by Jessica Ashe
I nod. “Nearly. It felt like ten. There wasn’t exactly a lot to do, and even if they did let me watch television, my basic understanding of Arabic wasn’t much help.”
“How did you get out? Was there a prisoner exchange?”
“No. I’m glad there wasn’t. I wouldn’t want a terrorist to get released just for my benefit. I got rescued.”
“By the SEALs?”
I laugh. “I wish. It was the United Kingdom’s SAS—Secret Air Service—that ended up rescuing me. That still hurts. I survived being in prison for five years, but to be rescued by the British… God, that smarts.”
“This all sounds like something out of a movie.”
“In the movies, it’s always the Americans who save the day.”
“You really don’t like the British, do you?”
“It’s not that. It’s just there’s a bit of a rivalry between the SEALs and the SAS. Fortunately, they can’t go public with what happened, but trust me, we all keep score.”
“How were you rescued?”
“You sure you want to know?”
Piper nods. “But only if you’re okay to tell the story.”
“I don’t mind. At least this part of the story has a happy ending. Sort of.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alec - Four Months Ago
I’m seconds from sleep when a loud banging on the door jolts me awake. Soon after, I hear metal on metal as the key is placed in the lock and the door to my cell opens.
“Get up,” the guard says gruffly in heavily accented English. “Boss wants you.”
“What is it this time? Does he need help picking out a Christmas present for one of his wives?”
He doesn’t understand English well enough to have a clue what I’m saying. Probably for the best. My mouth tends to get me into trouble here.
I’m escorted to what I refer to as the interrogation room. It’s either that or ‘torture chamber.’ There’s a small table in the middle where the boss is sat waiting for me, however, it’s the handcuffs attached to the wall and various heavy instruments dotted around that always grab my attention.
At some point in the last five years, every one of those tools has been used on me for torture. It’s hard to forget that I nearly bled to death in the far left corner, or that I broke a bone in my leg while handcuffed to the wall and beaten.
Other than the boss and the guard who brought me here, the only person in the room is my faithful doctor, Andrew. That’s not his real name. He told me his real name once, but then laughed when I tried to pronounce it back to him. I genuinely tried to get it right, but he insisted I call him Andrew to avoid “making his ears bleed.” Andrew’s the one person here I like. But having him here is a bad sign. If he’s here, that probably means I’m going to need medical assistance soon.
“Good morning,” the boss says. His English is decent and I suspect he must have spent some time living in an English speaking country. He even understands some of the slang I use. Either that, or he’s good at faking understanding.
I don’t reply. I hadn’t realized it was morning. I thought it was evening. It’s hard to know in a windowless cell.
“Who is this?” he says, as he slides a photo across the table. I look down at the photo. It’s a young soldier—can’t be more than twenty or twenty-one years old.
“No idea,” I reply.
The boss nods to the guard and I brace myself just before the butt of his gun hits me on the side of my head.
“That’s not going to help my memory,” I say calmly. Despite what had some people say, you don’t get used to pain. If anything, it gets worse, and the thought of pain becomes almost as bad as the pain itself. Right now, my head hurts like hell, but I refuse to give them the satisfaction.
“Tell me who this man is, and we send you back to your cell.”
“Look, I told you, I don’t know. That man is about twenty years old. As you know, I’ve been here for five years, so he would have been fifteen when I was last free. You have to be eighteen to enlist. Math isn’t your strong suit, is it?”
The man in the picture is also British judging by his uniform, but I don’t tell them that. Better to let them figure it out themselves.
I get another beating from the guard. This one ends with me lying on the floor and taking a kicking. I used to try and fight back, even with handcuffs on, but it never did much good. I sometimes drew blood, but that was nothing compared to what they would do to me afterward. Now I just let them beat me while I try to think back to happier days.
The boss talks to the guard in Arabic, and presumably says ‘take him back to his cell,’ because the guard picks me up and drags me towards the door.
“I’ll take him,” the doctor says in English. “I’ll need to see to those wounds unless you want him getting an infection.”
“Very well,” the boss says, waving the guard off after a few moments thought.
“You know, Doc,” I say, once we’re out of the room, “sometimes your treatments hurt more than the beatings themselves.”
“If you weren’t so rude to the guards, you wouldn’t get beatings in the first place.”
“You want me to be polite? In case you haven’t noticed, they don’t exactly treat me with much respect.”
“I’m not saying you have to like them, just don’t antagonize them. I don’t get any pleasure from stitching up your wounds.”
“I need the beating every now and again. It helps me feel alive.”
“Keep that up much longer, and you won’t be alive at all. I’ve heard talk. They’re starting to wonder whether you’re worth the effort of keeping alive. Is there any information you can give them at all? Just something small, that will make them think you’re worth something to them.”
“I’m not telling them a single thing about the people I work with. Not even their dick size.”
“You’re stubborn.”
“You’ve only just noticed?”
“Good point. Come on, let’s get some alcohol on those—”
Andrew disappears from my side in a flash. I look around and see a soldier pinning the doctor to the ground with a knife to his throat.
“We’re getting you out of here,” the soldier says in an English accent. “Mind if I deal with this one? Or do you want the honors?”
“Leave him alone,” I command. “He’s one of the good guys.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Kill him, and I kill you.”
We stare at each other for a few seconds until the soldier loosens his grip on the doctor and pulls him to his feet. The British soldier isn’t the one from the picture, but I don’t believe in coincidences. The two of them must be connected somehow.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“My name is Wade Chambers. I’m with the British SAS, and we’re going to get your arse out of here.”
An escape? I used to dream of an escape. For the first year I was here I spent every waking moment, and most of my sleeping ones as well, dreaming that I would make it out. The more time passed, the less likely it seemed. Eventually, I just gave up. There’s hope, and then there’s desperation. Hope can be a force for good, but desperation drives you slowly insane.
“Do you have a vehicle?” I ask.
Wade nods. “This way.”
“How many men do you have?”
“Just me and my driver. We kept it small to remain undetected. If this ends up in a firefight then we’re—”
Wade’s words are cut off by the sound of alarms ringing through the building.
“Fuck,” Wade and I both mutter together.
“We need to get a move on,” Wade insists. “What do we do with him?” He points to the doctor.
“He’s coming too,” I insist. “He’s as much a prisoner here as me.”
Andrew and I follow Wade as he heads in the general direction of the truck. We both stop immediately when he raises his hand, fist clenched.
I poke my head around the co
rner and see a guard post with three men blocking the exit. The alarms are still ringing, but I can hear shouts now, with men approaching from all directions.
“Shit,” Wade curses. “We won’t make it to the truck at this rate.”
“Give me a gun,” I say. “You get out of here. I’ll cover you. If I’m going to go down, I want to take some of those bastards with me.”
“We can still make it,” Wade insists.
“No chance. We need someone to slow them down or they’ll catch us.”
“Give me the gun,” Andrew says. “Let me do it.”
“No way,” I reply. “You’ve saved my life enough times as it is. I’m not letting you die to save it again.”
“You’ve been a prisoner here for five years. I’ve been here for ten years and I’ve hated every minute. Give me the gun and let me go down fighting on my own terms.”
Wade hands the doctor the gun, and he handles it like he knows what he’s doing. I get the impression there might be more to this man than I’ve ever given him credit for. Now it’s too late to find out.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say. “You deserve freedom more than I do.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew some of the things I’ve done. This can be my redemption. Now go.”
The footsteps are close now. There are so many tightly woven corridors that it’s hard to tell exactly how close, but they’ll be here soon. I shake the doctor’s hand and say a quick goodbye. It’s not enough, but it’s all I have.
Alec and I make a run for it. After fifteen seconds, we hear the doctor screaming and firing his gun. By the time we make it out of the building, we can’t hear him screaming anymore.
We jump into the truck and duck down to avoid the bullets that end up slamming into the vehicle as we make our escape.
“They’ll give chase,” I warn.
“No, they won’t,” Wade’s driver says calmly. “I disabled all their vehicles.”
Wade quickly introduces me to his driver, Terrell, but no one is in the mood for pleasantries.
We sit in silence for half an hour until we see the British base on the horizon. It’s real. I’m free. I’m going to go through the mother of all debriefs, but eventually I’ll make it back to American soil and back to my brother. Back to Felton, hopefully, assuming he made it out alive. He’d better have. He made me a promise.
“The world’s changed a lot in the last five years,” Wade says. “Did they keep you up-to-date?”
“They occasionally told me what was going on, but I never knew what to believe. They told such obvious lies it became hard to tell what was true and what wasn’t. Eventually, I stopped listening.”
“You’re from Chicago, right?”
I nod. “Why?”
“Cubs fan?”
I nod again. “I wish I wasn’t sometimes, but you can’t change your team.”
“Well, I have good news. They won the World Series.”
“Very funny. The guards told me that, but some lies are easier to spot than others.”
“It’s true,” Wade insists. “We don’t follow baseball much in England, but it was such a huge deal that even I heard about it. Why do they call it the World Series, by the way?”
“No idea. Shit, the Cubs won the World Series? Wow. I really thought the guards were lying about that. They told me some huge lies.”
“Like what?” Wade asks.
“He tried saying America was at war with China.”
Wade laughs. “That’s not true. If it was, we’d all be too busy to rescue your arse.”
“What about Iran winning the soccer World Cup.”
“God, no. They have about as much chance of winning it as England.”
I shake my head in disbelief as I think back to all the crap they told me. “They even told me Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”
I laugh, but Wade and Terrell don’t join in.
“The world’s a different place,” Wade says again.
How right he was.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Piper
I’m emotionally exhausted.
That sounds pathetic. Alec just told me a story about how he spent five years as a prisoner of war and only barely escaped with his life, and here I am thinking ‘God, that was tiring to listen to.’
Life as a cop isn’t free from risk, but if I thought for one second I could understand what Alec went through, I was quickly set straight. His story is so unbelievable that if I watched a movie of it, I would dismiss it as typical Hollywood nonsense.
I can just about get my head around the ambush and near-death experience, but being held captive for five years and the eventual rescue is almost too much. But I don’t doubt him for a second. There’s no way he’s lying. I know that one hundred percent, without a single shred of doubt.
I’d bet good money that Alec never has and never will cry, but he came awfully close while telling that story. The names he gave me weren’t just names; they were people. Friends, colleagues, and in one case even the enemy. Alec speaks highly of the doctor who saved his life. I suspected there’s an element of Stockholm syndrome at play, but by the end of the story, I’m convinced that the doctor is as much a hero as the British soldier who saved Alec’s life.
Alec is certainly a lot more believable as a soldier than a political correspondent. Now that he’s told me, I feel like an idiot for not seeing it before. He’s always carried himself with confidence, but I just assumed that was because he’s good-looking with a great body and a huge penis. Lots of men carry themselves confidently, it doesn’t always mean they’re ex-military. Often as not, it just means they’re an arrogant asshole.
Alec certainly has his moments of arrogance, but he has the goods to back it up. Now I look at him and see a soldier. Not just a soldier; he’s a war hero by all accounts. He saved the life of one of his men and did what he could for the others. It wasn’t enough. From the sounds of it, they had one stroke of bad luck after another, with weapons jamming, and clips not reloading properly. If it weren’t for that, most of them would have survived.
Alec did survive, and he’s here with me. Innocent lives were lost, but I’m grateful he’s with me now.
“I don’t want too many details,” I say softly, “but can I ask you a question about the torture?”
“Of course,” Alec replies.
“Did you lose a few teeth at one point?”
Alec laughs and shows off his pearly white teeth. “Yeah, I had to have a lot of cosmetic dental work done when I was in the UK.”
“They have cosmetic dental work in the UK?”
“Took me by surprise too.”
That explains the teeth. I’m still missing part of the story. Alec escaped and should have come home to a hero’s welcome. He certainly shouldn’t be living like this.
“Why does your brother still think you’re dead?” I ask. “Surely someone told him? And why didn’t you go to see him straightaway?”
“Everyone thinks I’m dead,” Alec replies. “They all think I died five years ago on that patrol, and that’s the way I want it to stay.”
“I don’t understand. Why is your rescue a big secret?”
“On the way back to the British base, Wade and I had a little talk. I asked him how he found out where I was and why the rescue mission was so low-key.”
“Didn’t they say that was to avoid being noticed?”
“That’s what he said, but I knew that was a load of crap. That’s not how rescue missions work. If they wanted to, they could’ve gone in there in large numbers and subdued the enemy. But there was only two of them. I knew something was up. I was right; Wade and Terrell had gone off the books. He wouldn’t tell me much, but he’d been working to uncover a scandal relating to the supply of weapons in the Middle East. Eventually that led him to the weapons supplied to my team, and then he started digging into the patrol that left us all for dead. Somehow he found out I was alive.”
“Bu
t that doesn’t explain why you stayed off the radar.”
“Wade didn’t tell me much, but he did tell me that my team had been screwed over. A politician on the Appropriations Committee saw to it that his friend got a contract to supply us with weapons that were not fit for purpose.”
“Shit.”
“Shit indeed. It didn’t come as a huge surprise. I spent five years reliving that patrol, and I always came to the same conclusion; we would have survived if it weren’t for the weapons. The second Wade told me what happened, I decided to get revenge.”
I shouldn’t be listening to this. It’s one thing to hear national secrets, but I have a distinct feeling that it’s going to get a lot worse. I’ve taken revenge before. Sometimes it feels good, sometimes it leaves me feeling empty. My revenge is more along the lines of tricking a guy to get undressed for me and then letting everyone at the party see him naked as punishment for cheating on my best friend. It’s probably best described as ‘petty.’
Alec probably doesn’t do petty revenge. He has something a lot more serious in mind. My eyes flick over to the closet again where he keeps one of his only possessions. A long case which is too thin for a guitar. He’s either taken up the clarinet, or he has a more permanent form of revenge planned.
“Wade managed to sneak me into England,” Alec continues, “and a month later he got me back into the United States without the formalities of border patrol. He’s also the guy who set me up with a huge pile of cash. That man is connected in ways I still do not understand.”
“Probably for the best. So when are you going to come clean? Daron must be dying to see you.”
“Soon,” Alec replies. “I need to complete my mission first.”
“You’ve completed your mission,” I plead. “You got back alive. You had to go through hell to do it, but you managed it. Why can’t you just leave it at that?”
“Because my friends died. Five, maybe six Navy SEALs lost their lives. So did the doctor. I can’t just forget that.”
“So what? You’re going to expose the Appropriations Committee for awarding the contract to the wrong company?”