I laughed and it made him jump and put his hands straight back in the air. “You think I need a gun to kill you, then you didn’t pay close enough attention to my fucking file. Say your piece.”
“A report has come in that a mission you completed is not completed.”
This deluded boy, who was so new and fresh he was just missing a fucking letterman jacket, was insane. I never failed on a mission; it was another reason why they worked hard to keep me in their clutches. No one else had a one hundred percent success rate.
“You’re the only one who’s ever been close to this guy, the only one we can trust to get confirmation or finish the job either way.”
“There’s still over ten thousand troops out there with skills on the edge of insanity, pick one of them.”
“It’s Iqbal.”
If I wasn’t so used to schooling my reactions, I would have flinched at hearing his name.
“He’s our biggest near shore threat. With him being back and active, he just got bumped to the top of the most wanted list.”
“Well, at least you’re asking me to kill a legitimate war lord this time, not some dad of two who’s no fucking threat to anyone.” Locke either ignored my jab or didn’t get it.
Hearing Iqbal’s name fall from someone’s lips again did things to my insides. It twisted them all up, like my organs were physically distending with no hope of being able to unfurl and return to normal and function again. The last time I looked into that man’s eyes they were deadly, yet void of emotion, so void that they pierced you with all the evil a person could summon. I often wondered if my own had taken that from him, whether I had consumed his evil because it needed a new host because to live in as I stabbed the life out of him.
Did it all transfer to me?
Or when I thought I’d stabbed the life out of him.
“You have to do this. The enemy are mobilizing, and we can’t let them get a foothold. If they see this man rise from the dead like the messiah, nothing and no one will be able to put this war to bed. It’ll be Allah and paradise on our very own earth.”
“How do you know he’s alive?”
I looked at Locke and he chewed his lips, wondering whether to continue. “Not at liberty to say.”
“Then you should have known better than to ask me.” I turned on my heel. This would be a case of who blinked first.
“You either help or I’ll have no choice but to put a warrant out for your arrest.”
This was the threat I was expecting, and before he could even register that I’d moved, I was in front of him with my hand around his throat.
“We’ll take you your girl,” he wheezed.
That was most definitely the wrong play. Threatening the one person I loved unequivocally would not convince me and I let him know that by tightening my grip.
“And how you gonna do that? You got a secret army here that’s gonna step out from this tree line and take me out now.” I squeezed as he sucked in the tiniest scrap of oxygen I permitted him to have. “I don’t know you. I don’t fucking trust you, but I do know that if you ever threaten my family again, I won’t rest on this earth until your blood is draining into the soil. So, tell me the fucking truth right now or you’re looking at a leafy grave deep in those woods behind you, and they’ll never, ever find all of you.”
“Uh…” he wheezed again. “Can’t bre—”
I relaxed my grip the smallest fraction, as it hit me. “You’ve got someone on the inside.”
He nodded, as much as I allowed. “Then why the fuck don’t they do it.”
“Too… dangerous.”
“So, it must be too dangerous for me then too.”
“Wo… man,” he spat out through swollen lips and I released him immediately, shocked by his words.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You sent a female UC in there?”
Locke bent double with his hands on his knees and began to gasp for air, before he loosened his tie like that would ease the pain and deliver him more air. He’d see the bruises in the morning and realize just how pointless that action had been. Just how close I’d been to snapping his next like a toothpick. What a fucking useless cunt, where were they finding these classless, unintelligent amateurs? “Code name Poppy was recruited here, put in an arranged marriage through an agency and taken back there.”
“An ISIS bride?” They were all the rage at the moment, women were lured into fake relationships through social media sites like Facebook, by chatting to some hot, young guy and if they didn’t become suicide bombers here, they were taken back home to earn their keep on their backs. “She flat backing for the jihadis?”
“Poppy is committed to our cause and in light of this new report we can’t afford to have such a vulnerable asset anywhere near him.”
I’d seen what Iqbal had done to women in the past. He’d cut the tits off the last two wives who didn’t please him, then hung them in the main square using meat hooks rammed through the rib cages he’d exposed. His poor third wife was made to eat the lumps of meat after she’d had the job of barbecuing them at knife point.
He was a sick fucker. Revered as a war lord and it was devastating that he’d survived my last visit to his country.
“Mission is, find him, kill him, and extract Poppy. We want her alive, we have no idea how she’s suffering but not even you would want to see a woman suffer like she probably is. This time, finish it. You leave at dawn; further intel will be available in country in the usual way.”
This fucker knew I wasn’t going to turn it down, so much so that he stood up and smiled. I’d never been one to leave something unfinished, but there was no way I would leave an agent, a female agent, out in a vulnerable situation. It went against everything I stood for, and them knowing that pissed me off. The agency might have had these new upstarts working for them, but the tactics and tricks hadn’t changed.
“Usual drill for evac. Come home, Hope.”
His voice had changed, that self-centered, assured nature of an asshole, who should be working in a bank, not playing with people’s lives. My temper got the better of me and I snaked my fist out quickly and felt the blood lust sing inside me when I heard the bridge of his nose crack.
“Fuck!” He squealed like a pig and bent double.
“I come home and this dance with you is done. You or anyone from the firm approach me again and I will burn the whole fucking house down. I will make sure that I won’t be the only one who ends up rotting in a cell. Mine might be a military one, but yours will be a fucking black site where no one will find you. You get me?” Locke ignored me; he was too busy pressing a pristine, pressed fucking handkerchief to his face. “I said, do you get me?”
“Yes. Fuck, yes.”
“Good.”
My body vibrated with a familiar energy as I walked away from him. It was the exact same adrenaline rush I used to love about being given a mission, and it worried me. This life might not be done with me, but what if I wasn’t done with this life either?
Then I thought about Flick and the kids, the only family I wanted to be a part of, and I knew that I couldn’t let them down. But more than that, I’d promised Tracey and if I didn’t make it, those kids would suffer.
This was definitely it, one last job.
Back at the truck, I pulled out my burner cell and dialed the number from memory.
“Yeah.”
“Deploying at first light.”
The other end fell silent for a few moments. “How long?”
“Till it’s done.”
I heard a chair scrape back and a door close. I figured Wolf was moving out of earshot of Angel. “I’ll look after Flick and the kids.”
I breathed out the strangled lungful I didn’t realize I’d been holding. It was my turn to be silent.
“She know?”
“Knows it’s a possibility. Not got it in me to say goodbye.”
Wolf understood, the unspoken part of our conversation saying far more than anything we’d verb
alized so far.
“This number will be dead.”
“How do I get hold of you?” Wolf’s voice sounded panicked. In all the years I’d known him, even when he’d been shanked in prison, I’d rarely heard him scared.
“You don’t. Fully dark. I call you.”
“Fuck, brother! Flick’s gonna freak.”
“Then you and the other old ladies better sort that. Need my head in the game.”
“I hear you. I’m on it. Nothing to worry about this end.”
More silence.
“Brother, I don’t come home—”
“You wi—”
I interrupted him. “Brother, if I don’t come home, Flick gets it all and make sure she keeps the kids. My fucking parents do not exist for Ben and Lila.”
“You’ll come home.” His panic was rising again.
“Need you to remember this. Seven-three-seven-five.”
“What’s it for?” he shouted.
“Remember it. Now confirm you’ll make sure she’s looked after?”
Wolf sighed, he knew he wasn’t getting any more. “You got my word.”
“Appreciated.”
“Come—”
I cut the call dead, not being able to bear hearing someone else I cared about make that demand of me. It was a pressure that tipped the scales out of my favor.
I popped the battery off the cell, pulled the SIM card from it, and flexed it until it snapped in two. Hurling the battery and back case in one direction, I walked to the cliff edge and tossed half the SIM card over the side. Another half a mile down the track, I dropped the other half of the SIM card into the fast-flowing stream that ran parallel with the path. Taking one huge step back, I leaned back like a baseball pitcher and volleyed the cell phone into the overgrown forest, watching it until the very last moment when I lost sight of it. The thud disturbed some birds as they squawked into flight, before the silence descended again.
This was it.
It was time.
I was ready.
One last job.
Shadow
Sitting in the rear of a military cargo plane was terrifyingly comforting. My body and mind were on autopilot, smiling inwardly about the destruction we were about to cause.
I’d hitched more rides on a C-5 loadmaster than some of my current traveling companions had had hot dinners.
Surrounded by glass-eyed newbies and battle-weary vets, I was the only one who resembled a civilian. They all looked at me like I’d boarded the wrong plane at the airport, but they couldn’t have been more wrong, they might be sat in line with their weapons, but I was the deadliest. I’d killed more, ruined more lives and, apparently, with many more to come. My killing days weren’t behind me, it seemed I’d just been on a sabbatical. The only thing I had in common with these fresh bloods was my shaved head, the buzz cut I usually sported was shorter and more severe than theirs, but it wasn’t what I needed now. They were expected to maintain their regimented appearance, whereas I had to conceal mine; I had to let my hair grow, my stubble become a full-on beard in order to blend in. My trusty American firepower would be left behind, and I’d need to rely on the same shit the insurgents used and hope and fucking pray that it didn’t fail me when I needed it.
My need to blend in was almost as key to my survival as my firepower.
“He a reporter?” I heard someone ask from a few feet away.
“Yeah.” A battle-weary older guy with stripes on his arm looked my way, eyeballing me. He knew exactly what I was, he’d been briefed. I could see it in his eyes, the telltale mixture of fear, disdain, uncertainty, and just a hint of jealous admiration. He had no idea how lucky he was. He’d retire with a nice little nest-egg, go home and live a life of routine where he fucked his fat wife on a Thursday, and mowed lines in the lawn on weekends… if he made it home.
My usual cover story was CIA, and the uniforms fucking despised the CIA. One minute they’d be doing routine roadblock checks, the next they’d be on some mission they didn’t understand, helping the CIA make deals with the same group of people who slaughtered their brothers. It wasn’t just confusing, it was despicable.
“Land!” An excited soldier declared and anyone near the small porthole window clambered for a glimpse of it.
I didn’t, though, I could describe it perfectly from memory.
Goat trails would be snaking beneath us, dotted with mud-brick homes. When you approached from the air your eye would be drawn to the mountains. Mountains that became sand, while you wondered how the hell it was so green; the vegetation causing you to doubt everything you’d heard about the country. The brown of the Helmand river came into view, like the lifeblood it was for the people who lived near it. It sustained the crops, fed the livestock, and more importantly helped grow the poppies. When the season was right, the landscape would be dotted with patches of red.
“This is it, boys! Woohoo!” A jar-head yelled, completely clueless to what he was getting himself into.
Only a percentage of those flying in would board a plane home of their own free will. The rest of them would make the trip home, but probably in boxes draped with flags. Those who survived would age overnight. These boys didn’t know Afghanistan yet, but it wouldn’t take long. They believed they were here to defend the country, help the Afghan people take the country back from the Taliban.
But I knew different and their vision couldn’t have been more wrong.
The plane began its descent, the touch down and impact with the ground would be both physical and emotional. But despite these emotions as a soldier, you were drawn to this place. Your service was a calling, one you could never hope to explain to a civilian. And once you’d been to Afghanistan, it was in your blood, part of your genetic makeup. You always felt that sand, that dust, the blood, and you were never able to work it out of you.
“What’s it like?” The soldier next to me asked, his face sweaty from excitement, but his thready breath gave away the fear he was really feeling. There was the distinct possibility that this one would puke before his boots touched solid ground. I ignored him, deciding it was best not to burst his bubble and tell him the truth. Some things took more effect in live action. When he drove down a road littered with undiscovered bombs, those pretty stacks of rocks piled on the side of the road would send terror through him. He and his platoon would never know if they concealed an IED or were there just to trick them, twist them all up. When they patrolled a marketplace that thrived with life one minute and became completely abandoned the next, they would brace and get ready for the sniper, gun fire, or worse, a bomb.
These boys would bust their hump rebuilding shit, winning hearts and minds and as fast as they did it, it was undone. A pointless effort for us and a cruel one for the locals caught in the middle.
Suddenly, I broke my own rule, I engaged back. “Don’t underestimate them.”
“Huh?” The fresh soldier looked at me confused, and I knew at that moment my words were pointless, he believed the words of the recruiting officer. He’d learn, they all would and the three words I’d just told him would probably haunt him for the rest of his life.
Everyone underestimated the locals, you were a fucking fool if you thought they were all simple, stupid goat farmers. They weren’t, and it was one of the harshest lessons to learn. Their ability to adapt and evolve was impressive, it made this whole sand bucket a deadly place. Those simple goat farmers became soldiers of war with nothing to lose who believed that a higher power would reward them for martyrdom. For that reason alone, they worked ten times harder than a conventional army to win the fight.
This was their turf and they wanted us out of it, they were completely comfortable with any method of achieving that end game.
This was where I came in.
Our armed forces were conventional—I wasn’t. I wasn’t hamstrung by their rules, I was the exact opposite, taught to disobey. I targeted people and engaged in cloak and dagger battles to make the war shorter, more bearable, or so I
thought.
Something else I’d been wrong about.
In the blink of an eye, the mission changed, and you weren’t fighting to win any fucking war, you were fighting to stay alive and make it home in one piece.
Tracers flew up past the plane, illuminating the night sky. The soldiers oohed and aaahed like they were at a firework display. They were lucky it was only tracers arcing across the sky. I’d come in amidst RPG and gunfire blitz before, so much so that it’d felt like near daylight. Getting to the base at night would be their first real survival situation and most of them would never even realize that they’d passed it.
“Been before?” my persistent friend asked.
I glared at him. If nothing else this fucked-up experience would help him wise up, teach him when he was talking without thinking, when he was bordering ridiculous and insensitive.
Casting my memory back, I let it dredge up some native Pash, I’d need the language to get by.
Rain battered the plane suddenly, a few soldiers jumped thinking it was bullets making contact. Spring; the worst fucking time of year in Afghanistan. It’s humid, but it’s when they harvest the poppies. This country produces over forty percent of the world’s opium. So, not only are the Taliban a threat, the drug cartels are in force protecting their crop. A hopeless position for sons, fathers, and brothers, they’re either dragged into the Taliban, the Afghan national army, or the poppy fields. All a no-win situation, with a high probability of dying; valuable pawns, expendable gun fodder in their own country.
The soldiers sat around me would trust the Afghan National Army as much as they did the Taliban, it would cause them to question and second guess everything. They’ll clear a road of IED’s and then see after that they’d have been replaced, with more added just for shits and giggles.
“Trust no one but your brothers,” I mumbled, breaking my vow of blending in and silence again.
The sooner they all learned to only trust the men right by their side, the longer they’d live.
They needed to say it every day, forget the ANA, trust American only. No kids. Forget the fucking kids, they’re just as brutal with a weapon as the adults. I remember seeing a stack of kids playing in a crater one of our bombs had left, it was sad at first, until we noticed a stockpile of arms off to the side.
Flick (The Black Sentinels MC Book 4) Page 17
