Chapter 14: Rescue
"Cam! What's wrong?" Alex gasped as she saw the panting young woman duck past the barrier at the south end of the village and come flying up to them. She was disheveled, like she'd run all the way here without worrying what the trees and underbrush would do to her hair.
Cam was so winded she couldn't get any words out; Alex looked around, saw Gung Ho, and waved him over. He saw who was with her and was by her side in a moment. Across the square Alex saw Shana and Snake Eyes break off what they were doing and head for them at a dead run.
"Cam. Don't try to talk." Shana commanded as soon as she was in earshot. "Bend over and put your head between your knees. Take in deep breaths, as deep as you can manage. Sit down if you have to. Don't tighten up your abdominals, it'll be harder for you to get a deep breath." Although they were all dying to know what had happened, there was no way they'd get anything useful out of her if she couldn't breathe, and she'd pushed herself to the limit to get to them; all three could hear the warning rasp in her breathing pattern.
"Don't….have time. Found…kids. Lake. Flint…called recon teams. Called you…no answer. Alex…" and she gave a harsh wheezing cough.
Gung Ho sprang into action. "Don't try to talk. We got it. You and Flint found the kids by the lake in your search area. Just nod." She nodded.
"All right. Phase two. We get to Flint's location with all possible speed, then break into two groups, extraction and recovery, like we planned. Snake Eyes, Scarlett, White Queen. Head back to the hut, grab our gear. Move fast." He pointed a stern finger at Cam. "Polaris. You stay. We'll grab extra weaponry for you. You need to recover because you have to show us where they are and get us back to Flint." When it looked as if she were going to protest, he snapped, "Plant your feet. That's an order, soldier!"
The villagers had gathered by then, sensing something going on. Gung Ho raised his voice and addressed them. "Our recon teams have located the children captured from your village. We're going to go out and bring them back. I don't know if there are or will be injuries, so any healers you have, please get them ready." He repeated it in French for the benefit of everyone who might not understand English; although some of the villagers didn't understand English, most of them did have at least rudimentary knowledge of French, and although it might have been mangled by his Cajun accent, it had been adequate so far to help with weapons instruction.
By the time White Queen, Scarlett, and Snake Eyes got back with practically every item of heavy armament they had, Cam had recovered enough to talk. "They're in a dog pen in the middle of the village. Looks like there were about ten, maybe twelve children; it was hard to count because they were all heaped together but one girl got up to go bathroom and she had braces on her legs."
"Shandi!" Alex's eyes flew open wide. "Cam…Shandi. You're sure she had braces on her legs? You're sure?"
"They were makeshift—like someone made them with nylon straps and aluminum sticks."
"Gung Ho made them when we were last here. Ripped trim from the van Alex was driving and cannibalized his duffel bag straps to make them." Shana nodded. "That's Shandi. All right, we found them and we know they're definitely the ones we're looking for. Now we have to figure out how to get them out."
"Flint said stick with the plan." Cam had recovered her breath and was grimly shouldering a pair of MK's and her twin blade swords. "Come on. Let's get back to him. The other recon teams should have joined him by now."
"When did you leave him? How long did it take you to get back to us?" They were already in the move, ducking around the village tollgates and heading into the rainy forest, grimly ignoring the pouring rain that cut visibility down to mere feet in front of them.
"I think it was about ten hundred when I left him; it's about eleven fifteen now." Cam moved in a straight, purposeful line; they, knowing that her MOS was navigation, followed her, trusting that she would get them to where they needed to go.
They needed all their breath for the trek; Cam took them in a more or less straight line, stopping a few times to check cuts on trees to make sure they were heading in the right direction. Although they were all in shape, Scarlett was sure that Cam hadn't fully recovered, and after Cam started to wheeze a little—again—Scarlett called a halt. "Cam. Stop. Yes, we want to get to Flint as soon as possible. But Alex isn't military and she doesn't have the kind of endurance the rest of us do, so rein it in and stay even with the rest of us. We are not going to do Flint and the others any good if we can't move the minute we get to them." Cam obediently slowed.
It took them almost two hours to get back to Flint; by the time they got there the gray sky was definitely a few shades darker than it had been when Cam had first stumbled into the village. Shana, looking at her watch and discovering it was just before two hundred, did a quick calculation; the recon teams had been leaving around oh-seven-hundred in the morning, so it had taken Cam and Flint about three hours to get to the lake and find the children. She'd reached them at eleven fifteen, they set out at eleven thirty, and it was now two hundred, Cam had done the two and a half hour trek they'd just taken in under an hour and a half.
Flint and the rest of the recon teams had withdrawn little; screened by the hill, they'd put together a rough shelter, more of a sort of lean to, camouflaged by leaves and roofed by large flat fronds that did a tolerable job of keeping rain off the map spread on the ground before them. He hailed Gung Ho, White Queen, Scarlett, Snake Eyes, and Polaris with a curt nod, and waited until they had hunkered down under the roof of the improvised lean-to before he spoke. "All right. Been talking this over with the recon teams since they joined me, so here's what we decided. We stick with the plan. We split into two teams, extraction and cover teams. White Queen, you have to lead the extraction team; the children will follow you, listen to you. Gung Ho, you're on extraction with White Queen. Polaris, you and Spirit are with them too, you're not as good with heavy weaponry and depending on when we can get the kids out, you two will be needed to lead us through a dark jungle. Can you do that?" She didn't even bother protesting; she just nodded.
"Right. Now. Recoil, Brawler, Scarlett, Snake Eyes, and Recondo are with me on cover. We lay down cover fire if there is pursuit and keep them engaged until the extraction team, with the children, are safe. We flank and back them. And people," they all looked up at the sharp note in his voice. "Remember that deadly force is authorized on this mission, but I also want you to remember that the monster out there is the same person who we ran into earlier this summer and he has been indicted and convicted of war crimes. We'll be doing these people a favor if we kill him, but we'll be doing an even bigger service if we bring him in alive. We want to get the kids out, that's the first priority, but if an opportunity arises I want this son of a bitch alive to haul back to the ICC in chains."
They all nodded.
A sudden commotion from the other side if the hill, from the camp, caught their attention and they cautiously scrambled up the hill and peeked over it. "Zimurinda," Alex breathed in tones of half-fear, half loathing.
They watched in horror and anger as he strode out to the pen, unlocked the door with a key in his pocket, reached down and grabbed the hair of the little girl. Flint, watching, had to exert every ounce of his self-control- Zimurinda had grabbed Alex's hair, dragged her off into a hut to rape her; thinking about that happening to a little girl…
Apparently Shandi had the same idea; she ripped herself out of Zimurinda's grasp and tried, clumsily, to run. Zimurinda was so surprised at this show of spirit from someone who was apparently helpless that it took him a few minutes to gather himself and run after her.
Those few seconds was all the Joes needed.
By sheer luck Shandi had chosen to run in the direction the Joes were hiding; not straight at the hill, but an oblique angle heading to the right of it. Alex was already in motion, scrambling down the hill and intercepting her. Shandi almost screamed as she saw a tall adult figure suddenly appear out of the curtain of rain in front of her, but a moment later she saw the pale skin and blond hair and threw herself at Alex, clinging to the woman desperately, crying. Alex hugged her, holding her tight, crying too, both of them so relieved to see each other that for the moment the rest of the world faded into insignificance.
Until a gun barrel poked into Shandi's shoulder.
Zimurinda's face was twisted in fury as he poked the little girl with his gun. "So you did survive. I heard rumors but I didn't know for sure. This will be so much sweeter."
"Drop it," came an icy voice from behind him, and he turned. Flint stood behind him, holding the muzzle of a machine gun aimed at him, and his finger never wavered on the trigger.
"You!" the rogue's face twisted in a snarl of hatred. "I should have killed you when I had the chance!"
"Yes, well, it is what it is. You didn't, and now we have you. Drop the gun and you might walk out of here alive." Zimurinda hesitated, and Flint added, "I have no compunctions about killing you. Not after what you did to Alex, to me, and what I know you were planning on doing to that little girl."
Zimurinda's finger twitched.
Alex exploded into action, shoving Shandi behind her with one hand as she grabbed the muzzle of the gun with her other n and gave it a hard, sudden jerk. Flint knew that move, had seen Shana teach the recruits that same move many, many times; he wasn't entirely sure that he would have done it in this particular case, with Shandi this close and Zimurinda twitching, but there was no denying the result; the rogue was disarmed, and Flint lowered the gun as Gung Ho came up behind Zimurinda and closed a set of plastic zip ties on the wrists he crossed behind the man's back. Almost simultaneously Shana tied a length of cloth over his mouth so he couldn't shout for help, although the steady sheets of rain around them made it almost impossible for sound to travel far; she didn't want to take the risk.
It was almost anti-climactic, after hating this man for most of the summer, hearing this man's laughter in his worst nightmares, that Flint was almost disappointed. He'd expected Zimurinda to put up more of a fight, somehow; to be harder, tougher to catch. And he wasn't. Behind the guns and tough-man façade, in spite of the army he commanded, he was no more than a man, just like Flint, just like the Joes. Except none of them would have ever beaten a helpless unarmed woman, none of them would have raped a civilian just trying to do her job.
Alex was hugging Shandi tightly; the little girl was clinging to her, frantically. "Shandi. I have to go get your brother and your friends out, okay? Here. This is Cam, she's my friend, and I want you to stay with her until I come back, okay?"
"You will come back?" a whispered question with all of a little girl's heartbreak in it; Flint gritted his teeth. Yes, she's coming back. I promise it.
"Yes, I'm coming back." She saw the look on the little girl's face, and bent to hug her again. "I promise, Shandi, I'll come back."
Flint issued terse orders. "All right. White Queen in the middle, Snake Eyes, Recondo, Brawler, Recoil, Spirit, me, and Gung Ho flanking. We move fast, we move silent. I've been watching them and I think this was right around the time the guards changed, so we have a chance right now to sneak the children out without any of them the wiser. Scarlett, Polaris, you're here with the prisoner and Shandi. If it looks hopeless, I want you to go. Run." Scarlett opened her mouth to protest but he silenced her with a look. "Don't argue."
The rain was so heavy now that the group of eight Joes were lost to view of the two women almost as soon as they took a few steps, but neither woman complained; they were both in full battle mode, and they would stay there until the operation was finished. Zimurinda was mouthing some kind of incoherent protest behind his gag, but neither one of them paid much attention. It was only when he tried to lash out sideways with a foot that Scarlett even deigned to look at him, and even then it was a perfunctory, retaliatory kick with her own foot that drew a muffled cry from Zimurinda himself. "Not hard enough to break," Scarlett said expressionlessly to Polaris. "Don't want to end up carrying the bastard all the way back to Keshero. I swear, though, if I didn't want to see him punished for what he did to Alex and Flint so badly, I'd put a bullet in his head myself."
They moved as silently as they could; not that anyone would have noticed some footfalls, with the rain coming down as fast and as hard as it currently was, sound wasn't really a huge concern.
They kept an eye on the little dog pen in front of them but also kept an eye on their surroundings. While it looked like it was the middle of a guard change, they obviously had no idea that they were being watched, observed, and it was equally obvious to the Joes that the guards were not really in a hurry to run out into the rain to guard a handful of huddled, terrified children. They got to the pen without incident, and Flint's heart rose as he saw one of the children, a little boy, look up at the sound of White Queen's half-whispered French, "Sssh, quiet, we're friends and we're going to get you out of here."
It was a matter of a couple of seconds for Snake Eyes to pick the lock; a simple keyed padlock, heavily rusted, but the tumblers clicked into place under Snake Eyes' hands, and the gate to that pen swinging open was the most beautiful sight to Flint in the world, the open gate and the suddenly energized, formerly apathetic children slipping out. Although Alex whispered "Shh," to them, they seemed to understand the need for silence and stealth without the whispered admonishment. One by one they edged out of the pen until they stood in a silent line before the Joes, looking expectantly up at…Flint.
"They knew you were captured with me. Knowing that you got me out, they now trust you to get them out." It was a sobering thought for Flint as he looked at the line of ragged children, some thin to the point of emaciation, many showing signs of abuse on their thin bodies; a little girl's dress ripped here, bruises there, one young boy's eye almost swollen shut. A hard knot of anger settled in the bottom of his chest, in his throat; how could anyone, no matter how heartless and cruel, treat innocent children like this?
"All right," he said, and motioned to Spirit, who squinted through the rain, got his bearings, and led them back in the direction they'd come, back to where they had left Scarlett and Polaris, Shandi and Zimurinda.
It seemed like an eternity before he saw the dim, gray shapes of trees through the hard curtain of rain, and he blew out a breath in relief. Once we get in those trees, we're safe. Even if they follow us we'll be able to lose them in the forest. Almost there…
And all hell broke loose.
One of the guards, a little more conscientious than the others, had come out to check on their captives, and saw the dim shape of Gung Ho's back through the rain. His shout brought the other guards out of the concrete guard hut even as he launched himself at the Joes.
"Run!" The children wasted no time looking back; terror lent wings to their feet as they scrambled across the last few feet of mud between them and where Shandi waited even as gunfire erupted behind them.
Flint and Gung Ho aimed behind them, strafing the dark gray shapes running after them with gunfire. Some dropped; not all. "Phase Two!" he yelled, and they all knew what that meant.
White Queen headed up the huddle of children, accompanied by Polaris; Gung Ho dropped to a flanking position behind her and slightly off to her right, followed moments later by Spirit. Polaris assumed a position just in front of White Queen and started to lead them through the jungle. Flint, dropping back with the rest of the cover team, just followed blindly; they were going to have to trust that Polaris knew where she was going and would get them back safely.