Page 10 of Trust Me
Chapter Four
“Satellite images show a vehicle arriving at the entrance to the slot canyon thirty minutes ago,” the captain running the briefing began. “Two people got out of the vehicle and were permitted to enter the camp. They were there for thirty minutes. Two people then left the way they came.”
“Any clue who they were?” a lieutenant asked.
“No,” the captain said. “We haven’t been able to get drones in place. The canyons are too narrow for anything other than the smallest short-range drones, limiting us to aerial views.”
“Are we sure Dr. Edwards is still there?”
“As sure as we can be. There’s no vehicle access other than the route by which she arrived. It’s possible she was one of the two people who left, but the images we have show no sign either person who left was a prisoner.”
“But it’s possible she’s been taken deeper into the gullies on foot,” Chris said.
“It is possible, yes, but as far as we can tell, there is no other encampment nearby.”
“There could be caves,” Fallon said. “Those are nomad tents. Any chance her abductors are Bedouin?”
The captain turned to the intelligence officer with a raised brow. The woman stood and said, “With information provided by Freya Lange, we were able to track down the antiquities stall owner that Diana had identified as Bibi. She was…reluctant to answer our questions, but has admitted she told her Syrian associates about Dr. Edwards’s interest in her wares. She knew the men intended to abduct the archaeologist, but didn’t expect to be part of the abduction and to have a knife held to her throat. She described the men as belonging to an offshoot of the Islamic State. They could be ISIS, ISIL, or a group we don’t know, but it is extremely unlikely Dr. Edwards’s abductors are Bedouin.”
Again, Dr. Edwards’s face filled the screen. This time, she was wearing a headscarf, drawing focus to the distinguishing marks on her face. A freckle on her left cheek. The uneven line of her thick, dark brows. A prominent scar that bisected her bottom lip. The scar was clearly on the newer side and surgery hadn’t been able to do much to neaten the appearance of what had been a jagged, deep cut.
He wondered at its origin and if she had feeling on the right side of her bottom lip, or if the nerve endings had been irrevocably severed.
“Edwards is nearly fluent in Arabic. According to Lange, she has an exceptional memory. The report from her SERE instructor said she possessed a controlled calm that was quite unusual. She showed fear, but at no point did she come close to panic.” The woman smiled. “Of course, SERE isn’t real and we have no way of knowing how Dr. Edwards is holding up now, nor do we know what she’s been subjected to since she was taken.”
“Do we have intel on whether there are other hostages in the camp?” Albrecht, a young petty officer who’d been on this team only a few months longer than Chris, asked.
“At this time we have no reason to believe there are other hostages. Satellite images indicate there are seven guards armed with assault rifles. We believe this is a militarized camp, not a family or nomadic community.”
“No other hostages, and no known civilians in the camp,” Fallon said, underscoring the message.
The captain nodded. “Anyone who stands between the team and exfiltration of Dr. Edwards is to be considered an enemy combatant and complicit in the abduction of Dr. Edwards.”
In other words, the rules of engagement allowed for killing everyone in the camp. But it wasn’t a mission objective.
Which made Chris wonder if they hoped Dr. Edwards had gathered intel that would be even more beneficial if some of her captors could be followed back to their cells. It wasn’t lost on him—or probably anyone in this room—that Edwards’s fluency and brains had been underscored for the team just as Fallon had underscored who the enemy was.
But how much intel could an archaeologist gather in less than twelve hours of captivity?
The Seahawk lifted from the flight deck. The mission to extract Dr. Edwards from the terrorist camp was a go. Chris felt the usual thrum of adrenaline. This team might be new to him, but the job was not.
Still, he knew better than to feel any kind of complacency when it came to an op. A rescue mission that should have been a chip shot field goal had been the worst op of his life, and a weeklong training on American soil had turned into a nightmare with a higher body count than any real op since he’d made the teams.
Seven tangos. One hostage.
Don’t expect easy.
The only easy day was yesterday.
The helo dropped them six klicks from the camp. Given the tight wadi, they had no choice but to approach on foot from a distance. Chris’s Fire Team going in from the west, Fallon’s had the easier, but more visible route from the east.
The desert had cooled with the setting sun, but the weight of the pack and body armor as they hurried through the slot canyon in the dark generated plenty of heat.
A short distance from the camp, his Fire Team took cover in every alcove they could find, and Albrecht launched a drone the size of a quarter to scout the camp. Over the radio, Fallon informed everyone his team had done the same.
Chris toggled the controls on his night vision goggles so he could see what the drone saw as it entered the camp.
Intel had identified seven tangos. Two guarded the perimeter; the others were inside the tents. They hadn’t been able to identify which tent held Dr. Edwards. Hopefully the drone could do that.