Chapter Forty-Three: High-Stakes Retrieval
The operative looked down at the village through her binoculars, her scowl deepening as she watched the men hop off the trucks, firing their AK-47s into the air. They were dressed in t-shirts and jeans, athletic shorts, bright colors, sunglasses… Not uniforms. She wondered how long it would have been before the war tearing apart the rest of Somalia touched this village. A year or two, perhaps? Maybe six months?
Ever since the meteorite had crashed into the hills just north of the village last night, however…
The operative had emigrated to the United States after completing her mandatory army service in the Israeli Defense Force. She served for two years when she turned eighteen, as all Israeli citizens not of Arab descent are required to do.
At first, the operative had been eager to join the battle. After all, she'd lost her best friend in a rocket strike in Tel Aviv. She was barely into grade school when it'd happened… Her best friend's name had been Cassandra Reznik, and the operative had gravitated towards her because other students would make fun of her strange, ethnically-foreign name. But while strange, it was a name the operative would never forget, and after hearing of her friend's death in the capital… Well, she wanted a chance for revenge. And luckily or unluckily for her, she was guaranteed to receive one, due to Israel's conscription laws.
As a member of the IDF from 1987 to 1989, the operative had been present for the First Intifada—a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule that resulted in waves of violence sweeping across Gaza and the West Bank. She had also participated in the 1988 strike against Hezbollah that comprised of a punitive raid into Lebanon; twenty-one of her comrades had died in that operation.
The operative left Israel after completing her service, weary of the violence in the Middle East, but encountered much difficulty finding employment in the United States. This was not entirely due to a lack of jobs—the American economy was doing quite well at that time—but more an inability to get along with her bosses. That is, until she was approached by a representative for Skaianet. The operative didn't trust Skaianet—the technology company seemed to have its fingers in a lot of pies, and the operative believed in such a thing as being 'too big'. But the paycheck for the job Skaianet offered her was too good to refuse.
Though now, the operative was close to having second thoughts. She had waited patiently for a year in the town of Afgooye—a minor population center roughly twenty-five kilometers west of the capital city of Mogadishu. When tensions between the old military regime and the resistance groups neared the breaking point, the operative didn't bat an eye. When those tensions snapped and civil war broke out earlier in the year, the operative still wasn't fazed; she'd grown up in a warzone, and a little civil war wasn't going to give her pause.
When members of the various resistance groups turned on each other, after the fall of the Somalian government… It was especially bad in the south, where the power vacuum left by the toppled military regime was sought to be filled by two rival warlords, both of whom had once been high-ranking officers what had once been the Somali military. Once, the operative had witnessed the burning of a village not far from the outskirts of Afgooye by members of one such faction. Bodies left to rot in the sun, limbs and heads hacked off by machetes, the smell of hot blood and the incessant buzzing of all the flies…
That had given her pause.
Atrocities in her homeland were committed by both Israelis and Palestinians, but the kind of warfare that happened in Africa… The operative was used to rockets. Suicide bombers. Roadside bombs. Explosives… Not murder in this fashion, so up close and personal… It sickened her to her stomach.
The meteor had fallen from the sky last night. The operative had even been lucky enough to see it on the night it fell; a fiery streak blazing a trail through the star-studded sky, making landfall somewhere to the north. The simple act alone of merely seeing the meteorite saved the operative a lot of time—she already knew the direction in which she needed to head, as well as a rough estimation of how far she had to travel.
Yes, that meteorite was the reason why the operative was here. Her mission had been given to her directly from none other than the CEO of Skaianet. The operative was to travel to Afgooye and wait for a meteor to make landfall somewhere nearby. And when that happened, she was ordered to call it in to Skaianet, proceed to impact site, recover what she found, and report back to Skaianet a second time for extraction. And that was the extent of the details she'd been given.
However the CEO of Skaianet had been able to predict the arrival of this meteorite, the operative would never know. But she also knew that it could not have been an infallible method—Skaianet obviously had not foreseen a Somali militia force swarming the area where the meteorite had fallen.
The operative was more than capable of looking after herself—combat reports that made special mention of her actions while a member of the IDF were part of the reason why Skaianet was drawn to her in the first place—but she found herself missing being part of a squad. It was always easier to look at a larger enemy force while having friends of your own to back you up. But then again…the operative was not one to constantly choose the easier of two paths. And she did prefer working alone; not having to rely on others, as well as not having to have others rely on her. It was simpler, this way.
And so, upon seeing the arrival of the meteorite, the operative hurried down to the garage in the small house she owned, unveiling the jeep she'd kept hidden under a tarp and some trash since her arrival. The very next thing she did was to power up her satellite phone and place a call in to Skaianet, quickly reporting that her meteorite had arrived and that she was en route to intercept. She then grabbed her M21 rifle, extra ammunition, as well as a few food rations and extra gasoline; she did not want to die of thirst in the desert, nor did she want to be stranded there by running out of gas. Once she was ready, the operative climbed into the jeep and sped off into the night, leaving the town of Afgooye behind.
And now, it was nearly mid-morning, and the militia members had come to the village to investigate the loud explosion—they did not know it had been a meteorite, assuming instead that it had been some kind of artillery or bomb. They probably thought the village down there had a weapons cache of some sort, and it was only a matter of time before the militia grew impatient with the villagers' claims that they had no weapons.
Who would believe that a meteorite had just crash-landed in the hills to the north?
The operative decided to move in on foot. She lowered her binoculars and put her sunglasses back on. She strapped her rifle to her back and checked to make sure her pistol was secured in its holster, grabbed the car keys and slipped them into her pocket, and started running. She ran in a wide arc around the village, careful to keep to the trees wherever she could, running as low as she could to the ground without sacrificing too much speed. Luckily, the militia fighters were too busy harassing the villagers to worry too much about their perimeter.
The operative counted her blessings and moved on, passing the village by within five minutes, doing her best to ignore the screaming. The hills were just up ahead—the operative was muttering under her breath as she sprinted; Skaianet had better have a very good reason for making her do this. Yes, meteorites were very fascinating and all, but not fascinating enough to warrant charging headfirst into a warzone.
The operative kept reminding herself about the massive paycheck from Skaianet that she would get. Then she could relocate to some quiet town and start the family she'd always wanted. All she had to do was get to the impact site of that meteorite and find whatever Skaianet wanted to find. And if there was nothing there…then she had a gun-cam on her rifle that could prove that there was nothing to find. Speaking of which…
The operative retrieved her M21 from her back when she reached the hills, taking a moment to flick off the safety and blow sand out of the sights. Then she was right back to it…running, sprinting…scaling hillsides, always mindful of remaining out of the village's sight. The smoke of the meteorite had faded by morning, but the operative had managed to spot some of the debris from her previous vantage point, so she knew where she was going.
The operative knew she was getting close when she started to notice little fragments of dark rock strewn about the hillside she was making her way around. They grew larger as she got further up the hill…and when she reached the top of the hill, she could see the impact site on the slope of the next hill over—the meteorite had blown a good-sized crater into the earth, scattering fragments and debris all over the place.
The operative raised her M21, making sure the gun-cam had a good view of the crash site. There would be nothing cheating her out of her paycheck due to lack of foresight. She made her way around the hill she was currently on and quickly hoofed it up the slope of the next hill…and nearly dropped her rifle in surprise when she reached the place where the meteorite had landed, her breath catching in her throat.
Lying in the middle of the impact site was an infant! A real, live, bawling baby girl. No clothes, no identification…no nothing. She couldn't have been from around here because she had white skin—closer to the tan end of the 'Tan-Pale' spectrum, but still white nonetheless. She was not Somali. And then her eyes… If her skin color wasn't strange enough, being out here in the middle of Somalia, her eyes were even more bizarre. They were a very odd color…and if they were any other color, the operative would have been merely intrigued, but the fact that they were that color…
Coming back to her senses, the operative lowered her M21 and crouched down, taking off her light desert-camouflage jacket and wrapping it around the strange infant. It was lucky that the operative had arrived when she did—the girl probably would not have survived for very much longer out here.
"Ech kor'im lach?" the operative murmured to the infant as she picked her up. She'd asked the girl what her name was, obviously knowing fully well that she would not get an answer. She continued to speak softly to the infant, gathering her up in her arms and walking slowly down the hill.
The operative was already crouching into a protective stance when the first gunshot rang out. The bullet impacted the ground about a meter to the left of where the operative crouched, sending a puff of dust up into the air. The operative took off running, holding the baby girl close. As she sprinted, the operative could spot a small group of six militia fighters making their way towards the meteorite's crash site from the village, being led by an elderly man who must have been one of the villagers. The elderly man forgotten, the militia fighters broke off and started to pursue the operative, the staccato reports of the AK-47s cutting through the sound of the wind, along with the militia fighters jabbering on in whatever language they spoke. Somalis spoke Arabid, which the operative could recognize, but they also had their own native language which was not even close to being understandable.
The operative was a fast runner, but there was only so much she could do while carrying an infant. She'd have to make a brief stand and handle this immediate threat before moving on. She came to a stop at the crest of one of the last hills before the village, gently placing the infant girl down onto the ground. She then went prone on her stomach and focused the sights on her M21 sniper rifle.
She took several deep breaths, compensating for the wind and moving her crosshairs to the first unlucky fighter's center of mass. After holding her breath for a moment, she squeezed the trigger, holding her aim until she saw the fighter get jerked back around to the ground, a small explosion of what looked like red mist at this distance spraying out of the bullet wound in his chest.
One by one, the operative took out all but one of the remaining militia fighters pursuing her. After she took down the second and third, the remaining three cut their losses and tried to run…but only one of them made it out of the hills and into the village safely. The operative's gunfire had been masked by the AK-47s of the fighters terrorizing the village…but with that last man back in the village from the hills, the operative would only have minutes until the entire invasion force was coming down on her head.
The operative could see militia fighters streaming out of the village towards her hill, where she'd sniped the five men, by the time she was nearing her jeep, and they were swarming the hilltop as she climbed inside. The operative sat the baby girl up as best she could in the passenger seat, securing her with the seat belt. There really wasn't much else she could do—she hadn't been expecting a kid, and it wasn't like she had a spare booster seat in the trunk, or anything…
If the fighters hadn't known where the operative was before, they certainly found out when she fired up her engine and pounded the gas pedal to the floor, sending the jeep speeding away from the village in a plume of dust and sand. It was the village's lucky day—the militia fighters all returned to their trucks to give chase. They'd probably return later to burn the village, but at least the inhabitants would be able to flee.
"Harah…" The operative swore when she saw the militia trucks rumble onto the road behind her—she'd put a little distance between herself and the village, but the fighters reacted faster than she'd hoped. She would have to speed things up, here… The operative reached down into the door compartment on her left and pulled out her satellite phone. She had the CEO's personal number on speed dial.
The operative didn't even wait for the CEO to speak when she heard the call go through. "This is Retrieval-Two! I reached the impact site and recovered an infant girl! You hearing me right? I recovered an infant girl from the impact site! Did you know about this?"
"Por favor, please try and remain calm-" the calm, kindly tones of Chela Arevalo, the elderly founder and CEO of Skaianet, issued through the phone from the other end of the call, but the operative was not to be placated quite yet.
"How was I supposed to effectively deal with this situation when I didn't know it was a child I was supposed to recover?" The operative went on. "What kind of assignment is this, a-"
"Enough! I ask that you calm yourself before continuing to speak to me." the CEO cut the operative off. It was enough to make the operative fall silent—though the CEO was a kindly old woman, she was not someone who you'd want to piss off. The CEO sensed the silence on the operative's part, and when she continued speaking, she'd returned to her usual tone, adopting a more informal approach. "Digame, senorita. Talk to me. Your assignment has obviously been completed; what do you need from me?"
The operative glanced over at the infant in the passenger seat, making sure she was still alright. The fact that she was still even in the seat spoke volumes. "I can't make it to my assigned departure," the operative said over the phone. "I am currently being pursued by Somali militia fighters, and if I don't get a swift ticket out of this dump… You'll have a dead baby girl with violet eyes on your hands." The operative wasn't quite sure why she'd mentioned the girl's eyes. It'd just slipped out.
"I'm rerouting your evacuation team now," the CEO informed the operative. "Good thing your phone has a GPS device installed; they will be able to pinpoint your exact location." There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, then the CEO added, "Were these violet eyes perchance the same color as your own?"
That gave the operative pause. With a frown, she asked, "How do you know my eye color?"
All the CEO would say in reply was, "See you soon, Miss Galavis. Buena suerte." And with that, the call ended.
The operative was left on her own once again, doing her best to outrun these militia trucks… But she wasn't on her own for very long. Within a few minutes, a shadow fell over the speeding jeep, accompanied by the whump whump whump of rotor blades. The operative spared a glance upward, seeing the helicopter descend closer to the jeep, matching her speed.
As she continued to drive, a pair of clamps were lowered from the inside of the helicopter, slowly reaching down towards the jeep until they were able to clamp onto its upper frame. There was a slight lurch as the jeep was plucked off of the sandy road, but nothing major. The helicopter then banked north, taking the jeep round in a wide arc. The operative figured they'd head for neighboring Ethiopia and acquire transport out of Africa, probably to the United Kingdom or someplace where it would be easy to get back to the States.
The operative removed the violet-eyed girl from the passenger seat and held her close—she felt much better when she was holding the baby than when the seat belt was. She stuck up her middle finger at the militia trucks as the helicopter soared past them, hoping that they could all see it.
Settling back into the driver's seat while the clamps winched the jeep up towards the underbelly of the helicopter, the operative had nothing left to do but turn her attention back to the baby she was holding. She couldn't really explain why, but she felt the need to name her. After all, the baby obviously had no parents or birth certificate…
Ultimately, it was to her long-deceased best friend from her childhood that the operative's thoughts turned. She had tried to avenge her best friend's death through her actions with the IDF…but that had brought her no satisfaction at all, coupled with many sleepless nights. No, there were other, better ways for the operative to honor the memory of her friend, and they didn't involve bloodshed.
"May 16th…" the operative murmured the date to the baby girl, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Happy birthday, Cassandra."
It was raining rather hard, today.
The rain was not all that surprising; all the coastal regions within Georgia usually had a subtropical climate, marshlands, and frequent rains. The Samegrelo province was obviously no exception, even in late October.
Tash was only sixteen years old, but he'd already been fighting for nearly two years. He'd been there, in Georgia's capital city of Tbilisi, two years ago, when the National Guard had split into factions—one supporting the government of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, and one opposing him. He'd been there when the populace started protesting, building barricades in the streets, throwing bottles and rocks at one another. He'd been there when the oppositionist officers of the National Guard were arrested, prompting the anti-Gamsakhurdia faction of the Guard to withdraw from Tbilisi.
Then violence had broken out. Oppositionist fighters entered Tbilisi in December, brutally repressing pro-government demonstrations, firing indiscriminately into crowds. Tash had been at one such demonstration with his adoptive father, watched as the man who'd raised him from infancy was cut down by bullets from oppositionist guns. When the oppositionists began to spread through the city, Tash would never forget fleeing through an alleyway and stumbling upon a squad of loyalist National Guardsmen who'd just lost one of their own to the violence, and were in danger of being cut off from the rest of the pro-government forces. The sergeant of that squad asked Tash if he could shoot—when the fourteen-year-old replied in the affirmative, the sergeant picked up his fallen man's rifle and tossed it to Tash. And from that point on, though he could have easily run away and hidden from the violence, Tash stuck with the ousted loyalists.
Eventually, with the president fleeing to Armenia, the oppositionists formed their own interim government called the Military Council. Even when Gamsakhurdia later returned from exile to consolidate his forces, having popular support from much of the people—especially in Samegrelo and the rural regions… The cowards in charge of the Military Council turned to Russia for help. Russia sent weapons, technology, and supply-line security to assist the Georgian Military Council in crushing the Zviadist movement, beginning to turn the tide of the conflict.
And now, two years later, Tash found himself in the town of Senaki, less than forty kilometers from the coast of the Black Sea. Though the loyalists—Zviadists, as they were called by the populace—had been driven from Tbilisi, they had managed to fall back to the Samegrelo province, home of the ousted president, holding it secure against the oppositionists.
Tash watched the thunderheads overhead, the constantly-shifting mountains of dark gray and black clouds, occasionally silhouetted by a distant flash of lightning. The sixteen-year-old Georgian wondered how it had come to this. He had supported the government against a rebel movement…and now he was a rebel. And not only was he part of what was considered to be a rebel movement; he was part of a failing rebel movement. He had once fought alongside the National Guard, but now he was considered to be part of a militia. When had everything been switched around, he wondered.
The sound of music started to drift out of the house which Tash and his squadmates were encamped in. It was Korobeiniki, an old Russian folk song known by almost everyone in eastern Europe. It had achieved fame in the West, as well, when it was used as the music for a 1989 game called… Tetris, Tash believed the name was? Something along those lines.
Tash took one last deep breath of the cold, rainy outdoors before retiring to the house. The people who'd owned this home, as well as most of the populace of Senaki, had fled. They feared the fighting that was inevitably going to come. In the bottom floor of the house was a large living room, complete with a fireplace. The members of Tash's squad had gathered firewood a while ago, and they tried to keep the fire going as long as they could. As a result, this house was one of the warmest in the town, and the envy of the rest of the militia stationed there.
And sitting in front of the fireplace, dressed in toddler's clothing, was a two-year-old girl. She was pale, with green eyes and short black hair. In her hands, she held a small ukulele, which she was using to strum out the tune of Korobeiniki. Her musical talent at only two years old was stupefying, being able to play folk music at an age where most others would struggle simply to hold the instrument properly. She did not speak much, apart from the occasional swear word that she picked up from the fighters, but that did not matter so much. It was her music that the men loved, and they found it amusing beyond all belief when she would unknowingly call someone a nasty name.
The story of how Tash had encountered this girl was an impossible one to believe, and that is why the sixteen-year-old decided to simply tell everyone that she was an orphan he'd found at the side of the road during the retreat from Tbilisi. But that wasn't what'd actually happened…
Tash didn't really like to think about it. During the latter stages of the violence in Tbilisi, Tash had lost most of his squad in a conflict with an oppositionist tank. The only member of the squad with anti-armor weapons had been blown to smithereens in the tank's opening salvo, leaving the rest of the squad with nothing to fight the tank with except their small-arms and fists. Then the tank was supported by oppositionist fighters, and the rest of Tash's impromptu squad, including the sergeant who'd recruited him, was killed or driven off…leaving Tash pinned down behind rubble in the middle of the street with severely limited ammunition.
Then the impossible happened. It was a meteorite, Tash realized, after he dared to poke his head out from behind cover. A meteorite straight from outer space. He'd heard a loud, thundering roar coming down from the sky, followed by a deafening explosion that sent a shockwave of dust, rock fragments, and dirt showering onto Tash's head. He was lucky he wasn't struck by any larger chunks of masonry.
And when Tash finally staggered back to his feet, realized it'd been a meteorite that'd somehow crashed into the street, as insane as that sounded… The meteorite had hit the tank that'd wiped out his squad. The oppositionist fighters who hadn't been killed in the blast had counted their blessings and gotten the hell out of there, leaving Tash alone on the street.
Tash had found an infant girl in the middle of the crater the meteorite had torn into the road, and he knew for a fact that she hadn't been there before the impact… Somehow, impossibly, that baby arrived here with that meteorite. Tash wasn't a very religious or superstitious kid, but he recognized the supernatural when he saw it, and he feared it would be bad luck to abandon that girl. And so, he took the infant with him, regrouping with the loyalist National Guard outside of Tbilisi.
He'd intended to leave her at the first household he came across, but found to his surprise that the baby girl didn't need formula or breast milk to survive. She was doing just fine off of the meager rations that Tash had access to. And this was fortunate, because he did not encounter any households that were capable of taking her in. Then, a few months later when he joined a new unit, the others in the squad accidentally discovered the extent of her musical talent when she'd gotten her hands on a guitar belonging to one of the officers.
Tash's attempts to get the girl away from the fighting ended in failure—the men liked her music too much, and the officers saw her as a morale-booster. Tash couldn't believe it; he couldn't believe how his superiors were actually, realistically, keeping a toddler with a fighting unit. Fuck her musical talents; this was no place for a child. It was deplorable. On the other hand… Tash knew he'd be shot if he attempted to abscond with the child, but that wasn't the reason why he never attempted to slip away. He knew that, even if he did manage to escape with the child…what then? At least here, she had a home, shelter, and food… Alone in the countryside, however, she would not last very long. So Tash remained patient and waited. His unit hadn't seen any fighting since they'd been stationed in Senaki, and so there was little cause for alarm…but that was going to change any minute. Tash could feel it in his gut; trouble was on the way.
Tash took a seat on the floor near the fireplace, watching as the two-year-old girl played the ukulele, her fingers jumping from string to string with a skill far beyond her age. She played through the rest of Korobeiniki with no difficulty at all. And when she finished the Russian folk song, she began to improvise, weaving her own tune from the muted tones of the tiny instrument. The rest of the men in the room had fallen silent as they listened.
Then, after a couple hours, the two-year-old suddenly stopped playing. The final note from the ukulele hung in the air momentarily, and the girl looked up at the ceiling, her eyes wide, as if she were listening to something. Tash's spine had stiffened as he, too, looked sharply up at the ceiling. The other men murmured to each other, unsure of what was happening.
Then the two-year-old looked over to Tash and spoke the first word she'd ever spoken that hadn't been some form of profanity. "Beda." It was Russian for trouble. Trouble, misfortune, disaster; that general idea.
As for Tash, he'd just heard many noises that almost reminded him of muffled hammer blows. There was only one thing that sound could be…
Alarms began to wail all throughout the town of Senaki. The loyalist militia was under attack… And barely seconds after the alarms were heard, the barrage of artillery that the Tash and the two-year-old had heard came thundering down upon the outskirts of town. The men all leapt to their feet, grabbing their weapons and gear, the sergeant shouting orders as he got the squad outside.
Tash hurried over to the fireplace and picked up the two-year-old, who refused to let go of her ukulele. His sergeant blocked him from leaving the room, however, demanding that he leave the girl behind and join the fighting at the outskirts of town. Tash tried to argue, stating that the girl had to be taken to safety first, but the sergeant was having none of it. Fighting came first, babysitting came second—if the government forces overran the town, she was as good as dead, anyway.
When Tash refused to leave the girl, the sergeant drew his sidearm and aimed it directly at the sixteen-year-old's face, shouting at him to put the two-year-old down. If he refused to comply, the sergeant would shoot him on the spot.
Tash was torn, and he honestly had no idea what he would have done next. Luckily, he never had to find out. A shadowy figure dressed entirely in appropriate camouflage for this part of the countryside had been lying unseen not far from the house for the past twelve hours, watching the two-year-old carefully through a pair of binoculars. Seizing the opportunity to retrieve the child, the camouflaged person used the distraction of the government attack on Senaki and the ensuing chaos to slip down to the house and enter through the open door.
The camouflaged figure wielded a pistol, but did not use it. Instead, the figure clubbed the sergeant over the back of the head with it, immediately rendering him unconscious. The figure then aimed the pistol directly at Tash. "The child," the figure spoke English, gesturing at the two-year-old with her weapon. Tash was surprised to hear the figure's voice—she was a girl! And by the sound of her voice, she couldn't have been much older than him. And if that weren't surprising enough, her accent gave her away as an American. "She's all I came for. Hand her over, and no one else gets hurt."
Tash spun himself around, putting himself in between the stranger and the two-year-old. Luckily, he spoke English very well—his adoptive father had insisted that he learn the language in case he ever found himself in the West; English was much more useful there than Russian. And his adoptive father had not exactly wanted Tash to remain in eastern Europe for the rest of his life, under the shadow of the former Soviet Union.
"I've kept this girl safe for two years; what makes you think I'm about to let someone pointing a gun to my face simply walk away with her?" Tash shot back, eyeing his rifle that was leaning against the fireplace, wondering if he could reach it fast enough.
The girl with the pistol hesitated. Again, she'd been watching the house for the past twelve hours, and the two-year-old had seemed to have some sort of connection with this disheveled Georgian teenager. Still… "If you claim to care about that girl so much, then tell me… Why keep her here, among militia fighters?"
"Look around you; this is a warzone!" Tash protested, gesturing all around him. "Even if I could have gotten the girl away from the fighting, where could we have gone? I have no money to arrange transport out of the country, no relatives to seek shelter with, no home… She would have died in the countryside if I hadn't brought her with me."
The girl with the pistol frowned, lowering her weapon a fraction, her tone softening just a little. "What's your name?" she asked.
"What does that matter to you?"
The girl resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "It doesn't matter to me. It matters to someone else. What is your name? And please stop thinking about grabbing your rifle; you'll die before you even make it one step."
Tash cleared his throat, swallowing loudly, unaware of how obvious his little glances over to his rifle had been. He decided that it was probably wisest to play this strange girl's game, for now. "My name is Tash."
This time, the girl did roll her eyes. "I didn't ask for your nickname, I asked for your name. You're beginning to make me impatient."
"Alright, alright!" Tash raised his free hand, trying to keep the strange girl calm. "It's Tasha. Tasha Abramov."
That earned a round of surprised blinks from the pistol-wielding girl. "Did you say Abramov?" she asked.
"Yes, I absolutely did, and unless you are willing to take me with you, you had better shoot me right now, because there is no way I am letting this girl out of my sight." Tash heard the words pouring out of his mouth and was actually a little surprised that they were his own. He never thought he'd have it in him to stay brave with a gun pointed at his face.
Then the American girl lowered her pistol. She pulled down the scarf covering her face, and upon closer inspection Tash could see that she must have been wearing colored contacts, or something, because her irises were red. "You're lucky Skaianet sent me instead of Galavis; she would've plugged you by now… Fine, you can come," the girl said to him, holstering her weapon. "There's someone I know who'd like to meet you… Don't try anything with me, either; remember, I'm your only shot right now of getting out of this country in one piece. But no matter what, the girl is of more importance than you or me. If you can't keep up, I will leave you behind; don't forget that."
"Well, when you put it like that, I do not think I will," Tash muttered, retrieving his rifle and following the American outside. With patience and good timing, they were able to easily get away from Senaki and into the lowlands, heading west, away from the fighting. Eventually, they would reach the Black Sea, where Skaianet would have transportation waiting for the American girl.
Once Senaki was safely behind them, the American girl relaxed enough to engage Tash in conversation once again. She held out a hand. "My name's Tarrant, by the way. Abigail Tarrant. You gave me your name, figure I should return the favor."
Tash shook the hand hesitantly, not really sure how he should react to the stranger.
The American girl then gestured to the two-year-old in Tash's arms. "And her? Don't tell me you all have been calling her Guitar Girl this whole time…"
"I named her Tamara," Tash replied. "It was my grandmother's name."
The American girl, Abigail, pursed her lips, scrutinizing the name. Then she said, "Tami sounds better. Stick with that." When the American caught Tash's questioning glance, she gave a little shrug. "Nicknames aren't always bad, Tasha."