Pamela Clare - Striking Distance

A creaking door. A man’s deep voice. Footsteps.

She held her breath, listening until the footsteps faded away.

Would he come tonight?

She’d seen him take Nibaal to his room. Surely, Nibaal would be enough for him and he would leave her alone.

Inshallah.

She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping with everything inside her that he would stay away. Angeza had once told her that Zainab struck her only because Abu Nayef came to her bed so often. But she would gladly have traded places with Zainab. If only she could! She cared nothing at all for Abu Nayef. In truth, she hated him.

She hated the feel of his old man’s hands on her. She hated the sour odor of his skin, his breath, the coarseness of his beard. He was always rough with her, even when she lay still and didn’t fight.

Stay away. Stay away. Stay away.

She drifted off, only to jerk awake at the sound of a man’s voice.

His door opened, closed, soft footfalls sounding in the hallway as Nibaal made her way back to the room she shared with her four children.

She exhaled, certain she’d been spared for the night, her body relaxing, sleep stealing over her at last.

Screams.

She sat bolt upright on a rush of adrenaline and grabbed her burka, drawing it over her head just as the door to her room crashed open.

A dark shape filled the doorway.

A man with a weapon.

He aimed it at her, a red dot dancing over her chest.

Too terrified even to scream, she shrank back against the wall, her heart hammering, her mouth dry, fear making her mind go blank.

A light blinded her.

He aimed his weapon at the corners as if he expected someone to be hiding in the room, then shouted in heavily accented Arabic. “Come with me!”

She wanted to do as he’d asked. She didn’t want to be shot and killed. But fear kept her grounded to the spot, her breath coming in terrified pants.

“Clear! All clear! Got another female here, senior chief.” He crossed the room in two big strides. “Bring her to the courtyard. Roger that.”

The sound of his American English made her breath catch.

“Come.” The man spoke more softly this time, motioning for her to get to her feet and come with him.

As if in a dream, she rose, her heart beating erratically in her chest, his uniform and his American accent awakening something nameless and terrifying inside her.

He nudged her ahead of him, his weapon still raised. “Go!”

Her legs seemed to be made of water as she walked down the stairs, across the main room, and out into the frigid night, where the other women stood in their veils huddled together with their children, all of them crying, some praying aloud.

“Hanan!” One of them reached for her, called to her in Arabic. Zainab. “Hanan, sister, come here to us!”

She felt a rush of warmth to hear Zainab call her “sister,” something comforting in Zainab’s concern for her. The older woman’s fingers dug into her arms as she drew her roughly into the cluster of women, pushing her to the center, where other hands reached out, grabbed her, held her.

And then she saw.

There, in the center of the courtyard, lay Abu Nayef.

All but naked, he lay facedown in the dirt, his wrists bound together behind his back, a tall uniformed man standing guard over him.

A dead man lay on his side not far from Abu Nayef, his eyes open, part of his head missing, a spray of blood and brains on the wall behind him.

Her stomach seemed to fall to the ground, vague memories of another day, images of blood and dead men flashing through her mind. She looked away and swallowed hard, fighting to keep down her supper.

“They are going to kill us all!” Nibaal sobbed.

“Is this true?” Angeza whispered in frightened Pashtun.

She shook her head, whispered back. “They won’t hurt us.”

She couldn’t say why she was so sure about this, but she was.

Armed men in heavy uniforms seemed to be everywhere—on the rooftop, in the courtyard, inside the house. Their faces were covered in black paint, making them look like shadows in the darkness. They seemed to be searching for something.

“Where are your tears, Hanan?” Zainab pinched her. “Do you see what has become of our husband? Do you see what these Americans have done to him?”

Americans.

The nameless terror inside her grew stronger.

But she couldn’t bring herself to weep, not for Abu Nayef. She loathed him. Instead, she listened to every word the men in uniform said to one another.

“Hey, JG, we’ve got a dozen terrified women and kids here. Are they going to be safe when you blow those caves?” asked the tall one standing over Abu Nayef, speaking into a slender mic near his painted lips. “Roger that.”

“Hey, senior chief, we got nine hard drives, four cell phones, a handful of flash drives, and a box full of CDs, along with some files.”

“Bag ’em,” the tall one said. “Boss, we’re good to begin our exfil. Yo, boys, it’s time to go!”

Americans.

Chills shivered up her spine.

“What is that? Do you hear that?” Zainab looked up.

It was the thrum and whir of distant helicopters.

She looked up through the mesh of her burka at the starless sky, saw nothing, the night having taken on an air of unreality.

One of the women—Safiya—started to sob, clutching the crying baby to her chest. “They’re taking him away! What will become of us?”

Out of the dark sky appeared three helicopters, black against the black night, each with one rotor in back, another in front. One lowered itself to perch against the cliffs above, men in black uniforms rising like ghosts from the ground and climbing aboard, weapons in their hands. Another landed at the base of the cliffs. Still another landed inside the compound, its giant rotors blowing dust everywhere.

The house had been surrounded, and they hadn’t even known it.

One of the men began shouting to the women in bad Arabic, telling them to take shelter inside the house for their own protection, warning them that the caves in the cliffs had been set with explosives and were going to blow up.

She found herself caught up in a panicked tide of blue and black as women clad in burkas and abayas pushed her toward the house, Zainab’s fingers holding fast to her arm, digging deep into her flesh. She looked over her shoulder to see the tall one standing guard while two of his men lifted Abu Nayef by his elbows and dragged him toward the waiting helicopter and up its rear ramp.

They were leaving.

The Americans were leaving.

There was a buzzing in her brain, her pulse pounding so hard it all but drowned out the sound of the helicopters, that nameless fear gathering momentum, rushing against her like a wave, the terror in her mind coalescing into a single, heart-stopping thought.

Ana amrekiah.

I’m an American, too.

“Ana amrekiah.” She didn’t realize she’d stopped walking or spoken aloud until Zainab jerked her arm.

“Shut your mouth, or I will cut out your tongue!”

Strong hands shoved her toward the house, making her stumble. She looked back, saw the tall man watching them, and she realized he was waiting to board the helicopter until the others were safely back inside. Then he, too, would disappear up that ramp.

As the women reached the door, he took two steps back, then turned away from them, speaking words she couldn’t hear into his microphone.

The Americans were leaving—without her.

Dizzy with terror, she jerked away from the other women. “Wait! I’m an American, too!”

But her words were blown away by the roar of the helicopter’s rotors.

WAIT! I’M AN American, too!