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It was around 9:00 p.m. when Hail picked up his phone. The caller ID was a long line of numbers he didn’t recognize.
“This is Hail,” he answered abruptly, not knowing who to expect.
“Hi, Marshall,” Kara said, “Do you remember telling me if I ever needed your help to give you call?”
Inside, Hail’s heart did a little flip-flop. Why did hearing Kara’s voice bring him such elation? Hail tried to compartmentalize his reaction. Maybe his emotion could be explained away as relief.
“Where are you?” Hail asked. “Are you OK?”
Kara tried to assemble an answer to his question, but it didn’t work. Where should she start? She felt guilty pulling Marshall into this mess. This wasn’t his fight, but on the other hand, he was in the business of killing terrorists, and there just happened to be one in the vicinity that needed killing.
Kara said in a controlled tone, “I will send you my coordinates when I hang up, but right now I’m trapped in a farmhouse with Victor Kornev.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hail said. “I hate to tell you I told you so, but you should have let me kill that asshole when I had the opportunity.” Simultaneously, dominoes in his mind knocked one another down as he realized they absolutely had to be in the same country.
Kara replied a little defensively, “For a man hating to say I told you so, it really seems to give you an immense amount of satisfaction. Anyway, right now I have a timing problem. Victor tells me that he thinks Zain Shallah has more than 100 men surrounding my position. They are tactical personnel, but most won’t have body armor or night vision. I’m going to send Victor out to negotiate and stall for time.”
“Negotiate for what?” Hail asked.
“For the lives of Shallah’s children.”
“Whose children? Who is Zain Shallah?”
After each exchange, Hail sounded more confused and agitated.
Kara said, “Kornev told me that Zain Shallah is the man who pulled the trigger on the missile that took down the airplane my parents had boarded.”
Hail asked, “So what does all this have to do with his kids?”
Kara said, “I surveilled his home for days. His security is very tight and I’m not a sniper. I realized that there was an opportunity to abduct his children and use them as bargaining chips with Shallah. After all, these men care very little about things, but this terrorist really cares about his kids. Well, at least he cares about his son. Kornev informed me that Shallah places little value on women or their daughters. I have confirmed this.”
There was a long silence.
“So, you found him? Good for you,” Hail told Kara, at a loss of what to say to Kara’s confession.
If he could track down the men who had shot down the plane his family was on, he would be right in the thick of it as well. He was no different from Kara, even though he would have gone in with a lot more firepower.
Kara said, “Well, it was more like he found me. I had scanned the children to determine if they had any trackers on or in them, but the tracer I used was no longer state of the art. Thanks to Kornev’s aging merchandise, Shallah found us.”
“How long do you think you can hold out? I need time to put together a plan so I can get to your location.”
“You and whose army?” Kara asked.
“I haven’t thought it out yet. I would like to avoid a full-out air assault. I don’t want to expose my little operation. At least not yet. I have my own terrorist I want to track down, so sending in Hellfire and LOCO missiles is not on the menu.”
Kara assured him, “I think that’s a good idea. No matter how accurate they are, I don’t want to be on the receiving end of a massive bombardment. It’s not good for my anxiety issues.” Kara tried to laugh at her joke, but she was genuinely concerned Hail could do little more than watch her die from his airborne drones.
“Let me see what I can put together,” Hail told her. “Stall as long as you can and sit tight. Don’t do anything stupid, or rather, stupider than what you’ve already done.”
“I deserved that one,” Kara said.
“All right, I’ll call you back as soon as we have a plan. Don’t worry; we’ll come up with something.”
“OK,” Kara said. “And thanks.”
“You can thank me when you see me,” Hail told her as he severed the connection.