by Sidney Wood
Chapter Twenty
Fouzia sat at her desk and scanned the news feeds diligently. She and Najid made watching for news updates in the middle east a priority within their busy schedules. Over the past few weeks they had not found anything else in the news about Jena, but the FBI brought them in a week prior to watch another video. The new video was directed at Muslims across the globe. It was not a call to arms like the one featuring Jena, but it was just as disturbing. Up until the new video was intercepted, the FBI and Homeland Security were convinced Jena would be used as a suicide bomber carrying a dirty bomb. The new video confused the analysts. It spoke of a secret vaccine, and warned all Muslims to get it as soon as possible. Fouzia and Najid were brought in because at the end of the clip, directly after the warning, an image of Jena flashed across the screen.
“There is no vaccine against bombs,” stated Agent House. “We think Jena is going to sneak a virus into the country. How do you think she would do that? Is there anything that you can tell us that might help us stop her?”
Fouzia shook her head, rejecting the idea and looked at her husband. Najid clenched his fists and stepped forward as if he would hit the agent. Fouzia took hold of his arm and begged him to stop. “Please, Najid! We can’t help her by fighting!”
Agent House stiffened and half-stepped toward Najid. He looked angry and ready to fight. Fouzia held a hand up toward him and pleaded silently for him to stop. Agent House stood, unflinching and waited for their reply.
“We don’t know anything! We are just as confused as you,” said Fouzia. “We just want to help her get home safely. Please, she is not the enemy! Do you know any more about where she is?”
Agent House shook his head and looked disappointed. “We honestly have no idea. Look, I know this must be hard. I can only imagine how you feel right now, but the best way for you to help your daughter is to help us. We’ll try to keep her safe, I promise, but the first priority is protecting the citizens of this country from a legitimate threat. I don’t know how your daughter got mixed up in all of this, but…well, she is. If you think of anything, or if she tries to contact you, please, call me right away."
Fouzia shook her head and continued browsing news headlines. Anything related to the middle east caught her eye and she looked at it closer. Unfortunately there was nothing that she could connect to Jena. She saw a story about new and horrific executions of civilians by ISIS in Iraq. There was another about retaliatory executions of ISIS soldiers by a Shia militia. “Where are you Little Bird?" She rubbed her eyes and sat back in her chair. “Whatever happens, whatever you’ve done, I still love you. Just come home.”
There was a loud repeating tone over the intercom and Fouzia sighed. She pushed back from the desk and stood up. She rushed out of the office toward the nurse’s station, while pulling her hair back into a pony tail. She tied it with the hair tie resting on her wrist and looked at the electronic map on the wall. The light associated with room 32 was flashing red, and Fouzia saw nurses and orderlies running down the hall. She took a deep breath and as she hurried toward the emergency, she prayed that she would be able to help the patient in room 32.
Chapter Twenty-One
Staff Sergeant Dustin “Deep South” Parks, hunched over a wooden crate to look through his rifle scope and scan the horizon. He was a big man. He stood a full head taller than most, and his shoulders were massive. His team was currently assigned to an Iraqi Special Forces unit probing a perceived weakness in the ISIS stronghold in Mosul. He looked over his right shoulder at the two ISF soldiers sleeping against the wall behind him and shook his head. “Damn Hajis don’t give a lick, why the heck do I?" In answer to his own question, he looked to his left at his battle-buddy, Sergeant Mason “Preacher” Ricks. There was a man he respected and would gladly lay down his life for. “Hey Preach,” he said in a low voice. “What’s the ETA on Skinny and Frankie?”
Preacher was a short tempered, tattooed soldier from Missouri that Deep South had known since his first tour in Afghanistan. They were polar opposites but completely inseparable. Preacher was scrappy and quick to fight with a medium build; while Deep South had a long fuse, talked slow, and was just plain big. Preacher shrugged his shoulders and answered without looking up from his scope, “Shoulda been here by now. Probably stopped for a beer." Deep South could see his shoulders shaking as Preacher laughed at his own joke.
Deep South grunted and looked through his scope. After a minute, the back of his neck started itching and he turned again to look at the ISF soldiers behind him. He stretched a long leg out and tapped the boot of the nearest one. “Hey,” he said. “Get yer ass up and watch our six like you’re supposed to." The ISF soldier looked at him with sleepy eyes, but didn’t move. He gave the soldier’s boot a harder kick and pointed at the eastern window for emphasis. The soldier immediately turned and kicked his partner. He spoke harshly as if blaming the situation on him, and the two of them got up and moved back to their position to watch the eastern approach. “Unbelievable,” thought Deep South. He turned back to the west and looked through his scope at the city skyline. They were three miles out, observing from a small abandoned stone building set off of the main road by another quarter mile.
Through his scope he watched the same lone figure walking east from the city near the road that he had been watching for the past few minutes. Whoever it was, carried an AK47 and not much else. “They probably belong to one of the rural villages or farms outside the city,” he reasoned. It was not out of the ordinary for a person to carry an AK47 in Iraq. Many people carried them for protection, and it didn’t signify an alliance to any particular organization, or indicate hostile intent. That was a problem.
Deep South needed to know if the person he was watching approach their position was a bad guy or not. They didn’t wear the typical black uniform of ISIS jihadis, but it was not exactly the type of organization that issued everyone a uniform either. Many of them wore what they could get, and no two were outfitted exactly the same. Another confusing thing was that they usually travelled in groups. Thugs don’t like traveling alone and making themselves vulnerable. The word was that here on the eastern side of the city, ISIS wasn’t so popular anyway. “Maybe this guy had enough, and he’s just trying to make it to someplace better." Until he knew for sure, Deep South wasn’t going to let him out of his sight.
A few minutes later, Preacher made a clicking noise with his tongue. “They’re here,” he said in a low voice. Deep South didn’t look up from his rifle.
Two sets of boots could be heard approaching from the south. When they finally made it into the building, Deep South glanced over his shoulder and nodded at Captain Jim “Skinny” Denny, and Sergeant First Class Frank “Frankie” Banner. He went right back to his scope. Something new had caught his attention and he was waiting for the Haji to get a little closer so he could see more detail. There was something about the way the person was walking and how they carried themselves that just seemed…off.
Skinny dropped his pack behind Deep South and squatted next to him. “Gimme a weather report,” he said with a Brooklyn accent.
“Just a drizzle, sir. I got a singe adult male walking this way from the city. He’s walking light, with a rifle and a few supplies. That’s about it. No black baddies marching around or chopping off heads in my sector."
Skinny tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Alright, switch out with Frankie. I want you up top with your long gun. Gimme a shout if anything changes.”
Deep South stood up with a grunt and headed out the back door on the eastern side of the building. He tossed his pack up onto the flat roof and climbed up the ladder after it. Up on top, he kept a low profile and pushed his pack toward the western edge of the roof. He laid the barrel of his rifle on top of the pack and crawled up behind it. He lay prone on his stomach, with the butt of the rifle in his shoulder pocket, and his cheek resting on the comb of the buttstock.
Frankie set up in the western window down below. He heard Frankie st
art laughing, and wondered, “What the heck is going on down there? Skinny probably crop dusted him." He smiled at that thought. Their Captain was known for childish pranks, especially if they involved flatulence.
In his ear, on the team channel, he heard Frankie say, “Deep, you big gay moron. Your perp is a woman! Dang, she’s pretty good lookin’ too!”
“Really?” asked Deep South. “I knew something was off, but it’s so hard to tell sometimes, you know? Some of these Hajis ain’t exactly John Wayne, if you catch my drift." They both chuckled.
Deep South repositioned his rifle to look at the woman approaching just above the road. “Why isn’t she walking on the pavement?” he wondered. He switched to maximum magnification and held his breath. “Well, hello there,” he finally said with a smile. “Frankie, she’s better than pretty good. That girl wants to meet my mom." Frankie chuckled again, and then the Skinny interrupted.
“Deep, don’t go proposing just yet. Unless she starts waving a black flag, we need to let her pass by. We have a job to do first. I’ll call her in and somebody else can pick her up for intel while we push closer. Don’t you worry cowboy, I’ll make sure they get her phone number for you.”
Deep South ignored the friendly barbs, and watched her through his scope. Her head turned sharply, and she looked back toward the city. Deep South traced his scope in the direction she looked and switched to lower magnification. The scope was self stabilizing, but the higher the magnification, the less effective the stabilizer became. For quickly acquiring a target, a lower magnification setting was better.
On the road, about a mile back, was a pick-up heading east. It looked like a driver and a passenger with a light load in the back. As they got closer he could see a young boy driving, and an old man riding in the passenger seat. He swung the scope back to where he last saw the woman. “Huh,” he said. He swept slowly right and left, up and down. “Where the heck?" He clicked to a higher magnification and held still. “Gotcha,” he said, smiling again. She was laying prone, in a slight depression with her rifle held tightly to her chest. “What’s got you so spooked honey?” he whispered.
Deep South watched her as the truck drove by. The woman didn’t move a muscle until about thirty seconds after the truck passed. She sat up and scanned the area carefully, before standing all the way up and scanning again. “Huh, Skinny?” he radioed. “I think she’s on the run or something. She hid while that truck went by.”
“She’s a woman alone in the desert during a war. I think hiding is the only smart option, don’t you?” answered the Captain.
“Yeah, I suppose,” Deep South replied.
“Okay, fellas,” said Skinny over the radio. “I’m calling her in now. We’re moving out as soon as she walks her cute butt a little farther east, got it? Be ready to roll in fifteen."
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jen held still as the truck drove past. She was about fifty yards off of the road to the north, but she didn’t want to take any chances until she was much farther away from the city. She waited until she no longer heard the motor and sat up. She carefully looked around her in all directions and then stood up. She scanned the area again in case there was something she couldn’t see from the lower vantage point. Once she was confident that it was all clear, she took a sip of water from her jug and set off again. “Come on Jen,” she said. “Let see how far we can go today."
Two hours later, she found a place to stop. She walked down into a wash, out of sight from the road, and sat on a rock. She needed to rest her feet and eat a snack if she was going to keep walking all day. As she sipped on a warm orange soda and nibbled on salty crackers, Jen hummed songs she used to listen to on her iPhone. One oldie kept popping into her head and she hummed along between sips of pop and mouthfuls of cracker, “Here I go, again on my oooown. Like a drifter I was born to walk aloooone."
She finished the soda with a long swallow, and after deliberating internally the pros and cons of leaving the bottle, she decided to bring it along. It wasn’t that heavy, and maybe it could be useful for something later. She shouldered her rifle and climbed up and out of the wash. She scanned the area and stepped off to the east once more. “Here I go again on my oooown!” she sang.
Another two hours of walking passed, and Jen decided to stop again. This time, there were some boulders grouped together near a small hill and she sat in the shade between them. She scouted it first with a stick while she held her pistol ready. “Snakes are not okay,” she thought. “I am not going to die out here from a stupid snake bite." She nearly laughed out loud when she realized, she was probably more dangerous to the snake.
Jen took the hijab off and felt immediate relief. It was like taking off a parka when she felt hot. Her head felt lighter and the trapped moisture evaporated leaving her feeling cooler. She picked up her rifle and laid it in her lap. She turned it over and over, trying to figure out how it worked. She found the magazine release and pressed it while pulling on the magazine. She emptied the bullets out, taking care to remember how they went in. “Seventeen bullets left. That’s pretty good,” she thought. She dusted them off and reloaded them into the magazine.
Jen pulled back on the lever sticking out of the side and it slid toward her. To her surprise, another bullet flipped out. “Eighteen,” she said. Jen let go of the lever and it slammed back to the forward position. She pulled it again and no bullets came out. She looked into the opening while holding it back and saw the rear end of the barrel. “Oh cool, that must be where the bullets go." She set the rifle down and put the eighteenth bullet into the magazine. After a couple of tries she was able to snap the magazine back into place on the bottom of the rifle. She pressed the release again and practiced pulling it out and snapping it back in. “That’s not hard,” she thought. “I got this."
Jen picked up the rifle and stood up. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and retrieved her sack. She had one soda left and only a few crackers. The bread was gone, and her water was half empty. “At least it’s getting lighter,” she mused. It was late afternoon and the air was beginning to cool. For the next two or three hours the temperature would be ideal for walking, but after that it would be uncomfortably cold. Jen decided that she would move farther from the road and build a fire when that happened. She was not looking forward to another cold night sleeping outdoors, but a fire would certainly help. Maybe she could even find some meat to cook over the fire. Earlier in the morning she saw several large hares outside the city. If she saw another, she would shoot it and try her hand at camp fire cooking.
The light was starting to fade when Jen finally decided to look for a place to camp. There was a gradual upward slope on either side of the road that meant finding concealment close by was not likely. Jen turned left and walked north away from the road. She walked for about a thousand paces before she found another wide washout that sunk several feet below the general grade of the surrounding terrain. She felt relief as she walked down into it and made a quick survey. The sides were steep and about eight feet high at the deepest point. There were dense shrubs along the south side of the ditch, and it was oriented parallel to the road, so it would provide excellent cover and concealment from anyone driving by.
Jen grounded her bag and water jug, and walked to the far end and peered out. It was similar to looking out of an alley way since there were walls on both sides. She felt secure in her little fortress.
Ahead of her, next to a lone bush about twenty yards away, sat a hare. It was dusty gray-brown, and looked like it could run like a cheetah. Jen carefully pulled the rifle off her shoulder and raised it in front of her. The hare sat still, nibbling on the leaves of the bush with its back to her. She put the buttstock in her shoulder and sighted in. Her heart was pounding in her ears. The hare froze and its ears perked straight up. They turned back and forth, listening for the sound of a predator. Jen pushed the safety off and carefully squeezed the trigger. The rifle clicked, but nothing happened. The hare immediately bolted.
�
�Ugh! What happened?" Jen lowered the rifle and looked at it. “The magazine is in it. The safety is off. What am I missing?” she whispered. She spotted the charging lever on the side and took hold of it thoughtfully. She pulled it back, half-expecting to see a bullet flip out, but instead she watched a bullet slide from the top of the magazine and go forward into the chamber as the charging lever returned to the front. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “That’s how it works.”
She walked out into the twilight looking for the spooked hare. She crept forward slowly, carefully placing every footstep to avoid cracking any twigs or branches. The ground was mostly dirt out here away from the road, so walking quietly was not difficult.
Jen noticed movement nearby and raised her rifle again. She held the buttstock tightly against her shoulder, but looked over the sights in the fading light. “There!” she thought excitedly. The hare was just ahead of her, about thirty feet away, and holding still. Jen looked through the sights, placing the front sight in the middle of the rabbit’s body. She squeezed the trigger and heard a deafening crack as the bullet flew out of the rifle. Though he ears rang, Jen smiled. The hare lay on it’s side, unmoving. “I did it!” she said breathlessly. Her heart was pounding out of her chest from the excitement and she wanted to shout “Yes!” in victory, but she knew she needed to get beck to the wadi and start a fire before the light was completely gone.
Jen slung her rifle and retrieved her prize. She carried it by the ears and walked back to the wadi proudly. She set to work gathering wood, which consisted mostly of small branches and dried brush. There were some larger pieces closer to the road, half buried in the dirt. She pulled these out and carried them to the wadi as well. She piled some of the dry brush over a crumpled piece of paper she found that afternoon while walking and lit it with her lighter. The dry tinder caught quickly and she began feeding larger pieces on the top. Soon she had a hot fire crackling, and she decided to work on her meal.