“And neither do I. Yes, we teach them prayer, but we also teach them to read and write. We teach them to think for themselves and how to find their hearts again after people like you have ripped them out!”
He reached out and slapped her.
Daniels stepped back, stunned. He hadn’t been violent with her, but as she looked around she realized she was causing a scene. Two other soldiers ran up with guns pointed and the children began to cry.
“Get them inside,” Rajan said.
Daniels stared at Rajan as he walked away and turned to face the soldier that was pointing a rifle at her. He wore three red hash marks on the sleeve of his jacket. She had a sneaky suspicion they symbolized kills. She reached out for the little girl’s hand and they walked ahead of the soldier into the house. She was surprised to see that the house was fairly modern. Sofas in the front room, wood floors and wood paneling. The heat and humidity were broken with fans placed strategically throughout the residence. The soldier behind her didn’t give her time to reflect on the surroundings, but shoved her forward. He was taller than the soldier with the red and looked a little more raw around the edges. His emblem was different than Red’s, the emblem of the shark around the skull set onto a black X. There was a sense of completion about the design, as if he had surpassed the red hash marks and had completed his head count.
The two soldiers moved them into the center of the room. One waved the children down to the floor, but stopped her from following. She looked at the two soldiers as they ushered her away from her little band. A slow smile crept across Red’s face and he motioned with his gun for her to move. When she didn’t move quickly enough, the larger soldier grabbed her arm and pulled her into the adjacent room.
Daniels heard the children begin to cry. She tried to quell her own rampant fear. She moved away and tried to position herself near the window. She dashed around the small desk and chair, but Red cut her off. Her heart was racing and she tried to think of a good prayer, but the only thing she could think of was, “God, please get me through this.”
She gasped when the second soldier grabbed her hair from behind and used it as a means to propel her around the room. He shoved her forward onto the desk, slamming her head into the wood. She struggled against him, but as she started to escape Red was on the other side of the desk, pushing his weight down onto her shoulders.
She could barely breathe with all of the weight and tried to cry out as the soldier fumbled around trying to rip away her clothes. Red laughed as her arms flailed. Her fingers made contact with a pencil and she wrapped her hand around it and managed to swing her arm forward and jab it into Red’s side.
His shriek was short-lived and had him slamming his elbow down on her back. She felt the fabric of her clothes begin to tear as the onslaught continued. Her ears were ringing from the pain and lack of air as her chest was compressed by their weight.
Red released her, and she glanced upward in time to see the bullet blast through his skull. The brute behind her was ripped away, and she turned to see Rajan land a punch to his midsection and then an uppercut connected with his jaw. Fury marred his normally serene expression. With Red dead, the brute began to explain his position so rapidly that Daniels didn’t understand. Her breath came in gulps as she tried to readjust her clothing.
Rajan reached out and grabbed the soldier by his hair and dragged him outside. Daniels staggered out of the room in his wake. She collapsed in the doorway and watched Rajan in the middle of the courtyard with the soldier on his knees. He was yelling, but she could only make out a few words as the others gathered to watch the spectacle. He pulled a pistol from his holster and didn’t hesitate dropping the soldier in front of the group. He began to yell again as he marched over to the house. He stood on the porch and pointed at Daniels clutching the doorframe.
Still shaky on the language and reeling from the events she made out one word. “Mine.”
Rajan reholstered his pistol and helped Daniels to her feet. He walked her past the children and into a small bedroom. Fear pulled at her, but she tried to relax. He sat her on the bed and went into the adjoining bathroom, returning with a cool, damp rag. She pulled her knees into her chest and pressed up against the headboard.
He started to run the cloth along her forehead, but she took it from him and used it to wipe down her tear-streaked face. It felt wonderful on her skin and she took several deep breaths, to bring herself back under control. Daniels knew that without Rajan those men would have raped her without a second thought.
Taking a seat in a chair next to the bed, Rajan said, “I’m sorry I had to strike you. I can’t have anyone challenging my authority here. Any weakness might provoke a challenge. I’m also sorry I left you alone before I established that you were not to be touched.”
She didn’t speak, but sat with the cool rag against her skin. She had never had her world so completely turned upside down. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. “May I have some water, please?” she asked.
He nodded and left the room quickly, returning a few moments later with a bottle of water from the kitchen. “Drink this,” he said. “You will feel better.”
“I’m not sure I’m ever going to feel better,” she said. “I feel filthy and I don’t even know why.”
“Because even though those men did not rape you, you know what they planned. They treated you like…like you had no value. That is why you feel dirty.”
Catching her breath, Daniels said, “You’re a psychologist, too?”
He laughed softly. “No, but I am not unfamiliar with such traumas.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” she whispered.
He shrugged. “You will stay here until the ransom is paid. If you behave, the smaller children may stay here with you and you can school them, but you may not approach those in training.”
She looked around the room and reflected on what she understood from the courtyard. Pirates always extracted a price and she began to ponder the reality that he may be showing her kindness because he expected her to share his bed.
“And where will you sleep?”
“I will sleep with the soldiers in the bunkhouse. This room will be yours alone. I will send two other women for you to have as servants, but you must not task them with anything that is forbidden. They are not worth what you are, and you would be risking their lives for the trespass.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Ransom and piracy are part of the way of life here,” he said.
“No, that I get, but I don’t get you. What is it you want from me?”
“You’ll understand everything in due course. This will be the only time I ask, you must trust me and you must do what I tell you. This is not all what you think.”
MICHELLE PETERSON STARED at the man across the table from her flipping through the State Department reports that she acquired. He had everything that a special ops military man was supposed to: muscular physique, mysterious good looks and enough training and skill to render a small country’s entire military inoperative in under an hour. This morning, however, he was dressed in civilian clothing, and something about him nagged at her perceptions. He didn’t act like a military man, strictly speaking, and he sure didn’t seem like a traditionalist when it came to operations. She trusted President Daniels completely, so when he’d said that a man named Hal Brognola was the person to turn to when Heather was taken, she believed him.
What she didn’t believe was that the man sitting across from her was in the Army. The fit didn’t feel quite right to her. She needed to know more about him before they went into the field. This wasn’t the kind of mission she wanted to tackle with someone she couldn’t trust.
“May I ask you