My breathing was shaky as Arthur returned. "It's ironic, really. You've fought so bravely, resisted with such tenacity held onto your secrets better than I ever thought you could. Never would I have imagined that the questions I asked of you would be answered by your own government. The country has forsaken you, outed you as an American spy."
No! I thought, resisting the urge to cry out or blink. They wouldn't… Shaking.. I couldn't believe what he had just said.
I believed Blackburn had just signed my death warrant. I knew that if i survived torture or capture by the Iranians, I would not be able to walk for a year.
My heart dropped out of my chest and landed soggily in my gut.
"After all the torture, the hood, the knives, the gun, your people have done my work for me."
"You're lying."
A split second later a calloused palm edge cracked into the left side of my skull and my head collapsed to my chest. A fist lashed into my face and I went the rest of the way down.
I treed to get up and got a second first in face for the trouble. Blood dripped from my nose onto my knee.
"That wasn't smart, American." The voice was marginally less calm. "If you think your friends can trace us to where you're going, then they must have fucked with your brain. Let's take a ride, shall we?" He grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet, and pushed me out the door. Finally, the white was now colour.
I was pushed down a long, dark hall, and made to wait at the end. Arthur stood behind me and unlocked the handcuffs, humming without a tune.
The door banged open, and I jumped. Fresh sweat sprang on my skin. Two bearded men with eyes of hot jet came into the hall. They were both dressed in loose linen for the heat.
I flung myself at them, just to unlock the freezing panic reflex and gain some measure of control over the built-in helplessness.
One of them fended off my arms and back handed me across the faces. It floored me. I lay there, face numb, tasting blood. One of them yanked me back to my feet by an arm. Distantly, I saw the face of the other, the one who had hit me, and tried to focus on him.
"So," He said." "We begin."
I lunged for his eyes with the nails of my free arms. The Seal training gave me the speed to get there but i had no control and missed. Two of my nails drew blood on his cheek. He flinched, and jumped back.
He cursed, lifting a hand to claw the mark and examining the blood on his fingers.
"Oh please," I managed, out of the unnumbed side of my mouth. "Do we have a script too?" I jammed to a halt.
"Not Aida Hareb, then," he said. "We progress." This time, he hit me just under the rib cage, driving all the breath out of my body and paralysing my lungs.
I folded over his arm like a coat and slid off onto the floor, trying to draw breath. All that came out was a faint creaking sound. I twisted on the concrete while, somewhere high above me, he snapped the handcuffs from Arthur's hands. It make an obscene clanking sound.
He squatted beside me and cuffed one of my hands. I thrashed as if galvanised and this time, and it took him a moment to immobilise my other arm long enough to repeat the process. An urge to scream that wasn't mine surfaced and I fought it down. Pointless. Conserve your strength.
The floor was hard and uncomfortable against the soft skin of my elbows.
The energy was draining on me quickly-the tiredness, the hunger, all making themselves more apparent.
I was shoved into the back of a van, and my handcuffs chained to the roof.
Arthur climbed in after me, and the doors slammed behind him.
The engine turned over, and the van shook. "Evin Prison. That's where we're going right now. You will spend the night in solitary. Actually, that's not accurate. I'll be with you." He grinned.
I swallowed hard, knowing I was going to be executed publicly next. And, quite possibly, Alpha Dogs won't even stick around to watch. A tear rolled down my face, but I only allowed one.
"Your country may have told us who you are, but there is so much more inside your brain I need to extract."
"I will give you nothing." I replied bluntly.
"You will give me everything."
I closed my eyes, waiting for the voice to return, to comfort me. To tell me he loved me. But nothing but the humming of the van as it sped down a smooth road.
Surely, if my men were going to rescue me, they'd have succeeded by now.
I blinked hard and faced the horrifying facts.
There was nothing I could do. There were no precautions I could take. There was no place I could hide. There was no one who could help me.
I realized, with a nauseous roll of my stomach, that the situation was worse than even that.
A global catastrophe was caused, not only by me, but Alpha Dogs, too. They were also in danger. What if they hadn't made it out?
The tremors rocked me until my teeth chattered.
To calm myself, I fantasized the impossible: I imagined a big nuke meeting the ground in Tehran, blowing us all into smithereens, and massacring the indestructible rebels the way they would any normal person. Despite the absurdity of such a vision, the idea comforted me.
If the enemy was destroyed, the insurgents then couldn't tell if I was here all alone.
My good soldiers were never coming back; how soothing it was to imagine that the other
kind could also disappear.
I squeezed my eyes tight together and waited for unconsciousness–almost eager for my
nightmare to start.
Pain will be without limit. The interrogator will be without mercy.
It is a universe of suffering. There will seem to be no end. Accept that it will never stop.
Scream your way through it, or cry, or bleed, let them think they have begun to break you.
Remember only one thing. An animal in the forest is caught in a trap. It will flail, bite, snap, try to escape. Gnaw its own leg off. You are no animal. You are a DEVGRU operator. You aren't trapped.
You're waiting.
They control the environment.
Wait.
Find the weakness in the enemy.
We are patient. We wait. We endure. We find the weakness, and then we strike.
Even if it is to destroy the weakness in ourselves.
Convince him you are broken. He believes you are the one in the trap. Use that. Take what is offered. Use it. Let him believe you are weak. Until he discovers you are not.
My eyes flashed open. I remembered it all. The Green team training that seemed so long ago now.
I found Arthur sitting across from me, staring at me blankly.
"I'm not who you think I am." I croaked.
"Who are you supposed to be now?" Arthur replied stoically.
I grinned weakly. "Someone you truly should not have fucked with."
Arthur's face dropped.
"You dumb motherfuckers abducted and tortured and Navy Seal. You got any idea what the Corps with do to you for that? They'll hunt you down and feed you to the K9 units. All of you. Then your families, then your business associates, then their families, and the anyone else who gets in the way. By the time Colonel Flag is finished you won't even be a memory. You don't fuck with a Commanding Officer and live to write songs about it. They'll eradicate you." That was a colossal bluff.
"Shit." Arthur breathed, staring wide eyed at me. "Why would the Special Forces Operator be sniffing around Tehran, huh?" he fought back.
"Jarif." My gaze was not friendly.
Arthur scoffed. "No one know where you are. In fact, they will see your blood splattered all over the news soon enough. They'll never find us."
"They'll find you," I said, with the confidence that a strand of truth in the lie provided. "You can't hide from The United States. They'll find you whatever you do. About he only thing you can hope for now is to try cut a deal."
"What deal?" Arthur asked.
"Well, first of all, you cut me loose, and no one talks about this to anybody. Let's call it a professional misunderstanding. And then you open some channels for me. Name some names. Black market like Iran, the information circulates. That might be some worth to me."
"As i said before, you're going to the prison. Then I won't be involved-"
I came off the rail, letting just enough anger bleed through. "Don't fuck with me, pal. You are involved. Like it or not, you took a big bite out of something that didn't concern you, and now you're either going to chew it, or spit it out. Which one's it gonna be?"
"I will consider this." Arthur turned away.
With the new realisation I knew this was how the DEVGRU's worked. A common snatch and grab. And I was being moved from the push of the American government. Now was the perfect time to intervene.
But too much time had passed.
There was no gunfire, or screeching of tires. There was nothing the rumble of tires under the floor beneath us.
How selfish was my hope? Or maybe what Arthur said was true-they outed me as a spy to protect the others. But the new global threat was inevitable.
For what I did to Jarif has sparked a new war between Iran and the U.S. And who remains in the Alpha Dogs would be led to their deaths.
I knew what was coming. Not only a public execution, but the humiliation of everything else. The murder of the insurgent's commander, the fact that I am American in Iran- Illegally. And a trained American, at that. But surely now, Arthur and Qassem knew exactly who I was, even if they didn't say it aloud.
If only I could tell my father and Andy how much I really loved them before it was far too late. If only I took the order to exfil when I was advised. If only I left with my team, instead of making a feeble attempt to assassinate one of Iran's biggest warlords. But my regrets were far too late now. The world would move on, and the sun would rise without me.
There was a sudden explosion from outside the van, shaking us as we screeched to a halt.
Arthur stood up and was flung to the floor by the force of the brakes, and his gun flew from his hand.
I grabbed Arthur's neck with my feet, and squeezed as hard I could.
There was the rattle of gunfire outside, and bullets smashed through the glass of the cabin as Arthur tried to break free. He reached up to grab me, but I bit his hand, tasting his blood through my teeth. The chain bound around my ankles tightened against Arthur's neck.
The gunfire stopped, but I didn't. I put as much strength in the chain as I could, making it tighter around his neck.
He relaxed slowly, and I kept the chain tight, breathing heavily with the adrenaline. He finally slumped to the floor, and I tried to catch my breath. There was a thump against the van door, and I froze, eyes wide as I watched the door.
"Trig, turn steel!" A voice outside the van was muffled.
Someone was here for me! I realised and used the last of my energy to turn away from the door, shielding myself from the blast.
"Clear!"
A loud bang shrilled through the van, and sparks showered the floor. The force of the explosion forced my against the wall of the van, and I slumped against the van wall, my ears ringing.
My eyes were cloudy when I tried to open them, and the voices outside were distant.
I expected Charlie Team to pick up the pieces after a failed op by Alpha, and I wanted to see someone I recognised at least.
The door flung open. "Clear!"
Arthur's body was being dragged out of the van, and two blurry figures who stood over his body on the ground.
"Got him?"
"Yeah." One of them pulled out his pistol and shot Arthur in the head twice. A comforting sound, though, there went my hope for revenge later.
Someone climbed into the van and scrambled to their knees beside me, tugging on the hand cuffs.
"Jaz?" Flag's voice shouted.
Though I tried to respond, but my mouth and eyes wouldn't move.
Something smashed against the chain holding my hands together, and my arms fell to my lap. I groaned.
"Trig? Jesus." Someone said.
"Come on, come on," Flag was urging, as though he were trying to tell the men to help me.
"I'm gonna give her a shot of epinephrine." Someone said.
"Come on, hit her!" Another voice replied.
I felt some energy return, but only a small bit. I groaned as something sharp poked my skin.
"There she is." Taylor's voice sounded relieved.
"Let's go." A voice said. In a quick and supple notion, Flag pulled me from the seat and into his arms.
I hung there, limp, as Flag loped swiftly into another van.
It didn't seem like too much time passed before there were lights and the deep babble of many male voices.
"Quds will be here soon." Another voice sounded rushed. "Cops will be locking down the city."
I couldn't make sense of what they were talking about. I pried my eyes open, and saw vaguely familiar faces, but dressed Iranian fatigues. A confusing swirl of faces moved over me. Was I dreaming?
Only now did I feel the searing, stinging pain that ran from my ribs to the crease inside my knee.
Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my torso–into the frantic eyes of the five suddenly alarmed Special Forces Operatives.
I tried to call out to Flag, but I only heard weak muttering coming from my dry mouth.
"Just hold on," Flag's beautiful velvet voice whispered anxiously.
I was startled at the sound of his voice, but it should not have surprised me.
"Let's go guys!"
"Alright, I got her." Flag said calmly. The van door slammed, and we lurched forward, tires screeching.
My eyelids were strangely heavy, but I fought to see the men who had come to my rescue.
Flag's heart was pounding in is chest, looked down at me. There was a pair of familiar green eyes. I gasped and let out a quiet sob of relief. I wished I could tell him how much I was sorry, but I couldn't find my voice.
"Okay." Flag said softly. "We got you."
I let out a slow breath of calm and sleep dragged me under.
I opened my eyes again when the van door opened.
Flag's weight shifted under me, and I was carried outside. Two men now grabbed me under the arms, making the knife wound stretch open. I fought back a whimper.
"From here it's a short drive to the Turkish border. Esendere crossing the smaller and least patrolled land crossing out of the country." Hassan advised.
"Night time will help," Taylor said.
I was slowly pulled up from the ground, and I slumped on something cold and hard. The smell of fruit wafted across me.
My vision became more clear, and we were in the middle of no-where, the desert.
Flag climbed onto the back of the truck with me and guided me to a lower deck behind a large crate. I grunted painfully as I laid down on the wooden panel, and Flag climbed in behind me, shifting his arm to beneath my head, creating a pillow
"Well, that's good, 'cause they're gonna be looking for us."
Taylor and Thibault climbed into the cavity beside us, and Hassan placed planks across the hollow, concealing us from anyone who may be searching the truck.
"And we'll be looking for our contact, Reza, with border security. For a price, he's willing to help us. He'll be expecting us. I built this for smuggling runs into Iraq. Craig, you're gonna ride in the front with me. All right, let's get her up here, nice and slow."
"Here we go." Flag whispered, and Hassan started the truck. "Talk to me." I swallowed hard. "I should've played things differently. I got us all into this mess."
"Did you kill Jarif the guy who orchestrated the murders of civilians and children and your fellow servicemen?" Hayes droned.
"Yeah," My voice was husky with the residue of sleep.
"Are we getting out of this country?" He asked.
I looked over at Thibault, not more than two feet away, looking at me with sympathy, which made me feel even worse. "Yeah, we are. So then that's it, all right? You did good." Flag added.
"Jackpot." Taylor agreed.
The sun had gone down and it was pitch black.
The truck never stopped.
"Tac," Taylor said suddenly, making me jump as I dozed in Flag' arms. "What's our ETA?"
I was anxious to get out-but I was content exactly where I was. I was simply too exhausted to worry about anything - tired from just being tortured and sedated, and aching from the shivering. My body relaxed slowly as I thawed, piece by frozen piece, and then turned limp. "Rick?"
"Hmm?" his voice sent vibrations through me.
"What took you so long?" I didn't have anything else to say. As the silence lengthened, my eyelids drooped and shut, and my breathing grew slower, more even.
"That's right, honey, go to sleep," His voice whispered. I tried to do what he instructed. It was hard; the instinct for fight or flight was nearly uncontrollable.
I sighed, content, already half-unconscious.
"Flag?" Thibault whispered. "She okay?"
"I think so. But she needs to get to the hospital ASAP she's very weak and keeps losing consciousness."
"That was too close, Taylor. It can't happen again. What if Blackburn loses his job over this?" Logan Thibault began, his voice sounding higher and more stressed than usual.
Taylor didn't say anything.
"I'm serious. We can't let this happen again. What if we were too late?"
"Keep your questions to yourself." Taylor grunted.
"No one said you had to listen."
Taylor huffed. "Trig made the decision to go in. No one forced her. And believe me, I did think about stopping her."
"Well, why didn't you?" Flag hissed.
"Because she wouldn't forgive me if I did." Taylor sighed. "If we didn't get to her, there wouldn't be anything of her left to hate with. She is a valuable asset, and I'd hate for her to get into this kind of trouble again."
"Flag, she's our commander. Her choice overrules ours. Every. Single. Time." Hayes added.
There was no response.
I was too far gone to ask them to stop talking about me like I wasn't there. The conversation had taken on a dreamlike quality to me, and I wasn't sure I was really awake.
"I'm sorry about before." Flag said.
"Are you?" Taylor grunted.
Flag grunted. "Yeah, I was out of line. I was just worried about Jaz."
"Well that's obvious." Taylor chuckled.
Thibault groaned. "Will you girlies shut it?"
Flag didn't respond for a moment, listening to the tires crush the gravel, the humming of the engine or digesting what he'd heard, I didn't know which.
It was then that I let the pain take me.
Then I was aware of the voices. They were just a humming at first, and then they grew in volume and clarity like someone was turning up a radio.
"She's had too much to deal with today. Let her mind protect itself."
But my mind was not protected. It was trapped in the knowledge that had not left me, even
in unconsciousness - the pain that was part of the blackness.
I felt totally disconnected from my body. Like I was caged in some small corner of my head, no longer at the controls. But I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't think. The agony was too strong for that. There was no escape from it.
A warm palm pressed against my cheek, and then fingers stroked my forehead, but I couldn't find a force in me to tell whoever it was to stop making a fuss. Instead, I let myself slip back under.
I woke up again, a dreamless slumber. We were still in the truck, and still in the dark.
Faint voices became clearer as I came to.
"At the crossing, let me do the talking. If they ask, we're delivering produce to the Hakkari province." Hassan said.
"Are you really coming with us?" Craig answered.
"Iran is over for me. It has been ever since my daughter Mayam died. I'm ready to leave."
"I thought you said it was the least patrolled."
"It usually is. Increased presence at the border."
"Instead of two guards, I'm looking at six, maybe eight soldiers."
The truck began to slow, groaning as Hassan shifted down a gear, and finally breaking. I could hear indistinct chatter, shouting and low tones.
"Border guards commencing search." Flag whispered, placing his hand over my mouth gently. "Shhh Jaz."
"They've got us on border lock."
"There's no way past that."
"There is one way."
"Stay sharp." Flag was breathing heavily, although I wasn't coherent enough to know why. And I wasn't going to ask if he told me to be quiet.
There was more shouting, and someone opened a crate above us.
Hassan chuckled.
Taylor and Hayes sighed in relief, but then one man stopped above us, and jammed a crowbar in the crack between the planks concealing us from them.
My breathing was shaky now, as I began to realise what was happening. They were about to find us…
Flag took his hand off my mouth and back onto my head, trying to comfort me. I squeezed my eyes shut hard, looking away from the planks above.
"They've been made." Craig said from the cab.
A man outside began shouting.
"When I say hit it, punch the engine." Hassan ordered.
"No. There's got to be another way."
"These monsters killed my daughter. They don't kill my friends, too."
There was more Arabic shouting, but not clearly enough for me to understand.
Hassan opened his door and jumped out, crushing the dirt below. "Go!"
There was deafening gunfire mere feet from us, and the truck suddenly punched forward, barrelling at such a speed, that every bump made me slam into the wood below.
I groaned, and Flag held me tighter.
The gunshots faded, and it sounded like we crashed into something, but we didn't stop. The ride became smoother.
"We are through the border, heading west on D-400, ETA six hours to Incirlik." Thibault shouted.
"We're clear." Craig confirmed.
Flag let out a long breath in my ear. "Tac, inform the Turkish government that we have a vehicle in priority transit. Make sure there's a medical team standing by waiting to tend to Jaz the second she arrives on that base."
The sun began to rise, and I cherished the fresh air hitting my skin.
The last few days I'd thought I would never see the sun again or feel the wind in my hair. But here I was, on the back of the truck racing away from the Iranian border.
We had to stop to refuel, so we all climbed out from under the hollow and stretch out on the deck.
Flag was nestled under a jacket on top of a crate, and I sat on the very edge watching the horizon-though it never came.
Thibault was perched on top of crates, staring out into the desert, and Taylor was humming to himself in the corner, knees propped up against his chest.
Craig was still driving. The last several hours was a blur-maybe someone would enlighten me. But for now, I enjoyed what freedom I did have-for now.
But my attention drifted. I was surprised to find that the subject of my freedom was suddenly not as gratifying as it had been just a moment ago. I looked over myself, as I began to feel itches and stings all over me. The white gown was still draped over me, splattered with dried blood.
Was it mine? I looked around at my team-none of them were injured.
I looked through the back window of the cab. Craig sat inside, unmoving like a statue.
My ribs began to ache. My arms and legs stung. My chest tightened and I began to panic.
The syringe Thibault gave me had worn off, and I could feel my injuries.
I groaned and looked over myself, touching the tears in the fabric, and the dried blood that hardened around them.
Then I remembered the searing hot metal blade. My recollections of time during the torture were hazy - the Seal conditioning was deliberately curtaining off the experience to avert the trauma - but even if it had gone on a couple of days, that was about ten minutes real time.
The finger tips scraped over the roughness of torn skin in the wound, and I felt something membranous throb against one of them below my ribs. I grimaced at the movement of the gown against the wound. "Fuck that stings."
Flag stirred, but remained asleep, and Thibault looked up at me.
"You alright?" He asked.
One eyebrow arched. "Got any more of that stuff?"
He shook his head. "Sorry, Trig. That's all I had. It was strong, too but you kept fighting it."
I grinned. "Typical," I winced as I tried to shift my weight. "What happened?"
"It took us two weeks to find your location, a slaughterhouse. And we couldn't get in. So Blackburn outed you as an American spy to get Qassem to move you."
My eyebrows pulled together. "Two weeks?"
Taylor continued. "I'm glad we got you back boss."
My eyes darted to Flag, who was curled up under the jacket. "I can't imagine how hard that must have been."
"I can't tell you how he felt." Thibault replied quietly. "We should check you over."
"I'm fine. Just a little sore." But I was wrong. More fresh air hit me in the face as the wind picked up, making me dizzy. "Trig, you don't look too good…" Hayes warned.
I sunk down to the deck and leaned my head against it, feeling the world spin around me. Hayes' and Thibault's voices were sounding muffled and my skin was all hot and prickly. I breathed slowly in and out, focusing on that to calm myself.
Blood was drying in thick streaks across my cheek and neck, matting in my muddy hair.
I examined myself clinically, pretending the blood was paint so it wouldn't upset my stomach. I breathed through my mouth, and was fine, but I was sucking in the air too quickly, and I suddenly felt light-headed. "I can't breathe…" I whimpered.
A warm liquid burned my lungs and my throat was too full of blood to catch a breath.
I couldn't see anything but darkness everywhere, reaching for my face.
"Breathe!" a voice, wild with anxiety, ordered, and I felt a cruel stab of pain where I recognized the voice–because it wasn't Thibault's even though I was just speaking to him a moment ago.
I could not obey. The warm, metallic blood filled my chest, burning.
A rock smacked into my back again and again, right between my shoulder blades, and another volley of liquid choked its way out of my lungs.
"Breathe, Trig! C'mon!" Taylor begged.
Black spots bloomed across my vision, getting wider and wider, blocking out the light.
The rock struck me again.
The rock wasn't cold like the air; it was hot on my skin. I realized it was Taylor's hand, trying to beat the liquid from my lungs. The iron bar that had dragged me from the deck was also… warm… My head whirled, the black spots covered everything…
Was I dying again, then? I didn't like it–this wasn't as good as the last time. It was only dark now, nothing worth looking at here.
The sound of the humming engine faded into the black and became a quiet, even whoosh that sounded like it was coming from the inside of my ear.