The Captive Girl

by David Nees

  After a half hour, Dan slipped back into the cover of the woods and moved to his right. He walked easily through a grove of beech trees; the area was almost park-like. He wanted to get a look at the back area of the property from ground level. The pool area was brightly lit and people were still hanging around it. Infrared heat lamps had been placed around. After the sun went down the warm air rose and was displaced by cooler air sliding down from the ridge above and settling on the grounds. No one was using the pool. The activity seemed to be about eating and drinking. Dan could hear laughing and talking but couldn’t make out the conversations.

  He backed up from the clearing and unslung his M4. He set it on the ground next to him and sat back against a large beech tree trunk. He would wait until everyone went inside. He wanted to see what the late-night security involved. He yawned. It would be a long night for him including the climb back to his camp.

  Around eleven that night the sounds coming from the pool area died down. People were drifting into the mansion. Dan crawled closer to the edge of the forest. The last few feet, thick with bushes from the increased sunlight, presented a green wall of concealment hiding the interior of the woods from view. The thick brush, while not easy to squirm through, allowed Dan good cover from which to watch the compound.

  He made himself comfortable. The lights were turned down around the pool. Dan put on his goggles and waited. Within ten minutes he spotted a figure coming around from the front of the house. The man was armed but in the greenish light of the night vision goggles, Dan couldn’t identify the weapon. Probably a submachine gun, like an MP5. The man walked back along the side of the mansion, outside of the foundation plantings. He passed the pool area and finally disappeared around the back of the studio building. A few minutes later he reappeared, retracing the same route. Must have two guards, each working one side of the building. That made things more difficult. They probably met at the back of the studio and if one didn’t show, an alarm would be triggered. Dan watched through two more cycles to get the timing established. If he was going to get to the mansion, he would have only ten minutes after the guard passed before he would be returning. And that meant moving across the cleared area, almost a lawn, while the man was walking towards the rear building.

  If there are motion sensors, I’m screwed. Dan could see light fixtures along the side of the building. He could only assume there might be motion detectors mounted as well. But they must be turned off to allow the guards to move around. Feriz must think active guards are better security than passive detectors. He lay in the brush and thought about the situation. Take out Feriz, get into the compound, find the girl, and get out. In that order? Dan’s mind swirled with all the possibilities of how that could and probably would go wrong. If the job was to assassinate Feriz, that would be relatively easy. Just identify him, take a long-range shot, and disappear back into the forest. He’d be over the mountain pass and on his way home before anyone figured out where the shot came from. But the rescue? That made the job infinitely more difficult.

  Dan took a deep breath. Got to work this out. It’s what you do. I should see what’s out front and figure out how often the guards change. He reluctantly put down him M4 and dug into the ground. He dug down through the mulch layered on the forest floor until he found some dirt. He rubbed it all over his face and hands. Then with just his CZ and tactical knife, he began to crawl out onto the lawn. He had his night vision goggles in a side pocket of his vest.

  He crawled slowly out onto the field, staying flat against the grass. From his ground level vantage point, he could not see much. He followed every dip in the ground. The ground was not completely flat and even a depression of a few inches would help conceal him from the guards. He moved slowly so as to not trigger an alert if anyone was monitoring the cameras. Each time the guard passed, going to the rear, or coming back, Dan pressed himself to the ground and lay still. He only looked through slitted eyes, not wanting even the whites of his eyes to show in the dark.

  It took an hour to cover the seventy yards from the edge of the woods to the house. As he got to the shorter grass, he used bushes and flower beds that were part of the landscaping to provide cover when the guard passed. When he got to within twenty yards of the building, Dan waited until the guard went by and crawled the last yards to the wall. Now he was hidden by the shrubbery planted along the building foundation. He sat still and composed himself. The guard walked by on his return not twenty feet from where Dan hid.

  After he went by, Dan started crawling towards the front of the mansion. He wanted to see what went on at the front. Did the guards meet there? Were more of them hanging out there? How often did the shifts change? Once he had the information he needed, he then would have to make his way back to the woods without detection. Dan moved flat against the dirt under the bulk of the bushes that grew up against the walls. His elbows dug into the soil and the dirt scrapped along the front of his body.

  When he reached the corner of the house, he found a well concealed spot to sit while he watched the activity. He forced his breathing to slow and made sure he couldn’t be heard. He was hidden not more than ten feet away from the men. Not a muscle moved. He was a shadow. The guards met after their separate walks to the rear of the building and back. They spoke little.

  One of them, stopped next to Dan. Only a bush separated them. Dan held his breath. No sound could come from him, no smell either. The man looked towards the guard house near the bridge, then up to the sky which was partially obscured by clouds.

  “We going to get rain?” He said in what sounded like the standardized version of the Serbo-Croatian language used throughout the Balkans.

  “No, this will pass,” said the other guard.

  The man started forward and Dan slowly released his breath.

  “How do you know?” the first man asked.

  “My grandmother. She says her joints don’t hurt enough for rain.”

  “She’s better than the forecasters?”

  “Everyone in the village relies on her,” came the reply.

  “She should get paid,” the first man said and laughed.

  They seemed more alert and professional than the guards he had encountered in Mexico, but they suffered from what all sentries suffer from, boredom. The same routine every night, with nothing to show for their work, tended to make even the most professional hired gun complacent. Dan would have to count on that.

  No one came out to check on them throughout their patrol cycles. The only time others came out of the house was when the guard changed. It was a three-hour shift. There was his opening. If he could take both guards out early in their shift, he would have two or more hours to work without alarms being raised. He still wasn’t sure what he’d do, but now he saw how to create a stealthy window in which to operate.

  After the guard set out again, Dan moved back around the corner to the side of the building. After the guard had walked past the second time and was down by the pool area, Dan slowly stood up. He pressed his back to the wall and moved along it until he was under one of the light fixtures. The cameras wouldn’t be triggered while he was up close to the wall; they were aimed further out into the yard. He studied it. There were flood lights mounted with the camera. The cameras didn’t look to be infrared. Relying on the guards outside? Dan shuffled back to his arrival point. He’d have to be patient and just reverse his path. He made it once, he could do it again. Move slowly so no one watching notices. He knew that while lying still, he would be an indistinguishable shadow on the ground and once in the taller grass, never be seen.

  An hour later he was into the woods. It took a few minutes of casting about to find where he had left his pack and carbine. It was 2 am. One more thing to do tonight. Dan took a drink from his water bottle. No rest for the weary. He gathered his gear and began to walk towards the rear of the compound, keeping inside the cover of the woods. The green “fencing” at the edge provided effective screening; he just needed to not make any noise.

&nbs
p; The woods curled around the back of the property with a smaller cleared area beyond the last building. This meant Dan would be closer and have less open ground to cover. There were a few plantings, but not much landscaping attention had been paid to an area that few people saw. Dan watched from the edge of the woods. The guards arrived at slightly different times. He waited through two cycles. What he learned was that they passed each other and actually made a circumference of the compound rather than retracing their steps. On one of the rounds they stopped for a smoke.

  Satisfied he’d seen enough, Dan headed back through the woods and began his long climb back to his camp. It was 4:40 in the morning when he got back to the SUV. He washed his hands and face, ate a power bar, and drank some water. Then he lay down on the back seat of the SUV and fell asleep. Images of explosions, people shouting, screaming and a young girl running raced through his confused dreams.

  Chapter 13

  ___________________________________

  J ane Tanner walked into Henry’s office. She was not looking forward to the exchange about to take place. Henry was her boss. He worked in the Psychological Operations subsection of the Special Activities Division or SAD. With Jane he had begun the black ops program that had identified Dan and set him up to hunt down and kill terrorists and their enablers. Henry’s boss was an old friend and the Director of SAD. He provided cover for Henry and Jane to pursue their program in the climate of an increasingly timid and politically correct agency. The work required a large amount of secrecy in order to not generate opposition from congress or come under the scrutiny of the Office of the Inspector General.

  “What do you want to tell me about?” Henry asked as Jane entered. He motioned her to sit down in front of his desk.

  “Dan’s gone on another operation.” She paused.

  “Okay.”

  “It’s not one I assigned him.”

  Henry sat back in his chair and gave Jane a long, hard look. He was an even-tempered guy. His unruly, white hair, glasses, and slightly rumpled clothes gave him an absent-minded professor look but underneath he was serious about operations and striking out against the enemies of the U.S. He didn’t like rogue operations or rogue agents.

  “You’d better elaborate,” was all he said.

  Jane proceeded to recount her conversation with Dan, emphasizing how the operation would at least save a young girl from a life in pornography or worse, and at best lead Dan to larger players in the underworld; people which they might want to find.

  “So he free lances and justifies it with some mystical mumbo jumbo? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Jane nodded.

  “And you didn’t stop him? You allowed this?”

  “Henry I tried, but Dan had made up his mind. You know he’s a bit headstrong. In the end, I don’t think it will hurt.”

  “I don’t find your assurance all that comforting. This could be the beginning of a rouge agent carrying out his own agenda. And you know what we have to do then.”

  Jane shuddered inwardly, not allowing her feelings to show. He was referring to sending an agent to take Dan out, an assassin to kill an assassin.

  “That won’t be necessary. It won’t happen. I did some research on this Feriz Sadiković. He’s pretty disreputable. He started off recruiting poor girls across the Balkans to work in night clubs. Only when they arrived he prostituted them. He paid recruiters to comb the region, praying on the impoverished. The girls who resisted disappeared. The rest were forced into prostitution and most of them became addicts. You can imagine how bad the life was and how they would turn to drugs to escape it, even if only for a short time.

  “He soon figured out he could make as much creating pornography and it was safer, not really being illegal. Apparently he’s moved to more and more hard core fare to keep up with customer tastes. And now, with so much of that stuff being free on the internet, he’s going to be looking for other activities to keep up his income and life style. It doesn’t take a genius to imagine him getting into drugs or gun running.” She paused. “And that puts him on our list of targets.”

  Henry was still staring at her, sitting back in his chair. Over the years of running operations, it had been up to him to order the elimination of an agent that had gone rogue or become unreliable. He didn’t like it, but he wouldn’t allow those issues to jeopardize a mission.

  “Your justification, then, is that this guy might become a problem for us in the future.”

  “It may not be so far in the future. We just eliminated Guzim Lazami. He had connections in the Balkans. Feriz must know those people. These rats all run through the same gutters. He could easily move in to fill that vacuum.”

  “All right, you make a point.” Henry leaned forward. “But I’m not convinced that Dan isn’t a liability. When this is over, if he survives it, I want you to go over there and get him under control. I promise you, if this keeps up, I’ll have him taken out, as much as I like him. And you’ll be looking for another assassin.”

  Jane nodded.

  “Do not misread me on this, Jane. I support you one hundred percent. But I’m supporting you and the mission, not some free-lancing cowboy.”

  Jane was about to say something in Dan’s defense, but kept her mouth shut. She had gotten Henry to sit on the sidelines and not act. That was enough for now. And she definitely would visit Dan in Venice when this was all over.

  Chapter 14

  ___________________________________

  D an spent the next day watching the compound. He wanted to try to identify Evangeline ahead of time to make finding her easier when he went in. His plan was beginning to take shape, but it still had so many cloudy parts to it that he really couldn’t yet call it an action plan.

  Dan had pictures of Feriz that Jane had sent him. One showed him in a tux at some award or party event. There were a series of telephoto shots of the man entering and exiting a restaurant. He looked to be about five feet eight inches tall and on the heavy side. His hair was thin and brown with a severe widow’s peak. He had a tan complexion and narrow set eyes with a protruding nose. He was not bad looking, but not someone one would call handsome. However, money makes everyone more attractive.

  Dan scrambled down the hill again to his observation position. After an hour he had identified three girls that could be Evangeline. He marked them in his mind. Better three than fifteen or twenty. There was no shortage of females at the compound. He saw Feriz coming and going from the back building where there must have been filming going on. It was Friday and the work activity seemed to stop after the lunch break. Finally he had seen enough. He knew what his first move would be.

  Dan hiked back up the slope and got something to eat and drink. He rummaged through his weapons bag until he came to the brick of C-4 explosive and the detonators he had brought. He cut the brick in half and attached the detonators to each piece. With the explosives, Dan had brought a transmitter and receiver which worked in line-of-sight mode and could be used to remotely send a signal to trigger the blasting caps inserted into the half bricks of C-4. He had taken the system in case there was no cell reception in the area. It proved to be a good decision.

  Dan went over his nascent plan. First thing is to take out Feriz. That will cause panic among the guests. Next I have to isolate the compound. He had noticed a rooftop satellite dish for communications. There was no cell service in the valley, so Feriz must have had his own connection installed through the dish antenna. He had checked and found a wi-fi system that was password secured. He would disable the connection with the M110. Then no one can be allowed to leave. Can’t have people rushing out and miss getting Evangeline. That’s where the C-4 came in. Dan would plant charges under the bridge. Without the bridge, no one could get across the ravine with its stream. I’ll plant the charges and receiver tonight.

  When it got dark, Dan collected the explosives and started down the slope. He would set up at the lower vantage point. It had a clear sight line to the bridge and was closer
than the outcropping further up the slope. After double checking the visual to the bridge, Dan took the charges and receiver in his pack and headed through the woods past the front of the mansion. He would get close to the stream and then work his way towards the bridge. The guards would not be paying much attention, their job being mostly to stop cars and make sure the visitors were invited. There should be few cars arriving late at night.

  He waited at the edge of the woods until past midnight. Cars had rolled in during the evening but arrivals had trickled off and none had appeared in the last half hour. Most are probably staying the night. Shortly after midnight Dan crept out from the woods and crawled to the stream. He slipped down the steep bank and worked his way along the stream bed using his night vision goggles to navigate the rocky terrain. He could not be seen from the guard house. The water was icy cold but Dan steeled himself to it and kept moving. He expected the noise of the flowing water, rushing over the rocks, would mask his work under the bridge.

  Twenty minutes later he was under the bridge. The bridge had two longitudinal beams carrying the load of the decking. The beams were supported by concrete piers on either side of the stream. There were cross beams of thick six by four timbers bolted to the beams forming the planking of the one lane roadbed. He took the two charges and placed them on the support beams in the middle of the span. If they were blown and torn apart, the decking would go with them and the bridge would be impassable, locking everyone inside. No cars would drive over the bridge for weeks.