Never Surrender

by Lindsay McKenna

“He sure has. And, hey, the guys in this platoon have been really nice to me, too.” And then she gave him a wicked grin. “Unlike your team who wanted to burn me at the stake.”

  He absorbed her laughter, drinking in the beauty of her face. “Your nose is sorta red. Been outdoors a lot? Patrols?”

  “I’ve been working clinics outdoors. No patrols, though. The captain wants me to stay in the village where it’s safer.”

  “Smart man. Tell him thank you.” That was profound news and a relief to Gabe.

  She grinned. “Well, the captain said he didn’t want an angry SEAL climbing his ass, so he really wanted to keep you happy.”

  Gabe’s hands were sweaty. He’d had such fear for Bay going out on patrols, his imagination going wild, having a nightmare about her being killed. “Hey, tell that captain I appreciate him watching your back. But you’re right, I’d damn well climb anyone’s ass if they didn’t properly take care of you.”

  “Well,” she murmured, “I think you guys in the SEALs have such a tough reputation, that it’s already a done deal.”

  He sobered. “I love you.” Gabe didn’t give a damn who heard him. Bay’s face softened, and so many emotions crossed her very readable face. She struggled.

  “I love you, too. And I miss you so much, Gabe….”

  “It’s mutual, believe me.” He saw longing in her expression. And sadness that they were once more separated from one another.

  “It has to be hard on you, too.”

  Gabe snorted. “Hell, I’m stateside. What’s gonna happen to me? Get bit by a pissed-off rattler because I ran too close to the manzanita bush he was resting under? Find a scorpion in my sleeping bag and get stung?”

  Bay shook her head, laughing. “God, you make my day, Griffin.”

  How badly Gabe wanted to reach out and simply touch her flushed cheek, kiss her lips, feel Bay lean into him, her arms sliding around his neck. His throat tightened with those intense memories.

  “I’m glad I do,” he said. “I want to see you smiling and happy over there.” He wondered if she felt him come to her at night when she slept.

  “You make me feel happy,” she whispered, losing her smile. “I’m busy, so it takes my head out of missing you so much.”

  “You’re not too busy, are you?” Gabe demanded, frowning. Bay had promised him to not wear herself out like she had before.

  Holding up her hands, she said, “I’ve been a good girl. Reza is here, and he’s like my guard dog, taking your place. He meets me at my house every morning, and then we have MREs at HQ. Every morning, he sizes me up. ‘Baylee, you have shadows under your eyes. Baylee, you look thinner. Baylee, aren’t you eating enough?’” She smiled a little. “He’s a miniature you, Gabe. Trust me on that one.”

  “Tell him thank you from me. That’s a stroke of luck Reza is there with you. For how long?” More relief tunneled through Gabe. He’d worked with Reza before, and the man was solid gold.

  “Another two weeks. He’s busy showing the team new rat lines up in the hills and mountains above our village.”

  “He’s a damned good person.”

  “He’s someone I can confide in. I can trust him with my secrets.” She gave him a teasing look.

  She was such an imp, but how he loved her. “Things you should be telling me instead?”

  “Ohhhh, I keep it aboveboard,” she promised, her lips curving more. “But I have active dreams at night. Can’t talk to anyone about them, however, and you aren’t here to tell them to….”

  Gabe grinned and chuckled. His spirits lifted just hearing her voice, seeing her face and making sure she was really all right. He couldn’t ask her details about anything; that was forbidden. Top secret was exactly that. “I sent you a care package. You should be getting it soon.”

  “Ohhh, surprises?”

  “Yeah, surprises just for you. I know how much you love them.”

  “Listen, do me a favor? Can you go to some of the NGOs that the SEALs work with? This village is so poor, Gabe. All the kids need shoes. Could you check into this when you get a chance? I’d really like to have about seventy pairs. The children are all running around barefoot.”

  He nodded. “Can do,” he said, thinking that Bay, as usual, was watching out for the children. She was going to be one incredible mother someday. And she would be carrying his child. His lower body burned with need for her.

  Bay looked at the watch on her wrist. “My time’s up. I got two SEALs standing in line waiting to talk to their loved ones, so I’m outta here, Shark Man.”

  He grinned, wanting more time with her. Wanting to capture her laughter and replay it so he could feel her near him. “Okay, next week?”

  “Maybe. I’ll try as often as I can.” Bay smiled sweetly, touched her heart with her hand and then extended her hand toward him. “I love you….”

  He sat there and returned the hand signal to her. A lump formed in his throat. “I love you, too, baby. Stay safe out there….”

  The screen went blank. Gabe sat there feeling euphoric and, at the same time, horrible dread. His emotions were up and down like a roller coaster. Never before had he experienced something as intense as his love for Bay. One of the SEAL wives who found out Bay was overseas had told him the same thing. There wasn’t a day that went by when she didn’t feel abject terror to dizzying joy, too. It was just part of a human’s emotional makeup when their loved one was overseas and in harm’s way.

  Rubbing his chest, Gabe scowled, hating how emotional he’d become since Bay had left. No other woman had ever affected him like that. He sighed. Well, the tables were turned, weren’t they? Instead of the man going overseas into combat, the woman went instead. And he was the one left home to do the worrying and the not knowing. Getting up, he ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.

  Gabe went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. Leaning his hips against the counter, he stared through the quiet condo. When Bay had been here, the place filled him with warmth, bubbling vitality and life. Now, it was sterile, gray and damned depressing to him. He sipped the coffee, his brows knitted. Bay was in what was considered a “hot” valley, a place where frequent, ongoing clashes with the Taliban were happening all the time. It didn’t help him sleep at night. Dammit, anyway. If only she’d been assigned to a SEAL team, he’d have breathed a helluva lot easier. She was in a bad place with an enemy who hated Americans with a fanatical passion.

  When he’d talked with Chief Phillips a week earlier, the SEAL had been blunt about Bay’s location.

  “It’s a damn snake pit. Mustafa Khogani, cousin to Sangar Khogani, that a SEAL sniper team just took out last year, is heading up the Hill tribe efforts to put new rat lines through that Shinwari tribe valley. Mustafa is a sick son of a bitch.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “This guy is real special,” Phillips had snarled. “He sweeps down on a Shinwari village, kidnapping little boys and girls between six and twelve years old. He’s a sex slave trader. Some of our teams have found these children dead, dropped like garbage along rat-line trails a few days after they had been kidnapped. They were children who were badly injured during the kidnapping. The bastard is killing these children, not giving them medical aid to survive. We want this monster.”

  A cold shiver had moved up Gabe’s spine as he’d heard Phillips’s icy rage. “I wouldn’t want to find one of those children,” he’d admitted, his voice hoarse. It would be the last thing he’d want to do—discover a dead child on some trail out in the middle of nowhere.

  “It’s upsetting the platoon plenty. A lot of these guys are married and have children themselves. You can imagine them stumbling upon one of Khogani’s victims. Mustafa is a sociopath. He doesn’t care. He just discards them, keeping the healthy, uninjured children and then selling them to the highest bidder once they get them across the Pakistan border.”

  “Jesus,” Gabe had whispered, rubbing his face. He couldn’t imagine the terror and grief of the Afghan p
arents. Worse, discovering their young son or daughter was found dead. Even more sorrow-compounding, finding out how the child had suffered and died. Gabe had seen the ruthless brutality in the Taliban ranks for too long, but this was new. And horrifying. “Can’t you get a sniper team tracking that bastard?”

  “That’s what we’re doing. We’re coordinating a team with the SF captain over in that valley. That’s the one Bay is assigned to. The captain came crawling over here last week pleading, hands out, begging us to interfere and provide him a SEAL sniper team. He also asked for our sniper platoon assets to start scouring the hills above the village to capture Khogani and his bunch, but it’s a no-can-do. He’s got to get the ragged-assed Army in gear to do that. We have our own areas that need our attention and protection. He asked for a drone, but my hands were tied. We can’t even get one except for the Ravens our teams use out on patrol.”

  Gabe’s mouth had thinned. “Did you tell Bay all of this?”

  “No, couldn’t. This is SEAL intel. She’s with Army SF. I’m assuming the captain filled her in, though.”

  Anxiety had feathered through him as he’d considered the info. “Maybe that’s why that SF captain is requiring her to stay in the village, then.”

  “Probably so. I’d sure as hell ground her, too. What the military doesn’t need is for someone like Mustafa to get his hands on an American military woman. It’s something we all live in fear of happening. It would turn into a media nightmare.”

  “I know…” Gabe had rasped. His mind leaped painfully to that scenario. Chief Doug Hampton had discussed his worry with him the day Bay had arrived at their platoon. So far, no woman combat soldier had ever been captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Jessica Lynch had been captured in Iraq and it had been SEALs that had rescued her. Hampton said it would happen sooner or later as more women were on the front lines, that one would be captured, tortured, raped and, most likely, beheaded. And it would all be videotaped and then put up on the internet for the horrified world to see. It was only a matter of time. Hampton had been adamant with him to keep Bay protected and safe. No way, on his watch, was she going to fall victim to this terrifying scenario. He wiped his mouth, fear grating through his gut.

  Gabe had ended that call with the chief, more anxious than before the conversation. Worry was eating a huge hole in his stomach.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MUSTAFA KHOGANI LAY on his belly, binoculars pressed tightly against his eyes, hidden among the brush overlooking the most southern Shinwari village in the valley below. Next to him, his second-in-command, Zmarai, was studying the village through his sniper scope.

  “Something new,” Mustafa growled. He zeroed in on a woman in SF clothing who was holding a medical clinic for at least twenty children and women of all ages. The clinic was on the edge of the village, near a huge stand of trees that spilled out of a wadi, ravine, thousands of feet above them. The grove of trees provided shade from the blistering sun overhead.

  It was a good place from a medical standpoint, but from a military strategy perspective, a very poor choice. But good for what he had in mind.

  Zmarai said, hesitant, “A third of the village children are lined up. “Which ones do you want tonight when we sweep down there to kidnap some of them?” They routinely kidnapped young children, and they sold them into the sex slave trade across the Pakistan border. The children would then be cleaned up, given haircuts, new, clean robes and photos taken of them. From there, the photos were sent to prospective buyers across Asia and Europe. It brought in operating money to keep his lord’s army fed and supplied.

  Snorting, Khogani said, “Tonight? Look at where they are! It would be easy to ride down into the wadi, undetected. We could get so close that a mere two-minute gallop would reach all of them. We’d catch them all off guard.”

  “It’s daylight, my lord,” Zmarai rasped. They had always raided a village at dusk. He studied each young child waiting patiently beside their mother as the American military woman doctor treated them. Barely able to stand what would happen to any of them who were kidnapped, Zmarai closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get a stranglehold on his disgust. He was Muslim. And because he was one, the sale of children as sex slaves made him sick.

  Pulling the binoculars away, Mustafa scratched his long, black beard. His mind seemed to consider the possibilities. Unlike Sangar, his cousin who had been murdered by SEAL snipers last year, Mustafa had more original ideas. Sangar had been too conservative and careful. Mustafa liked to keep his enemy off balance. He seemed sure that the Special Forces team in the village below them wouldn’t be expecting an attack in broad daylight.

  “There’s a cave about two kilometers from here. We could reach it before the Americans could ever react with Apaches.”

  Zmarai said, “Yes, there is a cave.” He worried about a drone high above, watching the whole attack. That wouldn’t be good for them.

  Mustafa smiled. “And it goes back a long way, and we can come out the other side of the hill into another wadi, maintaining our cover.”

  Nodding, the Taliban soldier looked over at his lord. “That is so. You want to strike hard, grab some of the children and then ride for that cave?” He wished for the thousandth time that Mustafa would lose his obsession with stealing young children. It was sick and perverted and against Islam. Otherwise, he was a brilliant, tactical Taliban leader.

  “Yes.” Khogani sat up and crossed his legs. “But I want that woman doctor, too.”

  Black brows raising, Zmarai stared in disbelief at him. “Her?”

  Shrugging, he growled. “The bulk of my forces are ten miles from here up in the mountains. We have a lot of wounded men who are desperate for a doctor. She could treat them. We could have our own, personal American doctor.”

  Compressing his lips, Zmarai thought long and hard. True, there were many Taliban soldiers who were wounded or in dire need of immediate treatment at their main cave right now. Although they could get bandages and drugs from the Pakistan hospitals across the border, they had no real medic among them. Their last medic had been killed when a B-52 bomber had dropped a laser-guided JDAM bomb on them during a night firefight a week ago. It had killed twenty of Mustafa’s finest soldiers as well as his own personal bodyguard. And without a medic riding with them, they would lose more men to bacterial infection than any amount of American bullets. The soldiers would die a slow, painful death, blood poisoning setting in and killing them.

  “She’s an infidel woman. Would your men allow her to treat them? To even touch them?” Zmarai wondered out loud.

  “My men will do exactly as I order them. The ones who try to quote Koran to me that a woman shouldn’t touch them will be shot in the head.” His full lips drew away from his yellowed teeth. “That will put a stop to that garbage. I need my men fit for duty. Pakistan is not providing us with a medic, and we need one if we’re to keep the pressure on this valley. She will be useful to us.”

  To whom? Zmarai didn’t verbalize the question. Some of his soldiers would want to kill her immediately. Military women were hated even more than the male infidels. Women should not be seen out in public without a burka covering their entire body, to hide them from the eyes of other men. The woman doctor below wore a green scarf on her head, but that wasn’t enough for Zmarai.

  Other soldiers would want to torture her to make an example of her to the other Americans. For them, it would simply be another way to get even with the Great Satan. And then, his mind ranged over other more political problems. The warlord in Pakistan, who directed public relations for al Qaeda, would probably be happy because he’d want video of her capture—or worse. He liked putting videos on the internet of soldiers being tortured or beheaded. To see an American military woman in a similar video would be a coup, a world event. Inwardly Zmarai saw Mustafa’s plan as a potential moneymaker because his lord would sell the doctor to this Pakistani for such purposes once he was done with her services. There were many financial reasons to capture the woman
, he thought, admiring his lord’s intelligence.

  “If you did that,” Zmarai said carefully, “you would have to keep her heavily guarded. She is a soldier. She knows how to escape and evade. She may try to kill us.”

  “She’s only a woman!” Mustafa snorted. “She’s not a man! But you’re right, I will have you put two trusted guards who will go everywhere with her. I need her medical skills.”

  “What if word gets back to Pakistan that you have captured her?”

  “Perhaps the khan will hurry through my request for a Muslim medic, eh? It’s his duty to provide one to us, after all. This could shame him into spending the money to get one for me. I had to stoop so low as to kidnap an American woman medic in order to save my good soldiers. That would embarrass him into action.”

  “Would he want to videotape her?”

  “I don’t care what he does with her after she’s taken care of my men. We would take her across the border. He could sell her into the white slave trade for all I care.”

  Zmarai’s conscience flared. He didn’t feel good at all about the idea of kidnapping the American woman soldier. In his early forties, Zmarai was the father of four boys, ages six through twenty. He loved them fiercely, and he fought with the Taliban to bring strict Muslim rule back to his country. He’d ridden with Khogani for a year and saw him commit untold crimes and brutally shoot any soldier who didn’t instantly obey his order, no matter how despicable the order was.

  “I think it’s a good idea,” Mustafa said in a self-congratulatory manner. “I will get value out of her in many ways.” He grinned more broadly and scratched his crotch. “Who knows? I might even grow bored and turn my attentions to her, instead. The khan in Pakistan wouldn’t care because she’s a whore, anyway. I could then sell her after she’s serviced me.”

  Zmarai nodded, keeping his expression neutral. He had no love of women pretending to be men. Combat was no place for them. They belonged at home, raising children. These American women had to know the price they would pay if they were captured by them. Still, that bothered him because as a devout Muslim, women were sacred and not to be defiled. Or raped. It was a heavy load he carried in his heart. Zmarai wasn’t sure he could continue to be Mustafa’s commander of the two hundred men who rode with him. Where was his lord’s morals? His values? The Koran did not sanction the things his leader did to Afghan women and children.