"So tell me more about your team?" Hannah asked after they ordered.
"What do you want to know?" Ben asked cautiously.
"I’m not asking for their social security number, just tell me about them. All I know is that they saved my life and like pizza."
"We've worked together for over five years; most of us went through training together, others joined later. They are all loyal and would jump in front of a bullet for you."
"They seem great. Is it only you guys with odd names or are there others?"
"Odd names?" Ben didn’t think they had odd names.
"Tiny, Cricket, those don’t seem like names any parent would give a child.”
"They're not odd." Well, at least not to him. He had earned his name as the rest of his team had. "We each earned those names and what we go by. Secrecy is must for us and using our real names goes against that."
"James Bond always used his real name,” Hannah argued.
“I doubt that was the name he was born with and was only his spy name,” Ben told her deadpan. He didn’t want her comparing him and his team to a fictional spy. Bond and other spy movies ruined a person’s image of what the Delta Force and real spies did. There was a lot more to it than fancy clothes and cool gadgets. Not that she would ever know.
“Well, I can’t go around calling them those names. What are their real names?"
"I’ll tell you, but don’t expect them to answer to them. Tiny is Mike, Cricket is Samuel, Doc is Carter, and Sunshine is Liam. Hawk is Heath and Hound is Aaron."
"I don’t think I’ll remember all those names."
"You get stuck just ask or say hey you. One of us is bound to answer." Ben smiled to show her he was teasing her.
Hannah laughed at his sense of humor. It had been a long time since she had a reason to laugh. She was no closer to finding out more about Ben and his team but it was a start. She realized Ben was very secretive about his team and reluctant to tell her about them as if the information could get them killed. If Alejandro ever found her he could torture her for their names. Was that why he didn’t tell her more? It reminded her of all the secrets about her grandfather's past. He had been in the army during the war. He would tell her stories about storming beaches and racing into buildings during heavy gun fire. She never knew if he embellished the stories or not but he became so animated when retelling them she didn’t care. When he told stories though he never shared exactly where he was or who he was with, nor did he ever say exactly what he did in the army. Only that he was a soldier and left it at that.
They ate their lunch in silence and went back to Ben's house where the guys were already waiting. They were friendlier than when she met them last night. Maybe they had just been tired.
"Let’s get started." Ben indicated everyone to sit down. "Hannah has agreed to share with us all she knows about Alejandro, but first, Hound any intel on the flash drive?"
"It’s highly encrypted. Anything we did get isn’t useful. I sent it to my contact, Blade if anyone can hack it, he can."
"Good, Hannah, you’re up."
All eyes trained on her and Hannah sat paralyzed.
"It’s okay, Hannah." Ben urged.
Hannah cleared her throat and began. "I was sold to Alejandro a few weeks ago. All the women were kept in the underground tunnel you found us in. None of the girls stayed there longer than a few weeks before having the drugs inserted into them. I don’t know where the drugs were kept but the underground tunnels ran the length of the property and emptied into the water. To fool competitors he had dummy trucks and planes. Every two weeks a shipment of three girls went out and the weeks between new girls were brought in. Some had European accents and others American. He pulled girls from all over the world."
"If the girls were shipped out so frequent why did you stay so long?" Doc asked.
Hannah looked down at her clenched fists. A warm hand covered them and zings shot up her arms and she instantly knew it was Ben. Strange after all this time she knew him by touch.
He opened one fist and linked their hand together. Giving her his strength.
“Alejandro bought me from one of his rivals. I was the man’s favorite and Alejandro bought me. Guess blackmail would be a better term. Alejandro only bought me so I could tell him my previous owner’s secrets. I'm considered too old for most clientele so Alejandro didn’t have much use for me. He had planned to sell me to someone when you rescued us but I don’t know who."
"You were very brave, Hannah," Tiny told her somberly.
"You saved the mission, Hannah." Hound.
Hannah wanted to protest at their praise. She hadn’t done anything. She showed Ben where Alejandro's computer was nothing more.
"You led Ben to Alejandro's office when most would have run out of the room in the opposite direction. All the other women did. And you took out an enemy set on killing Ben and warned Ben when another guy snuck up on him.” She had done that, hadn’t she? Most of the rescue was a blur for her so she hadn’t fully processed all she had done.
Hound suddenly pulled out a piece of paper. "Can you draw us a map of the tunnels and write down any names that you might have heard?"
"Of course," Hannah said without hesitation and let go of Ben's hand and drew out the map of the tunnels and wrote names and a number of how many times she heard them mentioned. A name everyone stopped on was Fox and the 20 times he had been mentioned. It had to be a code name but for who?
"What do
