Liberator

PLEASE NOTE THERE IS AN ADULT EROTIC ROMANCE VERSION OF THIS NOVEL I DID FOR A PUBLISHER ON MY ARABELLA KINGSLEY PAGE.

THIS STORY IS THE ORIGINAL. BOTH CAN BE READ AS SEPARATE BOOKS IN THEIR OWN RIGHT.

Refugee Camp nicknamed The Hole, Marzello, Southern Coast of Italy

Adalina Morelli shook her head and stood up from the long thin camp bed in the tent. She stared at the young woman who was a year older than her sixteen-year-old daughter sitting on the opposite bed dressed in a Burqa holding a small five-year-old girl who was crying in her arms. Next to her was a quiet thirteen-year-old girl with a black hijab around her head. There were tears locked in her dark brown eyes but she did not shed any of them. The young woman removed her arm from around the small child and put it around the teenager’s shoulders and squeezed them to give comfort.

Adalina put her hands on her hips feeling pity swell inside her for the two girls. No matter how many times she saw children and the people in the refugee camp suffering, she couldn’t become hard to it. She had tried to place her feeling of hopelessness at a distance but it always reared its head and threatened to interfere with her aid work. Now it was affecting her better judgment and penetrating the cold armour she had placed around herself to get the job done. What the undercover free-lance journalist, working for her local paper on a part-time basis outside of school for God’s sake was asking to be able to do, was wither an act of courage or perhaps on reflection, stupidity.How the hell were her parents letting her do this?Perhaps they didn’t even know.Maybe, they thought their daughter was on holiday with friends in the summer holidays and didn’t have a clue what was going on?Who knew.Either way, Adalina couldn’t help but admire her bravery and determination.She genuinely wanted to help the young woman succeed in her quest but the danger was immense. It could kill them both. The journalist needed to understand sacrifices had to be made so others could be saved.

She threw her hands up in the air in defeat when she looked at the faces of the girls and made every effort to harden her heart but it was getting harder and harder to do. She said to the young journalist,

“You shouldn’t be here. I can’t protect you. If they find out who you really are, they will kill you.They don’t call this Refugee camp, The Hole for nothing. All forms of low life exist here among the innocent. There is even a talk about I.S operatives in here. People get swallowed up and disappear. They won’t take kindly to a Westerner living among them.”

Adalina rubbed her tired face. The woman stared back at her with sparkling green eyes but said nothing. The only communication she received in return was a nod. There was no moving her stubbornness and resolve to put her life at risk.She was going to stay in the camp to protect the two girls she had befriended and to get the story she wanted to tell the world about the refugees.

“You still have the number I gave you to contact me on if you need anything?” Adalina checked trying to ease her fear for the woman. “Good. I could lose my job for this. Don’t use the toilets in the wash block. They are overflowing. Use the field. And for God’s sake don’t drink water from the tap here. I will get you some more bottled water. Yesterday the camp amenity workers were checking the outside taps and found traces of E-coli and Coiform present. If the men in this camp don’t get you, the water will.”

If anything happened to the journalist as manager of the camp it would be on Adalina’s head.It hadn’t been her idea to let her in but the aid team she worked with encouraged it. They needed all the help they could get in exposing the truth of what went on in the camp and Adalina’s hand had been forced. There had been too many deaths and this one could be avoided. She was turning her mind back to marching the woman out of the camp but those two girls kept staring at her pleading with her sympathy, her humanity. If the journalist left they would be unprotected as orphans. Their fate would be unknown. Adalina would never sleep at night again.

“I will check in on you in another couple of days. By then you might have all the time you need to find the lead on all these missing girl refugees your source spoke to you about. You have been in here a week already. I dare not risk any more than another couple of days. You have already been attacked.I don’t want your rape or death on my conscience. So many women in here live in fear of being attacked as it has happened so many times. I cannot guarantee your safety . . .”

“I understand,” the journalist’s voice was calm and even when she spoke. “When this is over I need . . .”

Adalina thrust up her hand up to halt her speech and nodded.

“I will help you get the girls out when you leave.” Adalina meant it. They wouldn’t survive if she didn’t. “Just be careful.”

Adalina turned and unzipped the tent. She didn’t look back. The sight of the two pitiful girls was too haunting an image to keep returning to. Outside she straightened her slightly bent form to stand next to her armed male companion, grimacing when a long black shape scuttled over her booted foot.

“The rats are running free in here,” her companion moaned. “I have been watching them.”

Adalina sighed feeling the overwhelming hopelessness of the situation. The situation was out of control and the camp overrun. They were drowning and something had to be done. A pungent smell of decaying sweat clung to the warm air amidst the burning of the small camp fires between the lines a thousand dirty white tents covered in wet washing vainly trying to dry in the damp humid atmosphere. A group of men were smoking and drinking lying around one of the fires on the camp beds they had dragged out from inside their tents. Adalina frowned.

“She still won’t leave?” her companion asked gesturing his head towards the tent.

Adalina shook her head. The man sighed and took another puff of his cigarette.

“On her own head be it then,” he said dropping the butt and stubbing it out with his feet.

They started to walk away back to the safety of the outside world when they stopped dead in their tracks hearing the terror of a woman’s scream echoing loudly through the camp. It was accompanied by the wailing of children. Horrified they both stared at each other and took off in the direction of the terrified howl of pain. Adalina called for security on her mobile.

After what seemed like an age they finally reached the source of the scream. What they found made Adalina want to vomit. A man was lying on top of her with his trousers undone.

Adalina shrieked at the men. The guard with her produced his weapon and ordered the men in the circle back while she used all of her strength to pull the rapist off the woman. As her guard went to help her the rest of the men fled. The camp manager stood up allowing the soldiers who had finally appeared to drag the man away.

At the end of the row of tents she saw the Journalist standing quietly watching with her narrowed green eyes. She must have followed them. Strangely, Adalina felt comforted by her presence. Someone from the outside was finally seeing what was happening in these camps, in her camp. Europe and the rest of the world needed to know the horror they were dealing with and the appalling conditions the refugees were being forced to live in.She let out the angry tense breath she had been holding. The burden wouldn’t just be hers alone to bear anymore. The whole world would be forced to take responsibility for these people along with her and understand the action she had been forced to take to help as many people as she could.

But another chilling scream was to divert her attention. A woman and a man came running up towards them shouting in English.

“They have taken our daughter. They are taking the women and the girls. Help us, help us.”

Adalina’s eyes widened. This was what the journalist had requested her permission to investigate. The numerous disappearances of women and girls in the camp who she believed were being trafficked in to Europe and to the I.S for child brides, sexual and domestic slavery.She looked back at the English journalist knowing she would have heard every word. The young woman tilted her head in acknowledgement and stepped back in to the shadows to continue her investigation.

Chapter One

Mark Stone charged in to the Tube station at the height of the rush hour on a hot sunny morning in London.A large crowd was coming up the escalators signalling that a Tube had just come in.He pushed past them and ran down the escalator.Taking advantage of his strength, the eighteen-year-old jumped over the barrier and used his tall height to advantage to see over the throng of people moving down.She had to be there.He’d seen her run in.Got you.Don’t go anywhere.

The girl was stepping off the escalator at the bottom.Mark pushed through the crowd trying to run down the escalator but it was covered in a sea of passengers who were more than reluctant to move and appreciate his urgency.She was getting away.He checked the journalist’s small curved form once more thinking how much thinner and fragile she looked compared to the photograph he had been shown of her, given to them by her only relative her Aunt who had reported her missing.He liked her with a little more weight on those curves but then what did he expect after she’d spent the last month living undercover in Europe’s notorious refugee camp.He’d been told she was suffering from malnutrition and nervous exhaustion yet here she was still carrying on, putting her life at risk.

He glanced to the right.Two men in dark cheap suits unlike the quality of his tailor made one emerged from one of the tunnel walkways and started following her.They were closer to her than Mark.If he didn’t reach her soon there would be a bullet in her back and he would have failed to protect the witness.

Appearing blissfully unaware of the men pursuing her, the pretty, fair-haired seventeen-year-old journalist walked through towards the platform.Mark stepped off the escalator and picked up his pace becoming a little rougher pushing passengers out of the way to reach her. A tinny disembodied voice announced the imminent arrival of a tube. Too late the damn train was coming in and the suits were just about on top of her.

Mark barged through a couple holding hands praying he would take hold of her before the train arrived. But his luck was running out fast. Just before he reached the end of the tunnel walkway, a third suit stepped in front of him and swung a punch at Mark’s face.He quickly raised his arm to block it and deliver a hard blow to the man’s stomach.The man groaned loudly and bent double.The crowd of passengers were in uproar and panic.They scattered and ran out clearing a path for the other two assailants sent to silence the woman to the platform where she waited for the train.

The suit came back at Mark grabbing him by the shoulders to push him back against the platform wall between two screaming female French students running out.As his back hit the tiled wall, Mark lifted his arms with lightning speed and dislodged the man’s hold to aim a punch to the man’s jaw and then stomach in a succession of fast staccato movements, the older man tried in vain to match and counter as he heard the train arrive. Automatically, Mark’s attention diverted for a brief second to the platform to see if he could find the woman he had been assigned to protect. She was pushing her way on to the tube. His lapse of attention was a mistake.