Page 3 of Keeping Amanda
Those children would be forced to do heinous things, whether they wanted to or not.
And worse was the way the group treated women.Girls. They were disposable. Second-class citizens. Only good for the children they could birth. It was a barbaric and old-school way of thinking, and it made Buck genuinely concerned for the well-being of Amanda Rush and the eight girls who’d been taken.
Buck’s question was—why had this school been targeted at all? It wasn’t as if it was full of rich children. It was a school fororphans. Children who had no family. No money. Buck supposed if the rebels simply wanted boots on the ground, it made sense. But there were even other schools closer to the border. So whythisschool? Why pass up two other significantly larger schools with a lot more children? There was even an all-boys academy with older kids, ages thirteen to eighteen, that the rebels had to have passed in order to get to the small orphanage.
It was possible they chose the smaller school because that meant potentially fewer adults to have to deal with…but would that really stand in their way if they’d hoped to grab a significant number of children?
In the grand scheme of things, Buck supposed it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was getting to those kids and their teacher before they disappeared forever.
That’s where he and Obi-Wan came in.
They were going to fly into the jungle, rescue the kids, and bring them all back to Guyana. To safety. They were taking half a dozen members of the Guyanese military with them, as that was all they could fit in the chopper once the kids were rescued. He and Obi-Wan had been reassured that the six men were more than capable of taking on the dozen or so militants who were hiding out in the jungle.
It seemed like a huge risk to Buck, but he had to believe the army knew the capabilities of both their special forces soldiers, and the men they were hunting. His main concern was the kids…and Amanda.
He didn’t know what it was about the woman that intrigued him so much. She’d quit a job in Virginia—ironically in Norfolk, where he was currently stationed—to fly to South America and volunteer her time and expertise with the orphans at the small school. He didn’t know many people who’d be willing to give up their lives to do such a thing. Yes, people joined the Peace Corps all the time, but many were younger, not already well establishedin a career. He supposed it wasn’t unheard of, but Amanda’s actions still impressed him.
And something that concerned Buck was the fact that Amanda was twenty-nine, single, no parents, no siblings…and apparently didn’t have one person worried that she was missing. He didn’t even know if anyoneknewshe’d been kidnapped.
His parents were currently living in Kansas, and while he didn’t talk to them every day, he was still close with them. He reached out at least once or twice a month to touch base. His sister was married with two kids and living in Washington state, but if something happened to him, he knew she’d drop everything and come to Virginia to see if she could help.
Not only that, but he had his Night Stalker family, the fellow pilots he worked with on a daily basis. Who had his back in the air and on the ground. He’d die for them, and he knew they’d do the same for him.
The thought of Amanda not having a single person in the world who cared where she was or what was happening to her…it didn’t sit well with him.
From everything he’d heard from her coworkers at the school here in Guyana, she was a hard worker, considerate, compassionate, and kind. It seemed all sorts of wrong that she was caught up in whatever was going on.
Buck only wished the rest of his team—Casper, Pyro, Chaos, and Edge—were with them to assist. Instead, they were in Mexico, helping with the aftermath of the latest hurricane. Their skills were needed to help rescue stranded victims, and to deliver food and water to those who were cut off by raging floodwaters. He and Obi-Wan had volunteered for the Guyana mission, and they’d meet up with their fellow Night Stalkers afterward in Mexico.
“Are we set on the plan?” Colonel Samuel Khan asked. He was in charge of the rescue mission, and would be monitoringhow things were going from a small military base not too far from the Venezuelan border.
Joining them around the table were several other military officials, including the captain in charge of the special forces men tasked with taking care of any resistance from the rebels; the administrator of the school, Blair Gaffney; and her assistant, Desmond Williams.
Blair and Desmond had been tense throughout the meeting, and they’d brought with them a folder with names and pictures of all the children who’d been taken. Looking at them now made Buck’s chest hurt all over again. They were all so young. So innocent. He hated that this had happened to them. Hated that they were probably scared out of their minds. He wasn’t exactly glad that their teacher had also been taken, but he guessed without Amanda Rush, the kids would be even worse off.
“Buck? You good?” Obi-Wan asked.
Forcing his attention back to the present, Buck closed the folder. The faces of those kids were etched in his brain…but it was their teacher at the forefront of his mind. She looked eager and happy in the staff picture that had been included in the packet of information provided by Blair and Desmond.
“What’s the contingency plan?” he asked. He’d already approved of the plan to fly over the jungle, use the helicopter’s technology to find heat sources, make sure they were the right targets, then swoop in and spirit the hostages away in the middle of the night. But even the best plans didn’t always work the way they were intended. The kids may have been split up, the chopper might have engine failure—doubtful, but it could happen—or a hundred other things could go wrong.
He wanted to know what the plan was if they weren’t successful on the first go-round. Because once the rebels understood their location had been compromised, they’d scatter. Possibly taking children with them, or even killing them outright.
It was that thought that had Buck hesitating to call this meeting over so they could get started.
“This is a delicate situation,” the colonel said.
“No shit,” Obi-Wan said under his breath.
Buck did his best to keep his face expressionless as he stared at the man in charge.
“If this mission fails…I’m not sure we’ll be able to launch another rescue attempt for some time,” the colonel explained. “The rebels know that jungle better than we do, so they’ll be able to hide in places that might be impossible to reach. And if they split the children up?—”
“That can’t happen!” Blair exclaimed, interrupting. “If they split up the kids, we’ll never see them again.”
“They might have already split them up,” one of the special forces operatives said matter-of-factly. “It’s been sixteen days since they were taken. They could be in Caracas by now, for all we know.”
Buck didn’t disagree, but he was really hoping that wasn’t the case.
