Chapter One
Auralia Rochambeau
Sudan, Africa
Monday
Dressed in her night shirt, with leggings that she’d hastily tugged on underneath, Auralia stood next to Remi in the middle of the hotel room. The women draped scarves over their heads, tying them in place to cover their mouths and noses, a small protection against the cloud of dust that powdered the air.
As Remi poured champagne into their plastic cups, the women’s candle-lit silhouettes danced on the walls, distorted by the cracks and bubbles in the peeling green paint.
Outside, bombs screamed out their displeasure as they tumbled from overhead planes. In Auralia’s mind, she conjured up images of sentient missiles shrilling their high-pitched terror as they plunged toward the ground.
Each one ended with the impact, the detonation, and the roaring collapse of some structure.
There was nowhere else for the two women to shelter.
No safer space outside the walls of their hotel.
Their life expectancy at this point was luck of the draw.
Might as well drink the champagne.
Each explosion sent more debris into the atmosphere. Chunks fell quickly back to Earth. The fine chalky particulates thickened the atmosphere like one thickens a gumbo with roux.
An unctuous potage of air.
Unsavory. Unwholesome. Unwelcomed.
Auralia Rochambeau watched her friend and mentor, war correspondent Remi Taleb, closely for actions and reactions. Remi had been in these kinds of situations for most of her career. And Auralia was still getting used to the idea that she was in front of the camera, explaining what was happening to the news audience. Auralia had dreamed of seeing the world—all of it, even the horror-filled parts—since she was a little girl, watching the news with her mom while they washed the dishes side by side. Auralia had practiced her skills in the mirror, lifting her pink bristled hairbrush and annunciating, “Well, Jake, that’s a good question. The situation on the ground is bleak.”
Surreal.
It was easy enough for Auralia to suppose she had the metal to stand up to a situation like this when she accepted an assignment.
Living through it, though, tested the theory.
Whenever Auralia felt her body giving in to the terror, she’d conjure the image of her brother Gator, a retired Marine Raider who now jumped into hot spots all over the world as a security operator.
Gator was unshakable.
The last time she’d seen Gator, Auralia had noticed a new tattoo, a tiny skull inked in the webbing between Gator’s thumb and forefinger.
“What’s that about, Gator?” she’d asked when she discovered it on their last visit.
“A memento mori. I’m gonna die. We all are. This reminds me to do what I can while I’ve got a breath.”
“Why now?” Auralia had whispered as she painted her thumb over the tattoo. After all, his stint in the war with the American military was over.
“D-Day’s still in the fight.”
Ah, well, that made sense. Gator had met his wife, D-Day, on assignment. Together, they’d battled to stay alive. Now, they battled apart. D-Day was a Night Stalker who flew special ops groups into the fray in the dead of night, mere feet off the ground, at breakneck speeds. One twitch of her arm muscles, and she could be nose down in a fireball in a split second.
Gator, too, still took off on missions that required the finesse of a special operator.
If there was a couple that faced death on a daily basis, it was her brother and sister-in-law.
They were calm and accepting of their potential demise. “We came here and did what we could while we could,” they’d said when Auralia asked for pointers on how to face her fears.
As global hot-spot reporters, Remi and Auralia spent a good portion of their time hunkering under falling buildings to report the news to the world. They didn’t have the same level of hazard as Gator and D-Day’s jobs.
But there was a risk.
Tonight, a bigger risk than usual.
Auralia wanted to be brave in the face of danger like her brother and Remi, but her own brain screamed that she wasn’t ready to die, wasn’t done with life. She needed more time to accomplish something to help humanity.
Maybe that was the difference.
D-Day, Gator, and Remi had been doing this for so long that their accomplishments were undeniable. They’d made their mark.
BOOM!
Auralia squatted with her feet spread wide like a surfer on the wave, riding out the tremble of the building. She covered the top of her cup with her hand. The champagne sloshed against her palm. Auralia chuckled at how ludicrous it was that she’d volunteered to be here.
Remi checked her watch, then leaned over to open her laptop. She placed a pre-arranged video call to the Wombats - Women’s Mentorship in Battle, Achievement, and Trials. Just a handful of women who knew each other from the danger zones. Different skills. Different career trajectories. All of them people that Auralia aspired to become.
One by one, images populated the screen.
Remi leaned in so her face showed up front and center. “I’ve opened a bottle of champagne, ladies.”
They each raised their own glasses, whatever was handy—depending on where they were in the world—from champagne flutes to ceramic mugs to Remi and Auralia’s plastic, collapsible hiking cups.
A bomb whistled its way down.
“Do you hear that?” Remi asked.
BOOM!
The room shook, throwing Auralia off balance. She hovered there, arms outstretched, gasping for air through the dusty cloud, struggling to let go of her hold on life so fear wouldn’t incapacitate her.
Remi calmly stretched out to catch the laptop as it skidded off the table.
“Whew, close!” Hailey said from the top right corner of the screen.
“Too close. But let’s get to it, shall we?” Remi asked. “I have called you all here tonight because I thought this might be the appropriate time, place, and circumstance to welcome a new Wombat into our wisdom.”
A wisdom, Auralia knew, was a group of wombats out in nature.
And the wisdom of Wombats in front of her was an elite group of women who had bonded as they did their jobs in the most desperate of circumstances—reporters, humanitarian aid workers, medical aid workers, engineers, CIA agents, linguists. In that group, the expertise had depth and breadth. They used their resources to help each other accomplish their professional goals. And more importantly, to stay alive.
Remi lifted her champagne with one hand as she turned the video camera toward Auralia with the other.
The women started cheering and calling out welcomes to her.
Auralia’s eyes stretched wide at the honor that they were extending.
Remi’s words weren’t a surprise to any of them. Obviously, the women had discussed and agreed upon her invitation. They had opened the door for her and extended their hands to her; now, she needed to live up to their example.
“We have some rules,” Remi explained. “First, whoever is under imminent threat is the only one to share a hardship. If the threatened sister needs to break down and emote, excellent. If others needed to, they excuse themselves to do that privately.”
“Fear is infectious,” Hailey said.
“Panic, too,” Nicole added.
Remi took a sip of champagne. “The next rule: once the situation is understood, once all resources for aid are exhausted, it is time to collapse into the warmth of our sisterhood. To create an often-false sense of safety. A bit of rest. A webbing of support. Like tonight, there’s nothing more we can do to stay safe. So here we gather.”
“And if worse comes to worst—no sugar coating here,” Julie added, “well, we won’t die alone. Think of it as hospice surrounded by family but without the I.V. meds to bliss you out.”
The women laughed.
“Remi,” Hailey said, “let’s save the rules for when you’re not coughing up bomb dust. Let’s get the distraction going.”
And so, they did.
While Auralia couldn’t completely block out what was happening outside, hanging out with people who understood the circumstances did take the edge off—and time passed, which was the only remedy to the situation.
“Hey, do you hear that?” Nicole pointed upward.
Everyone stopped talking and listened to silence.
“How long?” Auralia whispered.
“Since we started our last round of camp songs.” Nicole grinned.
The all-clear siren shrilled.
Remi filled Auralia’s plastic cup, then hers with her Wombat-welcome champagne. “One last ‘Hurrah!’ Ladies. And then let’s all get some beauty sleep.”
The Wombats whistled and welcomed, then with the customary “see you later,” rather than the fate-tempting “good-bye,” each square on the video grid went dark until only Remi, Auralia, and Nicole were on the line.
Auralia took a gulp of champagne that went up her nose and made her sputter.
“Hey, Auralia, can you stay and speak with me for a minute?” Nicole asked.
“Absolutely.” She dragged the back of her hand under her nose.
Nicole Street functioned as a sociologist for an NGO, studying patterns in women’s reproductive health in both post-war zones and present-day conflict areas. She had seeded her share of journalistic stories by passing on insights and observations to Remi and Auralia, depending on who was reporting in which region.
It was a win-win.
Remi and Auralia knew which stones to turn over. Nicole got the public’s eyes turned toward women’s issues, helping to shape public awareness and understanding with the hopes that the outrage of the circumstances might turn to public pressures where policymakers might otherwise overlook these issues.
Her work in Kabul came to a screeching halt when the Afghan government decided that non-governmental organizations couldn’t employ women. The NGOs, in turn, said they couldn’t operate without their women. Auralia wondered where Nicole might be heading next and if she had a new story up her sleeve.
Chapter Two
Auralia Rochambeau
Sudan, Africa
Monday
Patiently, Auralia waited as Nicole searched the bottom of her cup. In their communications, carefully picking words wasn’t unusual. Auralia understood that Nicole often walked a fine line on what she could ethically share with reporters.
When her gaze came up, Nicole said, “I was going to go through Hailey on this since she’s a Wombat with an Iniquus connection. But she’s another degree of separation from getting information passed, and this is really very sensitive. Now that you’re a Wombat, it seems tighter to tell you and see what you think.”
“Wow, okay. Listening.” Auralia shifted into a seat in front of the screen.
Nicole lifted her voice. “Nowhere for you to go to make this a private conversation, Remi, but could—”
“I’ll put in my earbuds and crank the music,” Remi said as she flopped onto the bed, pulling out her phone and earphones. No bad feelings or curiosity. Such was the level of trust and support within the wisdom of Wombats.
“Auralia, with this conversation, I’m putting you in the middle of something, in a way.” She paused overly long, so Auralia nodded her head by way of encouragement.
“We Wombats support each other, but there is never a responsibility,” she started again, then shook her head. “You have no obligations here. I’m trying to fulfill a family debt. If you can help me, that would be great; if not, I’ll find another way. Okay? No worries.”
“Okay, well…” Auralia pulled her brow together. “Let me hear, and we’ll figure out the best steps together. How about that?”
“Your brother, Gator, still works on Strike Force at Iniquus?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a woman there who works with him. Her name is Lynx Sobado.”
“Yes.” Auralia canted her head. “I know Lynx. But how in the world would you know that name?”
“I don’t know her. I know of her. So the back story is, about a decade ago, my cousin Kaylie—Kaylie Street—was working in Africa on reclaiming desert and making the land farmable. Kaylie was kidnapped and not ransomed. They explained that it was most likely that she had been killed.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yes.” Nicole swallowed hard. “Whew, this is…a big decision to tell you this.”
Auralia locked her teeth, not sure she wanted to know what happened to Kaylie.
“Okay, step by step. These things are still okay to tell.”
Auralia pulled a long breath through her nose and promptly sneezed out the dust.
“It turns out that Kaylie was sold to Isis as a slave. She was alive. Held in Syria. Lynx not only helped discover where Kaylie was, but she personally went there to save my cousin’s life, fighting off the man trying to drag his knife across Kaylie’s throat.” Nicole wrapped both hands around her own throat as if self-protecting. She took in an audible sniff of air. “That was about two years ago. When I discovered what Kaylie went through, I changed my focus with the UN’s global women’s health research to specify women in crisis areas.” Nicole’s face turned red, her eyes watery, as she looked down at her lap, and a breath juddered past her lips.
There was the boom and shake as a building collapsed nearby.
The air filled again with particulates.
Auralia coughed into her elbow. “Keep going. There’s nothing else to do here but pace and shake. It’s good to focus on something else.”
“I know a secret about Lynx.” Nicole paused and looked up, rolling her lips in and out with indecision. “Well, surely Gator knows this, and surely Lynx knows this, so I’m just bringing you into the fold.”
Auralia couldn’t imagine what this could possibly be about.
“Lynx is married,” Nicole said in a sudden burst.
“Was married, yes,” Auralia corrected. “Her husband died in an IED explosion while on a mission with the Rangers.” Auralia stopped to smile. “She is engaged, though. To Striker, Gator’s commander. But they—” Auralia felt some strange sensation move through her body, then whispered, “keep putting off the wedding.”
“Lynx’s husband, Angel, is alive. Lynx discovered that when she was saving my cousin. Kaylie only told me and only because I needed help getting dangerous information to the right people, and she… That doesn’t matter. Angel Sobado is alive.”
“Wow,” Auralia whispered. The only way that made sense was that Angel was doing something extra-legal. Nicole had said “right people,” so that must make what Angel was doing something for the greater good. Auralia could only think that he was black ops—that he’d staged his death to lose his identity and protect his family and friends.
If Lynx knew he was alive and kept it secret, just kept carrying on as usual, then she had to agree that what Angel was doing was for the greater good. Otherwise, she’d go to the courts, the newspapers, and the Pentagon and create chaos. She had the contacts to bring a hailstorm down on the situation.
Nicole gave Auralia’s mind a chance to churn. To figure all of that out. When Auralia looked up to catch her friend’s gaze, Nicole nodded. “Okay, you get the situation. Now, why I’m telling you: I overheard a phone conversation by a CIA agent when I was…that doesn’t matter. The agent said they were wedged between a rock and a hard place when it comes to Lynx. They need Lynx’s special expertise in ongoing geo-political issues. She’s, according to that agent, an insanely important asset. He also said they’ve failed to live up to their obligation of helping her get a secret divorce from Angel. They had promised to help make that happen.”
“So, Lynx can’t get on with life because she discovered he was alive—”
“And if Lynx hadn’t gone to save my cousin, she wouldn’t know. She’d just have moved forward, unaware. Saving my cousin meant…well, it put Lynx in this bad place.”
“Okay.”
“That dangerous information I mentioned? As a sociologist going in and collecting data, I see and hear a lot of things. I’ve become a CIA asset. I’m not supposed to tell anyone. But this whole conversation is top secret. Yay for Remi’s encrypted channels, right?” She laughed nervously. “I am supposed to meet with…well, I guess I have to tell you the agent’s name, so if you decide to pass the information on, Lynx will know it’s trustworthy. The CIA guy’s name is Grey, John Grey. Grey will meet with The Angel—that’s what they call Angel now. I guess it references the fact that he’s supposed to be dead.”
“Maybe.” Auralia’s ribs were a tight cage around her lungs.
“I have the name of the hotel where the two of them will be next week in Jordan. Like I said, I’m meeting them to discuss something. I thought that particular information might be interesting to Lynx. She can choose what she wants to do with it. That’s it. I was hoping you could get that out to her.”
Screams rose from down the street, the high-pitched lament of someone finding a loved one dead. Once Auralia had heard that cry, she found it unmistakable no matter where she was in the world. It always sounded the same, a call to the universe.
Auralia’s skin pebbled with goose bumps. “I can. I will. I’ll do that. Yes, thank you.”
BOOM! Another building collapsed.
“That is,” Auralia grimaced, “if I’m still alive in the morning.”
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