“When do you sleep?” Felix asked.
“Never, according to my wife.” Zain grinned.
“We’re booked on a flight that leaves in three hours.” Kyle stretched his arms toward the ceiling. “I’d suggest repacking your bags and keep them light on nonessentials, heavy on ammo and tactical gear. Pack for hot weather. There’s a good chance we’ll be doing some running.”
“And I’ll hopefully have more for you by the time you land to make your connection in Egypt.”
The others filed out of the room, talking in hushed tones.
Felix didn’t get up. He kept staring at Jackie’s dirt-smudged face. When he met, he owed her an apology. His kind of frivolous spending was getting another game system he didn’t need. She was out to save the world.
“Everything okay?” Zain flipped through the papers on his clipboard.
“How does a guy think this is frivolous? I feel like a piece of shit looking at her life.”
“Some people have different drives.” Zain glanced at the screen. “Some of us are driven to succeed, which means getting more money, climbing to the top of the ladder. Some of us are driven to help people, which puts people like Jackie here in danger. And some of us unlucky bastards are driven to protect people, which means you better get your ass in gear.”
“You’re right.” Felix pushed to his feet and stretched.
“Ian was surprised you weren’t off. Something I should know?” Zain asked.
“Nah.”
“Well, if you can take this job, we need more boots on the ground. You don’t speak French or Arabic, do you?”
“My French is shit, and I can’t even ask for a beer in Arabic. I’m going to go get my damn bag.”
The best thing Felix could do to commemorate his cousin was bring Jackie home. The Björns and Jackies of the world were important. There needed to be more of them because too many people just wanted to make a buck at the expense of others.
2.
Friday. Slums of Nouakchott, Mauritania.
Jackie Davis held her breath and focused on the bowl in her hands. She couldn’t spill a drop. Water was precious. She’d wanted to fill it to the brim, but her arms had begun to shake from lack of food and sleep, her body screaming out for some kind of respite.
“Easy does it.” Valentina Sanchez wrapped her long, elegant fingers around the bowl and lifted it from Jackie’s quivering grasp.
“How’s she doing?” Jackie leaned against the wall, allowing her gaze to fixate on the twelve-year-old girl stretched out on one of the pile of rags they’d been granted.
“The fever seems to have broken, so that’s good. I wish I could get her on antibiotics or something, but that careverga dumped the whole bag out yesterday.” Val’s sweet voice didn’t match her words. Her patient was incredibly sensitive to tone, unsurprising considering how she’d grown up.
“I noticed that careverga has changed. There was a new guy out there earlier. I think the group has had another shift in leadership.” Jackie glanced over her shoulder, skimming the other occupants of the room, her team, the people they’d promised a better life.
“Great. Maybe this one will consider giving us decent water, food, facilities? The bucket is almost full again.”
“We just emptied it. Didn’t we?” Jackie frowned. She could have sworn she did.
“No, that was almost two days ago.”
“Really?”
“I told you, you need to sleep. Everything is starting to blur together. You can’t keep doing this. You’re Wonder Woman, but even she needed to sleep.”
“I’ll deal with the bucket situation and then sleep. I promise.” Jackie scrubbed a hand over her face.
Rough conditions didn’t bother her. She’d survived worse. It was everyone else that worried her.
She and Val had put together their team of nurses, a doctor and a few humanitarians with one promise: to get these people out of the country and somewhere safe. All they’d done was move them from the facility where they’d been held as slaves to being held as captives. It wasn’t a great turn of events, especially considering the civil war that was breaking out all around them. What had started as the perfect opportunity had become a trap, and the band of men holding them seemed to change leadership every twelve hours.
Jackie peered around the corner, counting heads, noting where everyone was. They’d been barricaded into an L-shaped side room off the main dining space of a local restaurant. The windows were boarded up, the doors were locked, there were no facilities, and the only water they had came from a leaky pipe. She’d promised these people a better future. If they didn’t get free soon, if she didn’t come up with something, they might not make it out of here before the fighting reached them.
How had this happened?
One minute, everything was fine. Or as fine as it got here. Mauritania wasn’t the most forward-thinking country, and living conditions were poor at best for those not born into money, but there’d been order and progress. And then someone revived the People’s Party of Mauritania and threw the country into civil war.
She crossed to the one window not boarded up. It looked out onto another room they’d begun calling The Den. It was where the men holding them lounged around, eating food they wouldn’t share and deciding the fate of these people.
The room was empty. Even their constant guard was gone. How long since she’d checked on things out here? Her memory was suspect. She had no idea if she had emptied the toilet bucket two days ago instead of right before she got water.
Jackie leaned through the window a bit. It had two boards nailed into the frame that prevented her from shimmying out, but she could almost stick her head between them.
She could barely make out a shape in the entry to The Den.
“Oh shit,” she muttered.
There’d been yelling. She’d been holding the bowl and jumped when it started, but it happened so often there was no real reason to be concerned. Now she wished she’d paid attention.
“Val?” Jackie quick stepped across the room.
“What?” Val stood and circled the pallet. The little girl had hardly moved.
“The guy with the eyepatch?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s dead.”
“What?”
“Sh.”
Val crossed to the window and peered out. Her shoulders slumped.
They were both thinking the same thing. They’d been friends for too long, gone on too many of these trips together to not know what this meant.
Eyepatch had been in favor of letting them all go. It took manpower and resources to keep seventeen people locked up. The women and children were not valuable as slaves due to their poor condition. Unless they had connections or resources, selling or trading off their medical team was tricky business, given that by now someone would be looking for them. If that man was dead, who was in control?
“Okay, so he’s been dead—what? An hour or two?” Val drew in a deep breath through her nose. “I can’t smell him, so not long. I mean, there’s probably a stronger odor around the body, but decomp hasn’t begun.”
“Probably. Where’d everyone else go?” Jackie stood on tiptoe, as though that would miraculously help her see something new.
“No clue.” Val eyed the boards blocking the window.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Jackie asked.
“You or me?” Val and Jackie were just about always on the same wavelength. There was no need to ask.
“Me. You can’t get hurt. You’re too valuable. If I get hurt, I can still bribe our way out of here without my hands. Get the others ready.” Jackie pulled the scarf from around her head and wrapped it around her hand. One good thing about the local fashion, layers of garments allowed for all kinds of uses for the fabric.
Val didn’t argue. She was a nurse, her hands were important. Jackie on the other hand was the wallet. All she had to do was present cash, and Val could even hold that for her.
S
he couldn’t get up high enough to use her feet and kick the boards out, she had to use her hands.
She grasped the lower board with her left hand and jiggled.
It was the slightest bit loose, probably from her pushing on it anytime she checked The Den.
She placed the heel of her right hand against the board and edged forward. So long as she hit it right, with the full force of her arm, she shouldn’t break a bone. Of course, she’d said the same thing when she’d broken her foot kicking their way out of a cellar.
Jackie pulled her arm back and inhaled.
This was going to hurt.
She drove the heel of her hand forward against the board and exhaled. The wood creaked and groaned, the nails screeching in protest. The impact jarred up her arm and her shoulder twinged. She pulled her arm back again, this time focusing on the left side of the window where she’d had more luck with loosening the nail.
Soft rustling of fabric and whispered voices alerted her to the others getting to their feet and hopefully mobile. There were two they’d have to help support if not outright carry them out of here.
Jackie had made a promise, and she’d damn well keep it.
She struck out again and again. On the third blow, the end of the board popped free, the nail tapping at the other side of the wall like a woodpecker.
“You got this, Jack,” Val whispered.
No one was coming to investigate the dead body or the noise.
That was good.
She switched arms and edged to her right.
“Someone’s coming,” one of the other nurses called from the end of the room. There was a small crack where they could look out, but it didn’t show much.
Jackie flattened herself against the wall and the others scattered.
Footsteps and muttered voices filled the other room.
“They’re just removing the body,” Val said, her voice pitched low.
Jackie held her breath.
“Okay, they’re gone,” Val said.
Jackie pivoted and punched. There wasn’t time to hesitate.
“Mahlaan!” A man shouted from the other side.
“Shit,” she muttered
Men rushed toward the door.
She stepped back, shaking her hand. There was self defense and then there was being stupid. Taking on these guys twice her size with nothing more than her fists wasn’t going to help their situation.
The door jerked open and three men entered. One had a makeshift bat in hand and the others had lengths of rope. The one wielding the bat was bad news. He gestured with the end of the bat and spoke in a rush. If Jackie had to guess, he was the reason Eyepatch was dead.
“What is he saying?” Val had her arms around two kids clinging to her waist.
“He wants to separate us from the others. They’re taking us somewhere.” Jackie had feared this might happen, but it didn’t stop her stomach from plummeting through the floor.
“No!” Val pushed the man closest to her away and took a step back, clutching the children closer.
“Val—don’t fight,” Jackie yelled over the noise of Arabic and Spanish clashing.
Jackie cringed and held up her hands. She was willing to fight to her dying breath if she thought it would do them good, but these men had already killed someone. She couldn’t get free and come back for the others if she was dead.
“No, I won’t let you. Jackie!” Val’s wide eyes latched onto her.
“Don’t fight,” Jackie said again.
The man with the bat grasped her wrist tight.
“Everyone, listen to me—don’t fight. We can’t help anyone if we get ourselves killed.” She winced, the rope biting into her skin, as her hands were bound behind her back.
The gaze of the formerly fevered young girl snagged Jackie’s. She mouthed words in Arabic, a promise to come back for them.
The doctor, three nurses and Jackie were led out of what had been their prison for weeks and through The Den. The smell of death and feces was worse out here, a testament that they hadn’t seen everything transpiring beyond the walls of their cell.
“What are we going to do?” Val asked.
“Stay calm.”
“That’s funny, coming from you.”
Jackie snorted.
“Quiet. No talking!” The man with the bat spoke in Arabic, brandishing his weapon at her.
They were led outside into the fading sunlight. Jackie squinted at the first glimpse of real sunshine she’d had in days, the intensity of it stabbing her in the eyes.
One by one, the five of them were loaded into the bed of an idling truck. They were positioned facing each other, backs against the side of the truck. Two men sat up against the tailgate, more bats and makeshift weapons in hand.
“No one has guns,” Val said.
“I saw that. I wonder if the people who had them ran off to join the civil war, or if they were stolen.” Jackie could see both as options. Without weapons to protect their goods the men holding their group would want to sell before the rest of their bounty could be stolen.
“Where are they taking us?” Dr. Lefebvre asked in accented English. He’d slept as little as Jackie, his face lined with exhaustion and his age showing.
“No one has said.” Jackie shook her head.
The truck lurched forward, the diesel engine sputtering before it shifted into gear and they accelerated away from the restaurant they’d called prison. Jackie searched for a sign, some sort of landmark she could use to find her way back here.
The women and children were slaves, but in their condition, they weren’t valuable. Considering the time, manpower, and money it would take to relocate them and facilitate the transaction, Jackie hoped the men simply gave up. If they did, and if her group could get free, they could come back for the people. That was, if the civil war didn’t spread to this part of the city.
It should have been an easy in, out, done run. They’d made several of these before over the years. This was the largest liberation attempt to date, but they hadn’t been able to leave anyone behind. The women and kids had been locked in their quarters, left to die, when Jackie and her team rescued them.
Their primary contact and translator had bugged out when their medical convoy was hit. The hired had drivers abandoned them. Now it was up to Jackie to figure out how to get them out of here.
Was she up to the job?
She wasn’t sure.
The truck slowed to a stop.
The man at the rear of the bed stood, grasping the tall, wooden sides of the vehicle and peered out over the cab.
“What’s he yelling?” Val asked.
“He wants to know why we’ve stopped. The way was supposed to be clear.” Jackie twisted to peer through the wooden slats. A barrier of burning debris blocked most of the road. There was no way to go except in reverse. “Shit...”
The war was spreading. That was the only reason there’d be a pile of burning stuff here.
One of the men at the rear of the truck let out a strangled yell, and the vehicle shook.
Jackie turned in time to see the other man pitch backward off the truck, writhing on the ground.
They’d been shot.
The truck was caught in the crossfire. No one would care if they were natives or not when the shooting started.
“Get down, everyone—down!” Jackie shoved Val to the floor and leaned over her.
The tailgate of the truck dropped and a man in green gear, complete with helmet, vest, all the odds and ends hanging off him and holding a rifle waved at them. That wasn’t the gear of any soldier she’d ever interacted with. The only part of him she could see was his face. High cheekbones, a slight stubble, wisps of blond hair and crystal blue eyes latched on her. No one with eyes that blue was native to this country.
“Jacqueline Davis and team? Come on,” he yelled.
That was English.
He was American.
The doctor and other nurses slid out. That was a language they all
understood despite their different nationalities.
Jackie and Val crawled after them.
The two men that’d been standing guard rolled around on the ground clutching their chests, but there was no blood. What had they been hit with if not bullets?
Two more men in green had their guns pointed at the cab of the truck.
“Come on. This way.” The one at the tailgate gestured to an open door.
The other nurses had their hands free and quickly untied both Jackie and Val.
“We have to go back.” Jackie grabbed the man in green’s arm.
They had a truck. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but they could get all twelve of the women and children loaded and out.
“We can’t go back, ma’am.” The man grasped her arm.
“I’m not leaving our people.” She twisted her wrist, the muscles in her shoulders protesting.
“PPM forces are about to take this whole area. The building you were in is in the block their men were securing. These guys barely got you out. We have to go, now.” He tightened his grip.
“I am not leaving them.” The whole reason Jackie was here, was for them. To be forced to flee without the people they’d come for was unacceptable.
“Jack—Jackie!” Val pointed behind them, her eyes wide.
A Mad Max style bus with metal plates welded onto every flat surface she could see rolled around the corner. Men with guns sat on top. PPM was scrawled across the front of the vehicle.
Oh shit...
Just how bad had things gotten while they were locked up?
This time, the man didn’t ask. He hauled Jackie forward, through the door into what had been someone’s home. Now the inside was looted, stuff everywhere.
“Through the back, into the van.” Another man in all green waved them through.
“Where are we going? What’s happening?”
“Fill you in later. Just—go!”
“Down!” a man yelled from the front of the house.
The guy with his hand on Jackie’s arm jerked her to the floor. He leaned over her, covering her with his body. She sucked in a breath, the dust sticking to the inside of her mouth and nose.
A moment later the whole structure shuddered. The blast practically boxed her ears. The only thing she could hear was a terribly painful ringing. Her body felt weird, weightless. What kind of bomb was that? She coughed and tried to shake her head. Her stomach tensed up, throat constricting.
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