CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hannah Marcus couldn’t think. Her body was slack on the slope, her feet braced against a tree so she wouldn’t tumble down the steep incline, her fingers gripping a tangle of vines. Her ability to reason seemed to have shut down—and her emotion with it.

She knew things—that Fareed was dead, that she was no longer locked in her stall, and that this woman claiming to be FBI was squatting next to her, peering through the scope of a gun—but she couldn’t assimilate any of it into anything meaningful. Each stood in isolation, somehow bearing no relation to the other. She had never experienced this kind of disconnection and she didn’t even have the energy to be worried about it.

She usually kept it all together. She had not fallen apart during her abduction or her long captivity. She had allowed herself once, and only once, to sob in despair, face down, on her

uncomfortable cot. But that was unlike her. She was never one to feel sorry for herself, had never felt privileged enough to allow herself that luxury. She tried to force herself to understand her situation.

My name is Hannah Marcus. I am a journalist. I was kidnapped by a group of Islamic fundamentalists.

Wait. That wasn’t entirely right. Fareed was about as religious as she was. Again.

My name is Hannah Marcus. I am a journalist. I was kidnapped by a group using the cloak of Islamic fundamentalism to further their agenda.

Whatever that was. Fareed had only told her so much. Fareed.

She never even knew his last name. He had been good to her.

Maybe even kept her alive.

I lived in an old stable for eighteen months, just biding my time, never holding out hope of being rescued.

That wasn’t entirely right either. She knew that the United States never negotiated with terrorists, but she had indulged in fantasy, on occasion. A helicopter, the beating of blades in the night—descending in a rush and disgorging a clot of men, black-suited, faces covered, to rush her into the monstrous aircraft and fly away.

I was rescued by a woman, an FBI agent. Rennie Vogel.

A woman. She had never imagined this scenario and she had imagined many. A lone woman.

The engines of her mind began to rumble to life. How likely was it that her government, which was not in the business of rescuing their abducted citizens, would send a single female to rescue her? Not likely. Not likely at all.

Hannah heard the scrape of metal against metal and looked over at Rennie who was still fiddling with the long gun. She could see her almost clearly in the moonlight, accentuated by the lights from the stage. Tall, her body very defined, she looked like she’d been through hell getting to this point. Her clothes were filthy and she was covered in scratches and her head had a huge bump, still slightly bloody. But underneath it all, she was striking.

Hannah turned her head further to see where Rennie had the gun trained. Sounds began to filter into her consciousness as she saw a man standing in front of an excited crowd speaking into a bullhorn. It must be Armin. Hannah spoke Farsi, had spent most of her career in Iran, and was able to pick out a few phrases. A shiver went down her spine. Armin spoke of jihad and the killing of infidels. Her mind seemed to finally be clearing. She glanced at Rennie again. She had her eye pressed tightly against the scope which seemed to be aimed directly at Ahmad Armin.

“Oh,” Hannah said aloud. All of her mental functioning seemed to return to her in a rush of clarity. Rennie turned to her, her face tight with anger.

She spoke quietly, punctuating each word. “Do not make a sound. Sit there and pull yourself together. As soon as I fire this weapon, we will run as far and fast as we can.” Her face softened.

“You have to find the strength. If you don’t, we’re both going to die, because I won’t allow us to be captured. Find the strength.

It’s there. Just draw on it.”

She thought then that Rennie would reach out to her, a reassuring hand on her shoulder. It was something in her expression. But then the look passed and she turned away. Hannah drew herself up on her knees to be ready to scramble down the steep hill. So, this was it all along.

An American agent sent to assassinate Ahmad Armin accidentally discovered I was alive.

She rescued me anyway.

Rennie turned back to the scope. She could only hope Hannah would be ready when the time came. After she fired the sniper gun, she calculated they would have three-and-a-half minutes to get ahead of the men. Four minutes, tops. Thirty seconds for the men to react to the shooting and three-to-three-and-a-half minutes for them to run the half mile to the line of the woods.

That’s if they assumed the shot came from the woods. Rennie wondered if she could divert their attention to the road.

She scanned the camp with the scope. It was split by the road.

On the side that ran parallel to the wood line was the staging area where Armin spoke at the far left. Then a large barracks.

Next was the little stable where Hannah Marcus had been kept captive. Then another smaller barracks. Beyond that, the road curved sharply out of sight. On the other side of the road were the residences of the leadership and the eating quarters. And directly across from the stable—Rennie could see it through the center passage which ran the length of the small structure—was the armory.

Rennie reached down and gingerly ran her fingers over the outline of the device in her cargo pocket. It was an M2 SLAM

mini-bomb.

She positioned the crosshairs of the scope back on Armin’s head as she unbuttoned the pocket of her cargo pants and removed the bomb. It would be risky, insanely risky. She would have to expose herself again out in the open. Plus, the bomb was equipped with a timer and the shortest setting was fifteen minutes. She had no idea how much longer Armin would speak.

She paused, flashing on an image of Hannah’s intelligence profile.

It wasn’t very thick and she had wondered at the time why there wasn’t more. Just the two photographs everyone had seen on the evening news, a couple of sheets of background information and the summary of what was known about the kidnapping. But she was able to recall a particular piece of information. She could see the page in her mind as if she were holding it in her hand.

Languages spoken: English, German, Farsi.

“You speak Farsi,” Rennie whispered.

“Yes.”

“Do you have any indication how much longer he will continue speaking?”

“It’s hard to say. It’s too far to hear much, but he seems to be on a roll.”

Rennie held Hannah’s gaze for a long moment as she thought.

“Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen.” Rennie outlined her plan.

Hannah seemed to be looking at Rennie as if she were taking

her in for the first time. A wave of guilt washed over Rennie as she saw herself through Hannah’s eyes. She had never imagined she would be compelled to take a man’s life in front of a civilian.

Hannah finally spoke, interrupting the moment of understanding that had passed between them.

“Why don’t you set it for less time?” Hannah asked. “He could finish soon.”

“I can’t set it for any less time.”

Hannah shook her head. “That’s brilliant.”

“If anything goes wrong before I get back, run. As fast as you can,” Rennie said taking her compass from her belt loop. “Just keep going west and you’ll eventually reach a village.”

Hannah looked skeptical as she slipped it into her pocket.

Rennie didn’t say what she thought, that the likelihood of her making it with no supplies was slim to none. She looked at the woman for a long moment. She looked wasted, her arms thin and reedy.

“What do I do when I make it to the village?”

“Just use your wits. Try to find someone you think you can trust. And contact the FBI or the American embassy as soon as you can.”

“Okay.” Hannah smiled weakly in resignation.

Rennie could see that she knew she would be in disastrous trouble if Rennie didn’t make it back. She picked up the M2, set the timer and synchronized her watch with it to the second. She carefully put it back in her cargo pocket.

“I’m going,” she said, taking a last look at Armin, who was still speaking.

Hannah put her hand on Rennie’s arm. “Be careful.”

Rennie nodded and was off and running the two hundred yards to the stable, sub-gun in hand. She ran fast, feeling her adrenaline ramping higher. Moving through the passageway of the stable, she crouched at the far opening. The road, dusty and deeply rutted in places, was about ten feet from the stable door.

All was clear. As she crossed the road, the mass of men at the staging area to her left came into view. She couldn’t see Armin,

but could hear him. She knew he could stop at any moment.

The door to the armory was padlocked. The building was about thirty-six feet square and she fleetingly wondered what was in it. Hopefully only light bombs, grenades, IEDs—the usual.

What sort of hell would she unleash by blowing it up? The armory was raised about two feet on wooden stilts, the best way to keep water out of a poorly constructed building.

Rennie dropped to the ground and scooted under the structure. Gingerly, she pulled the M2 from her pocket and placed it about ten feet in. Crawling back to the edge, she flinched as she heard a volley of gunfire. She hunkered down and peered out, ready to fire, but the men were only firing their weapons into the air, consumed by Armin.

Darting from beneath the armory, she crossed the road and pounded through the short passageway of the stable. At its opening on the other side she stopped and checked the wood line. She couldn’t see Hannah and hoped she hadn’t panicked and run already. All clear, she ran for the woods. This is it. If she could make it to the woods, they just might have a chance. She reduced her pace as she came into view of the staging area, figuring a slowly moving figure wouldn’t be as noticeable. Passing through the green curtain of the wood line, she found Hannah no longer prone, but up on her hands and knees, alert and waiting for her.

“It’s done.”

Relief passed over Hannah’s features. Rennie looked at her watch. She held up four fingers to Hannah. Four minutes until detonation. Rennie handed the sub-gun to her and crouched to the sniper rifle. Looking through the scope, she could see Armin still in position. She lay flat, her legs spread wide. The weather hadn’t changed, the conditions were still perfect. She wanted to wait until the last possible second before making her shot. That would give them their best chance. Could she do this? Complete the mission and bring Hannah Marcus home? It seemed almost absurd.

Two minutes.

Rennie lay perfectly still, her finger on the trigger, ready for

the pull the moment the M2 detonated. Not a sliver of doubt crept into her brain which was jumping on adrenaline. That would come later. Now she was ready.

Thirty seconds.

Her mind cleared. So intent, she was almost completely unaware of her body in its uncomfortable position, tenuously gripping the incline. Her breath was shallow, just enough to sustain her without affecting her position. She was aware only of the crosshatch at the end of the scope and that tender, vulnerable spot on Armin’s head. Then she heard the explosion. In the first instant, in that first fraction of a second, before Armin had time to react, she pulled the trigger. She never heard the bullet leave the muzzle, but she saw his head snap violently before he dropped to the ground. Lifting her head from the scope, Rennie saw a few men rush to Armin’s inert body, but most had already turned away from him, focused on the blast in the armory.

Before the second explosion erupted, the domino effect from the munitions in the building, Rennie turned to tell Hannah to run but she had already started down the steep slope, arms akimbo, the MP5 in one hand. Rennie scrambled after her, tearing down the slope, dancing over jutting rocks. It felt good to move, to break the deep tension of the last few hours. Rennie quickly gained on Hannah. Then she was by her, snagging the sub-gun and taking her hand.

Careening down the slope, Hannah Marcus found herself falling. Not to the ground—Rennie Vogel had too firm a grip on her to allow that to happen—no, she was falling into a place in her mind she couldn’t seem to extricate herself from, mired in a swamp of quashed emotions. How could she have kept it together so long through her captivity, only to fall apart now, when it mattered so much? The survivor in her struggled against it. She thought she had managed it, she had always managed everything, but it all came back—her parents, her capture, Fareed. She put her hand to her mouth, feeling her face transform into a mask of pain. The trees and rocks and vines, flying past her, grew cloudy

and then drowned under the salty wave of her tears. Throughout her entire life, from the beginning, to this which felt like the end, she had kept the pain compartmentalized, shelved where it belonged, and now it all came crashing down.

She remembered Fareed unlocking the padlock on the Dutch door of her stable. She had had a moment of fear, having spent a lifetime learning from her parents to never trust anyone. But then she saw his face reading her ambivalence and she relaxed.

Only in her world could the most interesting man she had met in years be her captor. And an Islamic militant. Just her luck.

Hannah’s tears felt warm on her cheeks. For a moment this woman who held her hand, nearly dragging her down the hillside, seemed the enemy. Fareed, however much goodness and refinement was in him, had made a terrible mistake. And he had paid for it. She would mourn him someday when she could make sense of it all, mourn him and absolve him of his sin of only being a man and not a hero. The tumultuous emotion gripping her began to subside. It had to. She had to forgive this woman, this Rennie Vogel, for killing what felt like her only friend in the world. Hannah squeezed Rennie’s hand then, in a need to reach out to her, to let go of the hatred that had bubbled up inside her since Rennie came through the door of her stall like a dark apparition. It was a strange moment for such an intimate gesture as they raced for their lives, and she figured it would go unnoticed, but she had to offer it for her own sake. Then she felt the pressure returned.

Her eyes clear of tears now, she looked at Rennie and wondered if she had noticed her breakdown. Rennie returned her gaze, eyebrows raised, questioning, and squeezed her hand again. Hannah nodded, indicating she was okay, not realizing until then that they had slowed their pace. Rennie, seeing she had pulled herself together, kicked it into gear, peeling forward.

Hannah willed herself to keep up.

Then she felt Rennie’s arm around her waist, holding her tight, she looked over and saw the woman caught up in the deep concentration of keeping them both aloft. The ground seemed

to be skittering under their feet, a kaleidoscopic blur of green and brown in the moonlight. Hannah could hear gunfire in the distance. Were the soldiers shooting at them as they ran away?

She looked at Rennie again and caught her eye. Rennie, who seemed to realize that Hannah was coherent and running better on her own, let go of her waist and just held her by the hand.

Hannah could feel Rennie wanting to go faster and tried to increase her pace. The first inklings of freedom began to course through her, sending a sharp chill up her back and along her arms. Could they actually make it and escape the hell they had found themselves in?

Then Hannah noticed a massive log crossing their path about twenty yards away. They would need to slow considerably to scurry over it. She was exhausted and anticipated the break in their demanding pace. But as the distance diminished, Rennie hadn’t slowed at all and then they were upon it and Rennie had Hannah around the waist again. She leapt as they reached the log, lifting Hannah with her. For a moment Hannah felt like they were flying, that they had somehow just taken off and would keep going higher and higher. A second later she felt her feet clip the log and they both fell hard to the ground, rolling over one another, their limbs in a tangle.

Hannah had a moment’s respite where the pain made her feel more alive than she had in years, but only a moment. In a second Rennie was up and pulling Hannah to her feet.

“Are you all right?” Rennie bent to examine Hannah’s legs, scraped but not bleeding. She looked upset with herself, perhaps for miscalculating Hannah’s abilities.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

Rennie nodded as she popped the magazine out of her sub-gun and then reinserted it to make sure it wasn’t damaged in the fall, scanning the woods at the same time, searching for any sign that soldiers had followed them.

Hannah leaned against the log, smooth and clean from enduring years in the elements. Rennie studied their surroundings.

“I’m trying to get my bearings. I hid a pack of supplies in a fallen tree. It should be somewhere close by. I think.”

“You don’t have GPS?”

“It was damaged...” Rennie hesitated before completing her thought. “Before.”

Hannah accepted this, but knew there was something else she wasn’t saying.

“We’re going to need to move more slowly for the time being, until we can find the tree. We’ll need the supplies. There’s water. Food. Ammunition.”

“Do you think they’re coming after us?”

“I don’t know. Hopefully they are focusing on the road.”

They walked quickly. Slow for Rennie seemed to be a little less than a run. But Hannah was thankful for any break in their pace. In her former life she had always been fit, but the year and a half in the stable had left her muscles weak and stringy. She had tried to exercise in her stall, doing push-ups and sit-ups, but her guard would come to the door and stare at her with a mixture of lust and loathing until she finally gave up.

Rennie stopped and pointed to a huge fallen tree, still covered in leaves. It was massive and lay perpendicular to the direction they were traveling. Handing Hannah her sub-gun again, she crawled into it, disappearing into a dense mass of leaves and branches as tall as Hannah.

Hannah looked at the sky, so clear and dark against the moon, and thought this was the first good day she could remember in a long, long time. Good in that she had a small hope that she would live a normal life once again. Then she heard the sharp crack of a branch breaking at a distance. Her head snapped up as she ducked behind the tree. Peeking over a thick branch, she saw a flash of red cloth about a hundred yards away in the direction of the camp. Not now, not when we’ve made it this far. Hannah squeezed through the leaves and branches, following Rennie into the lush green bower.

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