Falling

by Simona Ahrnstedt

“Sure. Peter is here too. Wait.”

  And before Alexander had time to say he didn’t want to speak to Peter, his brother was on the line.

  “I just heard. How are you?”

  The last thing Alexander expected was for it to feel good to hear Peter’s voice. His big brother. He could just see them, his siblings and David, together, worried for his sake.

  It might be the most ironic thing he had ever experienced. To realize how much they meant to him only when he was facing the most dangerous thing he’d ever done. He was relatively certain he would survive—it wasn’t a case of being worried for his own sake—and he figured that the others knew that.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Aside from the fact I’m headed off to fight in the desert and might have lost the only woman I ever loved.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “We’re going to need to fly out as soon as we’ve got her. A medically equipped plane would be good.”

  “I’ll arrange it. You have my word.”

  And Alexander knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if Peter promised something, he would keep his promise. “I’ll send a message with all the details I can.”

  “I’ll get it all ready,” said Peter, and then there was silence. “I love you,” he added. The words were chopped and sounded strange coming from his mouth. “I want you to know. That I do.”

  Alexander’s throat tightened.

  If he managed not to mess up too much, Tom and the others would cover his ass. It wasn’t fear for his own life that had him at the end of his rope, that made this phone call sound like a farewell. He knew what the photo of Isobel meant, knew why Tom had asked him for a black-and-white image. Simply put, it was easier to identify a dead or tortured body in that way. Easier to see past the beaten tissue and the red, blue, and green swelling using a photo in gray scale.

  The risk that they would fail was, in other words, looming.

  And if Isobel died down here . . . If he lost her . . .

  “I have to go,” he said, hanging up. He couldn’t bear to listen to his siblings’ caring voices any longer. He took a shaky breath. Ran his hand over his face. Felt sweat, sand, and stubble.

  If Isobel died . . . then he wouldn’t go home, it was that simple.

  “Alexander?” He heard Tom’s voice on the other side of the door. How long had he been standing there, knocking?

  Alexander opened the door and was met by Tom’s searching look. He pulled himself together. He wasn’t going to die, and he wasn’t going to fall apart. He would write a letter to Isobel, send Romeo’s number to Natalia, and tell Peter what he needed to know. He had a plan. “I’m okay. What do we do now?”

  Tom smiled, that same grimace Alexander assumed was the closest Tom Lexington ever came to a real smile.

  “Now we leave for hell.”

  Chapter 61

  They had hit her again today. Not all of them. But a few of her captors were more brutal than the others. It wasn’t unusual. Westerners were often hated here. If they wanted to get money for her they wouldn’t beat her to death, she supposed. But God, they scared her. They had screamed at her too. Terrible things. Isobel wished she could say she had been brave and that it hadn’t affected her, but that simply wasn’t true.

  Last time she was held captive, in Liberia, it had been for less than twelve hours. How long had she been here now? She had no concept of time and was slowly losing control of herself. They were in charge of her body and her freedom, but she was also starting to lose control of her thoughts. Thirst made her act against her better judgment. When they gave her a mug of cloudy water she drank it, though she knew it might be full of bacteria that could kill her more quickly than any beating or torture ever could.

  What was going on out there? Had they made a ransom demand yet? Had they even taken her for money? But yes, she was relatively certain of that, had heard them shout about dollars. If so, they’d keep her alive. Right? If they didn’t want to kill her just to make an example. Or by accident.

  But maybe no one even knew she was here. Why was it taking so long if they did? Medpax would pay, wouldn’t it? Or Alexander? He had money—surely he would offer a loan if they needed it? Or maybe he had left for New York after she’d behaved so badly. Had her lack of reply to his message gotten to him? Maybe he was in some New York club right now, making out with glamorous women, buying them drinks, and he’d stopped thinking about the argumentative, troublesome field doctor with serious trust issues.

  Stop. Don’t give in to pointless worry.

  Stay strong, Isobel. Be dignified. Respectful.

  Show them you’re valuable.

  She sat up and crossed her legs, rubbed her face, and smoothed her hair. Methodically she forced herself to go through old course literature in her mind. Semester 1: The Healthy Human. After that, she would go over everything she’d learned on the hostage course. And then, if it wasn’t too painful, she would try to do some kind of physical training. Maybe. Isobel almost smiled. Not even being held captive could motivate her to exercise.

  The door opened without warning.

  She was forced to turn her head away and close her eyes. The light was too painful. The man who opened the door yelled, but she had trouble understanding his dialect. He came forward, pulled her hair until her eyes watered.

  Phrases and pieces of the course danced through her mind. If your treatment starts to get worse, it’s a bad sign; they’ve decided to get rid of you. But they had hit her the whole time, threatened and starved her. How could she tell if it had gotten worse?

  Try to get them to see you as a person. Hysteria threatened to well up inside her. It was hard to try to be seen as a person when someone tied something over your eyes and another pressed something cold and metal against your temple and yelled something that sounded like “Bitch, you’re going to die now.”

  Chapter 62

  Alexander and the sniper, who had arrived with the rest of Tom’s team, left the dark green Land Rover at the prearranged spot in the desert. The sniper called himself Kill Bill. He was twenty-two at most, with white-blond hair. Kill Bill didn’t say much, but Tom had told Alexander he was one of the top ten shots in the world, so nothing else mattered.

  After they left the car, they crept, under the cover of darkness, the last five hundred or so meters to the hillocks from which they would watch the village.

  If they spotted Isobel, Tom and the rest of the team would attack within forty-eight hours. That was the minimum amount of time they needed to prepare and coordinate the attack.

  Alexander and Kill Bill lay down behind the hill. They pulled the camouflage tent over themselves, took out powerful night-vision binoculars, located the village, and began their wait. As the frostbitten night turned into orange-tinged dawn, Alexander reported the little he had seen to Tom over the radio.

  When the sun came up, movement began down in the village. The dogs came to life, smoke started to rise from one of the huts, and people came out. Alexander counted. Again and again. Women. Children. Young men. Old people.

  Tom and his team were about thirteen miles away. All the information was relayed to them, and Alexander assumed they were building models in the sand and going through various scenarios as they waited. In that sense, he thought, it was like poker. The more you knew about your opponents, the better.

  “But we can’t attack a village unless we know for certain she’s being held there,” Tom said grimly.

  Alexander had to agree. Reluctantly.

  “How is Marius?”

  “The kid? He’s no trouble.”

  Alexander wanted to ask more, but Tom disappeared, so he took the cigarette Kill Bill held out to him instead, lit it, and inhaled the smoke.

  The day passed, the sun bore down, and the insects crept over them. They drank warm water, which tasted like chemicals but which rinsed the sand from their teeth at least.

  Alexander listened to the conversations going on in his headphones. They were conduct
ed in brief, strongly accented commando English with the occasional French phrase.

  Two village soldiers, dressed in khaki and carrying automatic weapons, suddenly appeared in his sights. They went toward the hut farthest away from Alexander’s vantage point. He followed them with his binoculars. They opened the door and disappeared into the low mud building. He waited. This was the first time there had been any activity there. The door opened again and the two men came back out. They were carrying or dragging something between them.

  “Is it her?” asked Kill Bill. He was looking through his gun sights. Alexander wanted to tell him to put down his weapon, to avoid hitting whoever it might be, but right then he saw her. Red hair. A long kaftan, like the rest of the villagers, indescribably dirty. She hung between them, her feet trailing in the dirt.

  “It’s her,” he confirmed. “Is she alive?” Just then, he saw her cough, get to her feet. One of the men shook her, and then all three disappeared into another hut. Hardly able to hold his voice steady, Alexander reported it over the radio.

  “Woman sighted. Likely being kept in the northernmost hut.”

  Ten minutes later, the men came out again with Isobel between them. They opened the door to the farthest hut, went in, and then came back out without her.

  For the rest of the day, Alexander stared at the building in which Isobel was being kept. No one came or went. Did she have food? Water? He had known it would be tough, but this wasn’t tough—it was unbearable. Was she dying in there right now?

  “You should get a couple hours’ sleep,” the sniper said, unaffected by the situation.

  Alexander nodded.

  “Everything good?” He heard Tom’s voice over the radio.

  “No news,” he answered, trying to keep his frustration from his voice. He had to trust Tom, knew they had only one chance and that everything had to go right when they took it. But this waiting was the worst thing he had ever experienced.

  “We need another day out here,” Tom said. “You’ve gotta keep it together. Eat. Sleep. When we get going, you and Kill Bill are our eyes up there. We’ll go in under darkness. Bill will give us covering fire if we need it. You have to guide us. I need to know you can handle it.”

  “I can handle it.”

  He had done it time and time again during his military service. Kept watch for days under the most extreme conditions. Back then it had been an adventure, a chance to feel like he was really good at something. Now it was suddenly life and death.

  * * *

  When Alexander woke, it was dark. The sniper waited until Alexander had his binoculars ready, then pulled his hood over his head and immediately fell asleep.

  “We’ll go in when it’s darkest.” Tom’s voice on the radio was completely calm, as though he was reading the back of a bottle of dishwashing liquid. “With night vision. Night combat, particularly in inhabited areas, is tricky as hell; we have to assume there’ll be civilian injuries. It’s not going to be like in a film, no dangling from helicopters, no exploding doors. We go in, open some serious fire, get her out. If it all goes to plan, she’s out in under a minute. Then she’s into the helicopter and away.”

  Tom’s voice sounded completely clear. Did he ever sleep?

  “Does it normally go as planned?”

  The radio hissed.

  “Never. There’s no manual for hostage rescues. But we have backup plans. Two cars waiting. A stretcher ready. Everyone knows what they have to do. This is what we’ve been training for.”

  “How will you get into the hut?”

  “You haven’t seen anything that suggests it’s mined, so we’ll go in by the door. But we need to know how much she weighs.”

  Alexander thought about her curvy body. Isobel was tall, for a woman, but she had looked so thin. “One hundred sixty-five, maybe one hundred sixty pounds. Why?”

  “We’ll prepare an injection. We might have to give her something for the pain, and we don’t want to kill her with too much morphine. Tomorrow night’s the night. In less than twenty hours.”

  The radio fell silent. Alexander fumbled for his cell phone. Glanced at the timer, which counted how long she had been gone. It was rushing toward two hundred hours.

  Chapter 63

  Under cover of the desert night, the six soldiers moved forward. Alexander followed them with his binoculars. Each man was wearing night vision goggles and protective vests, and they were heavily armed with automatic weapons and pistols in holsters at their hips. They moved forward slowly because their goggles made the world green, robbed them of their sense of depth, and forced them to err on the side of caution. Alexander knew they were completely silent, every loose bit of metal taped down. These men were experts at tracking, rescuing, and killing.

  “T minus ten,” he heard over the radio. Ten more minutes.

  The helicopter should be ready at the base, its engine ticking over, ready to lift off. They had already moved the cars, hidden a couple hundred yards from the village.

  Alexander and his sniper directed the advancing soldiers quietly over the radio. From their raised position on the hill, they gave their orders: stop, wait, continue.

  When the force was one hundred meters from the village, Alexander saw one of the men put down a stretcher. If Isobel was injured, they would carry her out on that.

  “T minus five.”

  He knew the plan inside out, minute by minute. Tom would be cranking the helicopter up now, before lifting off and attacking at the exact same moment the men on the ground opened fire. Tom would fly in from one side while his sniper provided supporting fire.

  The men in the attacking force all had fluorescent fabric on their helmets, so those with night vision goggles could see them and avoid shooting them. That was the plan, anyway. The radio crackled.

  Seconds now.

  And then: “Showtime.”

  * * *

  Isobel woke to a sound she didn’t recognize. It was like a faint pounding, but she couldn’t place it. A storm?

  She sat up on the floor. It was so dark she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her. She leaned against the wall and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her heart raced. Was it just her imagination?

  No. It was getting closer. Dunk, dunk, dunk.

  And then the world around her exploded. The roar of an engine, shots and shouts, and then the door of her hut flew open and huge men started to yell in English. Behind them she could hear chaos and death.

  She quickly raised her hands, showed her palms. She didn’t want to be shot by mistake.

  “Identify yourself,” a man shouted as he shone a flashlight into her face.

  She couldn’t see a thing. “Isobel Sørensen,” she said with a hoarse voice; she had trouble shouting over the noise.

  “Your mother’s maiden name?”

  She blinked, shouted, “Blanche. Blanche Pelletier,” and knew that this was the man’s way of checking she was who she was meant to be.

  Two heavily armed men stepped forward, grabbed her, and pulled her to her feet.

  * * *

  Alexander had been so focused on the soldiers going into Isobel’s hut that at first he hadn’t noticed what was going on outside.

  “My bird’s hit.” He suddenly heard Tom’s voice in his headset. “Fuck.”

  Alexander peered through his binoculars at the helicopter, saw it lurch.

  “Shit. Right in the ass.” The helicopter lurched more powerfully. “I’ve lost control. We’re going down.”

  Helpless, Alexander watched as the helicopter fell, saw its rotor blades hit the ground, the body crumple and then explode in a great column of smoke. Alexander stared; his eyes burned. The helicopter was a huge ball of flames. No one climbed from the wreckage.

  He got up. Started to run.

  * * *

  The first thing Isobel saw when they pulled her from the hut was an enormous blazing fire. She had heard the crash. Something big had exploded. A light airplane, or maybe a helicopter.

 
“Medics,” one of the men yelled.

  “What’s that?” she asked cautiously when a young man covered in weapons, equipment, and wearing a helmet with some kind of binoculars on his forehead came toward her with a needle. She still wasn’t sure whether she had been rescued or kidnapped again.

  “Painkiller.”

  “No!” she said, trying to sound as much like a doctor as she could. She didn’t want anything to knock her out. “I’m not hurt. No need.”

  The soldier hesitated as if he had been looking forward to jabbing her. “We have to get out of here,” the leader bellowed. She heard fragments of conversation; they were talking into some kind of communication equipment.

  “Negative, no sign of them.”

  “Plan B.”

  “We’ve got to get her to the cars.”

  And then she heard a familiar voice.

  “Isobel!”

  She blinked violently. It couldn’t be?

  “Isobel!” He was closer now, no hallucination.

  “Alexander!” she shouted back, tried to orientate herself in the darkness, amid the gunfire and chaos. The soldiers had started to drag her behind them, and then she felt a familiar rock-steady arm around her shoulders.

  “Isobel!”

  “You’re insane. What are you doing here?”

  “We need to get out of here,” he shouted into her ear. “Can you walk a little farther? Are you hurt?”

  She just stared. The air was full of smoke and flames, and his face was covered in dirt. She couldn’t believe it was Alexander, in combat gear and with an automatic weapon in his arms, binoculars on his helmet, and heavy desert boots.

  “What are you doing here?” she repeated as they half ran, half crouched as quickly as they could.

  “Two hundred meters to the cars.”

  She nodded.

  He held out his hand, took hers, and then they raced toward the jeeps. Alexander tore the door of one open, she flung herself in, and he leaped in after her. The car started, a reassuringly strong motor roared, and the vehicle took them away at high speed.

  “Tom?” Alexander asked as he unscrewed the top of a green water bottle and held it out to her. She drank but forced herself to stop after a couple of gulps. Knew she wouldn’t be able to keep it down otherwise.