Chapter 13 Anthony
Anthony
When the sun starts to set, turning the sky a brilliant shade of orange and pink, we’ve been up for hours, gathering information about the villagers and their children. We had dinner with the families and the extraction is planned for tomorrow morning.
The families here offer to pay us to retrieve their stolen daughters from a group of terrorist. They’d killed the bus driver and took the whole bus with twelve girls, we were told they were all under fifteen, still inside. Their government has all but given up.
These sorts of rescues we do for nothing, we ask only for room and board until the mission is over. This way we can figure out who we can trust and who we can’t.
I use my income from GameStream to cover it all. Being the silent owner of the largest streaming company in the world has its perks. I’d say these rescues are the most important.
It’s scorching hot here during the day and freezing cold at night.
Even though I’m trained for this, I still complain.
The locals don’t seem to notice; they’re either used to it or keep their gripes to themselves.
When the sun sinks below the horizon, and it’s different in the desert.
There are no clouds for the light to bounce off—just an open sky where the moon and stars’ true brilliance goes uninterrupted, casting a rippling glow across the salt flats. Nowhere else in the world is like this.
My thoughts drift to Lila at home, probably curled up in her oversized lounge chair, lost in one of the books I left her. She has no idea I’m away or anything about me, really. Yet she is the one person I want to see as soon as our flight home lands.
“Tony!” One of my team members calls out, pulling me back from my thoughts. It’s Dillian.
“What?!”
“I’ve been calling your name for ten minutes! What’s going on?” Dillian asks, his flat blue eyes piercing through the firelight.
“You already know, Dilly Boy. It’s that woman he’s stalking,” Jonathan chimes in. He’s the oldest among us still working extraction; almost all his hair is gray now.
“I’m not stalking her, dumbass. I’m just trying to get to know her,” I retort.
“By watching her cameras all the damn time and leaving her little gifts?” Jonathan asks with a smirk as he leans back and pretends to stretch like an old man. “That’s stalking, son.”
“You didn’t see how hurt she was when her husband cut her off. You’d be pissed, too.”
“Not stalking pissed,” Dillian replies. “Most normal guys don’t just pick a random woman and stalk her.”
“I don’t know why I’m attached to her! When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.” I lean back against my camping chair and cross my arms and ankles. “I just have this strange feeling that she isn’t safe. And for fuck’s sake, stop using the word stalk.”
“We’ve done this long enough together to trust our gut,” Jonathan says while tossing small sticks into the fire he has been trying unsuccessfully to ignite for over an hour.
I trust my gut, I know her husband is worthless, and there is so much they don’t understand about Lila that I haven’t shared with them.
“Give that here, old man. I’ll light it,” Dillian says as he snatches sticks and lighter from Jonathan’s hands and quickly starts a fire. “Losing your touch! Maybe it’s time you retire,” Dillian teases.
“And leave all the fun for you babies? No way! You’d get yourselves killed. Especially with Tony spacing out over there.” Jonathan turns the focus back to me.
“You know Tony,” Dillian says while raking his fingers through his dark blond hair, “my wife once told me about something she believes in.”
“What’s that?” I ask sarcastically but feigning interest.
“She reads those same types of books as Lila, she said you’re welcome for those book recommendations.”
Shaking my head dismissively, I roll my hand in encouragement for him to continue.
“Get to the point, Dilly Boy.” Jonathan echoes my displeasure; he has never had much patience during conversations, anyway.
“She thinks humans have soul-ties,” Dillian explains while avoiding eye contact with me. This guy is a genius with logic and science; does he actually believe this?
“What kind of fuckery is that?” Jonathan scoffs with amusement sparkling in his deep green eyes.
“It means when you see someone and feel a connection you can’t explain, and they feel it too. Like when a mother hears her child calling out while they’re apart or when a wife loses a spouse while away.”
“Good God, boy! Go to sleep before I knock your head off. That’s ridiculous. We have a long day tomorrow; things are going to be hellish. We don’t want Tony distracted while we’re getting shot at.”
“Whatever, man,” Dillian shrugs as he rises from his chair and heads toward our small hut. “I thought I’d bring it up since he doesn’t understand himself.”
“Maybe he has a point there, even if it’s crazy,” I say quietly as Dillian walks away. “I don’t understand.”
“I get it, but if you’re not focused tomorrow, this could end badly.” Jonathan points toward Dillian. “Now get your dirty ass some sleep, too.”
“Fine! Goodnight Dad!”
“Fuck off!” Jonathan replies sharply.
It isn’t even five in the morning and it’s already hot enough to make the air hum; the dawn seeping into our borrowed hut.
The first thing I do is drink from the warm canteen beside my cot, feeling the mineral tang in my mouth, before I walk out into the village and face the day’s preliminary chaos.
Roosters crow across the valley, and the breeze is filled with dust, incense smoke, prayers to their gods for the girls’ safe return.
Our client, a middle-aged former politician with a voice that rattles when he speaks, is waiting for us outside, clutching a photo of his daughter and squeezing an effigy until his knuckles blanch.
He bows his head and says nothing, just holds out a folded note with the latest ransom demand, which Jonathan takes with gentle hands.
For twelve daughters, the terrorists want $100 for each girl.
These people are used to losing things, governments, teachers, crops.
But, when it comes to their children, they appeal to whatever god will answer quickest.
This time, it’s us. I’ve brought enough to get the girls without a fight. But we will fight for them if we have to. No one should be trafficked or abused.
Inside, Dillian is already hunched over a laptop, blue light washing out the lack of sleep beneath his eyes.
He’s running comms with the nearest airfield and scouring foreign social channels for any sign of movement from the crew holding the girls.
They run on generator power, so we’ve supplied batteries to keep things running smoothly with no flits and flickers.
He glances up when I enter and gives a quick nod.
“You know how long they’ll last in there,” he says. “If they’re still inside with the windows locked up, no air conditioning, they’re not going to make it much longer.”
I check the maps again, then my gear, then Jonathan’s, then Dillian’s, and double-count our supplies.
Tape, fuel, injectables, commemorative cigarettes in case the job goes to hell.
Jonathan is already suited up, sorting the small bundles of local currency and folding them into separate envelopes, one for each of the girls’ ransom.
He insists on doing these things himself.
At the edge of the village, we gather our things and step into the waiting pickup. A boy no older than the girls we’re saving, waits to drive us. His eyes so dark they reflect the world.
The desert here isn’t like the ones in movies; it’s flat and white, with heat simmering just above the horizon and giving everything a mirage blur.
The radio hisses in another language, cutting in and out.
The plan is simple: Dillian will jam their cameras, Jonathan will negotiate the drop while I cover him, then we grab them and run before the rest of the enemies change their minds.
Everyone expects it to go badly and it might, if they realize who we are and that we could pay more.
I wouldn’t put it past the greedy bastards to try.
The drive takes an hour, the sun climbing overhead, pounding the roof of the pickup.
I swear I can hear sizzle. The closer we get, the more I start to think of the girls, how they might be huddled together in the bus, dehydrated, and how their throats must be raw from crying and their wrists bruised from ties.
It reminds me of things I locked away a long time ago, people I couldn’t save when I was new at this.
Some mornings I wake up convinced those ghosts are sitting at the foot of my bed.
Dillian’s phone buzzes a warning: We’ve reached the drop site. The pickup stops behind a spit of rock, and we walk the rest of the short distance on foot.
When we’re in position, Jonathan takes a moment to kneel in the sand and say a prayer.
He says he doesn’t believe in God, but I’ve been doing this with him long enough to know better.
Maybe it’s for the girls, maybe it’s for us, or maybe it’s for the wife and daughter he hasn’t seen in ten years. I don’t ask.
I’m not sure when they realized it, but my worse fear is going down. They know who we are and are making more demands of Jonathan. They shot first, aiming for Dillian.
Then, the gun battle is exactly as expected, a short, brutal window of noise and dust and men screaming in four different languages.
We’re faster, better trained, and more desperate than they are, especially after Dillian’s surprise cut to the bus’s battery, which unlocks the doors and switches off the cameras.
There’s blood on my hands today, but thankfully, not innocent blood.
When it’s over, we hustle the girls into the bed of the pickup, counting off twelve terrified faces, none of them older than thirteen.
We tell the boy to drive fast, and he does.
Back at the village, the parents don’t hug them right away; they just stare, wide-eyed, as if the universe has played a trick on them by returning what was lost. We add security measures to the local villages so that this is less likely to happen again, at least in the near future.
After the debrief, when I am alone at sunset and can finally breathe, I find myself thinking not of the girls or the bullets, but of Lila, curled in her chair, reading the books I’d left her.
She knows nothing about this side of me.
She may not want to. Even so, she is the only thing that feels real when the adrenaline fades.
Now, I can’t wait to get home. I can’t wait to pay my girl a visit.