by Trevor Scott
On the cot next to her, Dr. Morgan Cassidy sat up abruptly and swung his legs to the dirt floor.
“What’s wrong?” Anna asked. Now she sat up and faced her friend.
“Bad dream,” he said.
With all of the captured being medical professionals, they had done their best to make sure their fellow relief workers were cared for, both physically and mentally. But it was not easy for some of them. At least Anna and Morgan had their military experience to help them through this troubled time. Both of them had discussed how they had considered this possible outcome while stationed in Afghanistan. Anna’s worst fear was being taken captive. She could rationalize being killed by a bomb or random gunfire. Death like that would come swiftly. But who knew what they would do to her here in the mountains. And where were they? Speculation among the captive had run rampant in the past few days.
Anna set her hand on Morgan’s knee. “Everything will be fine,” she said, her conviction less than convincing.
The doctor moved closer to her. “We must escape.”
“To where?” she asked.
“Anywhere but here.”
Maybe he was right. Yet, there was no way of knowing just how many gunmen were in this camp. And were there other camps nearby? She had tried to remember in her mind the time it took them to fly on the helicopter from the ship to this place, but it had been almost impossible. Their kidnappers had taken their watches, taken their phones. Blindfolded them. So time had passed in a series of constant rotor revolutions and engine noise and the occasional turbulence that nearly threw her from a web seat. They had stopped once, she remembered. Since she smelled fuel, she guessed that had been the reason for their stop.
Suddenly the flap of the tent opened and two men rushed in. When they first arrived the guards were wearing black masks, but now they didn’t even bother.
The men came directly to the back of the tent and grasped Anna by each arm.
“Leave her alone,” Morgan said.
Then the man at the door said something to the other two men in Arabic. They immediately let Anna go and grabbed Dr. Morgan Cassidy.
Now Anna complained and grabbed onto one of the men, who swung his hand around and backhanded her in the side of her head, knocking her back onto her cot.
Pain shot through her skull and her world seemed to swirl around, stars of light dancing in her view. Others in the tent complained but then fell silent when the man at the door aimed his AK-47 at them and yelled in Arabic.
Once the men were gone, the Spanish doctor, Antonio Cruz, rushed to check on Anna.
“Are you all right?” Antonio asked, checking out the side of her head.
Anna sat up in her cot with the help of the Spaniard. “I will be. Do you think they’ll kill Dr. Cassidy?”
“I hope not.” Antonio ran his fingers through his hair, which nearly reached his shoulders. “It’s my guess they will make a video and ask for money from the British government.”
“Or maybe they have an injured man,” she guessed. “They could just need his medical skills.”
“Perhaps.”
For the first time since their capture, the Spaniard looked concerned. He had been almost unreasonably upbeat from the first day. But something had changed in him in the past twenty-four hours. He had lost hope, Anna thought. Looking around the tent, Anna realized that Dr. Antonio Cruz had just gotten to the same place the others had reached much sooner.
Fifteen minutes later, the tent flap opened just far enough for the men to throw Dr. Morgan Cassidy through it. Anna rushed to him and helped him to his feet.
“Are you all right?” Morgan asked her.
“Me? What about you? What did they do to you?”
As Anna helped him to his cot, others gathered to hear what he had to tell them. He told them how they had forced him to kneel down in front of a black flag with Arabic words written in white. Two men wore black clothing and held long knives, while two others held rifles on him. They ran video first in Arabic and then in English.
“It was a big joke to them,” Morgan said. “It was like they were doing a Monty Python sketch with outtakes. They did the English version three times. When they were done they couldn’t stop laughing.”
Dr. Cruz said, “What did they ask for your return?”
Morgan shook his head. “Five hundred million pounds and the release of some men from a British prison.”
Anna was dumbfounded. Was this all about money? Or simply a power play? “We can expect fourteen more of these,” she said.
She slumped back onto her cot, her mind in constant angst. Is this what the end felt like? Would she feel pain when these men took her head? Was she right with God? These were questions she could not escape.
Calabria, Italy
Alexandra had no problem finding the old red Fiat at the Lamezia airport in Calabria. Jake had told her to drive it to their home near Tropea.
She pulled the car into the garage and closed the door behind her. Then she grabbed her small bag and dragged it into their villa, making sure to reset the security system. She knew that Jake would get a text showing she had gotten to their villa.
The flight from Berlin had been uneventful, but she wasn’t feeling right now. Something had upset her stomach, and she thought it must have been the sandwich she had picked up at the Berlin airport and eaten on the plane.
Now she had just enough time to run to the nearest bathroom and drop to her knees, expelling her gut into the toilet. She puked one more time before rising and washing her mouth out in the sink. Alexandra couldn’t remember the last time she had lost it like this. She rarely got sick, but it wasn’t like she could completely avoid food poisoning.
She wandered back into the main living room and gazed out the window at the ocean below. This place was so beautiful, she thought. But she knew that Jake wasn’t entirely happy. He was bored. It was no wonder that he had jumped at taking on this new assignment.
Alexandra went to the attached kitchen and found a note on the granite bar from Jake. He wished she could have been there to go with him, but he understood her obligation to her country. In the end, he said he loved her—something he rarely said. But she didn’t either. They had an understanding. Love was inherently mutual and only needed to be verbalized if one or the other had screwed up in some way. Now, Jake had not screwed up, she knew. But perhaps he also knew that his current mission would likely be dangerous. Hence his need to remind her of his love for her.
She kissed the note and set it back on the counter.
Finding her phone, she sent Jake a quick text saying she had gotten home and found his note. Then in German she said she also loved him.
17
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands
The five of them had just finished eating dinner and cleaned up the mess. Jake had been impressed with the culinary skills of both Sirena and the Frenchman, Jean Paul Talbot.
Jake sat back in a leather chair drinking a single malt Scotch when his phone buzzed. He saw that Alexandra had just gotten back to their place in Calabria, and he smiled with her affection in German. He simply typed back ‘Auch.’
The priest came into the room with a glass of red wine, sitting at the end of the sofa near Jake.
“You are smiling, Jake,” the priest said. “Is that your girlfriend?”
“Yes,” Jake said. “After what happened in Berlin, I’m glad she’s back at our home in Calabria.”
“You have a beautiful place there.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“Is this a woman you will marry?”
Here it comes, Jake thought. The living in sin lecture. “I don’t know, Padre. I’m not sure I’m the marrying type. Not with this lifestyle.”
“But from what you’ve told me, she understands this. She is like you.”
He had a great point. “I know. I’ve just had a really hard time feeling worthy. If you knew my past, you’d understand.”
“Have you never been married,
Jake?”
“No.” That was the easy answer. But then he thought about asking Anna to marry him just after he found out she was pregnant, and how she had been gunned down only moments later. Jake took that as a sign from God that he wasn’t worthy of finding love or happiness. Every relationship since that time had been strictly physical. Until Alexandra.
“You showed me a picture of this woman,” the priest said. “She is very beautiful.”
“That she is, Father. I’d marry her tomorrow if I thought it would work out. We do love each other. No question about that. It’s just. . .I can’t explain it.”
“You have doubts,” Father Murici said. “But these doubts have nothing to do with her love for you. For some reason you don’t feel you deserve to find love. This is an irrational fear, Jake. Everyone must feel that love is possible.”
“I’ve killed a lot of people, Father. I don’t know that God will forgive me for this.”
The priest reached out and put his hand on Jake’s hand. “Did you kill anyone who was not evil?”
Jake let out a deep breath and felt like he was a little kid again in the confessional in Montana. “No, sir. But it’s not always as cut and dried as that. Some would consider me evil. Like those who have taken the medical workers.”
“But they are false, Jake. They bastardize their religion to justify their actions. But there is only one God, and He would not agree with any of their actions.”
Nodding his head, Jake said, “I know, Father. That’s why I took this mission. At some point we cannot turn our back or continue to put our heads in the sand. I have been guilty of this myself—taking cases over the years that did not help solve the real evil in this world. But I can’t look away anymore.”
The priest took his hand back and sipped his wine. “The same could be said of the church. We watched our brothers and sisters, good Christians, get slaughtered in the Middle East and Africa, and we did nothing. Now the church can no longer sit by and let this happen. If governments won’t act, then we must.”
“What are you saying, Father?” Jake was confused. “I thought you said the church had not sanctioned your actions.”
The priest shifted his eyes and drank down the last of his wine. “It looks like I need a refill.”
“Wait a minute,” Jake said, holding the priest from rising from the sofa. “Spill it.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.”
Finally, the priest muttered, “Let’s just say that the church has enough sense to let me do my work.”
“Your work as a priest, or as a former Italian Army commando?”
The priest finally rose and Jake let him do so. “Sometimes there’s a fine line between both goals.”
“Like during the Crusades.”
Raising his brows quickly, the priest said, “You are an astute observer, Jake.” Father Francesco Murici smiled and wandered to the bar for a refill.
As the priest left, Sirena came and took the man’s spot on the sofa. She also had a glass of red wine.
“Everything all right?” she asked Jake.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Finish your drink. I got a text from the Agency. They want me to meet a contact here in Santa Cruz.”
Jake’s phone buzzed and he looked at it, expecting to see something from Alexandra. But this was from billionaire Carlos Gomez. “Looks like I got a similar message from Gomez.”
Then both of their phones buzzed almost simultaneously and each looked at the message.
“Looks like the Agency and Gomez want us both to handle this,” Sirena said.
But Jake’s text this time was from Kurt Jenkins, not the Agency or Gomez. The text gave Jake a contact and location in Santa Cruz.
“Let’s go,” Jake said.
They both armed themselves with identical Glock 17s and additional magazines. They put on dark clothing and sensible shoes, and headed toward the door.
Sinclair Tucker and Jean Paul Talbot stood in the living room with glasses of wine.
“Where you two going?” Tucker asked them.
Sirena threw her set of keys to Tucker and said, “A contact might know something about the kidnapping. The two of us have been tasked to question him.”
“Sweet,” Tucker said. “We’ll just stay here and drain the liquor supply.”
Jake and Sirena left the villa and locked the outside gate behind them with his key. The streets were relatively dark in this area of Santa Cruz, which was the border between commercial and residential.
“You know where we’re going?” Sirena asked.
He had been studying the map since arriving at the villa earlier in the day. “Yeah. Two blocks to the main street that runs to the waterfront. Then six blocks down the hill. Should be on the left.”
“How do you want to play this?” She hesitated, her eyes shifting toward Jake as they continued to walk. “I mean, last time we nearly got ourselves killed.”
“Tangier is a different animal,” Jake said. “What do we know about the contact?”
She stopped and turned toward Jake. “I just got a photo of the guy. They said he works for port security. I’m guessing he must have seen something that didn’t sit right with him.”
Jake was confused. “Then why didn’t the local police interview him?”
“They did. He lied.”
“Now he’s gained a conscience?”
Sirena shrugged. “Something like that.” She took his arm and they walked together arm in arm like a couple.
Once they turned down the main street, Jake could see the ocean ahead. But the lighting was still somewhat subdued. Someone was saving money on lighting their streets.
As they got closer to their target, Jake instinctively felt his gun under his leather jacket. Instead of his leather underarm holster, he wore his Glock on his left hip in a cross-draw. He unzipped his jacket now for easy access to his gun. Sirena carried her Glock tonight in a jacket sleeve.
Ahead Jake could finally see the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, a tall structure in the center of Santa Cruz. Perhaps the man had confessed his sins to the parish priest and now needed to come clean to the authorities, Jake thought.
The two of them stopped a couple blocks from the church.
“How do you want to handle this?” Sirena asked.
“He’s expecting a woman,” Jake said. “This one’s yours. I’ll back you up out here. Get what you can from the guy.”
“Gotcha.”
They walked together for another block and then Jake let her go on her own to the front of the building, like a boyfriend letting go of his girl to go to church. He found a place against a wall across the small square from the church, in the shadows by a thick pine, with a view and potential escape.
In the cool darkness, he shivered slightly, his mind again thinking about Alexandra in Calabria. He hoped she was all right.
•
Sirena climbed the small set of stairs and looked back briefly as she opened the massive wood door, noticing Jake had set himself up perfectly. She liked how he thought.
Inside, light darkness turned to candle darkness, and it took Sirena a moment for her eyes to adjust. She unzipped the inside jacket pocket and felt the butt of her gun. The Glock 17 was not perfect for concealment. It was much too big for that. But the gun was comfortable in her hand and had never failed her.
Without the Catholic ceremony, which she knew but neglected to do out of deference to her lapsed Jewish faith, Sirena wandered up the main aisle toward the church altar. She could see a lone figure ahead—a man of shorter stature, who was on his knees praying.
She slowed her pace and kept her head on a swivel, looking for any sign of danger. Someone could easily be in the darkness along either side in one of the smaller chapels, she thought.
When she came to the man on the left side, he didn’t even turn to look at her. He simply crossed himself and slid up to the wooden pew.
Sirena took a seat a
couple feet from the man. “Did you pray for me?” she asked quietly in English, her signal to the man.
“You are beyond prayer,” he said. His English was nearly accent free. But his words were somewhat strained, as if he were afraid of his own speech. He sounded drunk.
She slid a little closer. “What do you have for me?”
Finally he looked at her and said, “These men had a lot of help.”
“Explain.”
“The helicopter was from a local company that flies between islands.”
Sirena was dumbfounded. “I thought you worked port security.”
“No. Security for Tenerife South Airport. Look into tour company Tenerife Helicóptero Tours. That is all I can say.”
The man stood up and collapsed almost immediately to the floor between the kneeler and the pew.
Instinctively, Sirena pulled her gun and crouched to the floor. But she had no way of knowing the direction of the shot. She could only recall the familiar cough of a silenced gun.
She heard a slight scuffle of feet, so she backed out to the main aisle and slowly worked her way toward the front door. Then another shot came at her. This time she saw the flash in the darkness and could hear the bullet whiz by her head.
Aiming toward the shooter, Sirena rose up, shot twice and popped back behind the tall end of the pew, hoping Jake would hear the shots.
The next two shots hit the wooden pew just above Sirena’s head. Now she was forced to hit the stone floor. Any time Jake, she thought. She was pinned down, with a shooter on either side of her.
•
When Jake heard the shots fired from inside the church, he immediately knew that Sirena was in danger. He drew his gun and rushed toward the front door.
Instead of just charging in, Jake cautiously opened the door. Now in the increased darkness, he heard the distinct sounds of two separate coughs from silenced guns—one from the left side and the other from the right. These were followed by the sound of two shots from Sirena’s Glock, the sound reverberating and echoing through the cavernous space.