Very early in the morning Kylie woke me. She had gathered Clara and Sophia, but Tom was waiting at the entrance too, eagerly wanting to talk to me. I grimaced because I knew what it meant. Tom had news, bad news and actionable intel. We would have to set up an operation. But first I needed that talk, more urgent than ever.

“I’ll come back to you in a moment, Tom.” I said while I joined the small private meeting with Kylie, Clara and Sophia.

I held my index finger up, asking for silence.

“Look, we don’t have much time. For now, just listen to me. Perhaps later Kylie can fill in more details. I know you didn’t act out of malintent. You were trying, in your own way, or the only way you knew to seduce me. I can’t blame you for that. You couldn’t have known, the way you did, was the wrong way for me. Hell, I didn’t even know, when you eh... committed yourselves fully to it, I would feel bad afterwards. I don’t know why I felt it, my body acted on its own on the moment, and a few moments later when I left. When I arrived at the cave, I had a bad reaction. I can’t tell you why. I don’t want to tell you the reason why.

I don’t even want to tell myself.

Now, just know, I repeat, just know that I don’t blame you for a thing. I still care for you and whatever you think you did wrong, which you didn’t, I forgive you for it. As for the result, sadly, I will need more time to consider having a relationship with you two, as I have with Kylie, Kate and Kara. If you don’t want to give me more time, and since I had such a bad reaction to your attempts, I will understand it perfectly if you don’t want a relationship with me anymore.

No, don’t tell me now. We now have serious work to do. Very serious work. Life threatening work. Prepare your section in full battle gear, Sophia, while I go talk with Tom.

Before I left, their expressions of sadness filled with... I don’t know exactly. Something else than pure sadness. Something else than remorse too, that they shouldn’t feel in the first place, but fine. Just because you tell someone not to feel... It wasn’t anger at all... was it...

Hope?

That Tom was eagerly waiting was an understatement. He kept pacing around for even that short amount of time I talked to the women. He had a map with him.

“Right, Tom, show me the map. Talk to me.”

“I asked around a lot. Talked to a lot of villagers, my girlfriend was with me, sometimes her mom, to make sure they understood me. You wanted to know who left the village, who left without a trace, or who was even missing.

First: they are no missing people. No children, minors missing. Then I checked the people that left the village, and made a map of all the residents and tourists still in place.

Second: Of the people that were gone, I cross-referenced...”

“Stop Tom. I know you must have used your brain doing this. It’s why I trusted you with this in the first place. How many people are missing: ages, gender and without a reason or explanation?”

He calmed down a bit. He realized I wanted the summary, not how he came to it.

“Four. All women, all between age twenty and twenty-five. They lived on their own, with husbands, boyfriends, or even girlfriend gone to war.”

“Possible target list? Start with the best match.” I asked.

Isolated luxurious villa, residents: two brothers, rich, nice car, sometimes one of them goes to the pub, no history. Not born here, German, unmarried, no visitors from villages, only a van has been seen visiting the house. They did their own shopping in the villages for food, but mostly they drove away to visit restaurants.

“House?”

In this village... A bit further up the road, inwards, isolated by the forest. House surrounded by a net and camera surveillance. I didn’t look further. I just went around the house in stealth mode. The house has a patio at the back, windows closed and curtained. But, Alex, the infrared on the scope of the AT told me there were four people in the house, when I tried to look through the glass and curtains, and suddenly there were only three.

Fuck Tom... You should have started with that... Damn...He must be really nervous...

“Right, we’ll need to blitz attack it then. With an entire squad. No, the entire platoon. Shock and awe. They probably have generators, alarms and all, but the weak points seems to be that patio at the back...”

No, wait...

“Tom? Did they build the house themselves?” I asked them calmly.

“They did. Villagers were angry about it first, cutting trees and such, but the owner gave them a once-of-a-lifetime party when it is was done, not in the house though, but in the village centrum.”

The house could be reinforced. Steel doors, bullet-proof reinforced glass. We could be hammering and shooting at it all day, but once we do, they would be warned, they would flee, either to a panic room, or worse... to their prisoners. Prisoners probably in the cellar. Probably a big one. Reinforced entry points... And looking from the AT-scope three...

AT-scope... AT-gun... We even had two of those...

You could reinforce your house all you wanted, and the police would need a lot of time to enter it, but we weren’t the police. We were at war, after all. Trained with various weapons... Could we risk blasting a hole in it? Without hurting the prisoners? While the three fuckers were on the ground level? Fuck, if they were, a prisoner could be... involved. And they mostly would be... involved.

But the shock and awe effect would be there. No doubt about it.

“Alright, gather everyone, Tom. Time to make a plan.”

Diary, Alex, Entry (unreadable number) – My dear potential reader, you should know by now I am bad at describing operations. Well, the violent ones at least. And my after-action reports are even worse. I will never become a good staff officer. Not that it matters, as we no longer are in the army.

Anyway. The plan was simple and elegant. Cut the wires at the side, wait for all three plus one, run to the house, blast a big hole in it, another one just after and next to the first hole, et voila, operation **** a great success... And eh... three bullets less to be spent on the Russians.

I feel no remorse at all. I have killed Russians for less. They were obeying orders at the time. Bad ones, but still. But I do feel guilty. For not acting faster. For not returning earlier to the house we raided. For not taking my time with my prisoner back then. For not thinking clearly enough at the time. For... whatever time I had left unspent to free the prisoners. All five of them. Not four. Five.

Five young women. Four in dog cages. In a large cellar, with a door we blew up with demolition charges. Four naked women in dog cages... Who does that? What were they thinking? Locked up. I found the keys at the exit of the cellar, very visible. Like an extra torment to the women, keys so close but forever unreachable. We covered them in blankets, placed them outside. And then went to work on the house. Looking for something useful, looking for more of the fuckers, looking for the van owners. Shouldn’t have shot them. I know. But I couldn’t act in a different way. Tom told me what they were doing. In a voice so ****, like he couldn’t find the words. I told him not to bother. I had an idea what they all three were doing at the same time with the woman at that moment. Perhaps they would be still alive if they weren’t doing that at that moment of entry, but they wouldn’t have lived long either after I had seen the dog cages. As for the van owner, it isn’t as if we can go search for him in the cities. It is sad, but we have to be realistic here. We can’t protect everyone. I couldn’t even do it for the women in the village.

We took the women to our camp. We could have left them in an empty house, but with what they had experienced, they shouldn’t be alone. And the villagers had enough worries on their own. I sent some girls to gather fitting clothes, things that women need, trousers, warm clothing and other things. I am horrified at what some men can do. I can’t describe this feeling more. Utter repulsion, perhaps. – End of entry.