by Leila Haven
Jenny.
With an arm around her neck and a knife pressing against her jugular.
How the hell she was in that position was beyond me. She should have been back at the base, well away from this kind of danger. I wanted to scream so I could find the one responsible for the situation. A civilian, even an officer, should have been in a safe office, not in the arms of the fucking Taliban.
Everyone was still and silent in the living room. The guy holding her was slowly edging backwards toward a set of stairs. They probably led upwards to the second floor. Anything could have been up there, including an infestation of Taliban members.
At least a dozen high-powered guns were facing him but he knew nobody would shoot. Not when he was using Jenny as a human shield. I knew differently, they would shoot if they got the right opportunity.
All they needed was a clear shot.
I’d been in this situation before, but hostage negotiations weren’t my responsibility. Only certain soldiers received that kind of training and I wasn’t on the shortlist yet.
I was putting all my hope on Rafter and wishing he would hurry up and say something so we could get Jenny out of the situation.
I’d never been so scared before.
Seeing somebody I cared deeply for with a knife to her throat was quite possibly the worst sight I’d ever seen. A million thoughts ran through my mind, all trying to work out how to kill the fucker before he could kill Jenny.
Every second that passed by was one too many.
“Let her go,” Rafter said carefully. “You’re outnumbered here, you’re not going to move one more inch before someone takes you out. Do you want to take your chance with the snipers or are you going to release the woman and end this without you being dead in the end?”
I couldn’t even be sure if the guy spoke English. We needed an interpreter but there wasn’t going to be time to wait for one to arrive from base. Jenny would be dead by then, along with every daydream I’d had about her and our future.
The man started speaking in Dari with an accent too thick to even pick up the basics of his words. Everything he said sounded like a threat, regardless of us speaking different languages.
I knew when someone was bloodthirsty.
He had that look in his eyes.
Jenny’s eyes were wide open with fear, the emotion rolling off her in waves. We all would have felt the same in her position, no matter how brave we all pretended to be.
“She’s not who you want,” Rafter continued. If he actually thought he could get her out of this situation with words, he was a bigger fool than I thought he was.
I levelled my gun at the man, trying to see if I could get a clean shot without injuring Jenny in any way. He kept moving around, constantly keeping himself on his feet to thwart any snipers like me.
“Let her go and you can have me,” Rafter said. “She’s a civilian, this isn’t her fight.”
Again, he was answered with a garbled smattering of words we didn’t understand. Most likely he was telling us exactly what he thought of us.
It was all taking too long and prolonging Jenny’s misery. Something needed to be done and clearly Rafter wasn’t going to do it.
I needed to do something.
And I needed to do it now.
Chapter 7:
Officer Jennifer Ramirez
҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉
His breath smelled like tobacco.
Not the kind people smoked back home, but something stronger. Like he’d taken to eating the stuff, coating his tongue with it until he reeked.
He also reeked of sweat.
And not in the good way.
I should have been focused on something else but my mind knew if it did I would go crazy. Maybe even do something insane to try and get out of the situation. So I was concentrating on the smells and trusting in the soldiers huddled around in the small room to save my life.
“Let her go,” Corporal Rafter said. Not that it seemed to be doing any good. If anything, it only made the arm around my neck grow tighter.
Images from my past didn’t flash in front of my eyes like I was promised they would. Maybe I wasn’t as close to death as I thought. Yet I could still feel the cold steel of the knife as it pressed onto my throat.
“Drop your knife and let her go or we will shoot you. You are not going to get out of this situation alive without her being safe first.”
Major Atoll said it would be good for me to get out in the field and observe the men. Like perhaps I would be able to stop the traitor by his actions rather than his words. I knew it was a risk leaving base but I never imagined I would end up as a hostage either.
“Don’t make me shoot you now.”
The moment I had seen Shaun storm in with the others, I had felt relieved. He was there, and every time he was around, only good things happened. I knew he cared for me enough to rescue me.
At least, I thought he did.
Fear pulsed through my veins while I tried to remain still. If Rafter was planning on shooting his way out of the situation, they would need me to be still. Otherwise we were both going to end up dead.
My captor started yelling in Dari. I hadn’t heard it spoken by someone with the native tongue before. My language teacher had made it sound much smoother and slower. This man was throwing words out with no regard for their fluency.
He didn’t care if he was being understood.
I managed to pick up a few words here and there, again using distraction as a technique to quell my rising panic. He was telling them they were all ‘infidels’ and were going to ‘burn in hell’ for their crimes against Allah. He said nothing could save their souls now. I was also fairly certain he’d thrown in a whole string of swear words but I couldn’t be sure – we didn’t officially learn those in class.
All of a sudden the man pulled me tighter, almost cutting off the oxygen to my airway. I had to stand on tiptoes just to keep my head still attached to my body. If he continued on, he wasn’t going to have a live hostage to negotiate with.
My hands automatically went to his arm, trying to claw it from my neck. Black spots were starting to blur the edges of my vision – I was running out of air.
“Let her go!” Corporal Rafter screamed.
The man went backwards up the first step of the staircase. He dragged me along with him, momentarily using his knife hand to steady himself against the wall. Stars were starting to burst in my vision, making everything blurry.
Everyone started yelling at him as the knife returned to my throat and started digging into the soft flesh. It stung like a bee and remained throbbing around the knife. The tickle of blood oozing from the wound started to go cold on my neck.
He tugged me up another step.
Everyone yelled some more.
I could hear voices from up above, men on the second level of the house. No matter how hard I tried to listen, I couldn’t be sure how many of them there were. It sounded like many.
Enough to outnumber our soldiers?
Maybe.
Through the whole melee, one set of eyes stood out above all others. Shaun was looked at me down the barrel of his gun. In that fraction of a second, realization dawned on me.
He was going to shoot.
I had only a moment to process the information before everyone was silenced by the crack of a gun. It wasn’t loud, but everyone knew what had happened.
The arm around my neck slackened.
The knife fell away.
I was pushed downwards, tripping down the steps without being able to find any purchase. I landed on the floor in an undignified heap while chaos was making its home around me.
All the soldiers were moving, trying to get up the stairs while those upstairs tried to get down. I crawled to the wall and huddled there, making a small ball with my body and hoping it was enough to stay out of the fray.
“Are you alright?” It took a moment for me to understand that the voice was speaking to me. “Jenny, are you okay?”
Sha
un’s brown eyes were a glow of comfort in all the madness around me. I nodded and he remained a moment longer to see if I was lying.
He took off again when more shots were fired upstairs.
My shoulder was covered in blood. When I felt the red stickiness, I panicked. But there was no pain in my body, my captor had been shot but Shaun had missed me. He was a hell of a sniper.
Still, I wondered whether he had disobeyed protocol by acting when there was still dialogue being exchanged between the parties. It was crazy to be thinking so logically in such a traumatic time but it was all I could do to not focus on the terror that had seeped into my body.
I hated that I was having such doubts about Shaun. My heart said one thing and my brain was saying another. If so many people thought he was secretly working with the Taliban, there had to be some reason behind it. My college professor used to always say there was truth behind every rumor.
Shaun had just saved my life.
I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt. At least for now.
The sound of boots stomping and the smell of gunfire assaulted my senses. It continued on until soldiers finally started making their way downstairs again. I was grateful to see every face, hoping none of them had lost their lives in the house.
Shaun helped me stand as relief washed over me. “Did everyone make it?” I asked, holding my breath until I heard the answer.
He nodded, his face red from the stifling heat. “Yeah, everyone got out. There were eighteen of them up there but not one decided to live today.”
Eighteen dead people were a high number of lost souls, even if they were the enemy. Our superiors told us it was them or us, even knowing that didn’t make it any less difficult.
Shaun helped me out of house and to the truck. Nearly everyone was still inside, cleaning up before we could move on. “What are you doing out here?” he asked gruffly.
“The major thought it would be good for me to observe in the field. He said I would stay out of harm’s way.”
He punched the truck. “I’m going to kill him. You could have died in there, Jenny. Nowhere here is safe. The moment you leave the base you are fair game. The Taliban don’t care who they kill as long as their blood is red.”
I’d never seen him so angry before. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m okay. You saved my life, everything is fine.”
“No, it’s not. I almost…”
“Almost what?” I prompted.
He dragged his gaze back to me, the fire within him slowly simmering down to pain. “I almost lost you. If I did, I just don’t know what I’d do.”
His confession surprised me. He may have worshipped me when we were naked but I wasn’t naïve enough to think he held strong feelings for me fully dressed.
I didn’t know what to say.
Thankfully, our conversation was interrupted as Corporal Rafter called Shaun back to duty. He gave me one last look. “Just promise me you won’t leave the base again.”
“I won’t.” Nothing would get me through that gates again, not after this deadly sojourn into the Afghanistan desert.
I was returned back to base where I remained in my dorm room for the rest of the day. I told everyone I was fine, but when I was alone, the tears I’d been holding onto flowed in earnest.
Part of me expected Shaun to knock on my door in the middle of the night, but he didn’t. I wasn’t sure what that meant, if anything.
The next day, I returned to the meeting room given to me for my investigation. Corporal Rafter was scheduled to meet with me so I threw myself back into work. That way I didn’t have time to ponder what could have been my fate yesterday.
We sat down and stared at each other for a moment. Sometimes it was amazing what you could learn in the silences. Corporal Rafter was young for his ranking, but he was fully capable according to Atoll. He sat with a straight back, his hands on his thighs. He was showing no casualness to me, it was all business.
Clearly, he wasn’t going to be the one to talk first. I started the voice recorder and kicked it off. “Please state your name and rank.
“Matthew Edward Rafter, Corporal of the U.S. Military.”
“Are you aware of the reason for my presence here on base?”
“Yes, ma’am. Suspicions have been raised about a possible leak in the ranks.”
“Do you agree with those suspicions?” I asked. I always enjoyed getting straight down to the nitty gritty of the situation and not wasting time. Everybody here had a job to do and I didn’t want to keep good soldiers from their troop.
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
He hesitated a moment, those three letters potentially about to open up a big can of worms. When he finally spoke, it felt like his suspicions weighed on him. “There have been several missions lately that have resulted in the Taliban acting in a way that would suggest they knew we were coming. They had things prepared in such a way that couldn’t have been just a coincidence.”
It was pretty much what Major Atoll had told me. “You don’t believe in coincidences?”
“I don’t when it repeatedly happens. Once or twice could be coincidental, but not when it continues.”
He was right, but I needed to hear the words from him. I couldn’t lead him in any way, otherwise the interview wouldn’t stand up in the trial that would follow an arrest.
“Give me some examples,” I said.
He ticked the items off on his fingers. “We stormed the medical clinic and it was rigged with explosives. Then there was the incident at the hospital. Plus the school, they knew we were coming. Nearly everywhere we’ve gone, the Taliban have been ready.”
“They could just be paranoid and prepare for any attack.”
“They could,” Corporal Rafter said, pausing. “But I don’t believe they can be that prepared. Their resources aren’t enough to be ready for everything.”
I wrote down some notes about his demeanor that wouldn’t be picked up on the voice recorder. He seemed quietly confident in everything he said. His body language was open and honest.
I liked him.
He seemed like a straight-up kind of soldier and I appreciated that. My presence at a base wasn’t usually welcome as I investigated our own. Anyone that assisted my case was welcome in my books.
“Do you have any opinion about who the traitor could be?” I asked. It was the sixty-four-million-dollar question that I needed to find an answer to.
Corporal Rafter leaned forward, letting out a deep breath as he showed his reluctance at naming names. “I think it might be Private Simon, but I can’t be sure. Honestly, the idea of any one of us working against us, makes my gut twist.”
Even though I’d been expecting him to name Shaun, it still stabbed at my heart. “What makes you think he is involved?”
He shrugged and his gaze met mine. “I don’t have any proof.”
“I’m not talking about proof. What has he done that has raised your suspicions?”
“We’re all soldiers here, we signed up to protect our country and lay down our lives if necessary. That kind of dedication means we have a certain attitude toward our country. Simon seems to have lost that belief in what we’re doing.”
That was new. The way everyone else talked about suspects, they described incidents and tales of tattling. Nobody else discussed the attitude of soldiers.
“You think he’s jaded,” I prompted, careful not to lead him. I had to stay impartial, especially considering I was sleeping with the soldier we were talking about.
“I think he’s lost the drive that we need to carry out our duties to the highest standard.”
“Have you had to discipline him?”
He shook his head. “No. He does his job, he just doesn’t take any pride in it. It’s like he’s going through the motions but doesn’t feel it in his heart. Does that make any sense?”
“Yes, it does.” I’d seen it plenty of times in my relatively short career before. Once you lost the drive, you lost the motivati
on.
I tried to think back to yesterday, in that house with the Taliban. I had seen Shaun in action with his troop, did it seem like his heart wasn’t in it? He had held the gun with confidence, taken the shot when nobody else did. He saved my life, but was he just ‘going through the motions’?
My heart wanted to scream no but I wasn’t so sure. Was he just doing his job? Or was he doing it because it was me that was in the line of fire?
Everything I did with Shaun, and everything I thought about, was dangerous territory. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to do my job when people kept pointing their fingers at the man I was fucking.