She didn’t expect to be grabbed from behind, she didn’t expect to be thrown into the back of a vehicle and driven off. She’d been walking around the town most of her life and that sort of thing just didn’t happen. She tried to lift her head up and a boot mashed down in the back of her skull, shoving her face into the floor. A blanket was thrown over her and that was the end of any hope of finding out where she was being taken.
Wherever it was, the drive wasn’t far, the vehicle halted, somebody grabbed her feet and hauled her out. She hit the ground with a thud that drove the breath from her, then her head still covered, she was half-dragged, half-walked into some sort of building.
There were voices around her, speaking in languages she didn’t know. They were arguing about something, in fact there were two or three arguments going on in different languages, One of them sounded like Arabic and she felt a deep sense of relief, despite the violence with which she’d been picked up, these were the people she’d been working for. Another couple were speaking in Tagalog, she couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. Then the world changed. One of the voices spoke in Visayan. “Oh just kill the bitch.”
“No!” She gasped, her voice mostly muffled by the blanket. “Please no. I am on your side. I am working with Commander Torpedo. My work is to tell him who has received foreign currency transfers.”
Suddenly the blanket was pulled from her head. It didn’t help much, bright lights were shining on her and the rest of the room was in darkness. “See!” the Visayan voice said. “She lies. She claims to be a believer yet she walks with her face bare. Kill her.”
To Narisa’s horror a glass containing a viscous yellow liquid was produced and put on the table. She couldn’t see it properly but it was there and it reminded her of her fantasies. The threat was making her sick.
“Please no. I wanted to take hijab but Commander Torpedo told me my duty was to stay with the Bank. Please. Ask Commander Torpedo he will tell you.”
That caused more discussion, more talk in the languages she couldn’t understand. Then the Visayan man spoke again. “You will write a letter to Commander Torpedo asking him to confirm your identity. If he does so then you can go free. If Commander Torpedo does not confirm your story then you will be killed.”
“That won’t do. It could be anybody writing that note. How will Commander Torpedo know it’s her?” Another voice, foreign, it sounded like one of the men who had been speaking in Arabic.
“ I know a way. Listen, bitch. Put things in there that only the two of you will know. You better make it convincing. A hand picked up the glass and swirled the yellow liquid suggestively. Narisa whimpered and started writing. When she finished, she gave the letter to a man, hidden in the darkness. He read it quickly.
“That’s great. A lot of good stuff we didn’t know and confirmation of things we suspected.” The lights flicked on. The room held three Philippine Army soldiers and two Australians along with a couple of civilians. One of the Philippine soldiers picked up the glass of yellow liquid. Narisa whimpered again and tried to turn her face away.
Then, the soldier drank from the glass and shuddered. “This is disgusting. Fosters you call it? Dreadful. Look, I’ll get you some crates of San Miguel sent over. We’re allies, we can’t let you drink this muck. If this came from a buffalo, we’d declare the poor thing unfit for work.”
Narisa made a despairing grab for the papers she’d written. The Australian holding them whisked them out of reach. “Now, now my dear. That’s not nice.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Nothing. We’re going to drive you back to your home and drop you off there. All very nice and polite. You see, we have no more use for you. Commander Torpedo and his gang of extortionists were ambushed and killed this morning by one of our units. So there is nobody to whom you can pass the doctored information we’ve been sending your way. Of course your people know Torpedo was killed today and they’ll see you being returned home by an Australian Army jeep. Of course, they may assume it’s a coincidence. And if they don’t?”
Suddenly the Australian voice turned hard and shook with anger. “There’s at least two nice old ladies got torn up because of you. One of them nearly died and the other has more guts in her little finger than you and all your friends put together. There are lot more who live in fear now, afraid to be on their own, afraid to answer their own door. So I think you’ll get what’s coming to you.”
From the Rosario Sun newspaper, next day
“The body of local woman, Narisa Valadola, was found on a garbage dump behind her home last night. The victim had been driven home by two Australian Army soldiers in a jeep, After they left, she was seen to enter her home, alone, at least an hour before the body was found. Cause of death was a single knife wound to the throat, cutting the neck to the spine. Three suspects, all members of the local Muslim community, have been detained and are assisting local police with their inquiries. Unofficial police sources tell the Sun that the victim and the three suspects had all been drinking heavily and are believed to have had a dispute over Miss Valadola’s sexual favors and the division of the proceeds from an extortion racket.”
CHAPTER NINE: PITCHED BATTLE
USS “Thomas Jefferson” CC-3, Command Flagship, US Mediterranean Fleet
Ten years ago, it wouldn’t have been possible. Five years ago it was possible, but it didn’t work. Now it was possible, it worked and the Navy had to find out how to use it. It didn’t even have the same name. It was the Combat Information Center on smaller ships, here it was called the Combat Direction Center. The heart, the nervous system of the CDC, was NTDS. It was NTDS that took the tactical data from the sensors, fed it to the CDC that turned it into a tactical picture and returned that picture to the CICs in the smaller ships. Looking at the system, Admiral Mahan knew he was getting a glimpse into the future of warfare. What that future would be like, he couldn’t imagine, what he did know was that it would contain a hideous and terrifying number of acronyms.
Still, what he had in front of him was impressive enough. Over the eastern Mediterranean, close to the Sinai coast, the SOCOM airborne command post, an AC-133A called Buffy was circling while she coordinated the rescue operation for Marisol’s crew. The SGALs had met up with them at last and were bringing them back to the coast.
Buffy was also acting as a relay point for the Marines ashore just a bit to the north and east of the SEALs. They had seized a blocking position between the Caliphate base area around Gaza, partly to stop the troops there interfering with the SEALs, partly to act as a diversion. The Phibron was a bit further out to sea, close enough to support the Marines, far enough out to be over the horizon and away from immediate danger.
The air operations were a thing of beauty. The Phibron was being covered by aircraft operating from the Shiloh, the Shiloh was being covered by aircraft operating from Enterprise, the Enterprise was being covered by Chuck Larry’s F-108 Rapiers from Aviano. Also from Aviano, the surviving 23 RB-58s of the 1/305th were bombed up and ready to go.
Mahan had heard the mood in the 305th was ugly, and not all the rage was directed at the Caliphate. The Seven Pines and her battle group would be transiting the Straits of Gibraltar in less than 12 hours, the Bull Run and her group were less than ten hours behind her. That would make ten carriers, almost 800 naval aircraft, swarming into the Eastern Mediterranean. The two carriers already on the scene had their Hawkeyes up and those airborne radar posts were also feeding data back to the Thomas Jefferson. Once again the terse statement of policy swam through Mahan’s mind. The United States does not fight its enemies, it destroys them.