LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      She struggled to surface from the black hole trying to suck her back down. Her head hurt and she could barely open her eyes. Every part of her body ached so badly she began to think death would be a relief. But her heart, buried behind bruised and broken ribs, beat strong, pushing blood through her veins. And with the blood, the desire to live.

      Willing her eyes to open, she blinked and gazed through narrow slits at the dirty mud-and-stick wall in front of her. Why couldn’t she open her eyes more? She raised her hand to her face and felt the puffy, blood-crusted skin around her eyes and mouth. When she tried to move her lips, they cracked and warm liquid oozed out onto her chin.

      Her fingernails were split, some ripped down to the quick and the backs of her knuckles looked like pounded hamburger meat. Bruises, scratches and cuts covered her arms.

      She felt along her torso, wincing when she touched a bruised rib. As she shifted her search lower, her hands shook and she held her breath, feeling for bruises, wondering if she’d been assaulted in other ways. When she felt no tenderness between her legs, she let go of the breath she’d held in a rush of relief.

      She pushed into a sitting position and winced at the pain knifing through her head. Running her hand over her scalp, she felt a couple of goose-egg-sized lumps. One behind her left ear, the other at the base of her skull.

      A glance around the small, cell-like room gave her little information about where she was. The floor was hard-packed dirt and smelled of urine and feces. She wore a torn shirt and the dark pants women wore beneath their burkas.

      Voices outside the rough wooden door made her tense and her body cringe.

      She wasn’t sure why she was there, but those voices inspired an automatic response of drawing deep within, preparing for additional beatings and torture.

      What she had done to deserve it, she couldn’t remember. Everything about her life was a gaping, useless void.

      The door jerked open. A man wearing the camouflage uniform of a Syrian fighter and a black hood covering his head and face stood in the doorway with a Russian AK-47 slung over his shoulder and a steel pipe in his hand.

      Her body knew that pipe. Every bruise, every broken rib screamed in pain. She bit down hard on her tongue to keep from letting those screams out. Scrambling across the floor, she moved to the farthest corner of the stinking room and crouched, ready to fight back. “What do you want?” she said, her voice husky, her throat dry.

      The man shouted, but strangely, not in Syrian Arabic. He shouted in Russian. “Who are you? Why are you here? Who sent you?”

      Her mind easily switched to the Russian language, though she couldn’t remember how she knew it. In her gut, she knew her native language was English. Where had she learned to understand Russian? “I don’t know,” she responded in that language.

      “Lies!” the man yelled and started toward her, brandishing the steel rod. “You will tell me who you are or die.”

      She bunched her legs beneath her, ready to spring.

      Before he made it halfway across the room an explosion sounded so close, the ground shook, the walls swayed and dust filled the air. Another explosion, even closer, shook the building again.

      The man cursed, spun and ran from the room, slamming the door shut behind him.

      Her strength sapped, she slumped against the wall, willing the explosions to hit dead-on where she stood to put her out of her misery. She didn’t think she would live through another beating, which was sure to come, because she didn’t have the answers the man wanted. No matter how hard she tried to think, she couldn’t remember anything beyond waking up in her tiny cell, lying facedown in the dirt.

      Another explosion split the air. The wall beside her erupted, caving into the room. She was thrown forward, rubble falling on and around her. Dusty light spilled into the room through a huge hole in the wall.

      Pushing the stones, sticks and dirt away from her body, she scrambled to her feet and edged toward the gap. The explosion had destroyed the back of the building in which she’d been incarcerated. No one moved behind it.

      Climbing over the rubble, she stuck her head through the hole and looked right and left at a narrow alley down below.

      At the end of the alley was a dirt street. Men, covered in dust and carrying weapons, ran along the street, yelling. Some carried others who had been injured in the explosions. The sound of gunfire echoed through the alley and the men threw themselves to the ground.

      She ducked back inside the hole, afraid she’d be hit by the bullets. But then she realized she’d rather be shot than take another beating. Instead of waiting around for her attacker to return, she pulled herself through the gap and dropped to the ground. A shout sounded on the street at the other end of the alley. She didn’t wait to find out if the man was shouting at her; she turned the opposite direction and ran.

      At the other end of the alley, a canvas-covered truck stood, the back overflowing with some kind of cut vegetation, dried leaves and stalks. With men shouting and brandishing weapons all around her, she wouldn’t last long out in the open. She dove into the back of the truck and buried herself beneath the stems and leaves.

      A metal door opened and slammed shut, the truck’s engine roared to life and the vehicle rolled along the street. With no way to see where they were headed, she resigned herself to going along for the ride. Anywhere had to be better than where she’d been.

      As she lay beneath the sticks and leaves, she realized they were drying stalks of marijuana, a lucrative crop for Syrian farmers. Where they were taking their crop, she didn’t know. Hopefully, far enough away from the people who’d held her hostage. She touched her wrist where the skin had been rubbed raw, probably from having been tied with abrasive rope. In the meager light penetrating her hiding place, she noticed a tattoo on the underside of her wrist below the raw skin. She pushed the leaves aside to allow more light to shine in on what she recognized as a three-sided Trinity knot. Below the knot were a series of lines and shapes.

      The more she tried to decipher the symbols, the more her head ached, and her eyes blurred. The tattoo wouldn’t rub off. Since it was permanent, she should know what the knot and the symbols stood for. No matter how hard she tried to remember, she couldn’t.

      The rumble of the engine and the rocking motion of the truck lulled her into a fitful sleep, broken up by sudden jolts when the truck encountered a particularly deep pothole.

      What felt like hours later, the vehicle rolled into what appeared to be the edge of a town.

      If she planned on leaving the truck, she needed to do it before they stopped and found her hiding in the marijuana.

      She dug her way out of the sticks and leaves, crawled to the tailgate and peered out between slitted, swollen eyelids.

      The truck had slowed at an intersection in a dirty, dingy area of the town. With a dark alley to either side, this might be her only chance to get out unnoticed.

      As the truck lurched forward, she rolled over the tailgate, dropped to the ground and ducked into a shadowy alley. With her face bruised and bleeding, she wouldn’t get far without attracting attention. But she had to get away from the truck and figure out where to go from there.

      Turning left at the end of a stucco

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