12 Minutes (#2 in Military series)

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

The limited intelligence they could gather about the group behind the kidnapping of Safia and the other orphans spoke of an abandoned compound in the heart of Al-Qaeda territory as to the most probable location where they were being held.

As they packed up the jeeps and headed out of town with Kazeem and his brother at the wheels, Julia finally began to feel as if they were catching up with the perpetrators. 

Marc looked at her from across the back seat. Neither of them spoke a word but their hands found each other in the middle and Jules smiled a little at the way his fingers gripped her. 

His skin had bronzed under the middle-eastern sun almost immediately highlighting the soft dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose. Nobody would know they were there if they didn't look closely but Julia did, she knew they were there and it soothed her to think that only she knew it.

Perhaps it was bad of her but it helped to have something that was just hers, not the military's, not Carlos's or Twitch's, her own. Maybe there was a chance for them still. 

Julia didn't know how long they had been driving for, she would zone out at times, only waking up when they stopped to refuel from petrol cans pre-packed in the boot but when she looked up again she was shocked to find that it was dark outside. 

When she looked out the window now she no longer saw the broken and jagged outline of half-demolished buildings but rather she saw her own haggered reflection gazing back at her.

She stared at the lines on her face only starting to realise how old she felt. She had lost years of memories but her body remembered even if her conscious didn't. The x-rays her doctor had taken told their own story of a life on a battlefield. There were scars from explosions and gunshots. Her body read like an Andy McNab novel, and yet there were scars she still could not explain. 

Her eyes lowered towards her abdomen where unseen scars inside of her caused the most damage. Memory loss she could get over, but what if she could not past this? 

 "We can't go any further or else we risk them seeing us," Kazeem shut off the headlights as they rolled to a stop. The other jeep pulled up alongside them and Carlos stepped out. 

"Where are we?" Jules asked as she slipped out of the vehicle and looked around them but all she could see was darkness. 

Turning in a circle, Jules felt sand and small stones crunch beneath her boots and she felt the warm air brush her cheeks. 

"The compound is due north," Hasan walked around the front of the jeep with Twitch carrying a roll of paper, "It was abandoned after the army drew too close." 

Julia looked due north but she could not see anything. Turning to look at the sky, she saw that the moon was partly covered by cloud which could be good for them or bad for them, only time would tell. 

"This is a map of the compound," Twitch rolled it out across the bonnet of the jeep.

"Where did you get a map?" Marc walked over. 

Twitch looked at Carlos. 

"Don't ask," Twitch murmured as he stepped to the side for them all to take a look, "But it's not up to date." 

Letting her rifle hang by her side, she removed a small torch from her pocket and shone it across the map. It was a professional map but the paper had begun to grow yellow from age and the edges seemed to have been eaten away by mice but the main drawings of the compound remained intact.