“He promised me an audience with you,” I said. “I have a message from the United States government.”
“Your president has a message for me?” he asked.
“No, the Pentagon,” I replied. “The Department of Defense wants to give you financial assistance of two million U.S. dollars, to help in your efforts to overthrow President Assad. My job is to extend the offer and bring your response back to Washington.”
Al-Ansar looked at me, unblinking, presumably mulling the surprise offer. His fingers softly stroked the hair on his beard.
“Abu Khalid al-Ansar cannot be purchased like a tank,” he said. “You will give my reply to your country.” Any relief I felt at the idea of being released evaporated when he added, “Tomorrow we will make a video to show the American people. That will be my reply.” Then he stormed out of the room, angrily slamming the door behind him.
My heart sank as the headache and nausea worsened. I could only think of two kinds of videos likely to be made in that situation. One would show a hostage being held and a demand for ransom would be made.
The other would be an execution of an enemy, likely a beheading.
I had a sudden hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to even imagine such an outcome. Then I remembered the L-pill Sills had given me, which was hidden in a tiny pocket inside a seam in my jeans. Certainly they would give me back my clothes prior to making any video — men who were supposedly so devout wouldn’t want to seem like perverts by displaying a captured enemy in her underwear. It would hurt their cause.
Terrified, I resolved to hide the pill in my mouth and use it if necessary. I would refuse to give al-Ansar the satisfaction of using my gruesome demise as propaganda.
Thirty
The hours passed at an agonizingly slow pace. I knew it was sometime in the middle of the night and I’d been awake for more than thirty hours, except the few minutes I’d been knocked unconscious. I was exhausted but couldn’t risk sleeping because of the possible concussion, plus I was still feverishly trying to concoct some kind of escape plan. If I could somehow get out of that building, even dressed as I was, I could surely find someone willing to take me in, to save my life by hiding me. Or could I? That was also doubtful, in a country where everyone was intimidated by these violent revolutionary groups.
First things first, I told myself. I needed to find a way out of that room before I could worry about the rest. I walked to the bathroom and put on my bra, which was finally dry enough to wear. Peeking out the door’s window, I saw the lone guard fast asleep in a chair across the hall, his rifle leaning against the wall at his side. I turned off the light and sat back on the bed, determined to think my way back to safety.
Nothing came to me, though. There was no way out of this room, and I knew it.
Think, dammit. I couldn’t lose hope. Exhausted and scared shitless, I went over and over the situation. I finally decided my only chance would be to simply make a run for it as I was being taken to the video location, assuming it would be made elsewhere — a different building, perhaps, or hopefully at least a different room. If I could get outside and get somebody’s attention, I had a slim chance at surviving. More likely, I’d get shot, so I needed to have my L-pill in my mouth before running.
I sighed. There was no way this could possibly work. My eyelids grew heavy as my hopes dimmed.
* * *
I was awakened by a loud thump. Or at least I thought I heard something. I’d fallen asleep, but couldn’t tell for how long. I sat up in the darkness, listening but hearing nothing at all.
Then suddenly I heard keys jingling. I started to panic. It must be near dawn. They had come to take me, possibly to my death.
I could hear the keys in the door, then it opened and a large figure blocked the doorway, light pouring in from the hallway behind him.
I did the only thing I could think of, bolting out of bed and lunging across the room in full-on attack mode. I slammed into the man’s rock-hard body, then swung the heel of my palm upwards, trying to bash his chin. Instead, he grabbed and spun me, his chest against my back and his strong arms pinning my own arms to my sides.
“Mercer,” I heard him whisper.
I’d know that voice anywhere. I had to be dreaming.
“Mercer, it’s me,” he said.
This was no dream. It was Demarco.
I stopped fighting and when he released me I threw my arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. I’d never been so happy to see another human being.
“We have to go now, there’s no time to waste,” he said, pulling my arms off. “Where are your clothes?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They took them.”
Demarco grabbed my hand and pulled me into the hall, where I saw the guard’s body on the floor next to his chair, a dark red pool around his head. I looked at the pistol in Demarco’s hand and saw a silencer at the end of the barrel. We ran down the first flight of stairs and encountered two more prone bodies on the stairwell near the second floor. I stepped around them, then Demarco turned and stopped me.
“This will be tricky,” he whispered. “There are two guards out front. You need to run to the hallway on the other side of the lobby then down the hall. I’ll be right behind. Hopefully they won’t see us.” I nodded, my heart pounding in my chest.
I took a breath and ran down the stairs into the lobby, making an immediate right turn, Demarco’s footsteps audible just behind me. I glanced at the front of the lobby and realized the guards outside had seen me and were scrambling to open the door. As I reached the hallway I expected gunfire from the guards and almost ran into a figure who stepped out of the darkness in front of me with a pistol drawn. I heard voices in Arabic behind me as the man in front of me fired off two quick rounds past my head. Then Demarco slammed into me from behind as the two guards tumbled to the floor in the lobby. I looked at the shooter and saw it was Roger Krause, the agent who’d been my support in Venezuela. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Krause said.
We reached the back entrance of the building and paused at the door as Demarco looked at my bare feet. “Goddamit,” he said, then bent and threw me over his shoulder. “There’s all kinds of shit on the street around here.”
Cracking the door open, Krause peeked out, then held it for Demarco to pass through with me. With me bouncing on his shoulder, he immediately broke into a full sprint, holding me tightly with his arm wrapped securely behind my knees. It was surreal to see Krause running for his life behind me with the darkened Daraa scenery flashing by. We ran first through an alley, then down a deserted city street. Buildings pockmarked from missile fire looked ghostly in the dim light provided by the few streetlights.
We arrived at a car and Demarco set me down as Krause climbed behind the wheel. Demarco opened the back door and shoved me in, then climbed in on top of me, covering my body with his. “Stay down!” he ordered, and I wasn’t about to argue. The car sped through the city, Demarco’s hot breath in my face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, grabbing onto him and holding him against me. I was alive, at least for now. I had miraculously escaped from a likely death, with Ryan Demarco of all people improbably arriving just in time to rescue me. “How did you know?” I asked. “And where’s Abdul-Rauf?”
“Later,” he said, lifting his head to see where we were.
“This is it,” Krause said as the car made an abrupt turn, then screeched to a halt. I saw lights and heard voices. Demarco and I climbed out and were inside a garage, the overhead door slamming shut behind the car. There were two Arab men, both staring at me.
“Get her some clothes,” Demarco ordered. One of the men ran through a door and the rest of us followed, entering a small house. He returned holding a black abayah and handed it to me. I slipped it over my body, grateful to finally be covered. The sandals he gave me were at least a size too small but they’d have to do. He also handed me a niqāb to cover my head an
d face, which I held for the time being.
Demarco made a brief phone call, probably to CIA headquarters. “We’ve got her. Five enemy casualties.” He paused, then said, “No. No sign of him.” I didn’t know whether he was referring to Abdul-Rauf or al-Ansar.
“So what’s the plan?” Krause asked one of the men when Demarco hung up.
“Al-Ansar’s guards?” the man asked in return.
“Dead,” Demarco said. “Five of them.”
“And al-Ansar himself?”
“I didn’t see him,” Demarco responded. “I don’t think he was in the building.”
The man thought for a moment, then said, “It’s almost sunlight. Once the bodies are discovered, everyone will be looking for you, so we cannot afford to wait. We’ll take the other car. Just the four of us; you stay here,” he directed the other man, who nodded, looking relieved. Looking at Demarco and Krause, he said, “You will have to be in the trunk, there’s no other way.”
Turning to me, he said, “You’ll be in the front with me. You will have to pass as an Arab woman.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, confused.
“We’re only seven klicks from the Jordanian border,” Krause said. “We can get there in ten minutes.”
The two men told us to wait, then returned to the garage. I looked at Demarco. “Will this work?”
“It has to,” he said. “It’s our only shot.”
A couple of tense minutes passed, then the door opened. “Okay, come.”
We headed to the garage to find a different, smaller car with the trunk open. Krause climbed in, still holding his pistol, and Demarco followed with his. It took some maneuvering, but they managed to fit. We all knew the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning from exhaust fumes, but the drive was short and we had no choice. Hopefully the fumes wouldn’t leak into the trunk.
I took the passenger seat and slipped the niqāb over my head, adjusting it so that I could see out the small slit. I saw the serious expression on the driver’s face as the garage door opened, then he started the car and pulled out onto the street.
The streets of Daraa had become more visible in the pre-dawn light. “I am Sayid Kousa,” the driver said, introducing himself, “and you are my wife, Haya.” He fished a passport out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. The outside had an official symbol and said, “Syrian Arab Republic” in Arabic, English and French. I flipped it open and saw a picture of a woman wearing a niqāb, but with the veil removed from her face. Worse, she looked nothing like me.
“It was the best I could do on such short notice,” Kousa said. “Do you know any Arabic?”
“Just a few phrases,” I said, feeling the panic starting to set in. How could I possibly converse in Arabic with a border guard?
“Then we have to hope they don’t ask you questions,” he said.
The border crossing came into view and there were only a handful of cars in front of us. The road fanned out into eight lanes for checkpoints, but only two were open. “The rebels seized control of the border some months ago,” Kousa said. “This will be interesting.”
Interesting? I felt like any moment I would find myself right back in captivity again, this time with Demarco and Krause as my cellmates.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon when we pulled up to the checkpoint. I saw a military truck to my right, a guard perched atop it manning a machine gun. Kousa rolled down his window and another guard, a rifle slung over his shoulder, asked to see his passport.
Kousa presented it and the two men talked for a moment, ignoring me completely. I thought we might be out of trouble, then the guard bent down and looked across the car at me. My headwear hid my fear, save for what may have been visible in my eyes. He asked me a question and Kousa answered it, then the man said something else, more directly aimed at me. I had no idea what he was saying, then I saw Kousa’s index finger tap his passport. I handed my passport to the guard, who inspected it.
Again the guard said something. Kousa turned to me and, without the guard seeing him, motioned for me to lift my veil. My heart stopped as I took the bottom of the niqāb and pulled up, revealing my face. I had an olive complexion that was on the dark side for a white American, and had on no makeup because I’d washed it all off in the shower the previous day. Still, even in the early morning light I knew this was pushing it.
The guard looked at me, then at the passport. He said something angrily and dropped the passport in Kousa’s lap. The two men exchanged harsh words, then Kousa calmly lifted the passport again as if he were asking the guard to take a second look. The guard opened it and I saw Kousa had placed a few crisp bills inside.
It was the moment of truth. Either the guard would accept the bribe and wave us through, or we’d be arrested and eventually charged with five counts of murder and certainly put to death. I held my breath as he looked at me, then at Kousa again.
Then the guard stood up and slipped the bills into his pants pocket, gesturing with the other hand for us to proceed. I quickly lowered my veil and the car moved forward, gradually picking up speed. We passed another armed guard a few meters further, but he ignored us. The seconds ticked by as the border receded in my side mirror, then Kousa turned to me, a wide grin plastered across his face. I lifted my niqāb and leaned across the seat, planting a big kiss on Kousa’s cheek. “You are the best husband ever, Sayid!” I shouted with joy.
We drove another few miles to the town of Ramtha, safely in Jordan. Kousa found a dirt road and we opened the trunk to see the relieved, smiling faces of Demarco and Kraus.
“Please tell me we’re not still in Syria,” Demarco wisecracked.
* * *
We drove at very high speeds to Amman, this time with the two male agents in the back seat. Kousa explained to everyone what had occurred at the border crossing. The guard knew immediately I wasn’t the woman in the passport, but Kousa told him I was a wealthy Italian national who was leaving her Syrian husband because of marital strife. The guard was furious that a woman would do such a thing, but apparently had a change of heart when Kousa slipped him one million Syrian pounds, the equivalent of more than five thousand US dollars and a small fortune to someone whose monthly salary was about seventy-five bucks. “The CIA owes me some money,” Kousa laughed.
In half an hour we arrived in Amman and I had Kousa stop at a department store so I could buy a change of clothes. I asked Demarco to accompany me inside, not wanting to go anywhere without him by my side. As I hurriedly shopped, I asked him again about Abdul-Rauf, and how Demarco and Krause had learned I’d been captured. Demarco didn’t want to get into those things while in the store, or perhaps just wanted me to catch my breath after such an ordeal. “We’ll cover all that at GID,” he said. The General Intelligence Directorate in Amman was the CIA's best buddy in the Arab world. For decades we had been giving the Jordanian agency money, equipment and training so that we could maintain a friendly ally in this part of the globe.
I picked out some clean underwear, jeans and a T-shirt, along with cheap sneakers and socks. I asked the clerk if there was somewhere I could change, ready to dump this head-to-toe attire and put on some Western clothing. She pointed me toward a changing room. Demarco took a seat nearby and I slipped inside. As I got undressed I felt an overwhelming feeling of gratitude toward him for saving me.
I finished changing clothes, then stuck my head out of the curtain and looked around. Demarco was looking at his phone, and there was nobody else in sight. “Psst!” I whispered. When he looked up, I signaled him over. He approached the room and I let him in, then closed the curtain behind him and locked him up in a huge, grateful kiss.
I started crying while we were still kissing. “Thank you for coming to get me, Ryan,” I said when I broke away to dab at the tears. “I was so fucking scared.”
“Hey, I wasn’t ready to live in a world where we couldn’t get on each other’s nerves,” he said. He looked into my eyes and I sensed a warmth in him I hadn’t seen befor
e. ”We really should go, though,” he whispered. “I’m pretty sure that kiss was illegal in this country.”
I grinned as we left the changing room, the taste of him lingering on my lips.
* * *
At GID we were given a conference room and I traded notes with Demarco, Krause and Kousa until we all had the full story. The men were aghast when I told them about Gorani’s head being blown apart right in front of me. Though I didn’t mention the sex specifically, I said, “right after I’d finished engaging him” and I knew they’d get the picture.
Demarco and Krause told me that Nasry had turned on us, letting al-Ansar know what I was doing in order to curry favor with him. That slimy bastard. Nasry didn’t know why I wanted to meet al-Ansar, so al-Ansar had no idea why I was trying to get to him and became infuriated, likely imagining it to be an assassination plot. He probably didn’t believe my offer from the DOD was legit, and I almost certainly was hours away from being beheaded on one of those stomach-turning videos. Demarco had rescued me just in time.
“And Abdul-Rauf?” I asked.
Demarco shook his head grimly.
“No!” I wailed.
“We know they killed him,” he said. “The Agency is already making efforts to recover his body. He was shot in the lobby of the building, probably right after al-Ansar killed Gorani, while you were unconscious. The guards had thought him dead and left his body, but he crawled into a room and called HQ, telling them Nasry had turned and that you were in danger. Then there was more gunfire and the line went dead.”
I began to cry. I remembered that little room off of the lobby and couldn’t help picture my colleague dragging himself there so he could call the CIA to let them know I’d been captured. Even in his dying moments, Shabazz Abdul-Rauf had the presence of mind to look out for his fellow agent. He had saved my life.
“But how did you get to me so quickly?” I asked Demarco and Krause between tears.
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