Trust Me, page 10
Finding intact glass ingots in the Jordanian desert was potentially the first find of its kind.
Whenever she held artifacts—be they tools, objects of art, or raw trade materials—she thought of the person in antiquity whose hands had created it. The artistic vision or the skills they brought to the piece. She considered the person who bought it and thought of their hands touching the piece, using the tool, or the plan to turn the raw material into something else. Each item went through a chain of hands like hers until they were lost to time.
These ingots had a short chain, or they’d be something else entirely. A mosaic, perhaps. A window. A glass vessel.
She closed her eyes and practically swayed on her feet, her exhaustion was so great, as she wondered at the last human hands to have touched this ingot. How had it been lost before it could be used?
She held the cold glass, which was roughly the size and shape of an eight-inch round cake pan. This was the largest of the four intact ingots they’d found.
How many guns will Rafiq be able to buy with this artifact?
She held it up to the light, looking for cracks or variations in the color.
How many bombs?
The cortex was grainy and the glass opaque.
How many trucks to haul children away from their schools so he can enslave girls and conscript boys?
She would never know if she did it on purpose or not. The act went against everything she believed, but still, it happened. The ingot slipped from her fingers and shattered on the stone floor.
She gasped as it happened, her shock genuine. Bassam and Jamal both cursed. Their faces reflected her own horror.
They all looked to the open door to the hall, and she knew the men were braced for someone to step in and see the destruction.
She had no doubt Rafiq would deliver on his promise to cut off her hand. Perhaps all three of them would suffer that fate. Bassam and Jamal would certainly be beaten.
From the moment the ingot had been extracted from the site, it had belonged to Rafiq, and one did not destroy his property without consequences.
Diana’s tears dried up. Fear, it appeared, had quashed her ability to cry.
Glances passed between the two brothers. Jamal flicked his head toward the door, and Bassam, the closest to it, silently pushed it closed.
Without a word, they all began collecting the broken pieces. The largest remaining piece was a third the original size. They couldn’t pass it off as all that had been recovered from the field because the break was fresh. No patina. It looked like a blue obsidian artifact, with its bulb of percussion and smooth waves. That grainy cortex on one side.
“We can’t salvage any of it,” she whispered. “I’ll change the count on the inventory.”
Both boys nodded.
They gathered all the small, sharp pieces and placed them in an artifact box until they could figure out how to dispose of them. The boxes were numbered on the inventory sheet, and they didn’t have extra. Nor did they have a broom. They would need to figure out how to get the shards out of the room without anyone noticing. It wasn’t as if they could just toss them in a garbage can.
She stared at the pile of shards, her breathing shallow as she took in the volume. The garment—a dark abaya—she’d been given to wear had no pockets, and Jamal and Bassam couldn’t fit a sharp, shattered eight-inch cake into theirs.
Then she remembered the cell phone pocket in her headscarf.
The glass edges were sharp, just like obsidian blades. Little knives.
Weapons.
Jamal cut himself and cursed. Both their attention was on Jamal’s bleeding hand. With their focus elsewhere, Diana took a chance and palmed a larger, sharp piece, then brushed at her forehead to wipe away the very real sweat that had appeared the moment the tears stopped flowing.
Still, she dabbed at her cheeks as if the tears might be a problem and hoped neither Jamal or Bassam were paying attention as she slipped the glass blade into the headscarf’s hidden pocket.
Did her two guards even know the pocket was there? The man who’d taken her phone from her on that first day had known, but Jamal and Bassam hadn’t been there, and they were young and might not know the ways of modern women’s headscarves.
She thought about palming another piece, but decided not to risk it.
They swept the floor with small brushes they’d used to clean the artifacts. The smallest of the debris was whisked under a woven rug.
Diana placed a layer of padding over the shards inside the box. The boys agreed to take turns removing them, one pocketful at a time.
After changing the number of ingots on the inventory sheet, Diana resumed her task of unpacking and cleaning, while the brothers took a series of breaks.
It was a shame they no longer had the pit toilets they’d required in the field camp. Flushing toilets wouldn’t work for disposing of chunks of glass, but once they left the room, artifact disposal was their problem, not hers. She would claim to know nothing about the brothers’ theft or destruction of the artifact.
Bassam returned after one such trip smelling of cigarettes, and she guessed he’d dropped some of the glass in the garden. He gave Diana a hard look, and she resumed her job of unpacking boxes and checking them off in the field catalog.
Sheer exhaustion having finally caught up with her, Diana managed to sleep fitfully that night. She woke often. Each time she listened for rescue, but all she heard was the sound of Jamal’s even breathing as he blocked the door.
The glass shard remained in the pocket of her headscarf.
It was her new hope.
Her only hope.
Once the tears had stopped flowing, she’d been able to think again. If the SEALs weren’t coming, she’d rescue herself. She had valuable intel. She’d find a way out of this house. She’d escape and bring what she knew to the CIA or DIA. If she could get to an embassy or consulate, she’d deliver news of Makram Rafiq’s operation directly to the US Department of State.
She would probably die before all this was over, but she wouldn’t die here.
Chapter Seventeen
The early morning briefing promised to be more of the same. In the two days since Diana Edwards had initiated the tracker, there hadn’t been a glimpse of the woman or the terrorist leader. Now the signal was long dead.
Was Diana as dead as the signal? Had they failed her by not moving in immediately?
“As previously noted,” the analyst who was giving the morning update said, “this isn’t a single or even multifamily residence. We’ve counted at least a dozen armed men coming and going, with at least eight who appear to be living there.”
She tapped the mouse, and another image appeared. “In contrast, we’ve identified two women—wives, housekeepers, or both, we don’t know—but no children or anything else to indicate this is a family and not a militant group using the property.” She cleared her throat and added, “Yesterday afternoon, our drone captured this recording.”
The high-resolution video showed a man leaving the residence by a side door and crossing to what looked like a dry fountain or other decoration of some sort. He wore a rifle slung over one shoulder. The man glanced around, then pulled something from a pocket and dropped it. He kicked at the ground as he took a drag from a cigarette.
The analyst zoomed in on the fountain. The image pixelated, but it looked like a rock garden of sorts.
“He was hiding something in the rocks?” Chris asked.
“We think so,” the analyst said. “It could be nothing, but it was unusual compared to the other outside activity we’ve been able to capture.”
The man appeared to stay in the garden long enough to finish the cigarette, then returned to the main house. The analyst clicked again, and now they had a different angle on the same man.
She zoomed in on his face, and Chris took in a strangled breath. “It’s him,” he said, the words coming out almost unconsciously.
“Yes, Lieutenant Flyte, we agree,” the analyst said.
Now another image appeared side by side with the zoomed-in face, this one taken from Chris’s bodycam the night of the raid. There was Edwards, her eyes strangely calm as her fingers were frozen in the position that indicated the word diamond. There was a knife at her throat. The face of the man who held the knife was clearly visible to the right of Diana’s head.
Side by side, it was unmistakable. The terrorist who had escaped with Edwards that night was alive and well and at the house on the outskirts of Aqaba.
“We don’t have confirmation Edwards is still being held there, but this is enough to make the mission a go if we can confirm Rafiq is present.”
“What if we don’t have a Rafiq sighting?” Fallon asked. “Surely we won’t just leave Edwards there?”
“We are monitoring the house closely. If they try to move her, we’ll know, and our drones will be able to follow.”
“Not good enough. They could be beating her. She could be sick. Dying. We have no way of knowing what they’re doing to her,” Chris said.
“We’re looking at options for getting someone inside the house. A break in the water line or other utility issue that can be specific to that property.”
“That takes too much time,” Kramer said.
“We’re doing everything we can to ensure Dr. Edwards’s safety.”
Chris refrained from rolling his eyes. Everything would have meant getting the woman out two days ago, instead of leaving her vulnerable and afraid.
Rafiq entered the artifact room after the morning prayers. The artifacts had all been cleaned and laid out on the tables for inspection. Diana had drawn out the process as long as possible, insisting on organizing the items by age and, in some instances, cultural influence.
All items having come from the same site, she had chosen to split hairs and make an evaluation of what outside cultures had influenced the creator. Anything and everything to delay, delay, delay.
She was shoveling bullshit and hoped to bury the man in it.
She’d written extensive notes that made her work sound ridiculously scholarly. It would give the artifacts a perceived higher value, which should please the monster.
The shard of glass remained hidden in her headscarf, and when the terrorist leader entered the room, Diana could feel the weight of it as it pressed to her skin, similar to how her arm had itched in those first days. Only this time, instead of calling for her rescue, she imagined slicing open the man’s neck.
Could she do it? Kill him in that way? She’d have to be directly in his face. Hands on him. Go for the jugular. Literally.
She reminded herself of the lives he’d destroyed. Of Fahd and his children, who were now fatherless.
Yes. Yes, she could.
She was dead anyway at this point. Might as well take him out too.
That would be her redemption in this nightmare. She’d kill this man.
But with Jamal and Bassam in the room, it simply wasn’t possible. Not today.
All she could do now was tell him about all the amazing artifacts she’d looted for him and, like Scheherazade, weave a fanciful fiction about each one in an attempt to prolong her life.
Her throat went dry and she had to fight dry heaving, but after the first few descriptions were behind her, her stomach righted and calm settled in.
This was like eating an elephant. The only way to do it was to take one awful bite at a time.
At the end of show-and-tell, Rafiq ordered her to photograph and wrap all the artifacts.
Diana found herself with a camera in her hands. She’d had a brief moment of hope that she’d be given a cell phone, but no, it was a point-and-shoot digital camera. Not the latest and greatest, but still, new enough that it had Wi-Fi for uploading photos.
The blue icon wasn’t lit, meaning it wasn’t connected, but there was a menu to add email addresses for sending photos. She took a chance when Bassam left for a smoke break and Jamal wasn’t paying attention and added an old email address she only used for mailing lists. Once that was set up, she attached all the photos she’d taken. If the camera was connected to a computer with internet or connected to Wi-Fi, maybe it would send the photos before anyone noticed there were items in the outbox.
If someone spotted what she’d done before it connected, they’d come after her, but at this point, she was already in danger of being beaten, raped, and murdered. She might as well take every opportunity that presented itself, no matter how dangerous.
Two hours later, Diana got to enjoy her first walk in the garden, a reward for finishing her work, she supposed. A high wall—probably seven feet tall—enclosed the property. Made of smooth cinder blocks, there was no way she’d be able to climb it without a rope or ladder.
To make matters worse, the trees and shrubs that abutted the wall were small and sparse. She wouldn’t even be able to tuck down and hide. In addition, the outbuildings were too far from the wall to be of use. Rafiq had chosen his lair well.
Then there was the question of what she’d find on the other side, should she manage to scale the unscalable. She imagined a moat full of crocodiles or a river of lava, thinking of the childhood game of jumping from pillow to pillow in the living room because touching the floor meant maiming or death.
Why did children play such gruesome games?
Of course, Ring Around the Rosie was about the Black Death and that was a game played in preschool and kindergarten without fail.
Surely the other side of the wall was quicksand. At least that would be more plausible in this sand-filled corner of the globe. She should have paid more attention to the perils of quicksand in second grade. She circled the yard, allowed to walk by herself as long as she stayed in Bassam’s line of sight.
She was glad for this, as she hadn’t been alone except for the bathroom since they got here. During the dig, she’d always been within sight of one of her guards, but the range of area she had to explore had been four times the size of this yard. At least she’d been able to get distance and take deep breaths of air that wasn’t tainted by cigarette smoke. And at night, there were those few times she’d been able to lie under the stars all by herself and try to find a moment of joy to hold on to.
She’d thought of the SEAL and rescue and hope. But that was all behind her now. The only hope she still had came from what she might do to save herself.
No handsome, powerful SEAL would ride in on a white horse at this late date.
She’d left joy in the remote Jordanian desert. She’d felt nothing but tension and despair since arriving here. This compound was full of men with guns who eyed her in ways that made her thankful Jamal or Bassam slept in front of the door.
Not that either boy could stop one of the others if they decided she was fair game. She suspected Rafiq had given orders to leave her alone until she no longer had value to add to the organization.
So now she breathed cigarette-smoke-tinged air and leisurely walked around the enclosed compound, feeling the eyes of armed men mark her every step. She focused on the grounds and tried to forget the guards. While there was no doubt the property had once been a fine estate, everything about it now was worn down. Dilapidated. The paint on the enclosing wall and buildings was chipped. Metal hinges showed rust, while wood panels decayed.
She circled around the house, checking over her shoulder for Bassam, noting one of the unnamed guards had joined him for a smoke. Bassam’s gaze was on her, but he didn’t appear to be paying close attention. She imagined he basked in the attention of the older guard.
Bassam wanted to move up in the ranks. To be important to this group. From his bearing, she knew he was pleased to be considered one of the men. No longer a boy now that he was doing important work for the leader.
She had helped him attain that status, but she could also take it away.
She forced herself not to alter her stride when she noticed the wrought iron gate that crossed the driveway was open slightly. Just enough for a person to slip through.
The gap was explained by a bicycle that leaned against a post just beyond the metal bars.
From where Bassam stood, could he see the gate was open? She hadn’t spotted the gap when she first turned the corner, the angle being such that it wasn’t obvious.
Whose bike was it, and why were they here?
Diana didn’t have a moment to think or plan. It was an opportunity that no one could have predicted. She stood a mere ten feet from the open gate. Bassam and the other guard were more than ten yards away. They were smoking and laughing. Careless of their prisoner, who’d been mostly meek and pliable for six long weeks.
The person who owned the bike could be at the door, on the path, or inside the house. She didn’t dare look.
Instead, she ran.
Chapter Eighteen
The team was on the outskirts of Aqaba, ready to move in on a moment’s notice. Still, when the signal came, it was a shock. Even more so when the commander explained why.
“What do you mean she just ran out, grabbed a bicycle, and escaped?”
“Exactly that. It appears Dr. Edwards saw an opening and took it.”
From the commander’s tone, he sounded annoyed that Edwards had mucked up their plans for a tidy rescue, which, Chris had to admit, would be a problem as now they’d have to find her in the city, or worse, if she was captured again, she’d be harder to get to in the compound. If they even bothered to take her alive.
But still, Chris was impressed the woman had made such a bold move. She must have believed special forces wasn’t coming to her rescue.
“We’ll break into four Fire Teams to search for Edwards,” Fallon said.
