No More Tears

Chapter One

‘Cry or I make you cry.’

Lori Austen looked at the dark slits that were the man’s eyes, and scalding tears rolled from her own and burned a path down her cheeks. She hated him. Her family would see this. Anger stabbed through her.

She glanced at the video recorder set up before her and then stared at the other man holding a jagged piece of cardboard. His eyes were different, not so cold, but the face and clothes were the same. The week-old stubble on their dark faces and unwashed camouflage trousers spoke of desperation or fanaticism, and both made her afraid.

A prod in her back, and her fury grew. As she blurted out the jumble of words written in black pen on the board, she turned her palms upward on her lap and curled one into a fist, leaving the middle finger raised.

She knew in that moment that she had been turned into a killer. If she had had a blade in her hand she would have sunk it into her tormentor’s chest and relished watching him fall to his knees, watched him as he crumpled forward onto his face, the light gone from those inhuman eyes.

When she finished, he took a step forward and caressed her face. ‘Good girl.’

She recoiled, a snake about to strike. He lifted his hand and slammed it against her cheekbone. ‘Bitch,’ he hissed and strode from the room.

Lori sat rigid while his aide gathered up the recorder and walked to the door. As he reached it, he turned and his lips parted as if he wished to speak but a shout outside had him slam the door shut and the padlock clicked into place.

Then she closed her eyes in pain and touched her already swelling cheek. Her fingers came away sticky and she looked down at her bloody, trembling hand and watched in fascination as the vibrations moved up her arm and into her shoulder. In these men she saw little humanity. She slid from the seat onto her mattress and eased her knees up to her chest. Rocking, she drew on a white light and pulled it down through the top of her head to flood her senses, blow away the darkness. She would survive this. The bastards – she would survive them.

Chapter Two

Emma and Harry Austen clutched onto each other’s hands as they watched the video of their sobbing daughter.

‘I begged her not to go to Iraq. It’s a country of fanatics.’ Emma’s voice was firm, angry.

Her husband sat forward, eyes narrowed as he watched the fiasco unfold on the screen. ‘Look. Look at her hand.’ He turned to the three darkly-suited men standing behind the sofa. ‘Look at her hand,’ he repeated.

Jeff Glasgow nodded, his arms folded across his chest. ‘She’s a fighter. But there’s not a lot we can do.’

Harry stood up, his lips a tight line, and walked over to Jeff. Although Jeff was well over six feet, they stood eye to eye. ‘You will leave her there to die?’ Harry’s glare widened to include the other two men. ‘I think not.’

‘Sir,’ Jeff stepped back away from the anger on Harry’s face, ‘we can’t bend to their demands or there will be an upsurge in kidnappings. It is the United States’ policy.’

Harry poked his chin forward. ‘It’s not my policy. Damn it all, I will bring my daughter home. Who is holding her?’

Jeff sighed. He had seen this reaction from hostage’s families before in the twenty odd years he had been working for the Hostage Recovery Unit, a covert appendage of the Anti-terrorism Department. The usual reactions were anger - or even worse - a complete loss of control as they crumpled to become incohesive, crippled human beings.

Harry Austen fell into the first group. In the couple of hours since receiving the tape and the department’s decision to send Jeff to the Austens’ home to break the news to them, the research staff had investigated who they would be dealing with. Lori Austen had never married despite her thirty-one years of life. She had no children and no siblings so the parents were the only ones to meet with. At least that was a blessing. Large families caused a tangled web of emotions which scared the hell out of Jeff.

Harry Austen was the head of an affluent family. A family that had pulled themselves free from the lower classes by the sheer willpower of this man in front of Jeff. The owner of a computer software company, he would not be compliant in the face of his daughter’s predicament. The department had known that.

‘Sir, please calm down,’ Jeff said, fingering a packet of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. He needed one badly. ‘We will of course do everything within our power to bring this situation to a happy conclusion.’

Harry’s top lipped curled upward. ‘Don’t give me any of that sweet-talking crap, sonny. Who is holding her?’

Sam Hillsford and Phil Drake stepped forward, an instinctive reaction to protect their leader, but Jeff held up his hand. ‘A group of Sunni Muslim insurgents who say they are an offshoot of the Ansar Al Sunna group.’

‘And who the hell are they?’

‘The army of the Protectors of the Sunna. A terrorist group who have gathered supporters from all over the Islamic world. They’re responsible for a great number of the recent kidnappings.’

‘And what do they want for our daughter’s return?’ Emma had joined her husband, her eyes as dry as his. The women usually dissolved into a pool of tears as soon as they heard but not this woman before him. She was tall, dressed in a cream linen suit, and her long sun-streaked hair was silken on her shoulders, but what struck Jeff was her outward composure. They made a formidable couple as she linked her arm through her husband’s.

Jeff’s group wasn’t pulled in on all hostage situations but this was a young female, and the powers-that-be had decided Jeff would deliver the news and report back before a decision was made as to how to handle this case. If he was given the go ahead, this assignment would be made all the tougher because of these two citizens. They weren’t about to give him the freedom he needed to deal with this latest hostage emergency.

‘What they want is not relevant. We don’t respond to terrorist demands,’ Jeff said to Emma Austen.

She looked up at Harry, her eyes hard. ‘You ask the questions, dear. Mr Glasgow doesn’t seem to take females seriously.’

Jeff’s eyebrows twitched. It hadn’t been his intention to offend by not answering her question directly. He would have to watch his attitude around this woman. The only females in his department were the secretaries and the researchers, and his edges had long been rough and unpolished where the fairer sex was concerned. It had been almost a decade since he had been truly attracted to a female for who she was. The outer package had its place but boredom soon set in. He needed more from a woman.

Harry opened his mouth to speak but Jeff preceded him. ‘My apologies, Mrs Austen. They want thirty-six prisoners-of-war released. But...’

‘We know the standard line by now,’ Harry snapped, his face reddening. ‘There will be no negotiations. Well, we’ll see about that.’

Chapter Three

Lori awoke with a sensation of heat on her arm. A stray ray of light filtering through the boarded-up window had pooled on her skin highlighting the short blonde hairs growing there. She traced a finger across the beam and her own touch tickled.

There was no point in moving - nowhere to go. She let her hand drop to her side and closed her eyes again. After three days in this sauna-like hut, she knew the routine. Apart from the intrusion of the video episode, she had seen only one man – Khalif, who had held the cardboard, but she could hear at least another five or six out in the compound.

She was never allowed to leave her newly-appointed home and was fed twice a day. At the same time the bucket in the corner of the room – her toilet – was swapped for a clean one. But clean was relative. Everything had a layer of gritty sand which covered her skin and stung her eyes, entering every cavity, invading her mouth and nose. The food, sticky rice with tiny squares of eggplant or spinach, tasted of dirt, and the water was cloudy and foul.

On the first day she had found slivers of chicken in the rice and had salvaged half a wishbone. She used this to scratch the date on the wall behind her mattress so she wouldn’t lose track of the days.

She sat up abruptly as a sound outside the door caught her attention. It wasn’t feed time yet by about an hour. Sliding off the bed she slunk back against the mud wall, clasping her blouse closed at her throat.

Khalif slipped through the door, his index finger raised to his lips. In his other hand he held out two figs. ‘Take them quick. You need some good food.’

Wary of kindness, Lori edged forward, watching the young man for any show of aggression. He glanced backwards over his shoulder, and she realized he was as nervous as she was. His rich, coal-black hair framed an angular face with soft, almost feminine lips, but the nose and chin were strong.

She stretched out her hands, and he dropped the figs into them. ‘Eat everything,’ he whispered and she nodded. She would leave no evidence.

Before she could thank him, he was gone and the padlock snapped into place. Lori listened until the sound of his footsteps had receded and only the distant rumble of male voices remained.

She had been brought blindfolded to this place and knew of it only what she saw when the door opened. Outside were three scrappy constructions about a dusty courtyard. That there was no town in the vicinity was evident from the silence and lack of light after dark.

The trip from Baghdad where she had been snatched from the car she was driving had taken several hours but the blow to her head meant she hadn’t known what direction they took upon leaving the city. By the time consciousness had crept back she found herself locked and blindfolded in the trunk of a moving vehicle.

The group’s leader, Ahmed, had hit her each time she asked a question, so she knew nothing. He was bulky, bearded and stank, so she was grateful he had only come to her hut a few times.

She sank her teeth into a fig. It was good. The fresh tang after soggy rice tasted clean and nutritious. She placed the other fig between the mattress and the wall and hoped it wouldn’t encourage the rats she heard at night. She shuddered. The foul creatures were becoming bolder and soon she would have to stay awake to beat them off. She would eat the second fig before dusk.

Hearing the sound of approaching voices, she rapidly munched through the rest, devouring the small stalk, then licked the juice from her lips. She threw her scarf over the other fig and sat down on the mattress to shield it from view.

The door crashed open, and a man she had never seen before strode over and yanked her to her feet. ‘Today we move,’ he grunted and pulled her from the hut.

Trying to ignore the fingers that dug into the soft flesh of her upper arm and trying to keep balanced on her feet, she averted her eyes from the brilliance of the afternoon sun. A small green lizard scurried fearfully out of the way as two trucks loomed up. The man bodily lifted her up and threw her into the back of one. Lori rubbed at her shoulder. More bruises.

He climbed up after her, pushed her to her knees and wrapped a filthy strip of material about her eyes then enclosed her wrists in handcuffs. He shoved her and she fell onto her side and, though she wriggled, she couldn’t get up so stayed sprawled out on the truck bed as it sped off over a rough, potholed track away from the compound, the other vehicle following.

Her head bumped against the ridged metal of the truck as it shook and shuddered, jumbling her brain. The image she struggled to keep from her conscious brain intruded, and she didn’t have the strength to resist. Stephen on the road, bloodied matter oozing from his head. Dead. It had been a split second before the blow to her temple but she knew what she had seen and her colleague, her friend, was dead.

A tear slipped out and was soaked up by the rag. One minute alive, joking about the lack of water that morning in the hotel and the next dead. Lori struggled to place this knowledge in a part of her brain that could process it, but nothing had prepared her for this horror.

Back home in Washington DC they would know by now he had been killed and that she was a hostage. Her mother and father would be furious. They controlled life as if it were a wild horse being tamed, and this would be a rebellion against order they would fight with all the resources at their disposal. That very strength that had always so annoyed her would now be what might save her.

Though so afraid she sometimes thought she would wet her pants, she was also angry. Angry that these bastards had taken her freedom from her. She was American and was here on humanitarian work to boot. What nonsense to take out of circulation the very people who were here to help the country.

There were still places with no or an irregular power supply, cities that resembled war zones despite the declaration the war was over. Soldiers sweeping through towns and cities, laden with so many weapons their knees buckled. Scenes of carnage that would remain in the mind for decades. They needed all the help they could get.

The truck slowed, then veered to the left, and the surface smoothed out as they sped up onto a main road. Vehicles passed them, preceded and followed them. Help was an arm’s length away, but she couldn’t even get to her feet. Her neck muscles ached from straining to protect her head, and now she relaxed them and let her head judder on the metal floor of the truck.

From the steady increase in traffic, she understood they were heading for a built-up area. A thin stream of hope flowed through Lori as she thought of all that humanity surrounding them. There might be American military personnel. She would have to do something to attract their attention, but at the moment she was handcuffed and blindfolded.

In Iraq, hostages died, beheaded by butchers without compunction, and she didn’t want to be a statistic. She would throw herself from the truck if she had to. At least that would increase her odds of rescue.

As the tooting horns and revving of engines increased, she braced herself for an opportunity at survival.

Chapter Four

Jeff strode across his office and stared out the window. This latest hostage situation was tough. The news had broken and already the feedback was that the public were outraged at a young woman being taken. The last straw had been placed on the camel’s back. Instead of becoming desensitized by the ever-increasing cases of hostage-taking in Iraq, the public were rallying behind Lori Austen. They had had enough of the indiscriminate slaughtering of Americans and wanted action from the authorities.

The pressure from above was claustrophobic. Jeff’s superiors needed a miracle – the return unharmed of the hostage.

He ran his hand across the chilly surface of the window and leaned forward to rest his head against it. Up here in his fourteenth floor office, he tried to stay detached – as he had to be. Becoming emotionally involved in a case would undermine his efficiency, but that video of Lori had reached beyond his defenses.

Her soft, wide eyes looked so dark, he felt he was looking into a void. When her lips had trembled before the first sob came, a deep brown lock of hair fell forward across her face and she had shoved it back in annoyance. That gesture and that raised finger spoke of a woman who wept only because she had to, of a woman who was solid at the core. But that strength also worried him. She would be more likely to do something stupid.

He slammed his hand against the window and stalked back to his desk and sat down. He pulled out a cigarette and scrambled in his pocket for his silver Zippo lighter. He couldn’t lose this hostage too. Their recovery statistics were not what they should be.

Where was she now, right now? She had been snatched in Baghdad but could be anywhere but his guess was in the western provinces where there were several strongholds of Sunni extremists who wanted the Americans gone from their homeland.

America had certainly got themselves into a pickle this time. They had not expected the open hostility from the people they alleged to be saving from a monster. In fact, they had grossly misjudged the resistance they would encounter, and it was naive citizens like Lori Austen who were paying.

He reached out and pressed a button. ‘Maree, get me Phil and Sam in here.’

He flicked at his lighter and lit his cigarette. One day, he would give up but not today.

It was usually at his discretion whether they made a recovery attempt or not. It was little known that covert attempts were made to locate and storm hostage-takers’ strongholds. Off the record, the Anti-Terrorism Department sanctioned their work but there was never any public acknowledgement of their efforts. So far they had lost more men than they had recovered hostages alive but hadn’t been shut down yet.

Phil tapped on the door and entered. Still in his suit from a meeting with the bosses, he threw himself into a chair, legs sprawled.

‘When can I toss off this monkey suit?’ He ran his finger around the inside of his shirt collar.

Jeff grinned at his colleague – an ex-marine through and through. His tangle of black hair which seldom saw a comb and fresh stubble on a square chin looked incongruous with the trim navy blue suit, which was kept in his locker for official visits.

As Jeff shrugged out of his own jacket, Sam walked in the open door and slammed it shut.

‘Damned asshole that Austen,’ he said.

Jeff shook his head at the youngest member of his team. Sam hadn’t been out of training more than six months and, although he was already proving he knew his stuff, he was yet to go out into the field. Jeff had been watching him carefully to see if he was ready.

‘You greenhorn,’ Phil growled. ‘Wait ‘til you have a family. Fucking smart ass that’s what you are.’ He made the sign of the cross.

Jeff grinned. Phil thought the sign would exempt him from divine retribution for swearing.

Sam stopped still and glared at the older man. ‘Jesus man, that wasn’t necessary. Austen is a hard-ass.’

‘Sit down, Sam, and shut up,’ Jeff said, indicating a chair. He offered them both a cigarette but they shook their heads.

Sam ran a hand over his shaven head, then scratched his ear. His success with females had a lot to do with his arrogance and, on the job, he sometimes forgot a strict hierarchy existed and he was far down the feeding chain.

He sat, a pout on his full lips, which made Jeff smile. At twenty-three, Sam was half Phil’s age and also had half his knowledge. He would do well to remember that.

Jeff cleared his throat. ‘If you two have finished, I want you to listen up.’

Phil sat forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘This is a tough one, boss. Young woman like that. Could be my daughter.’ He whacked Sam’s arm.

‘Got the message,’ Sam grunted. ‘Sorry.’

‘We go in – the three of us.’

The corner of Sam’s mouth curled upward. ‘Iraq?’

Jeff nodded. ‘We go in, find the bastards.’

Phil sat back, a glint in his eye. ‘Fine by me.’

Sam bounced to his feet. ‘You mean me, too?’ He punched the air. ‘Yes,’ he hissed through his teeth. ‘About time. I’ve got to get myself a St. Christopher’s medallion.’

‘What do you want to do that for?’ Phil snapped at him.

Sam grinned. ‘Patron saint of travelers. I told myself I’d get one for my first mission.’

Jeff sighed. ‘Sit down, you clown, and listen carefully. This won’t be no picnic, I assure you.’

He had been about Sam’s age when he had been part of a four-man team sent into Italy on his first mission. It had been a stuff-up, and he had been the only one to return. He squeezed his eyes shut to disperse the images.

Though technology now made communication a cinch and their weaponry was state of the art, their success rate was no higher. A man in the field was basically alone but for his team mates, reliant on his wits to keep him alive. That hadn’t changed. As part of an essentially clandestine activity, there was no back up when things went wrong.

He stood up. ‘Go get some shut-eye and we start planning tomorrow. Friday we leave.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Damn, I’m late for a meeting.’

Sam lifted an eyelid. ‘A lady friend?’

Jeff shook his head. ‘No such luck. My son – at the restaurant downstairs. He’ll be after a story for his newspaper.’

Phil grunted. ‘Damnable thing having a job you can’t discuss even with the family.’

Jeff stubbed out his cigarette and pulled his jacket back on. ‘Hey, I do what I have to even if it did cost me my marriage. Someone has to do this job.’

Phil pointed a finger at him. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t get a kick out of bringing back Donald Pickford.’

‘Poor bastard. I don’t know if we did him any favors. He’ll be having nightmares when he’s eighty.’ He raised a hand. ‘Tomorrow morning seven sharp.’

Chapter Five

Lori knew they had reached the town by the squawks of vendors and the echoing of sound between buildings. But the truck slowed only fractionally - the driver, with his hand on the horn, wove and swayed around obstacles while Lori slid around making painful contact with the sides of the truck.

‘Please let me get up,’ she called out to her captor. ‘I’m covered in bruises.’

A string of unfamiliar sounds were shouted at her from close proximity, and her heart sank. He didn’t speak English. But then rough hands grabbed her shoulders, and she was picked up and dumped on her backside.

She wriggled backwards until her shoulders touched the side of the truck so she could brace herself. He yelled more words at her which felt like a physical assault, then he was silent.

Lori sat hunched up, her hands handcuffed behind her back and contemplated her options. Her brain functioned at half mast when fear blurred the edges, and pain took away the will to react. Could she actually stand up and throw herself from a moving truck? She had thought it would slow