“I’m aware of all this,” she said, staring at the ground as they walked. “Believe me, if I could have done something to avert yesterday’s chemical attack, I would have. I didn’t realize they’d act so soon.”
“There’s no point in feeling guilty about that. You couldn’t have known.” He glanced sideways at her. “But you could give me the location of the safe houses. That would allow us to send in our special forces and end Hakeem’s reign of terror, before he does any more damage.”
She squared her shoulders. “I will give you the information. As soon as we’re on that plane. It’s not going to do you much good now; you can’t relay it back with the communications network down.”
“Yes, but if something happens to you, at least I can still get it out.” It was a valid point, but not one she wanted to hear.
She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Exactly, Sergeant. That’s why I’d rather give it to you on the plane. That way I can be sure nothing is going to happen to me.”
He didn’t break his stride, obviously expecting her to say that. “Let’s keep moving then. The Allies are planning air strikes in forty-eight hours. We don’t have much time.”
A couple of blocks later they left the suburb where Tom lived and entered the fringes of the city. The buildings got taller and thinner. Wires crisscrossed the sky above them, suspended by long, wooden telegraph poles. Residential houses were replaced by stores, with boxes stacked outside their front doors, displaying their wares.
He stopped outside a newsstand. He picked up a local paper and scanned a headline halfway down the page. He pointed to it. “What does this say?”
The front page was covered with ghastly photographs of civilian casualties from the chemical mortar attack in Hamabad. Hannah tried not to look at them and focused on his finger. “It’s a sandstorm warning. For today. Oh no.”
Tom frowned. “What’s the estimated time of arrival?”
She scanned the article. “This afternoon. Three o’clock.”
“So we’ve got until 1500 hours to get to the base. That doesn’t leave us much time. Come on. Let’s move.” He strode off, a bit faster than before, but still not rushing. Still not doing anything to draw attention to them. He didn’t even take the most direct route to the southern motorway. Instead, they zigzagged through town, merging with other people, acting as normally as possible.
There was less talking, though. He issued instructions on which way to go, and when to stay in the shadows, but apart from that, he remained silent. She didn’t feel much like speaking anyway. She was still trying to get her head around the fact that she was a walking memory stick of information, vital to ending this war.
He put a hand on her back and pointed down a short road, bustling with pedestrians. “Watch out!” he called, gripping her arm and pulling her out of the way as four men stormed past at a run.
Although he was doing a supreme job of looking after her, she was very much aware that his priority—his duty—was to get the information into the right hands as quickly as possible.
If something happens to you, at least I can still get it out.
The road widened into a busy square, where the two main roads from the east and the west connected in a giant circular intersection. Intended as a recreational area for workers from this business district, it contained some impressive modern architecture, mixed with ancient buildings from centuries past, bordered by a five-lane traffic circle. Right now, however, it was packed with angry civilians and rebels.
“This doesn’t look good.” She watched as a man fired his rifle into the sky. Someone else yelled an anti-government slogan, and soon a group of them were chanting it, waving their guns in the air.
The crowd got thicker as they watched from the approach street. There was a feminine cry behind them, and both Hannah and Tom spun around. A woman had been pushed to the pavement by two burly men in suits. She was pale-skinned, with dyed blond hair in a ponytail.
“Oh my God, it’s Anwar Abdul’s men. I recognize them from the compound.”
“Don’t look at them,” barked Tom, but it was too late. They saw her face and broke into a run toward them, one touching his earpiece.
Breathless with panic, she dug her fingers into the fabric of his shirt. “What should we do?”
“We’re going in,” he said, grabbing her hand and running into the square toward the excited mob. “Hopefully we can lose them in the rally.”
An array of bullets pinged off the wall next to them, sending fragments of paint and concrete falling to the ground. “They’re shooting at us,” yelled Hannah in disbelief, not that he wouldn’t already have figured that out.
He gripped her hand even harder. “Keep going. A moving target is harder to hit.”
It better be.
He weaved around pedestrians on their way to join the rally, and she tried her best to keep up with his long strides without stumbling. Eventually they had to slow down as they melded with the thickest part of the crowd.
The mob was two or three hundred men-deep and growing by the minute. There didn’t appear to be any women around. She glanced over her shoulder, but because of the animated nature of the crowd, she couldn’t make out the two men that were following them.
“They won’t risk shooting here,” he told her. “Come on. Let’s get to the other side.” He squinted at her, and whatever he saw in her expression caused him to add, “It’s going to be fine, just… Whatever you do, don’t let go.”
Don’t let go. She gulped and gripped his hand as if her life depended on it. The swarm of protesters was packed so tightly into the square that it buzzed with a life force of its own. The mob propelled them forward, toward the center of the chaos. Several times she lost her footing, and had she not been clinging to Tom, she would have been crushed underfoot.
Protesters fired their weapons up at the sky, egging on their fellow freedom fighters. Amidst the general roar of the crowd, she could hear chants of “Free Syman!” in Arabic.
A loud bang sounded as someone discharged a shotgun only meters away. The noise of the crowd dimmed, and she clutched her head, knowing as she did so that it wouldn’t do anything to stop the sudden, shrill ringing in her ears. Tom didn’t miss a beat. He linked an arm around her waist and thrust her through the mass of protesters, using his bulk as a shield and his incredible strength to barrage his way through.
She let him half guide, half carry her to the opposite side. She felt battered and bruised, and more than a little disoriented by the time they got to the relative safety of a mosque entrance, which was set back from the square.
He still held her around the waist, which she was grateful for, as she felt rather off balance. She put a hand against his chest to steady herself. His heart beat solidly under her palm. Its steady rhythm fed strength back into her body.
“We’ll wait here until you get your bearings.”
She rested her forehead on his shoulder, waiting for the ringing in her ears to subside. “I’ll be okay in a minute”.
Then something changed in the way he held her. His arm went from supportive to tender, holding her gently against him, rather than merely upright. Still trembling from the onslaught of the mob, she leaned into his hard body for support. The faint scent of his aftershave filtered into her nostrils, overriding her senses. He smelled and felt so good, she wanted to cling on forever and forget where she was and the dangers that lie ahead.
“I think we lost them,” he murmured, gently extracting himself from her embrace. “No one could have followed us through that.”
She straightened and stepped back, out of his personal space and back into reality. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” She managed a thin smile. “I’m fine now.”
The mob was becoming more agitated. One man had climbed up on a statue and was shouting chants at the crowd, who yelled back in unison. Men poured in from all directions. Everyone had guns or a weapon of some kind. A youth threw a rock at a glass shop windo
w, which smashed all over the pavement.
“It’s turning ugly,” he cautioned. “Let’s get out of here. I can’t see our friends anywhere.”
After the busy intersection, they stuck to back alleys, finally emerging in front of a small pavement café that looked out at Highway 80, the four-lane, north-south highway that coincidentally shared the same number as Iraq’s “Highway of Death.” She hoped that wasn’t an omen.
“The air base is ten miles south on 80.” He stared out at the road from under the shadows of the café’s dirty awning. It was a good spot to survey the freeway and keep out of direct view. “Let’s see if we can hitch a ride.”
“From here?” She looked doubtfully at the steady stream of traffic turning onto the highway. There was no stopping until the traffic lights turned red, and it would be too obvious to try and hitch a lift then. Someone would spot them for sure.
“No, we’ll cross over onto the hard shoulder and walk for a while up the road. We can wait in a rest stop, out of sight. That’s the safest bet.”
A steady stream of people, mostly families and elderly couples, also trudged along the edge of the highway. The men carried suitcases and travel bags, while mothers gripped onto tiny hands to prevent the children from running into the road—their aim being to leave the city before the violence began.
She wanted to reassure them that it was going to be okay. That once she got back to England and relayed what was in her head, special forces would capture Hakeem and his government, and the violence would end. There would be no air strikes, no ongoing civil war, like in Syria. But she didn’t dare, because what if she was wrong? What if they couldn’t get out in time or if she was captured? What then?
“Won’t Hakeem’s men be expecting this?” She felt sick to her stomach. In a way, all these people depended on her, and she in turn depended on Tom. She glanced at the SAS soldier, so confident, so capable. But would he be able to protect her from a regime that couldn’t afford to let her live?
“They’re looking for a blond Westerner, not a local woman with a rebel sympathizer. Those two guys in the square wouldn’t have seen your hair, and if they did, they wouldn’t have had time to relay the information back to their colleagues yet. We’ve got a narrow margin in which to exit this city. We must use it well.”
They crossed at the traffic lights, Hannah keeping her head well down, while Tom remained alert, his head moving slowly from left to right like a radio beacon. No one stopped them, and so they blended with the civilian exodus from Syman City.
They were almost at the first rest area when five or six police vehicles roared past, sirens wailing and blue lights flashing. Tom muttered an expletive and pulled her back into the sparse vegetation that lined the dusty off-road patch.
They watched as the cars came to a screeching halt about a mile up ahead. The blue lights could clearly be seen from their position. And they weren’t getting any smaller.
“They’re setting up an army checkpoint.” His expression was grim.
She felt like crying. “We nearly made it.” The blue lights spread out across the road and the traffic started backing up. “Now what?”
“They’re going to stop more rebels from entering the city and joining the rallies.”
“You mean it’s not for me?”
“Not officially, no. But they’ll have orders to watch out for you.”
With the cars reducing speed in lieu of the checkpoint, it was easier to flag someone down. The first car was a lone driver, a man. He let that one pass.
The second was a smart Mercedes with two businessmen inside. While she was tempted to shove Tom out into the road to get their attention, he didn’t stop them, either.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Something they’re not expecting,” he replied, his eyes squinting at the next car, a silver sedan, slightly run down, not the latest model. There was a woman next to the driver and another two people in the back. Tom jumped out into the road, waving his hand and forcing the driver to stop. The army definitely wouldn’t be looking for a family.
Tom beckoned Hannah over. “Ask him where he’s going.”
She did as she was told, in flawlessly accented Arabic. The man didn’t seem to realize she was a Westerner. She took that as a good sign.
“He’s going to Bani Hatwah,” she whispered. A visual of Bani Hatwah written on the map popped into her mind. It was a tiny village, a thumbnail’s distance south of Syman City. The woman sitting in the passenger seat looked impatiently at her husband.
“That’s good enough. Ask him for a lift. Tell him I’ll pay.”
“Okay.” She relayed the information to the driver, a slightly paunchy man of about sixty with a beard and a turban. At first he looked about to refuse, then he heard the word “pay.” Money was essential during a crisis. Banks were often closed or unavailable; the cost of goods went up as demand multiplied.
“How much?” he asked.
“I’ll give him a hundred dollars,” Tom said, not bothering to wait for her to translate as he pulled the notes out of his pocket. He must have anticipated this.
At the sight of the money, the wife nudged him eagerly. Reluctantly, the driver signaled for them to get in. He shook his head at the gun, though, and said he didn’t want to be caught harboring rebels.
Tom nodded in understanding. “You get in,” he said to Hannah, opening the back door for her. Two faces stared up at them—a wrinkled woman in a burka, and a young girl of about fourteen, in jeans and a pink T-shirt with sequins on the front. Both had the same anxious brown eyes and pale, scared faces. Despite the age difference, it was clear they were related. Hannah smiled reassuringly, but it did little good. They both continued to stare at her with something close to terror.
Then Tom did the strangest thing. He dropped down onto his back and rolled under the car. There was a metallic clunk, and she guessed he was securing his weapons to the car’s undercarriage. It took all of ten seconds, and he was back on his feet again, dusting himself off as if nothing had happened.
The driver, tight lipped, said nothing. Then the wife got into the back and Tom climbed into the passenger seat in the front. It would have looked odd with Tom riding in the back with the women and right now, it was essential to appear like a normal family.
Tom nodded to the driver, who pulled out into the slow-moving traffic again, directly toward the roadblock.
Hannah studied the back of Tom’s neck to keep from panicking. His muscles were taut, but as always, he seemed completely composed. He endured high-stress situations such as this on a daily basis, while she was shaking like a leaf and trying desperately not to overreact and give the game away.
There were five cars ahead of them.
Directly in front were the two businessmen. In front of that was a pickup loaded with men sitting awkwardly on top of what appeared to be long, meter-wide planks of wood. They were dressed as construction workers.
“Overtake this car,” said Tom. The driver frowned, momentarily confused, but then complied. He slid into the outside lane and reentered the stream behind the pickup truck. He held up a hand to apologize to the Mercedes driver who, not appreciating being cut off, honked his horn.
“Why did you do that?” she snarled around the headrest. “Are you trying to attract attention?”
“There’s something suspicious about those guys,” he whispered back, jutting his chin toward the vehicle in front of them. “They could be a diversion.”
Hannah stared at the men in the pickup. They appeared to be normal construction workers to her.
Three cars away.
She focused on her breathing, channeling her yoga instructor at the compound. Extend your breath. Feel the life force moving through your body. Take the breath inside. Retain. Release.
Two cars…
Then the pickup was pulled over, and the checkpoint officers made the men get out and line up along the side of the road. Their driver got out and gesticulated mad
ly to the soldiers in charge, pointing at the boards he had to deliver, then to his watch.
One of the soldiers held him at a standpoint with his weapon, while his colleague inspected the rest of the men. He walked down the line studying each of their faces. Without warning, the worker second-to-last in line made a run for it. He darted off into the open land beside the road, zigzagging over the dusty terrain. He didn’t get far. Within seconds, the soldier guarding the driver raised his weapon and fired. The running man fell to the ground and lay still.
“They shot him!” She couldn’t believe what she’d just witnessed. If they could kill a man in cold blood for running at a checkpoint, what would they do to her—a woman wanted for treason?
The old woman looked shaken, and the teenager had her fingers stuffed into her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Tom’s face tightened, the muscles on the side of his jaw tensed. “I thought there was something suspicious about them.”
“How did you know?” She stared out of the window as two more soldiers appeared and together they dragged the dead man’s body back to the roadblock where they dumped it in a waiting prison van.
“I saw that guy jump into the truck at the traffic light, and I thought it was a bit strange, that’s all. I suspected he was doing what we were trying to do. Be anonymous.”
“It didn’t work,” she murmured, her gut wrenching with anxiety. Would it work for them? The shooter guided the rest of the construction crew into the van along with their associate’s dead body. That left one remaining soldier guarding the checkpoint.
Their sedan was next. The driver, drawn and pale, pulled off the road as instructed. Hannah thought about the rifle under the car. Then the dead man. Please let us get through, she prayed.
The soldier stared through the front window. His gaze roamed over the driver and then Tom. His eyes narrowed slightly.
“Family?” he asked the driver, in Arabic.
“My son-in-law,” the driver replied. Tom nodded but didn’t speak.
Would the soldier know they were lying?
Personal Assistance (Entangled Ignite) Page 6