Veiled by Choice (Radical Book 3) Page 4

  “What if Ava escapes and gets out of ISIS territory? Can you pick her up with a patrol?” He just needed to talk to Ava on the phone. He could help her come up with some kind of plan. She was smart. “I read about an ISIS deserter last week in the Denver Post.”

  Silence from half a world away. Joe cleared his throat. “Men, Kaleb. Islamic State men desert. Given the restrictions ISIS places on women,” a swallowing noise from across an ocean, “of the over three hundred Western women who have joined ISIS, only two have escaped.”

  No! “You have to help me, Joe.” Sweat poured down Kaleb’s forehead, stinging his eyes. A rickety desktop reflected the ceiling’s light. He’d played Frogger on that desktop for hours as a teen and got frustrated every time toddler Ava jumped on his lap and yelled, “Frog, frog!” as she slammed her fingers against the keyboard.

  “I’m in Iraq now. I will look for Ava during the siege of Mosul. I promise.”

  Something clicked. The phone lost its connection. Fingers still gripping the cold glass, Kaleb dropped his arm and sank onto the water-damaged couch. He stared at his iPad where it perched on an upturned box.

  He ran numb fingers over the screen. Had Ava already “married” that pedophile? Ava still kept a Mickey Mouse nightlight in her bedroom to drive away the monsters under the bed. He typed “brides of ISIS” into the search engine and stared comatosely at the screen as a picture of what Ava’s life would be appeared on the web browser.

  Story after story filled with horror and terror blinked on the LCD pixels. The clock ticked forward hour by hour and the screen began to blur in front of him as he poured over the stories of Western women who had joined ISIS.

  The images of the women stared back at him. The Before pictures showed teenage girls with pony tails and eye makeup. The intermediate ones showed a round moon of a face covered by a veil thing. There were no pictures of the girls once they entered Islamic State territory.

  One picture caught his gaze. Curly red hair fell down around a girl’s shoulders, stark against her deep green eyes. Jessica Walker, the three-year-old newspaper headline read. This seventeen-year-old from the U.K. entered ISIS territory through Syria. Her mother and step-father are in shock. She is eight months pregnant and the father of the child is believed to be a terrorist working with Islamic State.

  Gaze glued to the screen, Kaleb read on. Jessica was raised Anglican and her mother said she regularly attended services with her grandmother until her teenage years. Jessica’s father could not be reached for comment.

  Pictures of girl after girl flashed on the computer screen under the “ISIS Bride” heading in the internet browser’s search engine. Each caption read “whereabouts unknown.”

  Had really only two of these girls ever escaped Islamic State? Where were the rest of them?

  The web browser revealed no gruesome videos of the girls’ dead bodies riddled with bullets. Nor did images of black eyes and broken bones incurred from abusive husbands pop onto the web browser. That didn’t mean though, that those idiot Western girls weren’t currently experiencing such things.

  Domestic violence cases came to hospitals all the time even here in Denver, Colorado. Despite every hospital and law enforcement officer’s best efforts, he’d often treated domestic violence wounds in his work in ICU. If that happened in Denver, what happened in ISIS? His baby sister was trapped in that hell-hole! Kaleb clenched his fists.

  Ava’s ballet concert invite crumpled beneath his sweaty hands. He had to save her.

  A tiny line at the bottom of a news article glimmered, the blue hyperlink flickering against the iPad screen. “American joins Iraqi Peshmerga army to become a foreign fighter against ISIS.” Kaleb pressed his finger against the hyperlink.

  Stories of Western military men joining the local Peshmerga forces to help fight ISIS flashed across the screen. “Join now, ask a recruiter how,” read a minimized box at the bottom of the screen.

  He entered his email address and hit the chat button. A message popped up on his screen. “Are you prior military? Playing war computer games does not count.”

  Slowly, Kaleb moved his fingers toward the keyboard. “Yeah, ten years ago, infantry in Iraq,” he typed. Kaleb hovered his finger over the Send button as he stared at the blinking icon.

  He was supposed to report back to work at the hospital in a half hour. He had exactly one day’s worth of sick leave saved up and zero vacation. He could skip today’s shift, but if he didn’t show up tomorrow, he very well might lose the job. His apartment’s rent needed to be paid.

  Other news articles popped up on the edges of his browser, story after story about Peshmerga fighters who died. If even fully-armed fighters were dying, how would Ava ever survive? Kaleb hit Send.

  With a whirring noise, his message flew through cyberspace to halfway around the world.

  The foreign fighter’s avatar blinked. “Then come on over to Iraq, my brother. I’ll email you instructions.”

  “Okay.” Kaleb hit Close Chat. He switched to Kayak.com. Flights to Baghdad, Iraq, $1500 dollars. Buy now, take off in three hours.

  A pit formed in his stomach. If he lost his job, how did he pay his bills? He’d only gotten one of the forty-five applications in so far for the research fellowships he wanted, and it was for the one he’d never get. The application was for a world-class research position in the best hospital in Taiwan. The other applications’ deadlines were coming up in the next two weeks.

  He’d promised to cover his co-worker’s overnight shift at the hospital this week and next because the man’s wife was recovering from surgery for an ectopic pregnancy. Also, he was supposed to pick up his F-250 from the mechanic this Saturday and return the rental he was driving. Would his cell even work in Iraq?

  Shoving the thoughts away, Kaleb clicked Buy Ticket Now. His baby sister was not going to be a statistic. He’d get Ava out of there. He ducked into the crawlspace and yanked out a spider web covered safe. The metal lid creaked open.

  His old M16 lay in its wrappings beside the folded flag of the comrade he’d lost, “Muddy Boots” Kaine. The sweltering Iraq heat must have dulled Sergeant Kaine’s senses that day in Fotur that the car bomb took his life. Kaleb swallowed hard.

  He’d only done a month in Iraq before he’d had to be transferred home to get rotator cuff surgery. After that, he’d been taken off active duty for a while and given the option of a medical discharge. He’d taken the discharge and a truckload of CLEP courses and decided to be a doctor, not a soldier.

  Six months later, he’d gotten the news about his sergeant. Kaine’s aging grandmother had handed him the flag at the funeral, said that Kaine would have wanted Kaleb to have it.

  The slippery folds of red, white, and blue slid through Kaleb’s hand, bringing back ten-year-old memories. Kaine had always been the cool sergeant who’d knock back drinks at the bar with his guys like the best of them. Not like Joe. No, ten years ago, Joe Csontos had been the uptight, religious freak who tried to get his privates to go to chapel.

  With a shake of his head, Kaleb banished the memories and closed his hand over the cold metal. He was going back to Iraq to where “Muddy Boots” Kaine and multiple others in his unit had lost their lives, despite all the body armor, night vision goggles, armored trucks, and combat training the world’s only superpower could buy.

  This time, he wouldn’t have the might of the U.S. military protecting him.

  CHAPTER 5

  Iraq, North of Mosul

  The Sinjar mountains rose high behind Kaleb. Concrete buildings painted in the colors of the rainbow spotted the landscape. Scrubby date palms lined the ridge in front of him and the Peshmerga forces spread out around the tiny town. After the week-long ordeal of plane delays, traveling through international airports, and Iraqi road blocks, he’d finally arrived.

  Hope soared through Kaleb as he strapped on the body armor the Peshmerga forces had given him. He grasped his battered M16. To his left, dozens of troops milled around stacks of supplies
. An American forward operating base (FOB) stood ahead, a U.S. flag marking a line of garages.

  A Peshmerga commander, “Ali” someone had called him in broken English, gestured toward the training grounds. A red beret perched on the man’s head, and unlike most of his Arab-looking companions, he was black.

  The sun glared on the dusty road behind Ali. On the other side of the mountains, dirt and sand stretched out to the horizon where the blue sky glimmered in the raging heat.

  Beep. Kaleb’s iPad made a noise. He dug into his backpack and unlocked the iPad. An email from his apartment’s management office flashed across the screen. Your apartment has flooded. We could not get in contact with you, so your belongings have been moved to the leasing office. If you do not claim them in twenty-four hours, we will donate all items to the ARC thrift stores.

  What the ####?

  The sound of Arabic words buzzed around Kaleb’s ears. “I want to see Joe Csontos,” Kaleb shouted to anyone who would listen. He’d spoken with Joe on the phone this morning. Joe had said he’d be at this FOB.

  More Arabic words skittered through the overheated air. A translator mumbled something to the commander. With his chin, Ali pointed to a concrete garage painted in shades of orange and purple.

  Perfect. The translator yelled something, but Kaleb double-timed toward the garage. Without bothering to knock, Kaleb hauled up the garage door and ducked inside.

  The rusted metal door scraped against his hairline. Inside the garage, a naked lightbulb illuminated piles of U.S. Army gear and mounds of electronic equipment.

  Joe glanced up from a makeshift desk at the back of the garage. An iPad glowed in front of him and a dark-haired woman spoke from the video chat. “Kaleb,” Joe nodded to him. “Five more minutes.”

  Despite Joe’s disbelief in the wee hours of the morning yesterday when he’d called him from Baghdad, Joe had promised to discuss Ava’s situation with him. If the Peshmerga launched a forward offensive, maybe they could overtake the house Ava was in. Kaleb glanced to Joe’s iPad. “Should I walk out? Classified?”

  “It’s okay. I’m talking to my wife.” Joe twisted the iPad screen to face him. “Kay, meet Kaleb. He was one of my privates ten years ago in Iraq.”

  Crossing toward the desk, Kaleb raised his hand in hello. The screen cut out, removing the image. “You got married? I didn’t get an invite to the wedding.” He smiled as hope soared through him. By the end of the week, he’d have Ava out of ISIS’s clutches and on a plane to America.

  “Last month. We didn’t invite many people.” A faint red tinge rose across Joe’s ears as he tapped the now-black iPad screen.

  Kaleb slapped Joe on the shoulder. “I’m joking. We haven’t talked in years.” Honestly, he’d never connected with Joe as a corporal. The guy was way too religious, his Bible more well-worn than most guys’ copy of their truck manual, which was stupid. Sure, there might be a God out there, but that didn’t mean one had to waste time getting to know him.

  With the crackle of static, the iPad lit again. The woman’s image flashed back on the screen. She stared at a blurry purple object in her hand. “This can’t be happening!” Joe’s wife’s scream penetrated cyberspace.

  Joe lunged toward the screen. “Kay, are you all right? What happened?”

  “I’m pregnant.” Terror registered on Kay’s white face as she waved the pregnancy stick across the iPad screen, obviously oblivious that anyone but Joe watched on the other side.

  Kaleb coughed and took a step back from the desk. As a doctor, he’d been a third-party bystander to many of these kinds of intimate moments. The dazed expression Joe wore as he stared wide-eyed at his wife and gripped the iPad in both hands counted as a remarkably calm reaction actually. He’d had at least a dozen fathers-to-be faint at this point in the hospital emergency room.

  “How did this happen?” Joe’s wife’s wail blared through the iPad speaker and she certainly wasn’t winning Most Calm Unexpectedly Pregnant Woman of the Year.

  Joe swallowed, moving his throat beneath the high collar of his camo uniform.

  “Joke’s on me.” Joe’s wife stared at the pregnancy test in front of her as she rapidly devolved into panic. “Why did I trust a homeschooled virgin when he said, ‘oh yeah, I understand birth control?’ ”

  “It’s going to be okay.” Joe reached out and pressed his hand against the screen, touching his wife across the miles. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “Your school curriculum probably didn’t even have Sex-Ed.” Shock sagged Kay’s masticatory muscles. She started shaking.

  “I’d already bought tickets to get on a plane to Dubai tonight for four days of leave, Kay. I’ll be there. It’s going to be fine.” Joe used a level voice, but his skin looked pale.

  Tonight, that meant they’d have to get Ava out this afternoon. Good, the sooner the better. Kaleb swung off his backpack and set it on the floor between stacked boxes.

  “You better get home safe, you hear me? You’ve got a baby depending on you. A baby!” Joe’s wife disintegrated into something that made hysterics look tame. She clicked a button on the other end of the screen and the connection ended, the iPad fading into darkness.

  Kaleb stepped around to the front of Joe’s desk. “All right, how are we getting Ava out?”

  “Give me one minute.” Joe held up his hand. He took hold of a metal canteen and slowly raised it to his mouth, a glazed look in his eyes.

  The pounding of boots sounded. Ali, the Peshmerga commander, along with six other men ducked through the half-open garage door.

  “The Jeep is here to take you to training. Six weeks up north in Mt. Sinjar, then you will be ready to fight with us,” a translator said.

  “No way. I plan to be back in America in much less than six weeks.” With a shake of his head, Kaleb turned to Joe. Back in America with Ava and hopefully still a job at the ICU, though that was doubtful. Assuming, of course, he wasn’t dead.

  Also, he needed to find someone to pick up his truck from the mechanic and go rescue his waterlogged belongings from the leasing office. If he could manage a steady internet signal, he should try to send in another research position application too.

  “Courtesy, much?” Joe raised one eyebrow. “None of these troops have eaten or drank anything since before sunrise because it’s the first day of Ramadan, so nerves are shot.”

  “In this heat?” Kaleb glanced at the half-dozen Peshmerga soldiers in front of him. Outside the garage, the sunlight beat down on the dirt so intensely that the ground glistened like a mirage. He’d thought it was hot ten years ago when he was in Iraq during springtime, but it was nothing like this. “People are going to be dying from heat stroke.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s Ramadan, so if you don’t want to get a fist in your face, be respectful. And try not to drink in front of any of our soldiers.” Joe dropped his canteen. The metal glistened against his desk. A pallet of plastic water bottles piled high on the corner by the wall.

  Were all these men seriously not touching a drop of water for sixteen hours in this heat?

  All at once, an all-consuming thirst parched Kaleb’s throat. He looked at the translator. “We need to launch an offensive to get my sister out of Mosul. Preferably this afternoon.”

  The translator rested his hand on his combat knife hilt, boots spread. “Do you think we don’t all have relatives trapped inside Mosul, dying at the terrorists’ hands?” The translator rotated and spoke in rapid Arabic. All the Peshmerga men launched a collective glare at Kaleb.

  “My sister is getting married to a pedophile.” Kaleb’s shout bounced off the ceiling’s metal beams, filling the garage. In the last week, the marriage might have already happened, but he couldn’t face thinking that. “We have to go save her now.”

  The translator crossed one brown arm over the other, his black eyes hard. “Iraq has been slaughtered by nation after nation for decades now, against our will. Your sister chose to join the invaders. Perhaps she got what she deserved.”<
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  “You!” Kaleb fisted his hand. The soldiers took a menacing step forward. Hands went to knives.

  “Stop.” Joe walked between him and the Peshmerga soldiers. “Kaleb fears for his family the same as the rest of you, thanks to the plague of ISIS. We’re in this together.” Switching to gibberish, Joe kept talking, presumably in Arabic.

  The translator looked to the other men. The soldiers nodded and their hands fell from their weapons.

  Joe turned to Kaleb. “We can’t get inside the ISIS-occupied section of Mosul until we defeat ISIS. We can’t save your sister or any one of these soldiers’ sisters until then. I told you that before you came.” His voice possessed a less-than-pleased edge.

  Kaleb waved his hand through the air, though he’d rather wave his gun. “When will that be?” Ava was imprisoned inside Mosul!

  The commander, Ali, stepped past the soldiers and spoke. He towered half a head above Kaleb, despite that Kaleb was nearly six feet himself. The translator motioned to Ali and relayed his words. “ISIS’s territory shrinks daily, but the battle may take weeks yet. Many, many of the civilians trapped inside Mosul will die.”

  “But some will live?” Kaleb rubbed his finger over a familiar groove in his M16. He’d done street-to-street combat in Iraq before. It wasn’t pretty, much less so for civilians.

  “Not girls who don’t speak Arabic.” The translator crossed his greasy little arms. “And if she did survive, we would make her stand trial under the death penalty. Girls like that are the reason men join the terrorists. Your sister is the reason our homeland is suffering.”

  The ####! Kaleb went for his gun and only barely remembered his medical oath to maintain the utmost of human life in time to not follow through on the urge to swing the rifle off his shoulder and aim it at the man. His nails bit into the palm of his fisted hand.

  Joe shook his head at the translator. “The embassy will, of course, do all in its power to get Ava extradited to the U.S., and she is a minor. But we have a battle to win before worrying about that.”