Authors: Keith Hoare
“Can we take them?” Karen asked the Captain.
He shook his head. “Not without casualties. Any suggestions?”
“We negotiate,” Karen suggested, “after all we’re on a humanitarian mission, they must have some shred of decency?”
“And if they don’t what then?”
“That’s your choice, Captain, for your own men. On my part they won’t take me alive. I’ll take them on.”
“All right, you stay back here and I’ll do the talking, Lieutenant.”
Some of his troops hung back and settled in the undergrowth with Karen, their guns at the ready. The Captain with one soldier walked up to the officer obviously in charge.
“I’m Captain Saunders. Why are my men on the ground?” he asked.
The officer looked at him. “Why are you in our country?”
“We came on a humanitarian mission. A number of girls, British girls, were abducted and sold to people who live in this country. We have just collected one of them. When we found her she’d already been sexually assaulted, forced to live in a stinking cellar with nothing to wear except her knickers and a damp mattress to lie on.”
“I am aware that children have been taken, Captain. I would like to question this girl in order for me to be certain in my own mind; that this is why you are here.”
Stephanie was brought forward. The officer looked at her in the oversize clothes, her face streaked with dirt, her hair dirty and matted.
“You child, what’s your name and where do you come from?”
“My name’s Stephanie Coops and I come from Sheffield, England, Sir.”
“Why are you in this country?”
“I won a competition for a holiday, but on the holiday I was drugged and brought here in a boat. A man bought me and I’ve been raped by him and his friends every night since.”
“I’m truly sorry to hear of your ordeal, Stephanie.” Then he turned to the Captain. “Where are your other soldiers, are they with you?”
“Yes, they held back in a defensive position awaiting my orders.”
The officer began to talk to another officer stood by his side, but in their own language. Then he turned back to the Captain.
“I’m a family man, Captain. What has happened to this girl makes me ashamed of some of my kinsmen. But of course in every country there are also these sorts of people. You and your troop will be allowed to complete your humanitarian mission shortly. There is a time for soldiering and a time for compassion. This is a time for the latter; the child must go home and try to pick her life up again with her family.”
“Thank you and yes you’re right, this scourge on society, when a human sells another human, is not confined to one country, one race. But the fight with them should come another day. As you say the urgency now is to get this child home.”
“I understand that, Captain, but among your troop do you have a girl with you called Karen Marshall?”
The Captain frowned. “Marshall? No we don’t have a Karen Marshall with us. We have a Lieutenant Karen Harris, why do you ask?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps I have the surname wrong? But I have someone waiting to speak to your Karen Harris.”
“Who is this person, and if she doesn’t want to speak to them, what is the alternative?”
“I will not hinder your leaving the country if your Lieutenant does not want to talk, but unless she does; the chances of finding and collecting the final missing girls would be impossible, I can assure you.”
“I will need to speak to my Lieutenant first,” he replied.
“Of course, take as long as necessary, but point out to her the importance of this meeting.”
The Captain walked back and joined Karen, out of sight of the soldiers.
“We can leave the country, Lieutenant, but there’s a problem.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
He told her of the officers’ conversation.
She shrugged but didn’t admit to the Captain her real name. “Well I’ll have to meet this person; after all we came for all the girls not just two.”
“Should I come with you?” he asked.
“No, I’ll be okay, you look after Stephanie.”
The officer watched as Karen approached. There was something different about her, the way she was dressed, the equipment she carried. This girl was also the only one who had a diagonal ammunition belt with grenades attached, the straps holding them in the pouches already released, the safety on her gun still off. He had no idea why the man wanted to talk to her, but it was he who’d given the location of the helicopter and who had told him in advance just why they were here. Although he’d decided not to mentioned that fact to the British.
Karen stopped in front of the officer.
“Are you Karen Harris?”
“I am, who is it who wants to see me?”
“He will introduce himself, but first we’d all feel safer if you put the safety back on your weapon and secured the grenades.”
Karen clicked the safety on the gun, clipped one grenade back down but removed the other, slipping her thumb through the ring, holding the grenade in her hand.
“I think perhaps I will protect myself. After all I don’t know you, don’t trust any of you and have no intention of being in a position that you could take me.”
“But I assure you, you’re perfectly safe, in fact I told your Captain that as well, and my word is law around here.”
She gave a weak smile. “Yes, well I’ve been here before and last time I trusted someone’s word, I often found it wasn’t worth shit. So I’ll keep my insurance.”
He knew there was no arguing with this girl, but her statement about being here before may mean he had her name correct first time, and this really was Karen Marshall who had taken on the army and still escaped? However, he didn’t pursue this line, if it was her, then this girl was extremely dangerous. Besides being very well armed.
“Very well, Lieutenant, if that’s your decision, would you come with me?”
She followed him to a trailer fifty metres away from the helicopter. It was large and Karen decided it must be some kind of mobile command centre. They went inside where four soldiers were sitting at computers and communication equipment.
“Can you wait here, Lieutenant?” the officer asked.
She nodded.
He went through into quite a spacious meeting room at the far end, shutting the door behind him. A man was sitting alone on one of the six chairs surrounding a large table.
“The girl’s waiting outside. She’s heavily armed and holding a grenade with the ring around her thumb. There is no way we could disarm her without the grenade exploding. Are you sure you still want this meeting? We cannot guarantee your safety around a soldier as well protected as this,” the officer said to the man.
“Is it Karen?” he asked
“The girl or rather Lieutenant claims she is called Karen Harris and also the Captain told me that was her name. But she also mentioned she’d been here before which makes me suspect this is the girl you want to talk to.”
“Then I will see her, because if it is Karen, she can be very unpredictable, but her caution is understandable. Just send her in and leave us alone?”
When Karen entered the room, the man had gone over to a side table and was pouring two coffees; he turned holding them in his hands when she shut the door behind her.
He stood looking at her for a moment, his heart was beating fast. She was a girl he had known only weeks, had photos of and yet even in combat clothes she looked stunning.
“I’ve poured us coffee, would you like to take a seat? Perhaps put your weapons to one side, I can assure you I’m unarmed and have no intention of trying to overcome you. You may even lock the door if that makes you feel safer.”
Karen studied this man as he placed her coffee on the table. Olive skinned, six feet two, deep brown eyes with black hair combed back tight over his head and tied. His clothes, although casual, were immaculate. The man all told was particularly handsome and very well spoken.
She turned and locked the door, then pulled the coffee he had set down over to the far end of the table, in this position her back was to the wall and she could see the door and of course the man. Then she took her handgun out, made a point of releasing the safety and placed it alongside the coffee, before re-fitting the grenade back into its pouch on her diagonal ammunition belt. Finally she leaned her AK47 against the wall behind her and sat down.
He also sat down, smiling to himself at her actions.
“You asked to see me, said it was something to do with the missing girls and also knew my name, why is that?”
“One at a time, Karen Marshall. That is your real name I presume. Why do I know that, because for a week you lived in my home? You then spent the next avoiding the army before I finally decided that the risk to your life was so high I let you go home.”
This time Karen’s heart skipped a beat.
“You… you’re Sirec?” she asked, her voice low and hesitant.
“Of course, and you don’t know just how much I’ve looked forward to finally meeting you.”
Her features changed; there was a coldness in her eyes. “Then you are a very foolish man wanting to see me without protection. You and Saeed are at the top of my list to kill.”
“Me…why kill me, Karen?”
She leaned forward, her hand on the gun. He could see the hatred in her eyes.
“You have the nerve to ask me that? When for days I was subject to a manhunt, forced to kill just to protect myself. Have you any inkling what that does to someone? The fear and hatred of the people that were doing it to you builds up in your mind, until you can think of nothing else. Many times I just wanted to put the gun to my head and end it, but even that’s difficult. So you plod on, every shadow, every noise frightens you. I was injured, losing blood and with no food I was becoming weaker. I was no soldier, nothing, just a schoolgirl terrified of what would happen to me if I was caught. Then after all I’d been though, with a splitting headache, all I could see was hundreds of troops bearing down on me. So I hid in some stinking hole praying they’d miss me. God knows how, but they did, so again I moved on. Finally at the cove waiting to be picked up, a lorry full of soldiers came down a path, with nowhere to hide, nowhere to run I had to fight yet again. And you wonder why I want to kill my abductors?”
He stood, took a sip of his coffee and leaned forward, his hands on the table looking directly at her.
“For a start I saved you from a life of hell in the brothels,” he replied sternly.
“Ha... and for what? Two weeks, maybe a month, before you tired of me and I’d end up in a brothel anyway?”
“Who told you that?” he demanded.
“Your own staff told me, that’s who.”
Suddenly his manner changed. “Karen, Karen you shouldn’t listen to gossip. For years Saeed has been supplying girls destined for the brothels, mostly from the Asian countries and families who need the girl’s income just to live. I admit I took a few, but only temporarily, never paid over five hundred dollars for them. But at least they were fresh and clean and not riddled with disease as you find in the brothels. But were they the sort of girl I’d want to spend my life with, have children with, meet clients? I don’t think so. I have never paid forty thousand dollars for a girl to have just for a month. I’d never have a girl taken to the local shops, select nice clothes and sleep in a guest bedroom, if all I’d wanted is a quick romp. The moment I first saw a picture of you and read your details Saeed had been sent I knew you were the girl for me. But you were mixed up with Saeed; he’d seen the value of you and wanted his pound of flesh. I did everything in my power to have you looked after, my only error was not being there when you arrived, otherwise you wouldn’t have been with Saeed for more than a couple of days. You have to remember, Karen, you’d already been abducted and were on your way. If I hadn’t shown any interest and made an offer, you would have been left with the other girl who came with you. There would have been no chance of you ever escaping. By now you would have either have accepted a life of rape four or five times a day, week after week or been so badly beaten you’d have been good for nothing. Then you blame me for the man hunt. My home had been destroyed, some of my warehouses razed to the ground. What did you expect me to do, let the SAS go home? I offered rewards for their capture, but they had also taken you, so I was insistent that you were not to be harmed in any way. I saw you as an innocent party mixed up in what was a military operation. But as you know things went wrong, you were on your own a number of times and still fighting back. I was proud of you, Karen; proud the girl who I’d decided I wanted was proving herself to be competent and brave. I was also becoming desperately concerned, by the reports that were coming back telling me you’d take your own life, rather than be captured. I didn’t want my girl to die, so I let you go but I didn’t realise how much hatred Khan, the officer in charge of the search, had for you. He was supposed to deliver the SAS officers to the same cove you were heading for, but he took his own soldiers with the intention to kill you instead. I went to the beach and saw what you’d done. Knew it was your doing by the weapons and belt you’d left behind. To tell you the truth only then did I realise just how good you really are. I know of no civilian who has taken on a truck full of soldiers and won. I stood for some time where you left your weapons, trying to imagine just how you’d survived. A motley set of weapons, even the ammunition you carried didn’t fit either gun, and yet you’d escaped. You were my sort of girl, Karen. Strong, determined, and I might add very dangerous both to yourself and others. I knew then I had to see you and explain.”