Viviana stilled as she waited to hear what the monster would say. She was glad Marisol couldn’t understand Arabic because the conversation they were having about her with the calmness of discussing the weather would have qualified as torture.
The soldier kept sucking, making the other two men laugh. Viviana had never felt so helpless and horrified in her life.
Finally, the soldier’s mouth released her nipple with a pop. “I wish to keep her,” he said.
Viviana mentally exhaled. There would be no gang rape. Maybe being taken as his wife or concubine was actually the better fate, she told herself. At least then Marisol always had the hope of escape.
“Are you certain?” The leader was rifling through papers. “According to this, she is forty-three years. She may not be able to give you sons.”
He shrugged. “I’ll take a second wife if she cannot. She is too beautiful not to keep.”
The leader nodded. “So be it.”
Marisol was quickly clothed in a niqab, a garment that showed only her eyes. Her captor tied her hands together before pressing them against his erection. “This will be inside you tonight,” he whispered to her, obviously unconcerned with whether or not she could understand him. “Once you are my wife.”
An eerie silence fell over what was left of the compromised CIA barricade. Only then did Viviana’s mind register the fact that the remaining fighters had absconded with Agent Kennedy and were gone.
The next several hours passed by in a daze of helplessness and mental disconnect from her body and surroundings. She was afraid to move, too terrified to speak, and could only stare into nothingness. A search and rescue squad finally arrived and located her. They gently pulled her body from under the worn tarp, her hand bleeding from the teeth still piercing it.
Jarred into awareness by the unsmooth landing, Dr. Lincoln blinked several times in rapid succession. She absently rubbed the hand that still bore a small scar from the stitches it had been given by a triage medic.
“What the fuck?” she heard the co-pilot ask aloud as the plane came to a stop. “What happened here?”
Viviana’s eyes widened. She quickly unbuckled her seatbelt and steeled herself for whatever hell was coming.
“They radioed ahead and told me to expect it,” the main pilot said. “Some idiot smoked too close to a gas line.”
“Shit.”
Viviana blew out a breath. They were okay. She could surmise from the back and forth banter that the facility had acquired some damage, but it was nothing to be alarmed about.
“Dr. Lincoln,” the pilot said, turning around in his seat, “My orders are to keep you here until a CIA liaison retrieves you.”
She nodded. “Sounds good.”
“Most of the installation is still completely intact. It’s the blockhouses that got fucked.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “They must intend to have me live in a safe house and work at the installation.” She sighed and glanced away, her gaze absently trailing beyond the tiny window next to her seat. “Great. That won’t look suspicious at all,” she sardonically muttered.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. I would have been given orders to abort and reroute if they didn’t have the situation under control.”
“I hope you’re right,” Viviana replied. She closed her eyes. “I really do.”
