by Mark Donovan
She grabbed the knife, jumped up, and started running deeper into the woods, blindly turning in a southerly direction in an attempt to stay parallel with the road. As she made her way through the woods she repeatedly ran into tree limbs and tripped over large rocks and fallen trees. The morning sun had yet to rise, making it difficult to see where she was going. Dana estimated she had run at least a couple of hundred meters before she stopped behind a large bolder to catch her breath and to listen. She could feel fresh cuts on her face and hands, and bruises beginning to form all over her body. As she bent over panting and trying to catch her breath, she heard footsteps approaching swiftly in her direction. “Damn”, she swore to herself. She immediately broke out into a run again, attempting to further distance herself from the approaching footsteps of Spencer.
“Dana, give it up,” yelled Spencer, his voice raging and sounding as if he was right behind her.
Spencer’s voice, piercing through the twilight forest, jolted Dana into quickening her pace. She blindly crashed into tree trunks and limbs as she pushed her way forward through the thick underbrush.
“Don’t make it any harder on yourself than you already have Dana. I will catch you,” yelled Spencer, his powerful voice reverberating through the heavily forested woods somewhere not far behind her.
Dana turned her head to look behind her as she continued to run forward. When she did, the side of her head slammed into a thick tree branch that she had not seen a fraction of a second earlier. Her head, followed by her body, bounced off of the tree and she fell backwards onto the ground. As she fell, and unbeknownst to her, the hunting knife she had been carrying flew out of her right hand and fell several meters away from her.
Dazed and confused, Dana looked up into the night sky above her, not sure where she was for a brief second. Spencer’s voice boomed again in the night air, immediately shaking the cobwebs from her head and bringing her back to her heightened senses. He was very close. It was coming down to a fight or flight decision. She already killed one man today, and she knew she didn’t have the physical or mental strength to fight or kill another. Flight was her only option. She pulled her legs up underneath her torso and used her hands to help prop herself back up into a standing position. Every muscle in her body ached and she could feel her hamstrings cramping up. Dana had only gotten to her knees when Spencer came rushing up to her out of the dark woods, a large hunting knife in his right hand, just like the one she was holding. In desperation, she glanced down at her right hand as she now resolved herself for a fight, a fight she already knew she could not win. Her heart immediately sank further, however, when she observed that her hand was empty, the knife no longer in her possession.
She looked back at Spencer knowing she had lost. He slowly walked up to her, his eyes glaring in anger, his breathing heavy and ragged.
“Why are you doing this Spencer?” she pleaded. “Your wife, Aaila. What would she think of you now if she knew what you were doing?”
He stopped directly in front of her, his eyes locked onto hers.
“You never knew Aaila,” he screamed back at her in rage, while still gasping for air. “None of you did, not your government leaders, or people like you who elected them. They…, you…, killed her and her family without any knowledge or consideration of the beautiful people that they were, innocent people who had never harmed or hurt anyone before in their lives.”
Spencer pulled Dana to her feet and began to march her back in the direction that they had come. As they walked Dana continued to question him.
“Do you think by killing thousands of other innocent people, and by kidnapping me, that it will soften your loss, and somehow make the world a better place?”
“It will not soften my loss, but it will avenge my wife and her family’s deaths,” he said in a resolved tone. “It will also send a message to the United States government and its European allies that my community will no longer accept the barbaric treatment of our people.”
“And you don’t think the United States government and its allies won’t respond in kind?” she pressed. “They will hunt you and your terrorist groups down, and in the process kill many thousands more innocent people, on both sides.”
“When they understand the true power we now possess, they will think twice about retaliation,” said Spencer in firm resolve.
“You call killing thousands of innocent people power?”
“Yes, by understanding that we can extinguish the lives of tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of your people, at will and anywhere we want, western governments will learn. They will understand that they are powerless against us and begin to finally treat us with respect, as human beings with similar hopes and dreams for ourselves and families.”
Retracing their steps back to the car, Dana and Spencer passed by the body of Abdul. “He was an idiot and a fool,” said Spencer as he looked down at Abdul’s body. “He was focused on only himself, his own personal interests.”
“And you’re not?” questioned Dana.
Spencer grabbed Dana’s arm abruptly, stopping her in her tracks and yanking her around to look at him, their faces only inches apart from one another. She could smell his fetid breath as he breathed heavily on her. “I will give you one warning Dana. Shut your mouth unless I ask you to speak. Ask another question or make another unsolicited statement like that and I will cut your tongue out of your mouth in a heartbeat. Do not test me.”
He gripped her arm for a couple of seconds longer, his eyes locked on hers, his breathing rapid. Then he let her go.
“Get moving. We are running late.”
Five minutes later the two cautiously walked out of the woods, the car still sitting there where they had left it, no other vehicles or traffic in sight. Spencer opened the back passenger door and pulled out Abdul’s knapsack. After searching around in it for a few seconds, he pulled out a bundle of tie wraps. He peeled three from the bundle and bound Dana’s wrists again with them.
“Get into the car,” ordered Spencer, as he pushed her downwards and into the backseat. Dana complied as she was exhausted and had become totally defeated.
Spencer walked around to the driver’s side, slid back into the front seat of the car, and started the car’s ignition. He glanced over at the clock on the Mercedes’ dashboard, made a quick calculation on how fast he would need to go to make up for the lost time, and threw the car into drive. While turning the vehicle back onto the road, he thought to himself, Dana’s attempted escape had caused a delay in his schedule, but at least it had eliminated a loose end that he would no longer need to contend with later on himself. His eyes briefly glanced over at the empty seat next to him.
Chapter 28 (April 17, Sunday 6:00am, Sofia, Bulgaria)
Dave had the airport of Sofia Bulgaria finally in sight. As he began his descent and neared the airport’s airspace, fear crept back into his consciousness again that he had missed his window of opportunity to save Dana. He worried that she and her captors had already traveled beyond Sofia. His feeling of initial shock about Spencer had also turned to seething anger and a sense of betrayal. He no longer cared why Spencer had turned on his country and friends. He simply wanted to rescue Dana and make Spencer and his terrorist partner pay for their crimes. He was also starting to wonder whether or not Spencer had anything to do with the cholera outbreak in Eberswalde, Germany. He was not one to hold a lot of stock in coincidences. As he neared the Sophia Airport, he put all of those thoughts on the backburner.
Dave called the Sofia Airport tower to announce his imminent arrival into the airport’s airspace. Immediately the tower responded and vectored him towards the active runway. Dave thanked the fact that the international language for aviation was English, as he adjusted the aircraft’s course to the tower assigned heading. He nudged a little extra hand pressure on the Cirrus’s left seat side yoke while applying a slight additional left rudder pressure with his corresponding foot. The plane responded smoothly as it transitioned to the new magn
etic heading.
Five minutes later Dave taxied the aircraft to a stop on the concrete ramp just outside of the small terminal building that housed the FBO office and shut down the aircraft’s engine. Before even lifting up and opening the aircraft’s door he called Ron once more on the PRC-155 radio to see where Dana and her captors were, praying that he was not too late.
Ron picked up the line on the other side of the world.
“I made it to Sophia,” said Dave, not wasting anytime with pleasantries. “Do you have an update for me?”
“Yes. Less than five minutes ago I got another update on Dana’s location. They are still about thirty kilometers north of you.”
“Apparently their stop was a little longer than I estimated,” responded Dave, with renewed energy.
“I have some additional news to share with you as well.”
“I don’t have a lot of time,” responded Dave. “I still need to rent a car and get out on the road if I’m going to have any chance of rescuing Dana.”
“I understand, but this will only take a minute,” responded Ron. “I have been working with our friends at the CIA to see if we could find out more information on where Dana and Spencer are specifically headed.”
“And did you have any luck?” asked Dave, with urgency in his voice.
“Yes. We searched all of Spencer’s email accounts and phone records. It turns out that one of his Google Gmail accounts appeared to be used to communicate with a very bad guy, a known Al Qaeda leader with ties to Iran. His name is Aref Zarin. From what the CIA explained to me, Spencer and this Aref Zarin apparently shared a common Gmail account. Instead of sending emails to one another via separate email addresses, they both accessed this same account to draft messages to one another. They never actually sent emails from the account. They simply created a bulletin board, if you will, that they only viewed. Or at least that is what Spencer and Zarin apparently thought.”
Ron took a second to catch his breath and to also sneak in an off-handed comment. “Thank you again for the Patriot Act,” he interjected before continuing on with his report.
“The CIA, with a little help from Google, was able to allow us to read all of the draft email messages that they had written to one another over the past year. The messages talked about a new bioterrorism weapon that they have created and were deploying. They call the weapon “WaterKill”, and effectively its results are what we have been observing, both in Yemen and Eberswalde. It is a type of bio-engineered cholera.”
“Unbelievable,” said Dave, his mind racing. “Why would Spencer have become involved in this?” Dave looked down at his watch and saw that precious time had been ticking away. “Ron, I need to get going, but quickly, were you able to find out where this Aref Zarin is?” asked Dave, with a renewed sense of urgency in his voice.
“We think so,” responded Ron rapidly. “He does seem to move around a great deal, and uses multiple computers to access this particular Gmail account. However, the most recent set of draft emails that were written by him originated from an IP address, or a computer, that places him somewhere in the southwestern suburb of Tehran, Iran.”
“Do you think you can get a more accurate fix on his location, a specific address or residence?” asked Dave.
“That is what the CIA and I are working on now. The CIA has some deep cell agents in Tehran that are doing some reconnoitering for us as we speak.”
“Spencer and Dana must be heading to meet with Mr. Aref Zarin,” replied Dave. “I need to rescue Dana before she slips out of my reach. If Spencer gets her to Tehran she is as good as dead.”
“Agreed,” replied Ron. “I will let you go, and in the meantime the CIA and I will do everything we can to locate Zarin. I have shipped the CIA several of our sensor drones to help in the search for Zarin’s exact location.”
“Great, I will call you again once I have Dana.”
Dave broke the connection on the call and shut down the radio. He then climbed out of the aircraft, quickly tied it down and proceeded to the small terminal building. Inside the building, he stopped at the FBO office and asked about renting a car. He was directed by the FBO attendant to the far end of the building where a small Hertz rental car agency office was located. Five minutes later he was exiting the airport in a white Suzuki Jimny compact SUV.
After leaving the airport, Dave entered the on-ramp to E79, a major roadway that encircled the Bulgaria capital city of Sophia. He traveled south on E79 for about eight kilometers before turning southeast onto the A1 motorway. It was on the A1 that he hoped to find and rescue Dana. The A1 was the only major motorway that traveled south to Turkey. It only made logical sense that her captors would take it.
He looked at his watch again. Only fifteen minutes had passed since he had last spoken to Ron. By his calculations he estimated he was no more than ten kilometers ahead of Dana and her captors. He had yet to formulate a complete set of plans on how he was going to actually rescue Dana without getting her killed. However, he had already figured out his first course of action. He would drive at or just below the speed limit to allow Dana and her captors to catch up with him. The only problem with this part of his plan was that he had no idea of what vehicle they were in. After a few minutes of thought, while staring out at the flat barren desert terrain in front of him, the sun still low on the horizon, he came back to his only viable option. He would have to keep his eyes focused in the rear view mirror as much as possible, and assess each vehicle as it approached and eventually passed him. As each car came up on his left side, he would glance over his shoulder at the passing vehicle and see if it contained his wife and Spencer.
The second major problem with his rescue plan was that he had no gun on him to force Dana’s captors off the road. It was not by accident that he did not have a weapon on him. He had no choice. He knew when he left Yemen that there was no way he, as simply a United States citizen, was going to be able to enter Germany possessing a gun. Consequently, he had specifically told Ron not to bother attempting to ship him one. As he contemplated his dilemma he concluded his only choice was to use the vehicle he was driving to stop Dana’s captors. He would have to run them off the road. Though the Suzuki Jimny was a compact SUV it was better than a small compact sedan he thought, which he guessed they’d be driving in. It also offered him a little more height that would allow him to look down, and to somewhat hide his identity, as cars passed him.
Dave looked into his rearview mirror. Thankfully traffic was very light. Not a lot of people were headed away from the Bulgaria capital in the morning. Then again, not a lot of people lived in the desert area east of the city either, he thought to himself. It would not be too difficult to monitor approaching vehicles from his rear view mirror.
Dave sank lower into the bucket seat of the SUV and turned up the air conditioning. He took a look at the main center console panel. The vehicle was reporting thirty degrees Celsius outside already, eighty six degrees Fahrenheit, and it was not even six thirty in the morning yet. He adjusted the rear view mirror and the driver’s side mirror so that he had maximum visibility behind him. He then set the SUV’s cruise control for ninety kilometers per hour and began monitoring his six o’clock in the rear view mirror.
In the distance, probably a kilometer behind him, he saw two vehicles gaining on him. One was a large truck, probably carrying food or commerce of some sort to Turkey, he surmised. The other was a darkish looking sedan. The sedan was in the left lane. From what he could tell from the distance between them, the sedan was pulling away from the truck and coming up quickly on him. Dave pushed himself a little lower in the driver’s seat and kept switching his eyes between the rearview mirror and the empty road in front of him. Twenty seconds later the sedan came up on his left side. As it did, Dave looked down and into the windows of the vehicle. There was a woman in the front passenger seat. Though she was wearing a hijab that covered her head, much of her face was exposed. It was not Dana. The tenseness in Dave’s neck relaxed as the car raced
by him.
A few seconds later the large truck came up behind him. The truck blew its horn to indicate to Dave to speed up. Dave did not put his foot on the gas pedal. He let the cruise control continue to move him forward at the programmed ninety kilometers per hour.
Dave looked back into his rearview mirror again. In frustration he saw the truck driver yank the wheel hard to the left, the truck immediately responding and pulling out into the passing lane. As the truck pulled up beside him the man gave Dave an indecent gesture. Dave gave a slight nod of his head to the truck driver, while raising his hands off the steering wheel and turning his palms upward, suggesting that it was the vehicle’s fault that the SUV could not go any faster, which wasn’t too far from the truth.
With the truck rapidly pulling away from him, Dave shifted his gaze back to the SUV’s rearview mirror. The road behind him was empty. He glanced down briefly at his watch, checking the time once more. Returning his eyes to the rearview mirror, fear started to creep into his consciousness again, and questions began forming in his mind. Could he have miscalculated? Was it possible that Dana’s captors drove much faster than he had estimated? Were they ahead of him already? Had Dana slipped through his hands?
Unconsciously, Dave had applied increasing pressure with his right foot to the accelerator pedal. It was the increase in road noise and the rush of air around the SUV that broke Dave’s concentration. He looked down at the speedometer and saw that he was moving at over one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour and accelerating. He lifted his foot off the accelerator pedal. The SUV immediately slowed down in response. When the SUV dropped just below ninety kilometers per hour its cruise control kicked in again giving Dave a slight jolt in his seat.
Dave swore to himself for second guessing his calculations and losing his attentiveness. He looked into the rearview mirror once again. Far behind him, he saw another vehicle approaching, the rising morning sun lighting it up like a metallic speck on the shimmering desert road. He tapped once on the SUV’s brake pedal to disengage the cruise control and allowed the vehicle to drop to eighty five kilometers per hour, before gently applying his foot to the accelerator pedal, and manually maintaining his new cruise speed.