“No!” I yelled out, almost pushing my way past Charlie. “No!” I didn’t want them to even try to explain my options. It wasn’t necessary. I would die before I’d ever turn on Charlie.
“Hannah.” Charlie grabbed me before I could lunge.
One of the men aiming his firearm on me began to laugh. “Keep your woman in line.”
I could have pounced on him. Damn him and the machine gun he had pointing at me. What power did this guy think he had? Who gave him the right to treat us this way?
The next few moments happened so fast. Two of the guards approached us: one grabbed Charlie and the other grabbed me. I instinctively struggled, but Charlie shook his head, begging for me to play their game. They then repositioned us so that we were standing directly facing each other.
“Kick him.” The guard whispered in my ear.
“Fuck you.” I replied too quickly.
I saw Charlie’s body tense before I felt my knees kicked from behind. I fell, screaming with pain, but my captor pulled me right back up, ordering me to kick Charlie again.
I refused.
He bashed me across the back of my head with the butt of his gun.
I blinked back awake, not sure how long I had blacked out for, but Charlie was still in front of me, and I was still being forced to kick him. It was far from over.
“Please.” Charlie mouthed.
I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. How? Just… how?
“Kick him!”
Charlie nodded.
Any more of my struggle would only lead to another crack across the back of my head. I had to try a different approach. So I retracted my foot, and then propelled it right forward, trying so hard to slow down my speed before my toe came in contact with his shin.
Charlie cursed out as soon as I made contact.
I wasn’t sure if he was playing along, or if I had actually hurt him.
I was made to kick him twenty times before they turned me to punches. I recoiled every swipe, hoping that I was putting on a good enough show that they believed what I was doing was real, and yet pulling my punches enough that they felt to Charlie like nothing more than gentle nudges.
I turned around, begging for the torture to stop, when I noticed we were being videotaped. I froze in shock. It all made so much sense now. I knew this tactic. They were planning to show the world the power they had against us. The fact that I could not only turn against my fellow soldier, but also the man I loved, would no doubt prove their point. They had me right where they wanted me. If I made it out of here alive, which was still very doubtful, I would be branded a traitor and forced to face the consequences that would be bestowed upon me by my own country.
There was no way out of this for me.
“Now, kill him.” The deep voice of my captor’s voice rang in my ears.
“What?” I cried, not realizing this would escalate so fast. Sure, I could pull my punches, but there was no way to pull a bullet flying full speed out of a gun.
He placed a pistol in my hand, helping me aim it directly at Charlie.
He then held his own gun up to my head, letting me know I didn’t have a choice.
My eyes focused hard on my love’s face. He was barely recognizable, and yet I knew exactly what he was saying to me with his mind. He was telling me to do what they told me. He was trying to save my life by sacrificing his own.
“I won’t do it!” I yelled into the air. “Charlie, don’t make me!”
My face was already stained with dried tears, but my eyes began to run again.
The gun being held against my head was cocked.
“I love you, Hannah.” He mouthed, almost audibly. “Goodbye.”
And then he closed his eyes.
And then I closed mine.
And then I fired the gun.
Chapter Eleven
Charlie
I heard the gunfire, two shots, but felt nothing. Was this what death was like? Had it really happened so quickly that it was over already?
“Charlie.”
I heard her voice.
I felt her touch.
I opened my eyes.
Chaos swarmed through the room. The man previously holding a gun to Hannah’s head was on the ground, as well as the man who was standing behind me.
It seemed to all happen in slow motion. People I recognized. People I didn’t. They were all there. And they were all fighting.
Hannah helped me to my feet, but I stumbled, having to give her most of my weight. She dragged me to the wall, propping me up in the corner so that we could escape the fire fight ensuing in front of our eyes.
I’m sure it was over in a manner of seconds, but watching everything made it feel as though the war went on for days. In my defense, my eyes were now practically swollen shut, so anything I did see was mostly a blur. It made it hard to focus, or stay sane, for that matter.
And then everything stopped.
“Dad?” I knew it was him the instant his hand touched mine.
“I’m here, son. I’m here.”
The sound of whizzing bullets, of blazing gun powder, it was all over. They helped me up, out of the cell, and safely to freedom.
“The ghost?” I questioned as soon as I felt the warmth of the sun hit my face.
There was a pause and a breath. I knew his wouldn’t be an answer I liked. “Not this time, Charlie.”
Damn.
A few days later, and I was back in the States, out of the hospital, and sitting next to Hannah in the debriefing room. I told them everything; I had nothing to hide. I told them of every day of the last eighteen months. I told them of the day I realized the rebels might have tapped into our radio feeds, and the day I knew I had been right.
“The second day I was imprisoned…” I started, not wanting to relive it all, but knowing that I had to for the good of our continued freedom. “They came in for my next dose of torture, promising that if I didn’t give up the coordinates of where the rest of my team was hidden, and the names of the men and women that had helped us along the way, I would be no good to them, and I would soon be dead.”
I reached out my hand under the table and laced my fingers through Hannah’s. I knew this would be tough for her to hear, and by the pallor of her face, I knew it was only about to get worse.
“I obviously refused to talk, aside from giving them the freedom to kill me on the spot. But they were too stubborn, too proud, to give up that easily. Then, after they had whipped me over one hundred times across my back, Nkomo, the boy I mentioned earlier, came into the room. I thought maybe I could connect with him. He knew so much about me; we were friends. I hoped that maybe he was being forced to give me up in order to protect his family. That, I would understand. But.” I swallowed, glancing quickly at Hannah to make sure she was still okay. “I soon learned that it wasn’t the case. Nkomo admitted to being part of the raid that killed his family after I was taken prisoner. He even proudly announced that he was the one who shot his mother right through the heart. Then, he looked directly at me before announcing that his parents deserved death because they helped the American Infidel scum. It was then that I knew I had lost him. He was no longer the boy I knew, and I pondered over how long this had been going on, and if I could have stopped it had I stayed… had I been there.”
I got a little choked up, but tried with all my might to hide it. I didn’t need to show emotion right now. I just needed to state the facts.
“Anyway,” I grounded myself. “One of the insurgents then brought in a recording. It was Reynolds,” I motioned to my father across the table, “speaking to one of his superiors. Sorry,” I swallowed again, “I didn’t recognize the voice, but he was getting permission to bring Birk along on the rescue mission. They were taunting me, and I knew it.”
I had yet to tell Hannah any of this, but I could feel her eyes searing into me. Had she only known the emotional turmoil I went through in the days leading up to her arrival. I knew exactly when she left the States, when she land
ed in Lagos, when the bomb went off at the police station, when Nkomo ‘conveniently’ found her, and finally, when they picked her up and brought her to the camp.
“Their plan was to force Hannah to make a decision between her life and mine, and then record it to use as propaganda against the loyalty of our military.”
I went on to explain the events leading up to the raid, as I was certain Hannah wouldn’t want to say those words aloud during her part of the debrief. I was sure to go on record saying that I told her to abide by their requests, forcing her to continue kicking and throwing punches, but she did pull them, and never once hurt me. There was to be no further investigation into my claims, as it was quite obvious Hannah was sickened by the entire thing.
It felt good to say it all out loud, to get it off my chest. While living it, I never thought I would get out of there alive… but now, it all seemed like some story I made up. None of it seemed real.
“Okay, now Hannah.” The officer heading up of the debriefing thanked me for my thoroughness, and then moved on. “Am I right to assume that the man who forced you to act violently toward Sergeant Madison was the first person you have ever killed?”
“You are right.” Her weak voice rang out next to me, echoing through the dismal room.
Of course.
It didn’t matter how much information I had tried to cover myself so that she wouldn’t have to fill in the missing pieces. This was, no doubt, going to be hard for her.
As I looked into her blank stare, I realized that after what we had just been through, neither of us were ever going to be the same as were were before.
Chapter Twelve
Hannah
To say I was in trouble might have been a bit of an understatement. I thought about lying- saying that I woke up after the bomb blast confused and shaken, unsure of who I was or where I had been, but the decorated men sitting around the table were sure to see right through that story. In the long run, a lie just wouldn’t be worth it.
So instead, I told the truth. I promised the group that I had looked for my team, but with the dust and the screams and the debris… I couldn’t find hide nor hair of them. So when the young boy came up to me with promise of reunion, I didn’t think twice.
“I wasn’t thinking straight.” I admitted. “Part of me thought everyone else might be dead.”
Luckily, we didn’t lose anyone during our rescue mission. The bomb was meant to be a disarming tactic rather than a killing machine. The goal of the terrorist act had been set from the very beginning: to feed Charlie’s weakness by capturing me.
I was simply a pawn in their game. And I walked, or rather ran, right into their trap.
I told them of the child, Nkomo, and how he knew so much personal information about me; I could only assume he was an ally.
“You do understand now that those stories were fabricated by the enemy as a way to draw you in.” Reynolds spoke up before anyone else had the chance to berate me.
“I do.” I shook my head at my stupidity, remembering that Charlie had already told me those exact words. “But damn.” I almost laughed. “That kid was a good actor.”
I continued on, retelling the story of my encounter with Nkomo. I relived the mile run, and then the moment when I realized it all might be a lie, and then when he brought up Charlie and I still suggested I go back to my group. But I kept on, admitting that after I received his warning that it wasn’t safe after dark, I decided to take my chances with a small boy rather than alone and unprotected in an unfamiliar land.
I rambled through the nighttime capture, counting the seconds that passed as I laid in the back of that truck, and meeting with the group that decided my fate.
“And that’s when you were thrown into a prison cell with Madison, here?” A voice came at me across the table.
“Yes, sir.” I nodded, hating that we were now stuck at this part. I just wanted it to be over.
“And when did you decide that torturing your fellow soldier was the path you wanted to head down?”
I didn’t have to defend myself. Even before he had finished his attack, Charlie leapt to his feet, violently tossing his chair aside in the process.
“I told you this part.” His hands slammed down on the table in front of him. “I gave her the order to follow his instructions. And yet she still pulled her punches. Kindly retract your accusation, sir.”
Charlie’s face was beet red, and the room was almost dead air, save for the sound of the wind coming through the vents.
“Charlie,” his father spoke up, splitting the silence, surprisingly calm. “Please sit back down and allow Hannah to finish her debriefing, or else we’ll dismiss you for the remainder of it.”
No more words were spoken on the subject, but Charlie did retrieve his chair and sit back down next to me. His hand moved to my lap, grasped my clammy right hand, and brought it on top of the table, still wrapped in his. With a ‘try to say something about this’ kind of smile, he held our hands firmly there in the open, putting on a show.
When no one else spoke, I started up my story again.
“When they put the gun in my hand, I realized it was all over. There was no way I could fake pulling the trigger. So, even though I knew that we might both end up dead, I turned the gun first on the man holding me in place, and then on the one holding Charlie.” I bit my bottom lip, seeing in my mind the look on both of their faces before I killed them. “I thought that was it. I thought the other men were going to open fire. But that’s when my team found me.”
I took a breath, trying to hold back the tears any way possible.
“And Reynolds?” the man who accused me of hurting Charlie shuffled through his papers. “You had put a tracking device on Birk?”
“What?” I shot out, as this was the first time I was hearing of this.
Reynolds apologized with his eyes before confirming the fact. “As I had a feeling Birk might do something rash in order to save Charlie herself, I gave her a necklace before we left Fort Bragg. Inside the jewel was a tracking device. We used the GPS coordinates as a way to find her once my team assembled after the police station bombing.”
I reached for the necklace still around my neck and pulled it off in one quick motion, setting it in front of me on the table.
The one asking the questions continued. “And you thought it was a good idea to bring her along- you actually fought for her aid on this mission- even though you knew she might do something that could get herself and your entire team killed?”
“Well,” Reynolds looked at me again, afraid to continue. “Technically I knew she’d be willing to take a risk that everyone else might be too trained to take. I thought if anyone would lead us to Charlie and his team…”
Charlie’s free fist slammed against the table. “You used Hannah as bait?” He screamed, filling the room with his booming voice.
“Charlie…” his father hoped to calm him down.
But Charlie was anything but calm. “You deliberately put Hannah in danger without her knowledge? How dare you sit here and try to justify it!”
I cleared my throat, hoping to get a word in. “But it worked.”
I went on to explain that had not Reynolds make that decision, Charlie would have been lost to us. I went back as far as to say that had I not been made part of the rescue team in the first place, the insurgents would have killed Charlie on the second day of his detainment. Reynolds had a decision to make in order to get back one of his own. He knew that I was the most untrained and reckless of the group, and yet probably the most determined. Had he not assumed that, I still would have found a way to get on that mission, and I would have wound up in that same situation. I just wouldn’t have had a tracking device on me, and I would have wound up dead, along with Charlie.
Of course, I was a bit shaken by the whole thing, as I would have liked a head’s up that I was being traced, but in hindsight, I truly believed the Command Sergeant Major made the right decision.
I chuckled to my
self, knowing that if Max Reynolds ever wanted to see my mother again, this whole thing would have to be our little secret. And luckily, I would always have something to hold over his head. It seemed like the perfect way to start our new stepdaughter/stepfather relationship. Save for the fact that I wanted this to be over as soon as humanly possible, I was slightly excited to get out of that room, just to be able to jokingly toss that into his face.
Charlie though, was still on fire. Nothing I said had calmed him down, even though I’m sure he knew there was sense to it. I think it would be awhile before he forgave his father.
After a few slaps on wrists and talks of what should happen ‘next time’, we were released from the debriefing and told to take a few days off. Luckily, I still had about a week until Robin Sage.
I would desperately need that week.
I was still very tired.
Embrace The Suck (A Stepbrother Special Forces Novel) Page 38