Pamela Clare - Striking Distance

“I think we’ve got a hostage.” He strode quickly to the terrified woman, grabbed a fistful of blue burka, and ripped it aside, exposing her completely.

For a moment all he could do was stare, his gaze taking in the tears and bruises on her cheeks, her swollen lip and thin face, her threadbare nightgown, the shock and terror in her eyes.

Laura!

And then his training kicked in. “This is now an AMCIT recovery. I say again: This is now an AMCIT recovery. Do you copy?”

Ross and Zimmerman ran down the helo’s ramp and took up defensive positions, ready to take out anyone who threatened Javier or Laura.

“We hear you lima charlie, senior chief,” the Boss answered from the third helo several hundred feet in the air above them. “Get her, and let’s go. We’ve got enemy QRF pushing our position from the east. You need to get airborne now!”

The second Chinook was already nosing its way downwind. Slow and cumbersome at liftoff, the helos made great targets for the Soviet-era RPGs that AQ combatants loved to fire at them. If the pilots couldn’t get them in the air and up to speed before the enemy got within firing range . . .

“Roger that.” Knowing the others were covering for him, Javier clipped his M4 into his tactical sling, lifted Laura into his arms, and turned toward the last helo, covering the ground in long, fast strides. Without a glance back, he ran up the ramp and settled Laura into his jump seat, Ross and Zimmerman pounding up the ramp behind him.

“All boots on board!” Zimmerman shouted.

“Ramp!”

“Ramp!” The shout was repeated as the cargo ramp was raised.

The helo rotors accelerated, seconds ticking by like hours as the big bird slowly left the ground, heading into the wind, the pilot fighting for translational lift. Javier listened as the pilot relayed their altitude, enemy QRF drawing ever closer.

A shell exploded not far from the helo’s tail, its blast wave making the helo lurch and drawing a gasp from Laura. Javier put a gloved hand on her shoulder, hoping to reassure her. “Sit tight.”

Too damned close.

The seconds ticked by, punctuated by two more explosions, each of them more distant than the last as the helo gained speed. Then came the deep rumble as JG detonated the explosives in the caves.

“We did it, senior chief!” Krasinski pointed at Javier. “Cobra strikes again!”

“We’re not done with the mission till we get back to home plate, Krasinski.” Heart beating hard, Javier leaned back against the webbing that lined the helo, grabbed it for balance, catching his breath, ratcheting down on the adrenaline, taking stock of his men, of the situation. Reeves had caught a round in the shoulder. Wilson, the platoon medic, had already treated it. Reeves would need surgery and PT, but he’d be fine. Apart from a few bruises and scrapes, no one else was wounded. Al-Nassar was battered but alive, his laptops, cell phones, disks, and drives bagged and tagged.

Delta Platoon had done what they’d been tasked to do on this mission—and they’d come away with something extra.

He let his gaze drop to Laura, felt a tangled rush of relief and rage. Clearly in shock, she sat there shivering in a white cotton nightgown that left little to the imagination, her face downcast, her long hair tangled. She was rail thin and pale, as if she had recently been ill or hadn’t eaten a good meal in months. There were fresh bruises on her face and her arms, proof that the other women had tried to restrain her.

All this time—eighteen goddamned months—she’d been here alive.

¡Carajo!

Al-Nassar’s group had claimed they’d executed her. They’d lied. Why?

He glanced at Al-Nassar, whose gaze was fixed on her, hatred mingling with something predatory in his eyes.

Lust.

The asshole had wanted her, had used her, had hurt her.

¡Mamabicho!

Cocksucker.

Like some trapped wild thing, Laura looked around at the helo full of men, her vulnerability tearing at Javier. He drew a blanket out of the webbing and wrapped it around her shoulders.

She hugged the blanket tightly around herself and looked up at him as if she weren’t quite certain he was real. “Th-thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He’d never told her he was a SEAL, and he was certain she didn’t recognize him beneath the uniform and camo face paint.

One by one, Javier’s men acknowledged her with polite nods.

“Ma’am.”

“We’re happy to have you on board, ma’am.”

“Welcome back, Ms. Nilsson.”

Then Al-Nassar began to speak, muttering something to her.

Her pale face went a shade whiter, fear in her wide eyes.

And something inside Javier snapped.

He smashed his fist into the bastard’s face—once, twice—the blow and the pain in his knuckles doing nothing to satisfy the burning anger inside him. Realizing what he’d done, he stepped back, fists clenched as he fought to rein himself in. “Wilson, gag and blindfold this motherfucker before I kill him.”

“You got it, senior chief.” Wilson grabbed a wad of gauze from his pack and shoved it into Al-Nassar’s mouth, tying it in place with more gauze.

Al-Nassar began to struggle, trying to pull his head away, blood trickling from his nose and a cut on his cheek.

Zimmerman stood and restrained him none too gently while Wilson tied a tourniquet over the bastard’s eyes. “You need to shut the fuck up and leave her alone, asshole. Got that? Yeah, I know you understood me. Went to Oxford, didn’t you? Paid the Brits back for your first-class education by trying to blow them up.”

Shaking with unspent anger, Javier looked down at Laura again. She probably thought they’d come to rescue her, when the truth was they hadn’t even known she was there. If she hadn’t shouted out for him, if she hadn’t run . . .

Christ!

He didn’t want to think about that.

What counted was that she had run. She’d found the strength and the guts to break free, to shout out, to let them know she was there.

And now they were taking her home.

February 14, 2013

Manhattan, New York

SANDWICHED BETWEEN THE two deputy U.S. Marshals—or DUSMs—who’d been assigned to escort her, Laura Nilsson pushed her way through the throng of reporters gathered outside the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, clutching her gray double-breasted wool coat tightly around her, a chill inside her that had nothing to do with the icy wind. Reporters pressed up against the barricades, called out questions, their mics shoved in her face, cameras clicking around her.

“How will it feel to face Al-Nassar in a court of law?”

“Why did you choose to testify? Are you hoping to encourage other victims of sexual violence to speak out?”

“What message do you hope to give the jury today?”

Laura stopped at the top of the stairs, turned to face the reporters, and willed herself to smile, refusing to let the cameras see inside her.

You can do this.

Pausing to gather her scattered thoughts, she spoke the words she’d rehearsed. “Thank you all for your support. Today marks for me the final chapter of an ordeal that began three and a half years ago. I know that justice will be served not only on my behalf, but also on behalf of the hundreds of others around the world who have suffered as a result of Al-Nassar’s terrible actions.”

Having given them a quote to take back to their editors, she turned to enter the courthouse. But she hadn’t taken a single step when another question rang out.

“What is your response to the allegations from Derek Tower of Tower Global Security that negligence on your part led to your abduction and the deaths of your cameraman, your security detail, and the safe house director?”

Her step faltered.

She fought back a rush of rage, turned toward the voice, and met the reporter’s gaze, her lips twisting into her best imitation of a smile. “Slow news day?”

The insult made the other reporters snicker.

Laura looked into the cameras once more, fighting to maintain her façade of calm. “The State Department’s investigation into my abduction was closed even before I was found alive. It was a random, tragic event perpetrated by a depraved terrorist. No one regrets what happened that day more than I do.”

“Not even the families of the men who died trying to protect you?”

She ignored the taunt, turned her back on the crowd, and entered the courthouse, disregarding the shouted questions that chased after her. The trial was closed to cameras and all but a handful of reporters, who’d been selected at random from a pool of news organizations, the solemn quiet inside the lobby a stark contrast to the chaos outside.

But Tower’s attack, so unexpected, had Laura’s heart thrumming. The bastard didn’t know when to quit. He’d been harassing her for weeks, insisting that it was her fault she’d been abducted. What did he think he was doing feeding those allegations to a reporter, making them public? Did he really think that dragging her down could somehow make his company look better?

Forget him. It’s not important.

She didn’t have time to think about that now. Not now. Not today.

A uniformed DUSM motioned her forward. “Put your purse in the plastic bin. Empty your pockets of keys, change, or other metal objects, and pass through the metal detector.”

She moved quickly through the security checkpoint, relieved to find Marie Santelle, one of the assistants with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, waiting for her. Dressed in a tailored black pantsuit, her dark hair done up in a sleek bun, Marie smiled, took Laura’s hand, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.” What else could she say? That she hadn’t slept last night? That her stomach was tied in knots? That she felt terrified?

Today, two years and three days after the SEALs rescued her from a living hell, she would see Al-Nassar again. She would face him in a courtroom, look him in the eyes, and denounce him to the world.

It was the day she’d been waiting for. It was the day she’d been dreading.

It was nearing the end of the second week of his trial, and his face had been all over the news, together with hers. It made no sense to Laura. The crimes he’d committed against her were the least of his offenses, nothing but a footnote in a criminal history that included terrorism and mass murder. And yet the press was obsessed with what he had done to her. Reporters had staked her out, called her at work, asked her questions that went beyond the public’s right to know, hoping to titillate their audiences with her worst memories, the ordeal she’d been fighting to put behind her fodder for public discussion on every channel, in every newspaper, on talk radio.

Allt kommer att bli bättre med tiden.

Everything will get better with time.

Her grandmother’s reassuring words came back to her.

Yes, it would all get better with time. It was already better.

Laura was no longer the terrorized, shattered woman the SEALs had rescued, a woman who barely remembered her own name. A year and a half of living with her mother and grandmother in Stockholm, together with intensive daily therapy, had helped her begin to heal. She might not feel like her old self, but she was slowly defining her new self. Or so her therapist had said when she’d burst into tears of frustration one afternoon, angry at herself for still being so pathetically weak, so fearful, so broken.

Her time as a captive made up only eighteen months out of thirty-two years of her life, and yet it seemed to define her. There were still days when the pain inside her was so strong she feared that if she started to cry, she would never be able to stop.

Still, she had so many reasons to be grateful.

She’d regained all the weight she’d lost and was no longer anemic. She was sleeping at night—most of the time. She was back in the States and had a nice loft in lower downtown Denver, or LoDo as locals called it. She had a seat on the I-Team—the award-winning Investigative Team at the Denver Independent newspaper. She’d even been on a few dates, though nothing had come of them.

It was a new beginning even if it wasn’t the life she’d planned for herself. And yet no matter how good her life was now, she didn’t feel whole.