Authors: Keith Hoare
Karen and the troops were back at the helicopters. Angela had already been placed in one waiting until decisions were made as to what happened next.
The Captain and Karen were looking at the map after receiving coordinates for the addresses they had radioed back to control. Out of the three locations, two were large estates, one in a border town and the last one located in a compound just outside a village less than fifty miles from where they stood.
“I suggest we go for the most local, Lieutenant? We’ll use one helicopter and send the others back with Angela and the medic. They can then remain on standby if we need assistance. After that pickup we high-tail it back to the ship and wait until nightfall before going on to the final two locations.”
She nodded. “I agree it is pointless sitting it out in the day around here, after all we’re far better going in undercover of darkness anyway and there’s at least three hundred miles to the others after this one.”
They watched the first helicopter leave and with six troops they set off for the next girl. The flight was without incident and soon they landed less than a mile from the house. The Captain didn’t see the need to take all the troops so two, along with the pilot, stood guard over the helicopter.
The house was as the map showed on the outskirts of a small village, at five in the morning all was quiet as they approached. Then a dog started barking but was quickly silenced with a drugged dart. Once inside the compound they walked round the outside of the house, a soldier was trying each door and window to assess which would be the easiest to enter from. After a decision, and using a glass cutter, they soon had a hole by which they could unfasten a catch. One climbed in and opened a door allowing the rest inside. The house was large with many rooms. They started to move between rooms, checking and searching before going on to the next floor. Five of the rooms had people sleeping in them. Soldiers were waking each person and moving them quickly to one room. Within minutes everyone in the house was standing in a row with two soldiers guarding them.
Karen walked up and down the line, stopping alongside a man who was obviously, by where he was taken from, and his night clothes, important.
“You speak English or French?” she asked.
“I speak English, what is it you want?”
“You purchased a girl off Saeed? Where is she?”
He shrugged. “I know nothing of a girl.”
Karen nodded her head up and down slowly as if in understanding, and then pointed to a young girl. “She’s your daughter?”
“Marcela is my niece, what is it to you?”
“And the rest of the people here, are they relatives.”
“Of course.”
Karen turned to the Captain. “We take the girl,” she said, at the same time winking at him so no one else could see.
“She’s joining us in the helicopter then, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“Of course. The way I see it, he buys a girl, deprives her of her own family, unlike his niece who still has hers, so it’s a fair exchange.”
The girl was dragged screaming out from the room, her mother and others beginning to panic, not knowing what was going to happen to her, but they didn’t dare intervene with two soldiers pointing guns at them.
“Who do you think you are? Coming into my house accusing me of taking some girl and now threatening my family?” the man demanded.
Karen grinned. “I’m not threatening; this is the reality of what you did to another family. Now it’s your family. Maybe you’d better explain to the mother what’s going to happen to her daughter, because until you produce the girl you took, she’s not coming home? Mind you thinking about it, you don’t seem to care shit about females. We will take the little boy as well.”
He sneered. “You don’t have the nerve to do that, Nasser’s my son and neither him nor myself are afraid of you.”
“I suppose you’re not afraid of a woman, after all you’re the sort who probably beats your women into submission. Mind you I’m not like that, so I’d advise you to be afraid, very afraid of me. Because I’ll have no compunction in putting a gun to your head, or that of your son. In my book it’s just one less child abductor in the world. But there is something I’ve been wanting to do since coming.”
“And what’s that?”
“I want to punish you where, with you lot, it seems to hurt the most. In the pocket.”
He sniggered. “So how do you intend to do that?”
“I could probably burn the house down, well not burn it down exactly, more blow it to smithereens with my grenades. That could cost you.” she replied grinning.
“You’re insane.”
“Yes, a few people have told me that.”
At that moment the Captain returned.
Karen turned and looked at him. “Sorry, Captain, this man seems to have so little regard for women we could be wasting our time with the little girl, so we take the son as well.”
When the Captain began walking towards his son, the man moved quickly between his son and the Captain.
“Take my niece, she’s worthless, but you keep away from my son,” he demanded.
Karen knew then she had him. “How can he be so thick, Captain, telling us what he values above all else? I vote we teach him a lesson and put a bullet in the lad’s head. It’s odds on he’ll end up like his father, so we’d be doing the world a favour.”
“Lift a finger to hurt my son and you, girl, will be hunted down and killed.”
“Yeah, Yeah, I have that shit all the time,” she said, pulling the handgun from the holster at the same time. Then she aimed it and fired, intentionally missing the son by inches.
“Shit I missed; maybe I’d better aim at the body, perhaps round the heart, that would be easier as I’m bound to hit something pretty painful?” Karen said, at the same time raising the gun once again to point directly at his son.
“For god’s sake stop her, she’s mad. The bloody girl’s in the cellar; just take her and go.”
Karen had a look of annoyance on her face. “What’s up with you lot, you could at least have held out a little longer, I’m a good shot normally.”
“Lieutenant, please will you put the gun away and go down and find the girl?” the Captain asked.
“Yeah okay, is the room locked?” Karen asked the man.
“The key’s on a hook outside the door,” he replied.
She replaced her gun. “Watch them,” she said, and left the room.
The cellar door led off the kitchen and she went down. The passage to the cellar was lit with one small light bulb hanging from a hook on the ceiling, the wire tied to pipes running the length of the passage. As the man had said a door at the end was closed, a key on a small nail knocked into the pillar of the door. When Karen opened the door, the smell of sewage hit her hard. Again, as in the passage, a small single lamp lit the room. There was no furniture or bed inside, only a bucket, a tray with a cup and an empty plate, to the far corner a mattress with a figure on it, huddled and leaning against the wall watching her. She was clearly frightened seeing a figure stood there holding a gun and pulled the blanket even further up.
“I don’t feel well tonight, I was told I could have the night off. Please leave me alone.”
“I’m not here to hurt you, but take you home. What’s your name?” Karen asked.
The girl’s eyes widened when she heard an English girl’s voice. “Stephanie Coops. Are you English?” she stammered.
Karen recognised the name. “Of course, my name’s Karen Harris. And like I said, I’ve come to take you home.”
“I’m really going home, and you’re not tricking me again?” Stephanie gasped.
“Of course; are you coming?”
“God yes, thank you,” she replied scrambling up quickly. Wearing only knickers and a t-shirt.
She followed after Karen into the room all the people were in, then stopped dead staring at the man who’d abused her for days, before leaving her in the cellar.
“Was this the man who bought you?” Karen asked.
“Yes…” she replied softly.
“Do you know where you could find your clothes, or at least something to fit you?”
“I never got any more clothes than these, Karen, but I’ll check the wardrobes in the other rooms, there must be something I can put on.”
When the girl left Karen went up to the man. “You owe that girl a great deal. How are you going to pay for the abuse and way you’ve treated her?”
He smirked. “I’ve paid enough, she’s wasn’t worth anything anyway.”
Karen turned to the soldiers still watching the group. “Take everyone but him down to the cellar room and lock them in.”
He grabbed her arm. “You can’t do that, my sister suffers from asthma.”
She shook him off. “Take them.”
Stephanie returned wearing a woolly jumper and old jeans two sizes too big and shoes.
“Go with the Captain, Stephanie, I need to talk to this man alone.”
She took one last look at him and walked out with the Captain.
“So what are you going to do?” he demanded.
Karen shrugged and leaned against the wall looking at him. “I’m still thinking about it.”
“What’s your name, so I can hunt you down?” he asked with a grin on his face.
“My name’s Karen, and Saeed knows that name very well, after all he’s now permanently in a wheelchair I believe. As for you, I intend to burn this house down, with your family in the basement. Maybe they will get out alive, if the stinking room you put a young girl in doesn’t collapse. Anyway who cares, I don’t.”
He stared at her in disbelief, however he had also heard her name mentioned before. This was Sirec’s girl, the girl he’d offered a fortune for her return and by all accounts a pretty nasty piece of work. “You can’t do that, it’s cold blooded murder? Those people down there are innocent, they knew nothing of her.”
She frowned. “Wasn’t Stephanie innocent as well? But that never stopped Saeed’s mother from selling her into a life of abuse and depravity. You didn’t even have the decency to give her some clothes, didn’t put her in a room that was warm rather than leave her in some stinking cellar with just a mattress and a single blanket. A girl not even eighteen alone in a foreign country, her only future abuse until you tired of her, then she’d probably be sold to a brothel to get some of your money back?”
He kept quiet.
Karen looked at her watch. “Right… it’s time I was gone, get down the stairs and into the cellar. Keep your hands on your head, try to escape, or go for me and I’ll put a bullet in you.”
He did as she asked. But as he walked down the passage towards the door, he suddenly realised they could all be locked in the room for days. It had no windows, was virtually soundproof and no one ever came into the cellar.
“I’m not going in there,” he said turning to face her.
“Oh but you are. You will experience just what you put the girl through, if you want to live that is?”
“We could be in there for days, there are children inside, and they could die. Where is all this compassion if you’re going to risk killing children?” he asked trying to play on her emotions.
“You really think I care about that? Maybe, if I get time, I’ll call the local police and tell them where you are, once we’re aboard our helicopter and safely out of the country that is. If I forget, so what, you deserve to die anyway. Now open the door, go inside and shut it, the longer you delay the more frustrated I’ll get, unless you want me to shoot you anyway and let the others go?”
The man did as she asked and after locking the door she wandered upstairs, shutting and locking the cellar entrance as well. Throwing the keys in a bowl on the kitchen table Karen joined the soldiers outside and they moved off back towards the helicopter. After half an hour at a fast pace they arrived at the helicopter but they stopped short. Close on forty troops were surrounding it, the guards they left including the pilot were lying face down on the ground, their hands high above their heads.