Behind the Wire (A Dan Taylor thriller)

by Rachel Amphlett

  Salim chuckled and wandered back to the table where Anna’s hard drive lay. He ran his fingers over it before picking up the grenade next to it. A manic expression crossed his face as he returned to where Dan stood, tossing the grenade between his right and left hands.

  ‘It would be a terrible waste if something bad were to happen to you before we could let you go,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Salim turned to his men and laughed, the small group joining in, bolstering his ego.

  Dan saw the man’s stature increase at the reaction of his men and wondered where the conversation was headed.

  He soon found out.

  ‘Enough!’ yelled Salim.

  Dan took a step back.

  In one fluid motion, Salim spun on his heel to face Dan once more, pulled the pin from the grenade, and tossed it to Dan.

  He held up the pin and laughed.

  ‘Fuck!’

  Dan’s eyes widened as his hands automatically caught the grenade, his highly trained mind already counting the seconds.

  Three or five?

  Anna screamed.

  Time slowed as he frantically sought a way out of the room to dispose of the small bomb. The single window was too narrow and too far away, and there was nowhere for him to run.

  Salim’s men had stopped laughing and were looking as scared as he felt, each of them backing away rapidly as he pushed past them, trying to find a way to get rid of the grenade in his hands.

  Then he became aware of a wheezing sound from Salim’s direction, and he pivoted to face the warlord, confusion swamping him.

  A bellow emanated from the man’s lungs, and he swung round to point at his men.

  ‘Every time!’

  They dutifully laughed, and Dan glanced down at the grenade in his hands.

  ‘Bastard,’ he murmured. He held it up so Anna could see. ‘It’s decommissioned,’ he explained.

  Salim approached, wagging his finger. ‘You would be wise to hold your tongue in future, Mr Insurance Man. Next time, it might be real.’

  Dan resisted the urge to throw the grenade at the other man’s forehead, fought down his rage, and instead dropped it into Salim’s outstretched hand.

  Anna ran to him, and he pulled her into a hug.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘He’s a madman,’ she whispered.

  ‘Shh,’ urged Dan.

  He wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment, but now wasn’t the time to antagonise Salim further by pointing out his lack of social skills.

  His attention snapped back to Salim as he called out to one of his men and threw the grenade at him.

  The men in the room laughed, tossing the decommissioned weapon backwards and forwards until Salim held his hand up to stop the game.

  ‘Enough.’

  Salim placed the pin back in the grenade and stood for a moment, removing and replacing the pin as if lost in thought, before setting the grenade on the table next to him and turning his attention to the leader of the men who had captured Dan and Anna. ‘Jamil, have your men take them to the cells.’ He raked his eyes over Anna’s body once more. ‘Do not let your men near the woman. Not until I say so.’

  He leered at her as she was led away, and Dan clenched his fists as two men grabbed his arms and shoved him in the same direction.

  As they reached the door, Salim’s voice rang out.

  ‘Wait.’

  His men stopped, curious expressions on their faces.

  Salim crossed the room and placed his hand on Dan’s shoulder.

  ‘Take off your right boot, Mr Insurance Man.’

  Dan frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘You appear to be limping,’ said Salim. ‘Yet, I did not strike your foot.’

  Dan cursed under his breath.

  Reluctantly, he removed his boot and held it out to Salim.

  The militant leader smiled. ‘Tip it upside down.’

  Dan sighed but did as he was told.

  The satellite phone clattered to the floor, and as Salim bent down to retrieve it, it was all Dan could do to stop himself from aiming a kick at the man’s head.

  Instead, he put his boot back on and met Salim’s eyes as they both straightened.

  A manic gleam stared back at him.

  ‘Did you really think you could call for help?’ the man sneered.

  He cleared the space between them, wrenched Dan away from the men who held him, and dragged him to the small opening in the wall behind the table.

  ‘Look,’ he said, shoving Dan in the back. ‘Look.’

  Dan’s eyes roamed the moonlit desert beyond the fort.

  Not a single light shone in the distance; there were no other signs of civilisation.

  He turned back to Salim and frowned.

  ‘You may be thinking of a way to escape and get help,’ said Salim. He pointed at the landscape. ‘But you will never walk the desert beyond here.’

  Dan saw the man’s eyes glaze over but stayed silent.

  ‘When I was a boy,’ said Salim, ‘the Moroccans dropped napalm and phosphorus on the people that lived south of their border. There are unexploded bombs that litter the earth all around here.’ His eyes met Dan’s. ‘Have you ever seen what napalm or phosphorus does to a man’s body, Mr Insurance Man?’

  He pulled back the sleeves of his robes, unveiling skin destroyed by horrific burn scars.

  ‘Some of us have never forgotten,’ he said. He turned and beckoned to his guards. ‘Get them both out of my sight.’

  As they were led through the interior of the fort towards a set of rooms that had had their doors torn off and replaced with metal bars as makeshift cells, he surveyed everything that lay around the space, knowing he had to get Anna as far away as possible.

  With luck, David and Mel would have traced their GPS location, but Dan wouldn’t take any chances.

  Salim was certainly crazy, whether through illness or simply on the power he held over those around him.

  Either way, he was proving to be unpredictable, and that made Dan more nervous.

  CHAPTER 27

  Salim waited until Dan and Anna had been led away and then filled a cup with lukewarm water from a jug on the table and drank deeply.

  He swallowed and pointed at Jamil. ‘Contact the Russian,’ he said. ‘Tell him we have what he seeks.’

  Jamil nodded and scuttled from the room, his footsteps receding in the confines of the passageway beyond.

  Salim replaced the cup on the table and turned it between his fingers. In the candlelight, the moisture on the base of the vessel left circles on the wooden surface. Salim’s eyes traced the patterns while he contemplated his next move.

  The fort was easy to defend, and although it was only three storeys high, over the past few months his men had blocked all entranceways save for the main doorway and a smaller one to the rear that was only used to restock provisions, and which remained bolted shut at all other times.

  The stature of the building allowed an uninterrupted panoramic view of the surrounding landscape, ensuring no enemies could surprise the fort’s occupants.

  Salim’s lips thinned.

  The Spanish colonists’ design would work to his advantage all these decades after their demise.

  His hand moved to the Englishman’s watch. Holding it up to the meagre light, he grunted in satisfaction. It appeared to be new, a latest model of a well-respected Swiss manufacturer that he’d seen on advertising billboards in the capital.

  Salim slipped the strap around his wrist, admiring the workmanship of the timepiece.

  ‘Spoils of war,’ he murmured.

  He frowned and peered closer at the time displayed on the watch face. It would be several hours before the Russian and his men would arrive.

  Salim had told the truth to Dan – no-one attempted to cross the Western Saharan desert at night near the borders. Death caused by stumbling onto unexploded ordnance was a very real possibility.

  Salim cocked his head to one
side as another thought struck him.

  That of the American woman currently held prisoner under his command.

  He licked his lips.

  Would she tell the Russian?

  Would he care?

  His top lip curled. In his heart, he knew the Russian would gouge his eyes out and have his balls if he touched the woman before the information had been extracted from her.

  He clenched his fist and fought down the urges. His time would come.

  Salim pulled out one of the wooden chairs next to the table and pushed his dirty robes out of the way as he sat.

  Automatically, he reached out for the decommissioned grenade. A smile played across his lips as he withdrew the pin then replaced it, over and over, the pinch and release of metal on metal soothing his fraught nerves.

  He straightened his shoulders and reached out for the cup of water, aware he had to remain calm in the eyes of his men, conscious of the fact he couldn’t afford to look fearful or else show his weakness to them.

  No, he resolved, he would obey the Russian’s instructions.

  He would remain loyal to the Russian’s orders.

  And he would claim the American woman as his own.

  CHAPTER 28

  A key turned in the well-oiled lock, and the men who had brought Dan and Anna to the cells walked away, talking loudly, their voices and laughter gradually receding as they left the bowels of the fort.

  Dan could imagine what they’d been discussing, and it angered him. He turned to see Anna backed up against the far wall of the room, her arms across her chest while she shivered uncontrollably.

  In three strides, he’d cleared the space between them, reached out, and tilted her chin until her eyes met his.

  ‘I won’t let them harm you,’ he said. ‘Do you understand?’

  A large tear escaped and ran down her left cheek, and he could feel her trembling under his touch.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, a little more forcefully. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘They’re going to kill us,’ she whispered. ‘But they’ll rape me first, won’t they?’

  Dan pulled her close and lowered his mouth to her ear. ‘I’ll get us out of here,’ he murmured. ‘Try to be brave.’

  He straightened, and she frowned.

  ‘How?’

  He put a finger to his lips and then glanced over his shoulder at the sound of footsteps, closely followed by the stench of stale body odour.

  One of the younger men had returned, his whole body posture suggesting he was less than pleased to be the one sent to guard the hostages. A cigarette dangled from the side of his mouth, and his beard was unkempt rather than being neatly trimmed as a sign of religious devotion.

  His rifle slung over one shoulder, he approached the bars of the cell with his hands shoved into dirty tracksuit pants before removing the cigarette from his mouth and crushing it underfoot. He wiped his hands on a stained vest top with a logo on the front that depicted an American football team Dan felt confident the man had never supported, and leered at his prisoners.

  Dan turned his back to the man and surveyed the cell.

  The stink of excrement and urine still filled the damp air, and Dan was sure the stains nearby were blood.

  He averted his eyes, not wishing Anna to pick up on his train of thought.

  A window had been set high in the far wall, but this too was barred, and the stonework showed no sign of deterioration. Moonlight pooled through the narrow opening, helping to alleviate some of the shadows of the cell where light from the guard’s lamp couldn’t reach.

  Dan guided Anna across to the far side of the cell, where they lowered themselves to the stone floor and sat with their backs to the wall, legs outstretched.

  The guard tried to look nonchalant as he turned an old dilapidated chair towards himself and sat in it, his rifle cradled across his thighs as his hooded eyes contemplated the man and woman beyond the steel bars in front of him.

  Dan lowered his gaze, brought his knees up to chest height, balanced his elbows on them, and closed his eyes.

  ‘Are you sleeping?’ said Anna, her tone incredulous.

  ‘Shh,’ said Dan out the side of his mouth. ‘Copy me.’

  He heard a faint sigh of exasperation but kept his eyes closed. He trusted her to do as she was told.

  He also trusted his gut instinct that their young guard would soon drift off, bored by the monotony of guarding prisoners who were doing nothing more than sleeping.

  While he waited, Dan recalled what he’d learned about the fort’s inhabitants since their capture.

  He’d neither seen nor heard any women apart from Anna, which meant the men were self-sufficient, cooking for themselves. He also guessed that the younger men had probably joined Salim on the promise of glory – yet were relegated to menial duties normally carried out by women.

  Such tactics would breed resentment quickly, and Dan suspected some of Salim’s men weren’t as loyal as the warlord imagined.

  They were certainly untrained, perhaps another feature of Salim’s determination to rule with an iron grip – if his men were badly trained, they’d be less likely to stage an uprising against him.

  He’d also neither seen nor heard any other men in the building apart from those who had travelled in the three vehicles plus two who had emerged from the fort upon their arrival, so it was a small group, probably comprised of the most powerful man in the neighbourhood and his cronies, and no-one else.

  Dan let his head drop a little and kept his eyes closed, his breathing steady.

  Anna’s head dropped to his shoulder, and she faked a small snore.

  Dan fought the urge to smile, and instead his thoughts returned to escape.

  Salim was evidently acting on orders, in all likelihood from the mercenary force whose weapons were being kept in the large room towards the entrance to the building. In which case, nothing would happen to Anna all the time Salim had to wait to be told what to do – and when.

  So, Dan had less than twelve hours before Salim’s superiors arrived at the fort.

  He tried to concentrate, bottling down the fear that threatened to surface if he thought too hard about what Salim and his men would do to Anna if he failed.

  The layout of the fort appeared to be basic: three floors built around a central stairway that was intersected by two passageways, one running east-west and the other north-south.

  As they’d been led to the cell, Dan had craned his neck when they’d reached the stairway and had seen moonlight shining through the top of the roof. He guessed that the top floor was uninhabitable, most likely used by Salim’s small group as a lookout post and nothing more.

  He wondered if his phone signal had been strong enough that Mel could intercept it and pinpoint his location. If she had, then he hoped David’s assertions that he could obtain help from the counter-terrorism unit of the Polisario army that patrolled the eastern reaches of the divided country were correct.

  He frowned. Even if David could secure their help, he realised it’d be unlikely they’d reach the fort before Salim’s masters.

  He had to do something, and soon.

  A loud snore from beyond the cell broke through his thoughts.

  He opened one eye and checked the guard’s position.

  The man’s head was tipped back, his mouth open, a trickle of spittle sliding down his jaw.

  Dan nudged Anna and put his finger to his lips. ‘Keep your voice down,’ he whispered.

  She nodded in response, her eyes darting to the sleeping guard, her lip curling in disgust.

  Dan quietly got to his feet and padded across the floor to a crack between the boarded-up window. He peered through, angling his face until he could catch a glimpse of the stars above, wracking his memory for the observations he’d made the night before.

  From memory, he figured the window faced north, and they’d travelled an hour at least before reaching it. He closed his eyes, trying to recall the map on his smartphone. At best guess, he figure
d they were still several hours from Mahbes, and certainly further away than they could expect to run or walk to freedom.

  He opened his eyes and turned back to Anna, who watched him silently from her place on the floor. He wandered back to her, crouched, and bent down to her ear.

  ‘I’ve got an idea. Do you trust me?’

  CHAPTER 29

  Laughter filtered along the corridor towards the cells from the rooms the militants occupied, and Dan raised his gaze to their guard.

  The man snuffled in his sleep, then began to snore once more, oblivious to his surroundings.

  Dan sniffed the air and caught the familiar scent of marijuana wafting through the building.

  His heart skipped a beat. If Salim’s men were relaxed enough to trust the young guard to keep an eye on their prisoners while they in turn got stoned, it worked to his advantage. Out of all of the men he’d seen in the building, Salim was the only one who gave him cause for concern, and his plan had to work if he and Anna were to escape before daybreak.

  ‘Okay, listen,’ he murmured. ‘We’re going to have one shot at this, so we have to make it work.’

  He laid out his plan to Anna, whose eyes grew wider as he set out what she needed to do. When he finished, he held her gaze and raised an eyebrow. ‘Got all that?’

  She didn’t answer. Instead, her eyes darted to the man in the chair outside the cell and back to Dan.

  ‘What if it doesn’t work?’ she hissed.

  ‘Anna,’ said Dan patiently, ‘we need to get out of here tonight. Tomorrow, whoever is giving Salim orders will turn up, and we won’t stand a chance.’ His voice softened. ‘If I’m going to get you away from here, alive, then we need to do this now, understand?’

  She swallowed, stole another glance at the guard, and then turned back to Dan. ‘Okay. Let’s do it.’

  He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. ‘Good girl.’

  He rose to his full height and cricked his back muscles, all the time keeping an eye on the sleeping guard while Anna scooped up the blankets, gathering them together.