Free Sandra Hill by Hot, Heavy

consternation had just come outof the largest tent and slumped against a tree. A young Arab girl, no more than sixteen, Ian would guess. She wore only a tattered man’s shirt. One eye was blackened shut. The stains on her outstretched thighs could only be blood. She had obviously been raped … repeatedly.
    “Riyad’s granddaughter,” they all guessed at once. A month ago, the son and daughter-in-law of the Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, Musa Riyad, had been brutally murdered by terrorists. Their daughter Altaira Riyad had simultaneously disappeared, and Aljazeera television had claimed, since there had been no ransom demands, the teenager must be dead. Instead, it appeared that Jamal was taking a particularly cruel form of revenge against Riyad, his sworn enemy. There would probably be pictures, horrible pictures, sent to Riyad sometime soon.
    As they watched, a man in a turban and long white robe walked up to the girl and grabbed her by the upper arms, shaking her. He seemed to be yelling something at her. Then he let her drop back down to the ground, like a rag doll.
    Eight sets of teeth could practically be heard grinding with frustration. The SEALs would like nothing better than to rush in and save the girl, whether it was Altaira or someone else. Impossible. Not yet. A civilian in the rats’ nest changed the whole game plan.
    For one blip of a second, Ian remembered Yasmine’s scars.
Is this brutal treatment what she’s running from? Or is she like those women terrorists you see on CNN with bombs strapped to their bodies?
    “This changes everything,” he said into hisinter-squad head phone. Moving quickly but carefully, he crawled over to Pretty Boy, who carried the radio satellite equipment. Pretty Boy already had General Adams at CentCom on the line.
    “Garfield, this is Cat One,” Ian said.
    “Garfield here. Cat Five briefed me. What’s your take?”
    “Tricky situation. Depending on how we play it, it could be a hallelujah mission or a major goat fuck.”
    “I read you. We must assume you’ve caught a bird.” Ian didn’t know much Arabic, but he did know that Altaira was the Arabic word for bird. “Do not … I repeat, do not … go in with the original ‘Shock and Awe’ plan.”
    “I copy.” The second Ian had seen the girl, he’d known a new strategy would have to be developed. The original plan had been to go in with stealth from seven different directions, taking the tangos out one at a time, except for Jamal.
    “There’s always the danger of crossfire,” the general reminded Ian, as if he didn’t already know that. They all did. “Too dangerous to the bird.”
    Aside from the basic human concern for an innocent victim, the U.S. already had an image problem in the Arab world. Killing that girl, even accidentally, would be a colossal mistake. “I hear you,” Ian said.
    “Stand down,” the general ordered.
    “Delay the mission?”
    “Correct. Do not engage. I repeat, do not engage.”
    “Roger.”
    “Retreat back to your prior location.” Ian read that to mean the cave. “Leave two cats behind, to be relieved every three hours. Keep this line open forfurther directions. Wait for final orders.” Ian suspected that it would be a nighttime raid now. “Big Bird will be alerted and on standby for extraction.” That meant the chopper, of course.
    “Yes, sir. And our priorities?”
    “Number one, the Big Rat. Two, the safety of all you cats. Three, taking out as many of the other rats as possible. Four, the Big Rat’s cheese.”
    Even though he’d already known what the general would say, his heart sank a bit. Yasmine, aka the cheese, would be sacrificed at the least notice, that’s what the general was saying.
    Once they disconnected, Ian ordered Geek and JAM to stay behind for first shift. There would probably be two more shifts before they attacked the site.
    Ian was point man, leading the way back to the cave. It was mid-afternoon now. He’d been gone since that