Abigail woke up to the same way she had in the last several years- with dirt up her nose and mites eating her alive. But it wasn't just the mites that woke her up. The door banging against the wall as someone walked into her room.
"Abby," the young voice said, making her aware that it was the boy named Karim coming to feed her again.
Across the dimly lit dirt floor room a boy about ten years old came towards her with a metal pitcher in one hand and a loaf of home cooked bread in the other. She hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours, her stomach was reminding her of that.
"Hi." She mumbled, knowing that today was going to be like any other day for her.
She always woke up at the crack of dawn to work, and by work she did something she regretted every time she tied two wires together.
"How many more?" The Taliban boy asked, setting the pitcher on her right side and then handing her the bread.
Taking the bread she broke it in two, giving half to the boy. "How many from yesterday?" She asked in return.
He sat down in front of her, his hair swaying slightly. He hadn't gotten it trimmed this month, which was surprising since his father made him get it cut at least once a month. The last thirty or so days she hadn't seen him get it cut.
"Six, I count six pipes that you made."
Heaving a sigh she looked at the mess of wires, timers, watch parts, clocks and other salvages pieces of metal that were given to her on an almost daily basis. There were parts starting to come together, another five if she had to think about it. Another four if she got to those that day.
"We'll have nine by tonight." She said. "Five by noon if I can just be left alone for a while."
It wouldn't be the first time some man had come in on her working, demanding something in Arabic to her, which Karim would have to translate for her. She'd been able to speak some Arabic, not a lot though in the five years she had been kept.
The bread was dry, her ass was hurting and her back stiff. At least they had given her a stool to sit on while she did the work that made her sick.
"The Iraqi's are moving closer." Karim said, head down.
The Taliban had been employing child warriors, boys Karim's age and older to fight in their last ditch effort to reclaim their territory. She knew that Iraqi forces were being trained by Iran militant forces, or that was what Abigail had heard through the Karim grape vine.
"Father says we move soon." He added before finishing off his part of the bread.
While she thought about it, Abigail ate her piece of the bread. They would move, as they had a half dozen times before in an effort to hide their secret weapon.
Their secret weapon was a woman that could build bombs and IEDs for them to use against their enemies. And she fixed guns if they were to jam or whatever. And she couldn't do a damn thing about it.
How could a one legged woman escape anyway with nothing to support her?
Ever since she was captured her left leg, or what remained of it, was the painful reminder that everyone probably thought she was dead. It prevented her from trying to escape. She had wanted to sneak out but that would be difficult when she didn't even know where the hell she was.
"Where to?" Abigail asked in regards to having to move again.
"North," came his simple answer.
North, they were already pretty north enough as it was. The Taliban and their Syrian counter parts were fighting a battle on both sides, similar wants and needs to be done. It was hard to believe that she was caught behind enemy lines without anyway to get word out that she was alive. If someone knew they were not going to let that go.
"Come on, Karim." Dusting off her hands, Abigail maneuvered so that she could get up on her right leg. "We have work to do."
Karim was her translator and her assistant when it came to making bombs and IEDs. He had learned a lot from her in the last three years that they were put together. Karim's father was the man in charge of their branch of the Taliban, he knew that Karim would tell him anything American related if the American woman would say it.
"I need that circuit board from the phone." She said putting down her flathead screwdriver.
The only light overhead didn't give her much light. Nor did the occasional background bombs put her at ease as she tied the explosives to the shrapnel case. It only reminded her of the reason why she was alive and why they hadn't killed her yet. They would need her to work her many years of bomb training. Using phones and other such devices to create bombs, both IEDs and Suicides. It was the worse to create the vest bombs, watching the women putting them on without fear of death.
Too many times Abigail had watched the final goodbyes of men and women after she had set the explosives on their vests. She seen the kids crying for their mothers and fathers not to but for Alla they would do it for their families.
"Abby," she looked up when seeing Karim holding the circuit board to a phone out to her.
"Thanks, Karim." She said taking it.
He was tasked with taking apart the pieces mainly. If she asked for something then he would hand it over once he had found it. Her job was assembling them on the only table that was supplied to her. No doubt that when they moved, she would have to get used to the rides.
The throb in her mangled leg reminded her of the nerve damage she sustained to her femur. It was the explosion of an IED that cost her her leg, her unit, her life. If she had just…
"No, shut up." She said, shaking her head.
Karim must have been getting used to her talking to herself. Abigail did that on occasion when her stormy thoughts started to cloud her judgement and effect her work. She didn't want to loose her hands as well as her life, just to have a bomb blow up in her face.
Hours seemed to slip by faster if she was working on an IED or bomb. By lunch, as she had anticipated, four of the explosives were ready to be used.
"There, that's the fourth one. Go tell them to come pick them up." Abigail said pushing back from the table slightly where she left the four finished explosives.
But before the boy could leave there was one explosion that caused the floor to shake and the single hanging light bulb over head swinging. There were yelling in Arabic, but it was Karim's face that made Abigail worry. He stood with his legs spread, arms out, eyes wide and looking at Abigail. He didn't know what was going on, he'd never been this close to the fighting that the Taliban was capable of.
For the second time that day the door slammed open, revealing the man Abigail only knew as Karim's father. He never gave his name, he was a tall man that often wore a black mask any time he was around. The man had two guns, one AK-47 and a hand pistol of some sort.
"Karim," the man followed the boy's name with Arabic so fast that even if she understood what he was saying, she couldn't make it out.
"Karim," he looked back at her but he had been pulled out of the room.
A second explosion made the dirt fall from the ceiling, making Abigail fling herself into the corner that was where she had been sleeping. She looked up and Karim and his father weren't there. More Arabic yelling, then there was gunfire, bullets peppered the wall that was just up over her head.
She curled up in a ball, arms over her head, her face pressing into her right knee. Abigail was scared, beyond scared. What was happening, what was going on? Was Karim okay?
She wanted to live, Abigail wanted to live for the sake of her family. Reaching into her shirt she brought out something that she always kept close to her heart, a small collection of wrinkled and bent photographs rested in her hands.
The first was a year old blue pitbull with large white front paws. That was her Koda, who sat looking up at the camera with a drooling tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. She remembered taking that picture shortly before she had been deployed. The second picture was of her and her cousins together, again right before she had been deployed. Mika was riding her back in the backyard of her childhood home. Larry and Taylor were trying to keep the two females from falling into the backyard pool. That's what happened shortly after the picture had been taken.
She laughed through her tears as the bombing and the raining bullet peppered around her. If they weren't careful the room was going to explode with the finished bombs in there. She would be blown up again, loosing more than another body part. If her intent was to get out of there alive she needed to do something other that cower like a coward.
When there was a break in the warfare, Abigail stuck her precious pictures back in her top and started to belly crawl towards the door. If she stayed down there was a less likely chance of getting hit.
"Go, Winters. Get moving, you coward." She grumbled feeling the pain in her left leg and her back flair up as she tried to move.
Under her work table she crawled, off in the distance it seemed like the fighting at moved on towards the higher part of the town. Hoping that the children were okay, Abigail continued on. Her longer brown hair had fallen out of the string tie that she had been keeping it in, it fell over her back as she bell crawled towards the door. Her hopes of getting out of there were within reach.
An inch or two towards the doorknob then she would be free of the hole she had been forced to live in. But where would she go when she gets on out? She couldn't worry about that just yet there was another issue at hand.
The door opened inward, it slammed right into Abigail's head, making her roll with the blow of the door. Holding her bleeding face, her vision blurred and the thick feeling of blood coming from her temple and her nose, the bitter taste of blood spilling into her mouth. She could not tell who it had been that opened the door, hitting her senseless but she could make out that they were men.
"She's American." A highly Arabic accented voice said from above her.
It was followed by a series of Arabic words, some saying didn't know, then there was slave or was it hostage? Blinking, Abigail tried to look up, tried to see who it was. She felt a hand going around her neck but it pulled at the dog tags that she continuously wore.
"Lt. Abigail Winters," the first male said. "Are you prisoner?"
"Yes," she finally got a good look at them.
They were Iraqi militant army people, trying to get Taliban out of the country. Or end it at all costs. I hadn't seen them before but I had heard of them. Their flag was pinned to their shoulders, but they lacked proper military uniforms. Some wore blue but other wore used camouflage from when the Americans were involved in their war.
Suddenly someone said something and two of the men hauled Abigail up to her one good leg. With her arms around them, they slowly made their way out of the compound, the hold out of the Taliban branch that had her for the last couple of years.
Bodies laid strewn out, blood covered bodies with guns at their sides. Had they shot a direct hit on Abigail's room then the entire place would have blown up with more dead than what there were in the halls.
The place had once been something like a manor, maybe. She wasn't so sure. But when she had been brought her some years ago, there was an open air courtyard and that was where she saw the worst thing since being taken captive.
They two men were walking by the long dry fountain and a heap of bodies lay there. But one of them didn't have a black mask, an obvious child and one she knew too well.
"Karim!" Abigail yelled, seeing the boy's pale white face turned up, blank eyes peering out of the his marred face. "Karim!" She shoved the two men away, pushing herself to the ground and crawling to the boy. "Oh Karim!" She wailed, pulling his lifeless body to her.
She brought the boy to her, cradling him on the musty floor, the dirt running red with bracken blood. Abigail tried to straighten out his hair, tried to wipe the blood from his pale cheeks. But it were the bullet holes in his back that startled her. They shot him in the back.
"No, no! You murdered him!" She yelled at the militant men. "You killed a boy with his back turned. How could you! He was my friend, he was my friend. He was the only goddamn person that actually cared about me!"
Her sobbing and wailing, keening and cursing made the militant men stop what they were doing. This woman, this American woman was weeping for one of her captures. A boy no doubt.
"I could have saved him!" Abigail yelled, pressing her face into his silken hair, holding him to her as a mother would have.
Karim, that was all Abigail knew him. She never got his last name. But he wore something, something close to him.
With a tug, she pulled off the corded string that hung something in his shirt, something that had been as precious to him as Abigail's pictures were to her. It was a golden crescent and a star pendant, long since lost it's matching gold chain, that she took. If there was something of Karim's she was going to take it.
It was the last thing of the only good person that she was ever going to have from that hellhole.
I actually had to change the rating of the story because of this chapter. I feel so bad for killing a little boy but it is essential for Abigail and the struggles she has to deal with.
Next chapter: Larry gets the call that shakes up his mood and turns his world upside down. Stu is there to help his friend in any way he can.