Swift Strike (SEAL Team 14 Book 2) Read Online Free

the past three years. And yet some small, stubborn flickering flame of hope lying somewhere deep in the recesses of her heart had propelled her to sign up for an opening at WG Oil upon her graduation. After all, they both shared a love for Africa and petroleum engineering. Surely, they would be able work through their differences, she’d thought at the outset. Of course, she’d been wrong.
    As the days and weeks passed, her father never once attempted to contact her or respond to her phone calls or emails. The magnificent Alfred Westlake remained aloof, cool, and distant—even to his own flesh and blood. So as far as mending the connection with her father was concerned, the year had been an abject failure...and now this .
    In the beginning of their siege, the terrorists allowed Lena and her fellow captives the ability to walk around relatively freely. Granted, that hadn’t meant too much. Not when they were still confined to a small, dark, locked room. But even a pitifully small grant of mobility had given them all a sense of optimism. A hope that maybe their captors were not as soulless as they suspected.
    AnSawar confiscated their hostages’ shoes during the first week. Taking their footwear probably gave the terrorists some measure of assurance that their hostages would be hesitant to attempt an escape. If that was their rationale for taking her flats, however, they were in for a rude awakening. As soon as her captors let their guard down, Lena was going to make a break for it—kicks or not.
    But so far, there hadn’t been any opportunity for her to escape. The terrorist group vigilantly monitored their hostages’ movements. Even the infrequent bathroom “trips” were conducted with the utmost care to ensure the hostages were never left alone for too long.
    As to be expected, the identities of these men were still a mystery. They took precautions to conceal their facial features and other identifying marks. Two such precautions were their penchant for wearing masks and gloves. Another was the long robes that they wore; the flowing garments made it difficult to discern the exact body shape of her captors. There was one critical oversight in their garb, however. The sleeves of the robes did not cover their forearms completely.
    From what she’d been able to discern from the visible skin on their arms, some of the men were black, but at least two of the men were white—their skin color nearly as fair as Lena’s. Her captors mostly spoke in Swahili, of which she could only translate a few words. Occasionally, they spoke in what sounded like Arabic. Only two of the masked men had attempted to speak English to them. The words had come out broken and maladroit.
    Most of the men holding them had been nice, cordial even. But she wasn’t fooled. An implicit violence lay beneath the surface of each of the men holding her captive. To try to convince them otherwise, the terrorists had promised them no one else would be hurt so long as they cooperated as requested. That had turned out to be a lie.
    This whole situation was a never-ending nightmare. She just wanted to go home. She’d give anything to go home, even if that home were her father’s home. It was odd to think that in this moment, she would be thrilled to see her father’s face one more time. The type of epiphany someone could have about her life when facing almost certain death was truly amazing.
    Two weeks. She’d been held for about two weeks now, though it was becoming harder and harder for her to keep track of the days. For the past week, she had kept up the hope she would be rescued. But now, she wasn’t so sure. With each day that went by, she was becoming more exhausted, dejected, and afraid.
    The U.S. government did not usually negotiate with terrorists. She knew that. And the fact that a rescue team had not been sent in by this point was not encouraging for her future prospects. And she very much wanted to have a future. She did not want to die. Not