The leader walked in, because the cave roof was about fifteen meters in height, which gave him enough room to move in. He’d already told the recons that he was moving in and arriving at rendezvous point in two.
The cave sloped off east, and then slipped in three directions. He consulted a GPS strapped to his hand and took the third one. The cave became danker, smelling of cold air which was not the same thing as fresh, cool air. His combat boots made no footfalls as he moved at a steady clip, ready to anticipate trouble at any moment.
The cave split again in two directions, and he again consulted his GPS and moved further in, until he came to a well-lit passage, and saw the shadows of both his men. They were at the ready, even though their weapons were held loosely at their side. Ex-military were always ready. And Kirschner Security only employed the best, and each of these men was alive only because they were the best.
“Boss?” Recon two spoke in his ear.
“Yeah.” The leader slung his own weapon on his shoulder and strode forward. “Behind you.”
The Recons moved fluidly and let him pass them, as they journeyed further in. About five feet into the long, alarmingly well-lit tunnel he heard it too. The screams of a young girl. Heedless, terror-filled and continuous. They were not words, they were not prayers or tears. They were just screams. Just pure terror.
He stopped for a split second and then nodded once. All three broke into a run and sprinted the last five hundred yards till they came to a wooden door that the leader simply ran through with his momentum. The door splintered apart, because it had been shoddily constructed and couldn’t withstand assault from a one-ninety-pound male specimen.
The recons swung their weapons in a wide arc while the leader advanced quietly.
“All clear,” Recon one murmured.
“All clear,” echoed Recon two.
The room, a fifty-by-fifty space was empty. Just walls, a table and a freezer that probably held beers as much as body parts. And it was devoid of both Alina Gujjar, the teenage daughter of Mahesh Gujjar, or any guard that might have been foolish and smart enough to escape detection from the heat signature scopes. There was an opening from the room and it was well-lit too.
The leader walked into the next room, from where the screams were emanating. His heart was slow, his breathing steady and he had acute tunnel vision. He could only see the next step, the next movement, his adrenaline on punch-high and his reflexes cold-purpose.
“Going in to retrieve package,” he murmured. “Radio silence from here on.”
And stepped into the room. The scream and the sight in the room stopped his heart.
Alina, a slender girl in filthy jeans and a torn white sweater, was screaming and crying sightlessly. Her shoulder-length hair was matted and she was bound to a ring on the rock wall of the cave. Her hands were tied to a wire that looped through the ring and were jerked tight enough to have almost cut off circulation if the girl moved much. She was not gagged, evidence of the hoarse animal sounds coming from the girl. But, her legs were stretched in front of her in a loose binding, a length of wire running around the ankles and on the ground to a covered contraption on the side.
“Shit.”
The leader moved forward and placed his weapon on the floor beside him for easy reaching. He knelt down in front of the girl and touched her. Lightly on the shoulder. She screamed harder as she focused on him. Saw the painted face and hell-black eyes, the camo outfit and the utter sense of menace he exuded. Her eyes were open in permanent petrification and she was hysterical.
“Hi, Alina, I’m Krivi,” he said, gently. “I’m going to get you out. Right now. I promise.”
“Wha—what?” she whimpered, tears running streaks down her muddy cheeks.
“I am going to get you out in five minutes.”
“But—there is a … there is a …” Sobs started shaking her thin shoulders and she hung her head and just wept. A hopeless, wrenching sound that should have melted the hardest, stoniest heart.
But the leader, Krivi, had no heart that anyone knew of so he just touched the girl on the shoulder, with a little more pressure this time. Enough that she looked up.
“Alina, listen to me. Will you listen to me?”
She nodded, her eyes streaming anyway.
“Stop crying. Can you do that?”
“I … I …”
“Brave girls don’t cry. They are heroines who get out of terrible situations and tell their grandkids about their youthful adventures,” he said, in a quieter, reassuring tone. That just set the girl off again. He considered his options and looked back at recon one who’d just come into the room.
“Detonation cord,” he said, nodding at the girl’s feet.
“Shit.”
“I’ll look into it. You get the girl out. Now.”
“Roger that.”
Krivi moved away from the girl but she screamed and he turned back and said, “I am here, Alina. This is my friend, John. He’s going to untie your hands. If you stay still, it won’t hurt at all. Can you do that?”
“Kri … Krivi,” she whispered, a small whisper of a terrified girl.
Krivi smiled, even though it felt like stretching taffy. “Yes?”
“There’s a lock. On my neck. There’s a lock.”
His smile faded and he looked at recon one, who had already removed a small wire cutter that could run through steel nylon rope if it needed to. And it had on three separate occasions.
“I am going to unlock it and you’re going to be out of here right now.”
Her lips trembled as she looked at the calm, rock-like face of the man kneeling before her, but she refused to cry again. And Krivi gave her points for that. It took a lot of cojones to not give in when the situation went FUBAR.
“Promise?” she asked.
He nodded and held out his hand. She took it with trembling fingers and just held on. Krivi squeezed once and then barked, “Scoot her forward. Give me specs. I am going to look at that.”
He turned to the gunnysack-covered contraption where the wire that had tied Alina’s legs disappeared under. He removed the gunnysack carefully knowing any movement could be fatal, trickily fatal.
Bombs were like that.
It wasn’t a very smartly made IED (improvised explosive device). There was a black cylinder with three different wires protruding out of it, and a small pin held the mouth of the cylinder shut. A few sticks of C4 were strapped to the outer body of the cylinder, as if to underline the point of an explosion and the three wires, all yellow, ran to a point under the wall and then disappeared.
“Now we know why they left no guards,” he murmured, almost to himself.
“Yeah,” Recon one, John, agreed.
He smiled reassuringly at the girl and said something too low for Krivi to hear. But Alina smiled and let him reach for a clean piece of cloth and wipe her face with it.
Krivi focused all his attention on the IED. It was a pretty standard bomb, with a decent-sized blast radius given the amount of C4 wrapped around the cylinder and det cord that were designed to confuse and fluster and a trigger mechanism that was probably pressure-controlled, rather than remote-controlled.
Hence, the lock on the girl.
He unsnapped a pair of pliers and carefully removed the main firing pin from the mouth