Maybe the rebels had intercepted my call with my boss and knew I was worried about Ana. Maybe Stephano had something to do with it? Something wasn’t right, that was all I knew. A normal twenty-something-year-old woman who just got out of a drug and trauma treatment program didn’t fly herself to the middle of a war zone.
“So, what’s up?” Rake asked.
“I’m not sure. I feel like it’s some sort of trap.
My brother just called and said my girlfriend called him and told him she would meet me at the office building and there are fifty people not twenty.”
“At the office building here?” Rake asked.
“I have no idea. That’s all she said. It seems like she would have been talking about the building here. We had talked about the number of people I expected and she knows the building.”
“How the hell could a woman just fly to Syria and waltz right into the building we are trying to rescue people from? You’re right, I think it’s a set up,” Baller added.
“I’m going to head over there now and see if I notice anything. Just going to gather some intel. I’ll be back by sun up.”
“Nitro, if it’s a trap, they could be leading you there just to capture you. There’s no way your girl is here. None,” Rake said with concern in his voice.
“I know it’s a trap, but we need the intel anyways, and it’s better to gather it tonight so we know what we are facing anyways. I won’t get captured, I promise,” I said with a laugh.
We all knew that no one got captured on purpose. There was just one small thing that messed you up and the enemy had you pinned into a corner. Even the best of soldiers could get captured, and I knew I wasn’t immune to it.
“Let’s make a plan in case there really are fifty people. How many can we get into each vehicle?” Rake said as he moved right back into mission mode.
“I think we could get at least fifteen into each SUV if there are children,” Sandbag said. “If we had four vehicles total, we could make it work. But I don’t see us getting four vehicles through the streets all at once. We’d have to stagger the rescue.”
“Yeah, I agree. Maybe load up one vehicle at a time. I’m going to take my walkie, and if for some reason I feel like tonight’s good, one of you be ready to get over there and gather people.”
“I’ll be ready,” Rake replied.
“All right, let me get over there right away before the night gets going. Perhaps all the rebels will still be eating their meals for the evening.” I laughed.
I wasn’t really joking though. My experience in war zones was that the first few hours of night and the first few hours before sunrise were the best opportunities to make things happen. It was still dark out, but only the dedicated rebels would be out at those hours.
I gathered my pack and said my goodbyes before I made my way out our backdoor and down to the street. It was a rather quiet night and we hadn’t heard much gunfire at all since we had arrived. But that was how war zones worked. There would be a few days of wild firefights and then even the rebels had to rest and get some nourishment.
I very quickly realized that the map I had memorized wasn’t useful at all. There were many more streets throughout the area we were in, and more housing as well. But I managed to get myself to the block I needed to be at just as I saw what looked like a woman carrying a large bag on her back and some sort of packages on each side of her. It was too dark to know who it was and the woman had her head covered in a black scarf. I hid inside an abandoned building while she crossed the street and then hurried to the alley where she walked behind the Resolve Oil building.
The woman knocked on the door three times and then waited for a moment and knocked again before someone opened and let her in. I still had no idea who the person was, but at least I now knew that there were people in the building still.
Luckily, the streets were rather calm for the evening and I was able to climb up the fire escape of a nearby building so I could look into the windows on each of the floors. The curtains were open on all of the bottom floors, but when I made it to the fourth floor, the curtains were pulled shut. There was a tiny sliver of an opening in one of the windows and I put on my heat sensing gear to see if I could locate the people inside the building.
Sure enough, there were many more than twenty people in the building, and many of them looked like children. My gut told me it was the perfect time to get some of them out.
“Rake, get over here, street is quiet and we have a house full. Copy.”
“Copy that, Nitro, watch for me in ten.”
“Ten-Four.”
I didn’t have any time to waste. It really didn’t matter who the woman was who had brought supplies into the building. We had a window to get some of the women and children out and we had to take it.
Quickly, I climbed down and knocked three times on the same door I had seen the woman knock on. Then I knocked again, just like she did. When the man opened the door, I didn’t give him any time to object before I pressed him up against the wall and took his weapon from him.
“I was hired by Resolve to get you guys out of here. We have a window of opportunity. I need two women and all the children who are under twelve or so.”
Surprisingly, the man didn’t fight me and appeared to understand what I was saying to him very well. He brought me up to the fourth floor and I listened as he talked to the group of people. I looked around to see if I saw Ana, but in the chaos I didn’t have time to look closely with all of the women.
After ten minutes, the man from the front door had two women standing in front of me with 18 small children. The older children were holding the hands of the younger children and a few of them were even carrying infants on their hips. Twenty people were a lot to fit into one SUV, but considering the size of the children, I didn’t think it would be an issue.