I swallowed my fear and nodded.
Clay gave me an encouraging smile, but I could see the strain behind his eyes.
James
I LASHED OUT with both feet at the car door, kicking as hard as I could.
“Jeez, calm down, James!”
I recognized Smith’s voice at once and paused.
“I’ve got the child locks engaged—you won’t get out that way. But if you keep pissing me off, I’ll have to put you out again.”
Vague memories coated in candy floss floated around my mind. I’d told him something important—what was it?
Gradually, the fuzziness cleared and everything came flooding back. I remembered: the argument, his insistence that Amira could be trusted, and Larson putting me in a choke hold until I’d passed out.
My throat was still raw.
Bastard!
I kicked the driver’s seat for good measure.
Smith swerved slightly and I heard another car honking at him. I would have smiled, but the gag in my mouth stopped me from doing anything.
“Christ! You’ll get us both killed if you carry on like that. I don’t want to hurt you, James. I like you. Just hold it together for a few more hours and I’ll take off the handcuffs and gag. Scouts honour.”
I muttered something that was unintelligible through the gag, promising myself that I’d show Smith how seriously pissed off I was, as soon as I had the chance.
But for now, I had no choice but to lie back and think of England.
The turn of events had blindsided me.
After Amira’s admission in the night, I knew that I needed to tell Smith everything I’d learned. I’d waited until she was asleep, then slipped out of bed and gone to find the CIA handler. He’d listened to me calmly, then told me that he already knew about how her brother had died.
I’d stared at him in amazement.
“Then you must know that the mission is already compromised! You can’t send Clay in there with her. What the hell is going on?”
“Clay already has as much data as he needs.”
“Then I’ll tell him!”
And that’s when Larson got me in a choke hold that rendered me unconscious in seconds.
Sick and woozy, I’d woken up in the back of a car, bound, gagged and blindfolded. Metal restraints were fastened around both wrists, securing my hands behind me, and sending sparks of pain shooting into my shoulders every time the car turned a corner. My mouth was dry and I could taste blood. I struggled to sit up, banging my head against the car window in the process.
“Good choice,” said Smith dryly.
I tried to spit out a few mumbled swear words, but he just ignored me.
He didn’t speak again, but drove for at least two hours, and I didn’t know how long I’d been unconscious before that.
Finally, Smith slowed the truck, the wheels thumping over the kerb, and he cut the engine.
I listened hard. I could hear traffic and police sirens, so I must be in an urban area.
Smith opened the door and I tensed, waiting for my chance to escape, but I could hear more than one voice, maybe three people. I doubt I could have fought anyone in my current state, certainly not two people, so I didn’t struggle as they hauled me out of the car.
“This him?”
“Yeah, Staff Sergeant James Spears, British Army, EOD high threat operator.”
“How long?”
“As long as it takes.
Hands gripped my shoulders and then I heard the car engine start. I could smell the fuel, and the sound told me that I was in a garage, so no one would be able to see me if I struggled. Then I heard the sound of an electric motor and the garage door clanged shut.
Someone released the restraints around my ankles and I was pushed forwards, stumbling slightly, then told to take two steps up. The air was cooler here, so it was probably a building with air conditioning. I was led upstairs.
“Sit,” said the voice.
Shuffling forward, I lowered myself awkwardly, finding a soft mattress underneath me.
The blindfold and gag were removed and I blinked madly, my eyes watering in the bright electric light. When I was able to focus again, I squinted up at a hard-looking man who was wearing a gun on his hip.
“Where am I?”
“A safe-house.”
What?
“Why am I here?” I asked, my voice scratchy and hoarse.
“You’re staying here until Smith says otherwise. There’s a bathroom over there,” and he nodded to a door on my right. “Clean clothes, shaving gear. I’ll send some food in.”
A second man entered the room and uncuffed my hands.
“Don’t make trouble,” he said, “and in a few weeks, you’ll walk out of here.”
Then they locked the door behind them.
A few weeks!
I yanked back the curtains, but thick bars lined the windows and there was no other way out.
What the hell was going on?
Amira
I THOUGHT THEY were going to kill us.
We were more than a mile from the terrorists’ camp when our car was flagged down by a man with an automatic machine gun.
“Showtime,” Clay whispered. “Stay calm. Follow my lead.”
I nodded, my heart thundering in my ears, fear clamping a hand around my throat and squeezing shut any words I might have said.
“Get out of the car and toss your keys on the ground. Hands on your head.”
The man gestured with his gun.
“We’ve come to join you in the fight against the Infidel,” said Clay, his voice clear and strong as we both stood clear of the car. “We wish to join the Jihad.”
The man didn’t reply but crept closer, keeping his gun trained on Clay. Then he stopped and looked directly at me.
“Show me your shoes.”
With trembling hands, I lifted my burqa a few inches, revealing my red and white Chucks.
The man nodded and I dropped the material.
I realized that he’d been checking that I really was female. A burqa hid many secrets.
He walked closer, then thrust the barrel of his gun into Clay’s stomach, winding him.
Clay dropped to the ground, wheezing and holding his belly. I was frozen to the spot, utterly unable to move, my whole body shaking.
The man spoke into a mouthpiece, staring at me coldly the whole time while Clay lay on the ground, and a minute later a Jeep came bouncing over the dirt track with two more armed men.
They blindfolded us and bound our hands, hauling us into the Jeep, then pushing us out roughly a few minutes later.
I landed on my knees, immediately falling face down. I lay in the dirt, breathing in the clean smell of soil through my burqa, panic gripping me, and I wondered if after all this, I’d be dead within the first minute.
But the seconds ticked by and I heard murmured voices discussing us, so I struggled to sit up.
“Well, this is interesting,” said a cultured voice with a British accent. “I’m told you wish to join the Jihad.”
“Yes,” said Clay, keeping his voice subservient.
I was ridiculously relieved to hear him speak.
“American?”
“Yes, sir. My wife and I are both American, but her family is from Syria.”
There was a short pause, then the man spoke again.
“I’m more concerned in hearing how you found us.”
Clay gave the speech that he’d been rehearsing.
“I served in the U.S. Army until ten months ago,” he lied. “I was given a dishonourable discharge for refusing to fight against my brothers in Syria.” His voice became bitter. “I served 18 months in a military prison, then they kicked me out after 11 years without a pension.” His voice became impassioned. “They’re killing children over there. They killed my wife’s brother.”
Another pause and then the man’s voice was closer to me.
“Was your brother Jihadi?”
He wa
s so close to me I could smell the spice on his breath from his last meal. I shook with fear that was definitely not faked.
“No, sir,” I whispered. “He was a med student. He volunteered at a hospital in Raqqa. He was killed in a U.S. airstrike.”
“Hmm. And what was his name?”
Even though he couldn’t see my face, my lips trembled.
“K-K-Karam Kousa.”
“And your name?”
“Amira Kousa.”
It wasn’t my real name. Smith had produced a set of documents for me and a paper trail that would show that Karam Kousa had lived in So Cal since birth and died in Syria.
“And you?”
I heard a thud and a muffled ouf from Clay, and guessed that he’d been kicked in the ribs.
“Clay Allen, sir,” he gasped. “I’ve been a convert for three years, sir.”
“You still haven’t explained how you found us,” the man said, his voice dangerously quiet.
“I met a brother who was friends with Ali Muhammad Brown.”
I held my breath, knowing that Brown was an extremist convert born in the U.S. and allied with Al-Shabaab, the Jihadist group from East Africa. He’d also murdered four men several years back: three in Seattle and one in New Jersey. His defence had been that the killings were in retaliation for U.S. government involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
There was an even longer pause this time. Then the questions began in earnest: where was I born, where did I go to school, who were my friends, where had I worked, where had I met Clay, how long had we been married, who were his friends, on and on, the same questions over and over as the heat of the day intensified and my brain felt like it was being boiled. I tried to remember every detail that Smith had drilled into me, but sometimes I had to improvise, and that scared me, so I kept as close to the truth as I could.
I told them that I’d been planning to join Karam in Syria but he’d died before I could go. I said that it was Clay who’d taught me basic bomb-making, skills that he’d picked up in the military.
Then the questions began for Clay: who were his family, when was he recruited, who was his Iman when he converted, where had he served, who did he know, where had he met Brown’s friend, repeating the questions, trying to trip him up, trying to find inconsistencies in his story, but Clay remained controlled, calm, thoughtful, just as always.
Finally, the questions ended.
“Take them to the hut and secure them. Then we’ll see if their stories check out. If not, cut their lying tongues from their throats.”
The man’s voice was conversational in tone, and that scared me more than if he’d been ranting.
I was hauled upright, my arms twisting painfully, as I half walked, half stumbled, gripped on both sides.
Eventually, we were dumped on the floor, presumably in the hut that had been mentioned, and left there.
I heard shuffling and then felt Clay’s body pressing against mine.
“How you doing over there?” he asked quietly.
My mouth was so dry, it took me several attempts to reply.
“Scared.”
“You’re doing great, ya amar.”
A surprised cough that could have been a laugh escaped.
“Ya amar? You’re calling me ‘my moon’?”
He laughed softly.
“Works for me.”
Clay was doing what he always did—making the horror a little easier.
“What’s going to happen to us?” I whispered.
“They’ll find that our stories check out, then decide if they’ll put us to work or…”
“Get rid of us?”
He hesitated before he answered.
“No, they won’t want to do that.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I prayed that Clay was right.
Karam, I need you more than ever.
But after another few hours of intolerable heat, fear was eclipsed by thirst.
My lips were cracked and my mouth and throat were as dry as dust.
For hours, we’d been left alone, our hands and feet bound. We could hear the sounds of the camp around us, a car engine starting up, people talking with a variety of accents, although I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
The air in the hut was stifling and the confining burqa made it hard to breathe.
I concentrated on relaxing my muscles one at a time, as much as I could—trying to ignore the baking heat and the lack of water.
Finally, the door opened and the intense heat lessened slightly as cooler air spilled inside.
My blindfold was ripped off by a hard-eyed man with a long scar down one cheek, and my hands released. A bottle of water was dumped by my feet. I worked my stiff fingers, wincing as the blood flow was restored, then awkwardly lifted the bottle under my veil to take long sips of tepid, plastic-tasting water.
Clay was untied, too, but the gunmen clearly regarded him as a much greater threat than me, watching him closely.
“Umar wants to see you,” said the scar-faced man, brandishing his gun.
We were led blinking into the sunshine and then told to kneel in the dirt.
And that’s when I saw Umar for the first time.
He was tall and slim with a handsome face, dark hair and a tidy black beard. He smiled, revealing even, white teeth.
“Welcome, brother and sister,” he said.
It was with a shock of recognition that I listened to his cultured British voice. This was the man who’d threatened to cut out our tongues.
I trembled, shaking like a leaf in the wind as he continued to smile at me and made us welcome.
We were given more water and plates of reheated food, then provided with a set of blankets in the room that had been our prison.
“It’s the best accommodation we can offer to a married couple,” Umar said regretfully.
Clay thanked him and we carried our blankets to the shed to make ourselves as comfortable as possible.
We were several hours further north here, and the temperature as the sun set was cooler. I eyed the blankets, wondering who’d used them before us and how clean they were.
Clay seemed unconcerned, but I shuddered, remembering what James had said about lice. Ugh, please no! I grimaced as Clay laid the two blankets on the dirt floor, kicked off his sandals and stretched out on the makeshift bed.
“Come and get comfortable, wife,” he grinned up at me.
Muttering under my breath, I pulled off my burqa and folded it neatly, then laid my Chucks, socks and jeans on top of it.
I felt very exposed, very aware of how I must appear to Clay—it was stupid to be so awkward, but I couldn’t help it. Clay was a genuinely nice guy. He was handsome, strong and kind, clever, too. I was so glad that we were in this together, and my heart rested a little easier.
Stupid heart. Didn’t know what was good for it. I’d always scoffed at the idea of an arranged marriage, but if you trusted your parents, maybe there was something to be said for it, because I’d made one lousy choice after another.
The last guy I slept with didn’t even wait to say goodbye.
Asshole.
The hut was still stuffy and airless, and my hair was a sweaty, matted mess, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I just left it loose and laid down on the blankets next to Clay.
“This feels weird,” I whispered.
“Aw, now don’t go saying that, ya amar. I was enjoying myself.”
I poked him in the arm and he pretended to yelp.
“No need to get violent on my ass!”
“I have no intention of going anywhere near your ass or anything else,” I hissed at him.
He chuckled in the gathering darkness, as shadows grew from the walls.
“Don’t worry, James would kick my ass just for looking at you. I hope to hell he never finds out that I slept with you.”
I froze, my fingers clinging to the rough blanket as if it was a life-raft in a turbulent sea.
Clay rolled onto his
side.
“Too soon?” he asked gravely.
I swallowed and forced myself to release the blanket.
“You know?”
He grimaced.
“It was kind of obvious when…”
He stopped suddenly but I could guess where that sentence was going.
“I got scared,” I shrugged. “It wasn’t my finest hour.”
“So … you and James aren’t…?”
“Definitely not.”
Clay didn’t speak again, but squeezed my fingers then let go.
He fell asleep almost immediately, but I lay awake, listening for footsteps in the dark and ruthlessly exorcising any memories of a man with ice-blue eyes.
James
TIME DRAGGED AND I was bored out of my brain.
I went over and over that final conversation with Amira, back and forth—one moment convincing myself that I’d misunderstood her, then wondering why the hell Smith had brought me here. If she wasn’t a threat, why keep me here? If I was a threat, why keep me alive? None of it made sense.
I wished I could speak to her. Hell, I wished I could see her. But now she was deep undercover, that wasn’t happening. I drove myself crazy thinking about her, wishing we’d had more time.
Instead, I tortured myself by going over every conversation we’d ever had, and that one surreal night that we’d spent together.
Shit, if they ever let me out of here, I’d turn into her stalker.
They fed me three times a day on a diet of take-out food, and the brands of restaurant chains that they used confirmed my suspicion that I was still somewhere in the U.S. and probably near a city.
They said it was a safe-house, and as they hadn’t killed me, it probably meant that they were government spooks like Smith: CIA or FBI or NSA. Probably. They tossed a few books into my room, but never answered any of my questions.
I marked the plasterboard with a fingernail so I could count the passing days.
And I set about trying to escape.
It became clear within the first thirty seconds that my room was a cell. The bars on the windows were cemented into brick walls, and I couldn’t shatter the glass by hitting it with anything I found in the room. The floorboards were all nailed down solidly, and I bloodied a few fingers before I gave up on that.
TICK TOCK (EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Book 1) Page 12