Chapter 1 #2
No, she was going to be here until she died. No matter how this played out.
She had zero confidence that a miracle would happen, that they’d either let them go or someone would come to their rescue. Life only worked like that in movies and novels. The reality was, the boys would be forced to fight for these rebels, and the girls…
She didn’t want to think about their fate.
Refusing to cry, as that wouldn’t solve anything, Amanda herded the girls to the tent.
One minute at a time. That’s all she could do. That’s all she had the mental bandwidth to deal with. Whatever would happen would happen, but when the time came for her fate, she vowed to fight to the bitter end. She wouldn’t make it easy for them, no matter what their captors had in store for her.
Nash “Buck” Chaney clenched his fists under the table, trying to hold on to his patience.
He and his copilot, Obi-Wan, were currently in Guyana, preparing for a rescue mission.
Twenty-three children and one American teacher had been kidnapped from their school near the border of Venezuela and taken into the rainforest. They’d just been briefed by the director of the school about what had gone down that day just over two weeks ago, when the school was raided, and nothing they’d heard was making him very happy.
He and Obi-Wan might not be in the middle of a war zone, but knowing there were innocent children going through something horrific right this moment was making him more than a little anxious to get this mission started.
The location of the kidnapping victims was currently unknown, but the Guyanese government had an idea of where they might be, or at least of the direction they’d gone.
There were several training camps in the depths of the rainforest they were keeping an eye on, since they were relatively close to the border.
Tensions with their neighboring country had ramped up in the last few years, and no one wanted to be surprised by an invasion via the forest.
Hostilities were even higher very recently, because Venezuela announced the annexation of Guyana’s western territories in something they called the Venezuelan Referendum.
Guyana had strengthened their military partnership with the US in order to help protect their people and land from their larger neighbor.
But nevertheless, they had been surprised by the kidnapping.
It happened so fast. The men had crossed the border without detection, driven straight to the school, loaded up the children and teacher and crossed back into Venezuela, all within ten minutes.
There’d been one fatality—a teacher was shot—proving the men weren’t afraid to use lethal force if threatened.
The reason Buck and Obi-Wan were there was because the vice president of the United States had a connection to the small country of Guyana, and he’d pressed the president to take action. To authorize the use of the Night Stalkers to see if they could rescue the children.
Officially, the involvement of the specialized Army unit was because of the American teacher taken with the kids. That was their “in,” so to speak. Sending a message that kidnapping American citizens wouldn’t be tolerated.
It was a tenuous excuse at best. Because Amanda Rush had no connections to the military or government. She had no intel that any foreign military would deem desirable. She was a volunteer, spending time in Guyana helping an organization educate a school full of orphans.
But the longer Buck sat at the table and listened to intel about the group who took the kids and their teacher, the more uneasy he became.
This was no unorganized, ragtag group of men.
They were terrorists, plain and simple. Reports of the things they’d done in the past made his blood boil.
They were ruthless, and they didn’t care if the soldiers they “recruited” were nineteen or nine.
Those children would be forced to do heinous things, whether they wanted to or not.
And worse was the way the group treated women.
Girls. They were disposable. Second-class citizens.
Only good for the children they could birth.
It was a barbaric and old-school way of thinking, and it made Buck genuinely concerned for the well-being of Amanda Rush and the eight girls who’d been taken.
Buck’s question was—why had this school been targeted at all?
It wasn’t as if it was full of rich children.
It was a school for orphans. Children who had no family.
No money. Buck supposed if the rebels simply wanted boots on the ground, it made sense.
But there were even other schools closer to the border.
So why this school? Why pass up two other significantly larger schools with a lot more children?
There was even an all-boys academy with older kids, ages thirteen to eighteen, that the rebels had to have passed in order to get to the small orphanage.
It was possible they chose the smaller school because that meant potentially fewer adults to have to deal with…but would that really stand in their way if they’d hoped to grab a significant number of children?
In the grand scheme of things, Buck supposed it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was getting to those kids and their teacher before they disappeared forever.
That’s where he and Obi-Wan came in.
They were going to fly into the jungle, rescue the kids, and bring them all back to Guyana.
To safety. They were taking half a dozen members of the Guyanese military with them, as that was all they could fit in the chopper once the kids were rescued.
He and Obi-Wan had been reassured that the six men were more than capable of taking on the dozen or so militants who were hiding out in the jungle.
It seemed like a huge risk to Buck, but he had to believe the army knew the capabilities of both their special forces soldiers, and the men they were hunting. His main concern was the kids…and Amanda.
He didn’t know what it was about the woman that intrigued him so much.
She’d quit a job in Virginia—ironically in Norfolk, where he was currently stationed—to fly to South America and volunteer her time and expertise with the orphans at the small school.
He didn’t know many people who’d be willing to give up their lives to do such a thing.
Yes, people joined the Peace Corps all the time, but many were younger, not already well established in a career.
He supposed it wasn’t unheard of, but Amanda’s actions still impressed him.
And something that concerned Buck was the fact that Amanda was twenty-nine, single, no parents, no siblings…and apparently didn’t have one person worried that she was missing. He didn’t even know if anyone knew she’d been kidnapped.
His parents were currently living in Kansas, and while he didn’t talk to them every day, he was still close with them.
He reached out at least once or twice a month to touch base.
His sister was married with two kids and living in Washington state, but if something happened to him, he knew she’d drop everything and come to Virginia to see if she could help.
Not only that, but he had his Night Stalker family, the fellow pilots he worked with on a daily basis. Who had his back in the air and on the ground. He’d die for them, and he knew they’d do the same for him.
The thought of Amanda not having a single person in the world who cared where she was or what was happening to her…it didn’t sit well with him.
From everything he’d heard from her coworkers at the school here in Guyana, she was a hard worker, considerate, compassionate, and kind. It seemed all sorts of wrong that she was caught up in whatever was going on.
Buck only wished the rest of his team—Casper, Pyro, Chaos, and Edge—were with them to assist. Instead, they were in Mexico, helping with the aftermath of the latest hurricane.
Their skills were needed to help rescue stranded victims, and to deliver food and water to those who were cut off by raging floodwaters.
He and Obi-Wan had volunteered for the Guyana mission, and they’d meet up with their fellow Night Stalkers afterward in Mexico.
“Are we set on the plan?” Colonel Samuel Khan asked. He was in charge of the rescue mission, and would be monitoring how things were going from a small military base not too far from the Venezuelan border.
Joining them around the table were several other military officials, including the captain in charge of the special forces men tasked with taking care of any resistance from the rebels; the administrator of the school, Blair Gaffney; and her assistant, Desmond Williams.
Blair and Desmond had been tense throughout the meeting, and they’d brought with them a folder with names and pictures of all the children who’d been taken.
Looking at them now made Buck’s chest hurt all over again.
They were all so young. So innocent. He hated that this had happened to them.
Hated that they were probably scared out of their minds.
He wasn’t exactly glad that their teacher had also been taken, but he guessed without Amanda Rush, the kids would be even worse off.
“Buck? You good?” Obi-Wan asked.
Forcing his attention back to the present, Buck closed the folder.
The faces of those kids were etched in his brain…
but it was their teacher at the forefront of his mind.
She looked eager and happy in the staff picture that had been included in the packet of information provided by Blair and Desmond.