by Selena Kitt
Now it would all be for nothing, and what would happen to what was in her backpack if she died here?
Tears flowed down her face in a steady, silent, filthy river. Ever since she was a little girl, she'd wanted to be Indiana Jones. Risking your life for archeological adventure sounded great when—in the end—you got away. Indiana Jones always did get away. It was beginning to dawn on her that her own adventure could have a very different ending.
Emily was on her own in a city that was much farther gone than she had been led to believe, with not one but two groups of armed men after her. That she had made it this far was only due to an extremely fortunate chance, but she had no reason to think her luck would hold. She'd been in the black basement for approximately thirty minutes. It had been at least half of that time since she'd heard the shouts of the men searching for her. Had they moved on? Or were they also lying in wait, sitting silently just as she was, knowing she was somewhere close, waiting for her to make the first move?
Emily reached into her jacket pocket and hit the 'on' button on her satellite communicator. The device was not an actual phone. It was more of a two-way GPS device that also allowed her to send text messages and location pings. Quickly, though she had checked it a dozen times before, she thumbed the button on the side to make absolutely sure the sound was turned off. She stuffed the communicator under her shirt, knowing that even the briefest and dimmest flicker of light might give her position away.
The device had a long battery life by design and was supposed to go at least five days without needing a charge, but as soon as she realized she was in trouble, she had turned it off, knowing that she had to preserve the batteries as long as possible. What if it were somehow a week or two before she could charge them again? She couldn't take that chance, and by only keeping it on a few minutes at a time, she was sure she could extend the charge by weeks or more.
The device itself had an SOS function that she had not initiated, fearing that somehow those who were chasing her might have a way of picking up that signal. Instead, she'd used the device's text-message feature to text her sister Rachel, told her she'd be turning it off for half an hour to give Rachel a chance to find her some help. It had to be nearly time to turn it back on again.
She curled her body around as best she could and peeked at the screen by lifting her collar away from her body. So dark was it in the basement that even the light from the screen hurt her eyes. As the screen flickered into life, she saw that Rachel had responded. "Got thru to Uncle Rob. They want you to keep the phone on." And then a second text: "He was mad."
In spite of her utterly dire circumstances, Emily almost smiled at the understatement.
* * *
JSOC Operations Center - Charles De Gaulle airport - France
Captain Michael Duncan heard the knocking on his door and his feet hit the floor nearly simultaneously. Four years in Delta Force had conditioned him to go from sleep to awake instantly, and he did it even better than most. "Sir? Captain Duncan?"
"Come in, " he called. The door opened and he casually reached for his fatigue pants.
Michael preferred to sleep naked, but on base he never did. Skivvies and a T-shirt, always, with a pair of slip-on shoes never more than a foot from his bed. No matter what, he could be mobile within five seconds. But whatever was going on now, the voice of the corpsman who monitored the Delta's communication center all night was insistent but not frantic. Michael knew he had time to put his pants on. He looked towards the door, where the corpsman was silhouetted against the light in the hall. "Phone, Sir."
Within thirty seconds, Michael sat at the table in the communications center and listened. And then the man who never took the name of the Lord in vain, who never used an obscenity, said one succinct word. "Fuck."
Chapter Two
Fifteen minutes later, Michael was on a small jet. He didn't know exactly where he was headed, and probably the pilots hadn't confirmed it yet either, but from the information he'd been given in the brief phone call, he assumed somewhere in Turkey. The plane they were in required at least a mile of runway to land. That narrowed it down even further. There was a commercial airfield at Hate, Turkey, about thirty miles from the Syrian border, and at this time of night, with no prep, that would probably be their best bet.
The pilot stuck his head through the cockpit door. "Sir, they're ready for you."
Michael hit a button, and immediately a large video screen in front of him came to life. He was looking at a large conference room. Considering that he was a minimum of four miles above the surface of the earth and that this signal was coming in via satellite, the resolution was astounding. He'd been on similar conference calls in the past and often found himself barely stopping from attempting to hand someone 'in the room' a piece of paper.
The conference room he was seeing was almost surely at the Pentagon—there, or maybe at Langley. The room was rich and well-appointed, with a bank of high-level support electronics on the wall behind them. He recognized General McAllister, the head of Joint Special Operations Command, and a few of the other men and women at the table.
"Captain," General McAllister spoke to Michael, "I've been briefed by the people in this room. You understand this mission is highly…" there was a long pause, "irregular."
A woman, not in uniform, spoke sharply. "Emily Becker may be a civilian, but she is the President's niece. We have no choice."
McAllister looked down at his papers, and Michael realized he was furious. "Great niece," he corrected tightly. "Half great niece."
"Does that mean it's okay to let her die?" the woman asked, and then suddenly Michael recognized her; she was on the news often. It was Marian Jayne, President Sam Caliber's chief of staff. Once he put that together, then he realized the man next to her was Johnson Poole, the President's national security advisor. They'd gotten over to the Pentagon in a hurry. Michael reflected. His brain instantly went up a gear. Something was up, something big, and things weren't adding up.
"No ma'am," McAllister said tightly. "But we all know if this were anyone else, we would not be sending in a Delta Force operator to handle the exfil."
Marian Jayne didn't even bother to respond. Another man in uniform that Michael did not know spoke into the tense silence. "Ma'am, would you mind reviewing the connection to President Caliber just so we are all on the same page?"
"Emily Becker's grandmother was President Caliber's half-sister." Jayne glanced down at her notes. "John Caliber, four term senator from North Carolina, had two wives. He and his first wife had three daughters, born between 1930 and 1940. The first wife died in 1942. Eight years later, Caliber remarried. During those intervening years, with Caliber in Washington much of the time, the three girls had lived primarily with an aunt and uncle and were not particularly close to their father. After the remarriage, they chose to remain with their aunt and uncle in North Carolina.
"At the time of his remarriage, Senator Caliber was over fifty, and the woman he married was only a bit older than his oldest daughter. With her, he had four more children, including our President. By the time President Caliber was born, Senator Caliber's oldest daughter had graduated from college and was married, with a child of her own. The two sets of siblings were never… close. Cordial, but not close." Jayne referred to her notes again. "The children and grandchildren of the first set of daughters have never exploited the connection to President Caliber. Most of Miss Becker's associates probably have no idea that she's the President's niece. Great-niece," she corrected.
Michael spoke for the first time. "Everyone is aware that Miss Becker and I are acquainted, I presume." Marian Jayne looked up sharply and Michael realized she had not known. This was a surprise, Michael thought, but he continued, face carefully impassive. "Miss Becker's brother Justin and I were roommates at West Point. She and I dated… briefly."
General McAllister asked, "Is this going to be a problem for you, Captain?"
"No, sir." Something told Michael to minimize the connec
tion, and quickly. "I saw Miss Becker a couple of months ago when Justin Becker was in Paris. She came down from England to see her brother and we all had dinner. Other than that I haven't seen her in several years." He watched the people around the table to see if the lie would stand. It did.
"How fortunate for Miss Becker that she's going to be rescued by someone she knows."
Jayne was looking down, shuffling her papers as she made the comment, so she missed the expression that crossed Michael's face. He didn't think that Emily was going to be inclined to use the word 'fortunate' once he got a hold of her, but all he said was, "Yes ma'am." Michael paused, and then went on. "I seem to be missing something huge here. How did Emily Becker get into Syria? Into Aleppo. Probably the most dangerous city on Earth right now."
General McAllister shook his head. "We don't know. From what we've been briefed, Miss Becker is currently working on a Ph.D. in archeological linguistics," he snorted and interjected sarcastically, "—now there's a mouthful—at Duke University, but she's spent the last two years on exchange at University College in London. Her main area of interest is in the study of Aramaic, which is an ancient form of Hebrew. Small, isolated groups of Syrians—mostly Christians—still speak a form of Aramaic, and Miss Becker lived among one of these groups in a total immersion study program a few years ago." McAllister looked directly at Michael via the camera that connected them. "Was this before or after you… knew Miss Becker?"
"During," Michael answered tightly. He didn't want to think about that. "So we don't know how she got into Syria?" He interrupted his question with another one. "And isn't the President's family on a watch list?"
Jayne answered, "Any time a parent, sibling, aunt or uncle, first cousin, niece or nephew of the President travels, they are required to notify the State Department. As a great-niece, Miss Becker was not on that list." She paused and looked down at her notes. "In this case, that is a very regrettable fact." She took a long breath and continued. "She flew to Ankara forty-eight hours ago, through Istanbul. Two years ago when she went to England she applied for a multi-entry visa to Turkey. Which means she doesn't need to reapply each time she goes."
General McAllister picked up the sequence. "From Ankara, our guess is she took a bus into one of the Kurdish-controlled border towns but we don't know for sure how she got into Syria." He shrugged. "She lived in Western Syria for over a year, speaks neo-Aramaic and some Arabic. We assume she has contacts in the area. "
"What about why?" Michael asked. "Does anyone know why she went to Syria right now?"
"Why is classified," Marian Jayne snapped. "Need-to-know basis."
Before Michael could say something nasty, General McAllister intervened. "Excuse me, ma'am," McAllister snapped, his voice tight with anger, "but if the President intends to send a Delta Force operator into Aleppo to rescue her, I think we need to know what she's doing there." His voice hardened. "She's not CIA, is she?" It was a legitimate question; it would not be the first time that the Teams were called in on a rescue, only to find out that what they were really doing was clean up on some botched CIA deal. The CIA was supposed to be able to exfil their own people, but it didn't always work out that way.
It would make sense. Emily Becker was the CIA's wet dream: smart, young, with a facility in an obscure language. What would be more surprising was if she had not been recruited.
On the other hand, she was also a female, which made it much harder, hell, nearly impossible, to function in a country like Syria. Michael's experience with the CIA, however, was that for people who supposedly knew what they were doing, they could be surprisingly oblivious to shit like that. It would be just like them to recruit someone like Emily and then be shocked that she couldn't drive around Syria by herself.
But Emily, CIA? Michael didn't think so.
The silence grew. Marian Jayne looked down at her papers and then directly into the camera, directly at Michael. "About a year ago, Miss Becker called the White House and asked to meet with President Caliber—her great uncle—privately, a request he granted. She told him about a cache of ancient scrolls that had been protected by some Christian nuns in Syria for some time. Centuries, in fact."
Jayne held her hand up, obviously anticipating the interruption. "We don't know how she found out about the documents. If she told the President, he has not told us. We also do not know how the documents got from the mountains of Western Syria into Aleppo. What we do know is that the scrolls were in Aleppo, and that ISIL was very close to finding them. She asked for his help in getting the documents out of Aleppo before ISIL found them, or some accidental shelling destroyed them. He promised to look into the situation. Three weeks ago she called the White House and said the situation in Aleppo was desperate. He told her at that point that we would not be able to help."
"So she went to Aleppo herself to get… scrolls?" Michael couldn't believe his ears. Old papers. The woman he had loved… the woman who he had assumed for years was going to be the mother of his children might die in a Middle Eastern hellhole for some old papers. His stomach rolled sickly.
Marian Jayne shrugged. "That is our best guess."
The screen flashed over to a street map of Aleppo, with a small blue dot overlaid. "Miss Becker has a two-way satellite GPS locator. When she got in trouble, she was smart enough not to initiate the emergency function. Instead, she texted her sister, who contacted the White House. So—at least so far—this situation has been kept very quiet."
A red arrow began running across the map, obviously controlled by someone in the conference room. McAllister picked up the narrative. "As we all know, the city is divided among three warring factions: those loyal to the Kurdish Turks, here—in the north and west—those loyal to the current regime of Syrian President Assad, in the south, and ISIL, which controls the far eastern section. This is the current line of demarcation between the Kurdish-controlled areas in the west and ISIL in the east." The mouse traced a line across the map. "Unfortunately, our girl is at least two klicks into ISIL territory."
Michael felt as if he'd been punched. Aleppo was bad enough, but to go behind ISIL lines? ISIL, the people who beheaded Westerners on YouTube. ISIL, the people who demanded that no woman leave her house unless dressed completely in black with a double face-veil and accompanied by a male guardian. What was she thinking of?
Michael's mouth was dry as he studied the map. He'd been in Aleppo dozens of times and was familiar with this quarter of the city. "Did she get whatever it was she went in to get?"
Johnson Poole answered the question. "According to the text she sent her sister, yes. She has a very old document in her backpack."
Michael nodded. "So the mission is go in, rescue the girl, save the papers and get out."
"No, Captain Duncan, not exactly." Jayne looked directly at him, and her gaze crossed the miles like a knife. "The girl has violated about fifty different laws, including attempting to smuggle antiquities out of Syria. She is to be taken into custody and turned over to the Syrian authorities. Any items she is carrying are to be destroyed. They are not to leave Syria."
McAllister and others around the time started in surprise at the directive. Jayne coolly pushed a document across the conference table, and while Michael watched, McAllister scanned it, then looked up at the camera, looked at Michael. "It's signed by the President, Mike. Those are our orders."
So much for being the President's niece. Michael nodded, his face carefully impassive. Good God, what had she gotten herself into? he wondered. But… "Understood sir," was all he said.
Chapter Three
When the text had come onto her communicator that help was expected to arrive in six to eight hours, Emily had believed she could make it. She'd already been in the ruins an hour when the message came through, and six more hours… 360 minutes… she could do that.
But six hours in the pitch dark stench, her heart and stomach jumping with terror at every sound, was taking a toll. There were things alive in the wreckage around her, and she ha
d been instructed to turn her communicator on every half an hour for five minutes, but with no way to tell what time it was, that was hard to do. She would sit, counting in her head, trying to make the time pass, until she was sure it had been twenty five minutes since she'd turned the device off the last time. She'd turn it on, only to find it had only been ten minutes.
Emily was brutally uncomfortable. Finally, after about two hours of sitting motionless, terrified to move a muscle, in desperation she'd managed to adjust her position. She had slipped the backpack off, every brush against the crumbling masonry sounding like an avalanche, eased it under the crook of her legs, and pushed back against the filthy wall behind her. Her leg was getting worse—not better. At least her head had stopped bleeding.
It had been at least three hours before she'd heard any sounds of humanity, and those had not been that of searchers. Incredibly, as destroyed as this neighborhood was, there were still signs of human habitation: a brief snatch of a radio song, a whisper of sound as a baby cried, and even the smell of grilling meat. Emily didn't even want to think about where the people in this wasteland would be getting meat or exactly what that meat was, but someone was cooking it, nevertheless.
She was going to have to move soon. After she'd adjusted her position, it had been better—a lot better actually—for a while, but now her butt was so sore it was numb, and she was starting to fear that if rescue did come, she would not be able to walk. On top of it all, she had to urinate—desperately.
She thumbed the communicator back into life. Two a.m. local —she'd been sitting here five hours. Emily knew a moment of desperate relief when she saw a new message: