by Selena Kitt
"Emily, you need to listen to me and starting now, do what I say even if you don't understand why. And if I say something or ask you to do something that doesn't make sense, you need to do it anyway. With no arguing."
"Yes, but…"
He willed himself to patience. "No arguing means no arguing. And 'yes but' is arguing. Please." Michael reached out and laid a finger across Emily's lips. "Please," he said more softly still, and she responded with a short, sharp nod. "No matter what you hear." She nodded again.
Mike shifted his head to the side and keyed his mic. "We've got a problem here. Target's ankle is broken. She's not going to be able to walk out." Even in the dim light, he could see Emily's eyes go wide, but she said nothing.
There was a long pause, and then the voice returned. "Patching you through to operations now."
Within just a few seconds, McAllister's voice came on the line. "I'm still here, Captain, with Ms. Jayne. We've just been told Miss Becker is not mobile. Can you confirm that?"
"Yes sir, that is correct sir. Her ankle is broken. She could walk a few feet with support, but that's all."
"Hold on."
Another voice came on the line. "Captain Duncan, this is Johnson Poole, the President's national security advisor. Have you verified that Miss Becker is carrying stolen antiquities?"
Hmm, Michael thought: No more questions about the ankle. Clearly, Emily's injuries were on no one's priority list. Playing it cool, he only answered the question he'd been asked. "Not yet, sir."
"We need you to do that now."
"Copy that."
Michael turned his head fully away from the comm unit, to make absolutely sure the mic was not on and that he could not be overheard. "They want me to confirm what's in your backpack."
Emily was close enough to him that he immediately felt her stiffen. "What? Why?" If someone could become shrill in a whisper, she was doing it.
"It doesn't matter. Just remember what I said." He paused. "What is in your backpack? I have to tell them something."
"It's a scroll. A first century papyrus scroll wrapped in a leather case. But why?"
"Okay." Mike was desperately wondering what was so critical about this piece of old paper that the President was willing to turn his own niece over to a dictator, but now was not the time to speculate. He rekeyed his comm link. "I have it."
"Do you have the means to destroy it, Captain?"
What an incredibly stupid question, Mike reflected. "Affirmative," he answered. "I can burn it."
Next to him, Emily whispered, "Oh my God."
Mike ignored her and waited about thirty seconds. Both of their lives depended on his making this whole charade as real sounding as possible. He got back on comms. "In order to do so, I am going to have to restrain Miss Becker, sir. She is not cooperating."
Emily continued whispering, Oh my God, over and over.
Poole's voice came, brutal and harsh. "Then do it, soldier. Fucking do it. What is in that backpack cannot leave Syria."
"Copy that." Mike took a deep breath.
"Mike, what's this all about?"
"I'm hoping you're going to be able to explain that," he responded, "but now is not the time. Just keep quiet." He again keyed the mic. "Miss Becker is restrained but I am afraid the noise might have attracted attention to our position. This situation is rapidly going into the crapper, sir."
McAllister's voice came back on the line. "Can you destroy the item, Captain? They are very… insistent." Mike heard a note in McAllister's voice he did not care for. One did not get to the levels that McAllister had reached without having been in on many dicey deals, and the stress in his voice told Mike something with crystal clarity. They were willing to go to incredible lengths to see that whatever it was Emily had did not see the light of day, ever. If he could not confirm its destruction, Mike got the feeling they had another option available, one that would not end well for either Emily or him.
"Done sir, it's burning as we speak." He kept his voice as cool as possible.
Next to him, Emily whispered desperately, "Mike…"
He jerked his hand up, ordering her to silence. She could not hear the other half of the conversation and it had to be driving her wild, but he could not let her be overheard, and the comms were very sensitive. "Now what? We need to evac sir. Our position is no longer secure."
Then, on a day when things could not have gone more unbelievably wrong, they did. Another voice came over Mike's comm. "Captain Duncan, do you know who this is?"
Michael froze. Incredibly, he did. "Yes, Mr. President."
"I need you to confirm the destruction of the item that Miss Becker was carrying."
"It's done, sir. Nothing but ashes which I am grinding into the dirt as we speak."
"And my niece?"
"She's restrained, sir, and very upset." Mike looked at Emily, holding her eyes with his, willing her to be silent.
"And she's not mobile? Her ankle is broken?"
"Yes, sir." Mike had been in a lot of dangerous situations, but with a coldness he had never felt before, he knew this was the most serious ever. He was actively and deliberately lying to the President of the United States. Then, he realized something else. What if they had a drone on him? If they did, they already knew via thermal imaging that there was no fire. Mike held his breath.
"Soldier, what we're asking you to do now might seem crazy to you, but we have received absolute assurances from Assad's people that they have a team just minutes away, they can handle the exfil, and that she'll be taken to a hospital and well treated. What's critical now is that you not be found there."
He let his breath out with a long careful exhale. They didn't have eyes on him. They didn't know there was no fire. "Understood, sir. Just to be clear. I'm to bug out without her."
McAllister's voice took over. "Affirmative."
Mike responded. "Copy that. Moving now." He reached up and turned off the mic manually, just to be absolutely certain he did not screw up.
"Did my uncle just tell you to leave me here?"
There was no purpose in sugarcoating it. "Yes, he did."
"Oh my God. I can't believe—"
"Emily, we don't have time for anything right now. They can track both of us through the GPS, and they are going to expect me to be on the move in about ten seconds. So where's your GPS unit?"
"What?"
"Your two-way. The thing you've been texting on." She was wearing a small fanny pack in addition to her backpack, and she fished into it and handed it to him. Mike verified that it was on, then dropped it on the ground.
"What are you doing?"
"They have to think you're still here," he whispered, still mindful that the assholes on the other side of the world weren't their only danger. "Do you have anything else that can be tracked?"
"My cell phone, I guess. But it's turned off."
"Give it to me."
"But it's a brand new iPhone. It costs like eight hundred—"
"Give it to me," he snapped, not believing that she was actually arguing with him. He grabbed it from her and using the pin tool on his Swiss Army Knife, he deftly popped opened the SIM tray and picked the small electronic card out with his fingernails. "They can track these even when the phone's turned off if the SIM is in. With the SIM separated, they can't." He handed it back to her. "Let's go."
Mike scoped around the basement they were in, which in the increasing light, he could now see clearly. Where she had fallen through, the floor was gone, but just four feet over the floor looked intact. "If I lift you up can you climb back out that other window?"
Emily nodded. He boosted her up to the floor, watched as she hugged the wall over to the second window, and climbed through. In just a few quick seconds, he followed and stood next to her on the street.
Emily opened the wrapped package containing the abaya, scarf, and veil. "Put it on. All of it. Gloves, too. They're looking for an American woman, not a properly veiled wife with her Syrian husband."
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br /> She nodded sharply, then her eyes got huge. "Oh Jesus. My backpack, Mike, we left it. It's on the ground."
"Crap," he snapped, then paused. "Emily, is what's in that pack worth dying for? Really worth it?"
"Yes, it is. It really is. Mike you've got to get it."
"Okay, just get the veils on. It's getting lighter by the second. No one can see you." The street they were on seemed to be surrounded by completely crumbled ruins of buildings, and he didn't see how anyone could possibly be living nearby but he couldn't take a chance. In her T-shirt and jeans, with an uncovered head, Emily stood out like a sore thumb.
Mike proceeded to climb back down into the basement. His comm unit came to life in his ear. "Captain Duncan, are you moving?" It was McAllister. "We're not seeing any movement."
"I had to secure Miss Becker. She was trying to follow."
"Copy that, Captain. You need to go now. We are being told Assad's people are within a quarter click. They cannot find you. You must exfil."
"Copy that." Mike looked around in the dim light, saw the backpack and tossed it up through the missing floor and out the window. It was heavier than he thought it would be, at least twenty pounds, and although he didn't want to be distracted, he couldn't help but spare a second's thought for what exactly was in it, what he was now risking his life for.
Mike quickly climbed back up the street and listened intently. He heard only a dog barking and, in the far distance, the low hum of some sort of machinery—a generator perhaps—but nearby, no sounds. He hadn't heard any vehicles or voices, nothing. Four years in Delta Force had honed Mike's instincts to a level of acuity that couldn't completely be explained by rational means, and he 'sensed' no one near. Assad's people were not close; he'd stake his life on it. Were they even coming at all? Whatever was going on here stank and stank bad. As bad as the basement they had just left. Worse, if that was possible.
There was no one coming. Michael was very much afraid of what was going to happen to this building as soon as he was a klick or so away. Included in that was what would have happened to Emily if he had followed orders and left her there.
Mike turned and startled. Just a few feet away, in the dim gray dawn, stood a fully-veiled Syrian woman. He shook his head at the craziness; of course it was Emily who had put on the abaya and was now pulling on the black gloves. The transformation was just so stunning. She'd gone from being a person to being an anonymous shroud of fabric in less than thirty seconds.
Mike scooped up the backpack and moved over to stand next to her. "You have the head scarf on, too?" Formerly, most Syrian woman wore an open abaya, which was more like a coat, and a hijab or head scarf—their faces were not required to be covered. Now, the ISIL extremists were requiring the strictest code, which banned the coat-like open abaya, and also included a second veil of thin black gauze thrown over the top of the headscarf, to completely hide the face. The theory was that the woman was supposed to be able to see through the gauze.
"This is crazy," Emily snapped. "I can barely see through this thing."
"Sweetheart, that's the idea."
"Even in Afghanistan, they have a mesh to look through. This is nuts!"
"We can debate Islamic dress later," he whispered harshly. "Now let's go. Keep your head down, and let me do all the talking. If someone insists on talking to you, answer in Aramaic, and whisper, like you're terrified."
"That won't be hard," Emily snorted.
"Play the part, Em. We've got good papers that should get us through the checkpoints. Right now, you're nothing but a bad runaway wife, being taken home for a good beating."
"Don't joke, Mike."
"What makes you think I'm joking?" he snapped, and with that, he grabbed the collar of her abaya, and began pulling her along behind him. Rotating his head, he spoke into his shoulder mic a final time. "Cleared the building, sir."
Chapter Six
"Do you have to keeping dragging at me?" Emily hissed. She and Mike were moving along the rubble-laden streets as fast as Emily's swollen ankle would allow. Mike's hand was firmly at her shoulder, fingers twined into the black fabric of the abaya, half pushing and half pulling her along.
He kept walking as he answered, without looking back or acknowledging her in any way. "Number one, it suits my mood. Number two, as you should know, it's not legal for me to touch your body in any way in public, even through clothing. So dragging you by the collar is the only socially acceptable way of moving you along." To punctuate his words he gave a particularly hard yank. "And number three, it looks very authentic to anyone watching us."
The golden morning light had risen slowly around them as they had moved away from the crumbled building where Emily had sheltered. With each passing minute, they saw more and more people moving along the streets. Most were men, women were scarce, but no one gave the scruffily-bearded Syrian man and his veiled companion a second glance.
"You're enjoying this way too much." His only response was a dark chuckle. "How much farther? I can't see."
Michael looked up at the corner of the building, where, at least at this intersection, a street sign in Arabic and in English was still attached to a building. "We're maybe a half klick from where you came through…"
Suddenly, behind them, they heard the muffled whomp of an explosion. "Jesus, what was that?" Emily grabbed at Michael's arm.
"Wait here." Michael pushed Emily out of sight, between two buildings, and moved out into the street, craning his neck to see in the direction of the sound. He very much feared that he knew, but he needed to verify.
They'd walked in a fairly straight line since they left the building, and it was clear that was precisely the direction where the bomb blast had come from. He watched, his heart pounding, as a thin plume of smoke rose lazily into the air. Around him, doors opened and more people ran into the street, also trying to see what was happening, calling out to each other and pointing. He stepped back to where she stood, huddled against the wall of the building.
"What was it?" she repeated.
"I think that was the sound of your communicator going up in smoke."
She was silent so long he was afraid he was going to have to explain it to her. Then, her voice came, so soft that he could hardly hear it. "Oh my God."
Mike did a quick assessment. If things weren't real before, they definitely were now. Just as he had feared, as soon as he was clear, they had dropped a bomb on the house. The President of the United States had just tried to kill his own niece. He keyed his mic. "I just heard an explosion behind me. I assume Miss Becker was extricated safely."
There was a long pause before anyone answered, and the voice that came on the comm was a new one, one he did not recognize. "That is affirmative, sir. We have confirmation that Assad's forces have picked her up and are transporting her to a hospital. Miss Becker is safe."
"Copy that. Base, I'm getting some heat here. I'm afraid I might get searched, so I'm dumping comms. Please let my driver know I'm about an hour away from his position."
He keyed his mic off and ripped the headset from his head before he could hear their arguments. "I'm dumping all my tech gear," he said to Emily. "It's the only prayer I have of getting you to a safe place. Oh, and by the way, I was just given confirmation that Assad's team picked you up. You're on the way to the hospital."
"Good to know." In spite of everything, she managed to crack a weak joke. "I feel healthier already."
Mike snorted. "I thought you'd find that reassuring."
Mike looked around the small alcove in which they stood, which was a narrow entryway shared between two houses. On one side, the windows were closed and firmly bolted, indicating that someone was still trying to live there, but on the other side a shutter flapped loosely open. A quick peek inside showed Mike the wreckage of an abandoned property. Quickly, he dropped his comm unit, his night vision goggles and, wincing as he did so, his tablet down into the rubble of the abandoned home. The first aid kit and the escape and evasion kit, he kept. Noth
ing in them could not be purchased or stolen, and nothing identified them as being American. Briefly, Michael patted his belt, checking by habit for his gun and his knife. He knew he was taking a risk keeping those, but there was no way he'd ever give them up.
"Let's go."
Around the next corner, Mike could see the checkpoint up ahead. It was manned by two skinny teenagers, and in a jeep off to the side, another two men sat, one talking on a cell phone, the other reading a book. Both teenagers were armed with AK-47s slung nonchalantly across their backs, and Mike couldn't even see a gun on the guys in the car. With cool clinical precision, he knew that even an experienced operator, which these two kids definitely were not, could not get the guns into firing position in under two seconds. If he wanted these guys dead, they were all goners.
Confidently, Mike approached the checkpoint. When he was about twenty feet away, he leaned over and whispered to Emily. "Stay here, and watch me carefully. Do not move, unless you see me go for my gun. If you do, start running for the gate. Run as fast and as hard as you can, and do not stop until you are through."
"Mike, there are four of them," she whispered back, frantic.
"I can kill all four of these guys before the first one even gets his finger on the trigger." His voice was low but firm. "I don't want to kill them because it will be loud and messy, but I can if I have to."
As Mike moved towards the checkpoint, she realized that he had positioned her very deliberately. His body never stopped blocking the two guards' view of her, and predictably, instead of looking at him, they kept trying to peer around him to see her. It was a well-calculated distraction. Emily kept her head down, but glanced surreptitiously sidewise under her veil towards the older men in the jeep. Neither spared Michael or her more than the quickest glance.
Mike approached the checkpoint with an identity paper in his hand and said something in quick Arabic to the two boys then gestured towards her. Emily could see, though she knew the man in the jeep could not, that he had American dollars in his hand. Quickly, he slipped each boy something. He kept talking and while she could not hear well, because he was facing away, she caught the word 'sharmouta.' She had enough Arabic to know that meant bitch.