AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This was it. If this was Rafiq’s base, all she needed to do now was initiate the tracker once she was certain there was cellular service or a working satellite phone powered on.
The rear cargo van doors were yanked open, and she was pulled from the vehicle. She’d only been permitted one bathroom break during a refueling stop, but they hadn’t allowed her much in the way of water, so her throat was more parched than her bladder full, but she still made a bathroom request. She needed a moment of privacy to collect herself.
The blindfold was removed, and she learned it was deep dark night. Not as dark as when she’d stargazed a few nights ago, because here there was the glow of light pollution, letting her know the house was in a populated area.
Still, having seen the position of the constellations in each of the last several nights, she knew it must be past two in the morning.
She scanned the dark grounds, seeing the shapes of outbuildings in addition to a large house. From what she could see, the compound was somewhere in the middle of the pristine to dilapidated spectrum.
It was a far cry from the way station where they’d kept her as the dig site was prepared. It had gates and a high stone wall. Electric lights. Plumbing too, probably.
Plus there were guards who manned the gate, even in the wee hours of the night.
This had to be Makram Rafiq’s lair.
As she was led through a side door and into the main structure, Diana was reminded of Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It appeared Makram Rafiq had taken a page from the dead al Qaeda leader’s book and had been hiding in a populated town in a country with infrastructure and not in a cave in Afghanistan, or as had been speculated in the months before Rafiq’s not quite death, a bombed ruin in Syria.
“I must oversee the artifacts’ removal from the van,” she said to Jamal.
He turned a sharp glare on her, raising a hand to strike her face. Bassam caught his arm. “Save it. No one but me heard her speak to you that way.” To Diana, he said, “Do not show disrespect to my brother or me, or you will get more than a slap.”
He was right. She couldn’t make them look weak in front of the rest of their group. If anyone witnessed a hint of lax behavior toward her, all three of them would be lost.
The only reason she’d been able to control them in the field was due to their age. She’d learned at one point that Jamal wasn’t yet sixteen and Bassam barely seventeen. They’d been eager enough to use Diana to gain status, and in general, they’d let her run the show. But this was different. They were nobodies here.
She should behave as if she feared them.
She was led to a bathroom and given a moment of privacy. There was no mirror in the room for her to check her appearance, not that she cared how she looked, but she knew a wisp of hair peeking out from her headscarf could trigger a rebuke and even a punishment from the men inside this compound.
She patted her hairline and straightened the garment as best she could, then stepped back into the corridor. Bassam berated her for being slow, while Jamal used rope to bind her wrists in front of her body. Another man found them and barked an order for the two boys to unload the van. This man would be the one to take her to see the top dog.
He led her down a corridor and up a flight of stairs, then she found herself in the same room with the Four of Diamonds once again.
She entered the room to find Rafiq sitting with his back to her. He spoke to her in Arabic. “I am told your dig was successful.”
She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. She needed to play a role here. If he guessed at her motives, she was dead. Literally. “Every item pulled from the ground was a failure to me.”
Still with his back to her, he said, “That is not my concern.” He turned, and in the full light, she could see a new scar on his face in addition to the one she’d spotted to identify him back when she was in the tent thirty-eight days ago.
She wondered if he’d been wounded in the attack that everyone believed had killed him.
Makram Rafiq was in his late fifties, although he looked older. He’d risen through the ranks of various terrorist groups since the Arab Spring. He was one of the hydra heads that had popped up with the removal of their previous leader several years ago.
Rafiq was a chameleon, and it had taken at least two years for intelligence agents to identify him. He was responsible for the deaths of dozens—possibly hundreds—of civilian children on at least three continents. His favorite method of spreading terror was attacking schools. Girls were abducted, raped, and enslaved. Boys were forced to join his army. Their choice was simple and horrific: become like the men who took them, or die.
She didn’t know if Jamal and Bassam had come to this organization via abduction, or if it was a path they chose willingly. Either way, she couldn’t let it get in her head. They were her jailers, and even if they’d been pressed into service for the monster who stood before her, they still followed his orders and would rape and/or kill Diana if so instructed.
The reason Makram Rafiq had ended up in Freya and Morgan’s deck of cards, though, was because Rafiq had come to power and built his terrorist organization with the blood of archaeologists and by trafficking artifacts.
There were rumors that the man had once worked for a museum or he’d been an historian of some sort in Syria, but no one in the cultural protection community outside the war-torn country had been able to confirm it.
Of course, they’d stopped looking when he’d supposedly died.
What had been confirmed was that his rise to power had followed an influx of antiquities being sold instead of destroyed. He’d already been wanted by the FBI and Interpol and most other major police forces when he’d orchestrated a strike on a military transport flight carrying a platoon of SEALs along with other US Navy personnel. He then became a major target, and there’d been much celebration in the military community when it was announced he’d been killed in a strike.
Freya’d had her doubts about the reports of the man’s death, so she kept him in the deck of cards, and now here was Diana, facing Rafiq down across his home office desk.
“You must let me unpack the artifacts and complete the conservation efforts I began in the field. Your men will break them or damage them in the cleaning process and make them worthless.”
