Zara

by Jade Kerrion

  “Ten hostiles. Twenty-four girls,” Grass’s voice confirmed her count. “AK-47s and handguns. No sign of the ambassador’s daughter. She may be in the other location—the inner sanctum in Bacchus’s temple.”

  Her sophisticated contact lenses and microphones notwithstanding, sometimes the old “technologies” worked better; Zara blinked a precise response in a Morse code. On it. She set the shopping bag aside and turned to leave, but one of the guards caught her wrist. “We rolled dice, and I won a turn at you.” His voice was a rasp, his accent betraying his low-class breeding. He massaged his crotch as he leered at her. “This way, woman.”

  “May he rest in peace,” Grass said softly.

  Beneath her veil, Zara stifled a chuckle. Those smart-ass Navy SEALs were making it difficult for her to take her work seriously.

  The man led her to a quiet nook. Amid the vine-covered stones, he loosened his rope belt and dropped his pants.

  Zara sighed. Men like that were an insult to women. His erection had nothing to do with her looks or her feminine charm since he had not seen anything other than a human body wrapped in a shapeless black robe.

  She bent down and lifted the hem of her robe. The man’s leer widened at the sight of slim legs clad in fitted black pants. She inched the material higher in a teasing striptease.

  The lust in his eyes drained away as a sheathed blade came into view.

  Zara yanked out the dagger and lunged at him. His mouth was still hanging open when she wrapped her left hand over his mouth to silence his cry and drew the dagger’s edge across his throat.

  She did not let his body fall—not out of any respect for the dead but because the sound would draw attention. Instead, she dragged him out of sight.

  “Nice one,” Grass said.

  Zara huffed out a whisper. “He’s a heavy son-of-a-bitch. The next time someone jumps my bones, I’ll make him take me to a suitable burying place for his body before I slit his throat.” She wiped her dagger on the back of the man’s bloodstained shirt, covered his body with tree branches, and stepped away.

  She had not even mussed up her burqa.

  No one stopped her as she walked among the ruins toward the temple of Bacchus. The guards were well-placed within sight of each other. So much for her plan to take them out one at a time. Nakob had planned well. Too well, the thought niggled her. Nakob, as a whole, wasn’t nearly that sophisticated or seasoned. Someone else who knew his or her stuff was doing the thinking on behalf of Nakob, but who?

  The inner sanctum in the temple of Bacchus was larger and cooler than the temple of Venus, but fear smelled the same the world over. Teenage girls, their faces dirt-streaked, stared at her, their expressions listless and without hope. Men loitered around the room, their AK-47s slung over a shoulder or carelessly placed against a nearby wall.

  “Twenty-five girls. Eight hostiles,” Grass’s voice in her ear confirmed her silent count. “That’s a total of thirty-four hostiles. Are you’re sure your intel of fifty was right? If so, we need to find the other sixteen. Infra-red isn’t picking up any clusters other than at Bacchus and Venus.”

  The catacombs.

  Did that word have to be that long?

  She started blinking it out, but her concentration was broken by a male voice. “What are you doing here, Raba?” A man strode up to her. “Why aren’t you preparing the food?”

  “We have a problem,” Grass said. “We don’t see the ambassador’s daughter. She and the teacher are missing. We’re aborting the mission unless you can find them before strike time.”

  What the hell? What about all the other girls?

  Zara muttered an apology under her breath and scurried out of the inner sanctum, but the man followed her. She fled past the tall columns, out of the temple, and managed to turn a corner, out of sight, and—she hoped—out of hearing of the others before the man caught up with her. He was not a tall or bulky man, but his wiry build was strong. He grabbed her arm and swung her around. His startled gaze fixed on her eyes.

  “You’re not Raba. What have you done with my sister?”

  Zara pulled off her burqa.

  The man’s jaw dropped. Several moments passed before he recovered his voice. “My-my sister. Where is she?”

  “Safe, away from Nakob slime who roll dice for a turn at raping her.”

  His face paled. “No-no. She’s the cook. That is all she is.”

  “She was the camp whore, and you did nothing to protect her.”

  “My brothers…my friends would never—”

  “They did, and one of them is now dead.” Zara shrugged, an elegant motion. “He had bad luck at dice.”

  “Where is Raba? Where did you take her?”

  “Nakob took another girl, and the teacher. Where are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wrong answer.”

  “I swear, I don’t know. I just do what I’m told—guard the girls.”

  Zara tilted her head. “That’s it?”

  The man nodded, his head bobbing like a chicken. “Yusoff told us not to touch them. Better price that way. But the men—”

  She filed his “but” away for later action. Yusoff Al-Akhbar was the leader of the local Nakob cell. “And where is he?”

  “Underground. Temple of Jupiter.”

  “The catacombs.” Saying it was a great deal easier than spelling it out in Morse code by blinking her eyes. “How many men are with him?”

  “Many, many men.”

  “Give me a number.”

  “A hundred. More.”

  A chill shuddered through Zara. “Nakob doesn’t have that many men in Beqaa Valley. Where are the rest coming from?”

  “Hezbollah.”

  10

  Grass’s voice spoke in her ear. “We’re not ready to take on a hundred and fifty men. Fall back, Zara, and regroup. We need a new plan.”

  She ignored Grass. She knocked Raba’s brother unconscious with a single blow to the back of his head. This time, she did not go through the pretense of breaking his fall before heading toward the temple of Jupiter.

  “What the hell are you doing, Zara?” Grass’s voice took on a harder edge. “I said fall back.”

  She did not waste her time pointing out the blindingly obvious fact that Grass was not her commanding officer. Besides, he should have known that she was terrible at taking orders, legitimate or otherwise. Anonymous in her burqa, she walked past Nakob guards. No one challenged her presence until she reached the makeshift wooden stairway that led down into the catacombs.

  The two men standing at the top of the stairway frowned at her. “What are you doing here, Raba?” One of them leered in a way that suggested he was accustomed to seeing Raba in a far more sexually vulnerable state.

  Zara was tired of being accosted. She was especially tired of the condescending tone, and the certainty of what those terrified schoolgirls endured pissed her off. She reached into her robes, pulled out her two handguns, and shot both men. The sound of the bullets, forced through a silencer, was no louder than a spit.

  The guns vanished into the folds of her robe as she stepped over the bodies and crept down the stairs, walking along the sides to avoid the creaky middle.

  She followed the trail of battery-powered lamps through the long corridors of the catacombs. Grass’s voice no longer nagged at her. The depth of the catacombs and the thickness of the stone floor above her probably kept the electronic signal from reaching her. The limitations likely extended both ways; he could no longer see or hear through her eyes and ears.

  Wonderful. Her conscience was now officially on a break.

  The faint scent permeating the catacombs was the stale sweat of the living, not the dry dust of the dead. The echoes of conversations in Arabic rolled toward her as the temperature in the catacombs inched up from cool to subtly warm. The lights led her into a massive chamber filled with men. Still concealed in darkness, she sidled against the wall until she found an alcove that sheltered her on three
sides. Her gaze swept over the crowd; a hundred men, easily more. She recognized many of them from her prior interactions with Hezbollah.

  Her cousin, Hakim, stood next to a young woman, not the ambassador’s daughter. Perhaps she was the teacher who had accompanied the class on the field trip to Gibran Museum, where the girls had been kidnapped. The woman was no helpless damsel in distress. The cold hard edge in her eyes belied her waif-like appearance. Her appearance was not accidental; she was the only woman in the room until Zara arrived, which meant her role was significant.

  Target acquired.

  Hakim raised his voice and spoke in Arabic. “The commandant has ordered us to defend our Nakob brethren against the ungodly soldiers of the west who would take our women and assault them.” His arm wrapped around the woman, who smiled up at him, malice curving her lips.

  Zara had seen that expression often enough on her own reflection to recognize it on someone else. Malice was a great deal more specific than broad-based fanaticism. Who was the woman trying to hurt, and why? Had the woman planned for international military conflict, or had the plan spiraled out of control?

  Zara wanted to believe it was the latter, but Nakob’s pact with Hezbollah suggested otherwise. She gritted her teeth. The SEALs did not have the numbers to take on Nakob and Hezbollah. She had to break up the alliance, and her preferred method—firing bullets into the gathering—was unlikely to accomplish it.

  She searched the crowd. Hakim, Nazrol, Khalid…she knew many of them by name. Did she dare gamble on the strength of her relationships?

  Hakim continued speaking. “An attack from the godless bastards is imminent—”

  “Yes, it is,” Zara cut in. Fortunately, lying with perfect composure was one of her strengths. Her voice rose easily above Hakim’s, steady in spite of her racing heartbeat. “They are many, and you will die. All of you.”

  Every eye focused on her. Yusoff Al-Akhbar scowled. “Raba? What are you doing here?”

  Zara tugged off the burqa and tossed it aside.

  “Zara!” Voices rose in unison.

  “You’ve come to fight with us?” a Hezbollah man asked. “We will win, by Allah’s grace.”

  Yusoff pushed his way to the front. He did not raise his gun; a mere woman, after all, could not possibly be a threat. “Who are you?”

  Zara tilted her head, the motion deliberately coquettish. “I’ve come to ask Hakim if he’s heard from his father recently, sometime last night or this morning?”

  Hakim flushed and lowered his gaze.

  “Ah, you have. So you know that the commandant has ordered Hezbollah to pull out of Baalbek.”

  “What?” Astonished gazes shuttled between Hakim and Zara. A man close to Hakim stared into his face. “Is this true?”

  Hakim shifted his weight and refused to meet the man’s eyes; it was answer enough. Her cousin had always been a terrible liar.

  Nazrol, a Hezbollah lieutenant, turned back to her. “But why?”

  “Because this fight is Nakob’s. They chose to abduct the girls, including the daughter of the U.S. ambassador. If Hezbollah chooses to go to war with the west, we will do so on our own terms, not on Nakob’s.”

  “But Hakim said—”

  “Hakim is thinking with his penis, not his brain.” Zara waited until the low chuckles subsided. She drew a deep breath. Convincing lies were, after all, little more than half-truths delivered through brilliant acting. Her voice lowered subtly; she slowed the cadence to punch confidence and authority into her words. “Warriors of Hezbollah, you know who I am. You know I speak for the commandant.” Zara slid her hands into her robe. Her fingers wrapped around the grips of her handguns. Just in case. “Leave Baalbek. Leave this fight to Nakob, unless of course, you wish to die on the whims of a Nakob whore.”

  The woman gasped. “She lies! Kill her!”

  Yusoff swung up his AK-47, but Zara was faster and more precise. The bullet from her handgun pierced his skull. His eyes emptied, and he toppled to the ground, blood leaking from a hole in the middle of his forehead.

  The young woman screamed, “Habibi!” My beloved.

  Hakim reached for his handgun, but Zara shot him through the arm. He shrieked and dropped his gun. Zara resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It was a shame to leave him alive, but she would have trouble explaining to her uncle why she had killed her cousin, even if he was an idiot. Hakim would have sacrificed a hundred good men, and for whom? Who was that woman?

  Men spun around to face each other—a hundred or more Hezbollah against fifteen Nakob men. Guns held at the ready, fingers on triggers, when Nazrol looked at Zara. “What are your orders?”

  A Nakob man shouted, “You take orders from a woman?”

  The corner of Zara’s mouth tugged into a mocking half-smile. You did too; you just didn’t know it.

  Nazrol shrugged. “I take orders from leaders, and I don’t recommend arguing with Zara. She has a low tolerance for—”

  The man’s gaze flicked to Zara. Muscles twitched in his jaw and the corner of his eye.

  Zara shot him even before he managed to swing his rifle up. He slumped to the ground, crimson blooming on his gray robes.

  “—fools.” Nazrol shrugged. “As I was saying, what are your orders?”

  “Disarm them. I want forty of your best men in a forward team. Sweep the temple compound and disarm Nakob’s watchmen—fourteen of them. Two other groups of twenty will go to the temples of Venus and Bacchus. There are nine guards in Venus, seven in Bacchus. Be gentle with the girls; they are afraid. Bring the girls to the main entrance. I’ll take it from there. You can take Nakob away to Joub Jannine. The commandant will decide what to do with them.” And with Hakim.

  “And Yasmin?” Nazrol looked at the woman who curled over her lover’s body, her shoulders shaking with each deep, wrenching sob.

  Zara frowned. The fleeting impression of a master puppeteer’s scheming malice had vanished beneath Yasmin’s shroud of grief.

  “Bind her hands and gag her. She comes with me.”

  “Yes, Zara.” Nazrol turned and issued orders to the men. Within five minutes, he had the men sorted into teams, and the advance group of forty was already heading up the stairs. Notwithstanding her uncle’s complaint of Hezbollah’s inability to attract good men, there were still some capable leaders, Nazrol among them. She had once contemplated recruiting him for Three Fates; that likelihood had shot up several percentage points.

  Zara followed the first group up the stairs and blinked hard when she emerged out into sunlight. She took several steps away from them. “Grass?”

  His irate voice snapped in her ear. “Zara? Who are all these people? What the hell are you doing?”

  “Hezbollah now controls Nakob.”

  “What? And who controls Hezbollah?”

  “I do, for now, mostly because the Hezbollah lieutenant seems inclined to listen to me. I need your team at the front entrance of the temple complex. Don’t come in. The lieutenant is an eager young man who will be disappointed if you don’t let him tie up Nakob in a neat little package. He’ll deliver the girls to the front gate.”

  “And the ambassador’s daughter?”

  “Not here, but I have someone who might know where she is.” Zara glanced over her shoulder as a Hezbollah soldier pushed Yasmin ahead of him, up the stairs. Tears streaked the woman’s makeup, and her white shirt was stained crimson. “And there she is.”

  “That’s Yasmin El-Amin. She was the teacher on the field trip.” Outrage infused his voice. “This was an inside job?”

  “Her lover, Yusoff Al-Akhbar, was Nakob’s cell leader.”

  “Was?”

  “Recently deceased, as of five minutes ago. She’s the linchpin between Nakob and Hezbollah. I need to know her story.”

  “I’ll put Navy Intel on it.”

  Zara rolled her eyes. “I think you’ll get better information asking the gossip column at her elite prep school than through Navy Intel.”

  “It was g
oing to be my next stop,” Grass said, his voice bland. “The team will meet you at the entrance.”

  Within minutes, Nazrol’s two teams approached her with forty-nine girls cocooned in their protective circle. The girls clung to each other as much as they shrank from the men surrounding them. Nazrol’s white teeth flashed beneath his neat mustache. “When did you come back to the country?” he asked in Lebanese.

  “Yesterday.”

  “You didn’t wait to jump right in.”

  “What do you know of Yasmin?”

  “Nothing at all. Hakim summoned us here. It’s not an unusual situation, Zara,” Nazrol said. The bristle in his voice warned Zara of his rising defenses.

  “What’s not unusual?” Zara arched an eyebrow. “Kidnapping schoolgirls or assaulting them?”

  “We did not touch the girls.” Nazrol flushed. “I meant obeying orders from the commandant’s son.”

  “I trust in the future you’ll be more selective about the orders you accept.”

  “Are you really here with the Americans?”

  “Did you really expect the Americans to sit this out when their ambassador’s daughter is taken?”

  “No, but I expected them to respond earlier. After two weeks—” Nazrol shrugged. “I wondered if they’d lost their appetite for a fight.” From their vantage point at the temple complex, they could see a small band of eight American soldiers moving quickly through the village. The locals stepped out of their way, but the ripple of unease and tension raced ahead of the soldiers. Nazrol’s hand shifted against his assault rifle, inching closer to the trigger. “Will there be trouble?”

  “There better not be, if they know what’s good for them.”

  His chuckle was low and amused. “You’re as capable of shooting Americans as you are Arabs, aren’t you?”

  “That’s equality, right?”

  Nazrol laughed. “So what happens now?”

  “It’s not over until they find the ambassador’s daughter. It’s the only reason they’re here.”

  “And the other girls?”

  Zara scowled. “I don’t think the Americans consider them a priority. Don’t leave Baalbek. I might need to call on you if they’re unreliable.”