by Fiona Quinn
A whop, whop, whop started up.
The line of gunfire was getting closer as the teams backed their way toward the helicopter.
“If this doesn’t work, what’s our fallback plan?” D-Day asked as she focused on the gauges.
“I’m thinking your parkour abilities might be something you might be leaning on. It might come down to which team can run the fastest.”
She turned toward him, her eyes stretched wide. “Well, shit.”
Echo team poured out of the forest. Blood seeped from a hole in Nitro’s shirt sleeve.
“Good?” T-Rex called forward to D-Day.
D-Day gave him a thumbs up and a tenuous smile.
“In. In. In. In. In,” T-Rex called—his knee on the ground, his rifle molded against his cheek.
Men poured out of the brush.
“In!”
“Dear God, let this work.” D-Day exhaled as she laced her fingers and turned her hands inside out to crack her knuckles. She pulled on her seat harness.
Nick stuck his head into the helicopter and counted Ty and D-Day, “One. Two.” He slapped his hand on Nitro’s shoulder as he climbed in. “Three.”
Nitro sat in the back, pulling his first aid kit from his thigh pouch.
“Four. Five.” Snacks and Jojo were on.
“How do the systems sound to you?” D-Day called back to them.
“It sounds good to me. I love the sound of rotor wash in the morning,” Snacks called back.
Ty figured it didn’t matter how bad it sounded. If it could get them up, over, and down, that would be good. If they had to shoot to kill, not just suppress—well, leaving nationals dead in their host nation was contrary to their orders to make this a clean mission with no footprint.
“Who’s doing the shooting?” Ty asked Nitro. He lifted his chin toward Nitro’s arm. “Need any help there?”
“Flesh wound, it’ll need stitching. It looks like it’s probably a local paramilitary group. That’s what the Ugandan guys are saying. They had what might be the Russian pilot at gunpoint. I think they were heading here to steal the helicopter themselves. They might be a little ticked that we got here first.”
“Do you think they had kidnapped the pilot?” D-day asked. “Can we get him back?”
As Echo operators crashed out of the tree line, they turned and took a knee, pointing their rifles into the foliage.
“The Russian-looking guy?” T-Rex asked. “Hard to tell what was going on. I let a bullet wing past the ear of the man holding a gun on him. The Russian took off running. No idea where he thinks he’s going to go.”
Nitro looked through the opening to the clearing. “Come on. Come on. Who’s missing? Let’s get gone,” he muttered under his breath.
T-Rex suddenly popped up. “Load up.”
Nick patted shoulders, counting off as the men climbed past him into the Russian copter. “Six. Seven. Eight.” As the rest of Echo climbed in, they threw down the gear bags they carried on with them.
Jojo and Snacks pulled the equipment out of the way, making room for the rest of the team.
With the last Ugandan soldier accounted for. T-Rex strapped himself to the runner and dangled out the side, putting down suppressive fire. “Get us out of here, D-Day.”
D-Day worked her magic and the bird lifted straight up. When they were just over the tops of the trees, she rocketed them away from the fighters.
Ty looked over, and though her facial features looked cool as a cucumber, sweat dripped from under her helmet, down her face.
***
When the team landed back at base in Djibouti, they arrived as victors with the spoils of war.
A cheering crowd of fellow soldiers had gathered to watch D-Day expertly land the beast.
Ty’s Russian had been minimally helpful. Still, the thrill of victory tasted sweet in his mouth.
As they made their way past the high fives and fist pumps, Ty watched the grin on D-Day’s face fall off.
There, CIA agent Johnna White was clapping her hands over her head. She brought her pinky and index finger to her mouth and sent out a shrill whistle. Her sleek black hair in a low ponytail, her intelligent almond-shaped eyes squinting against the bright sunlight.
D-Day threw her hands up like a sentinel signaling to stop. “No!” She barked out the single word emphatically, coming to a dead stop.
White stood about the same tiny height as D-Day. “Well, hello to you, too.” White’s smile, by contrast, was friendly and relaxed. “Fancy meeting you in a place like this.”
“Unless this is about your dress fitting for my wedding—which you should take up with Gator’s sisters—I don’t want to know why you’re here. I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t care about anyone’s orders. Throw me in the stockade.”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m not here for you.” White looked Ty dead in the eye. “He’s the one I want.”
Chapter Six
Ty
D-Day turned and tipped her head with her brows raised in surprise.
“Gentlemen,” White said. “I know you just got in, and I’ll let you get to your hot wash to debrief your last mission momentarily, but you’re going to like this.” White’s smile broadened into a grin. She clapped her hands together, then rubbed her palms back and forth like she was in Vegas getting ready for the roulette to spin. “Let me get you briefed, then Ty and I are going to head out on the new mission.”
Ty glanced toward T-Rex.
T-Rex gave him a slight shake of his head and a pop of his brow to say, no clue; this was going to be interesting.
D-Day scrambled to get away—their celebration cut short.
The men filed into the command tent, down the corridor, and into a room that was set up with a screen and computer ready for a presentation. Metal chairs scraped against the plank floor as the men took their places around the long table. They crossed their arms over their chests and tucked their chins.
The CIA was filled with good idea fairies. They didn’t much care what was said by boots on the ground about how practical those ideas were to their execution.
White moved to the front of the room. She nodded at T-Rex. “Master Chief.”
“Ma’am.”
Without ceremony, she reached over to her laptop and said, “Johnna White, CIA.” She pointed toward another woman in the corner, dressed in tactical khakis and a V-necked t-shirt. “My colleague, Angela Reston.” She paused and scanned the room. “Some faces around this room I’ve met in person, some not. But here’s a face I think you will all recognize.” She tapped a button, and a man with a thick beard, unruly eyebrows, a turban, and tribal robes glared down at them.
The mood in the room shifted.
The Echo operators leaned forward, forearms on their thighs, their eyes intent, nostrils flared.
“See? You do know him.” She gestured toward the screen. “This is Abu Musab al Khalil.”
“Shit yeah, he is,” Nitro said under his breath.
When Ty was new to the Unit, Abu Musab al Khalil was the jack of clubs in the card deck that portrayed the most wanted terrorists sought by the U.S. government. The cards were developed so troops could learn the most wanted faces and recognize them should their paths ever cross. Abu Musab’s claim to fame was propaganda. He didn’t want to kill Americans as much as he liked to capture them and put them on camera, doing horrific things that turned westerners’ stomachs and at the same time recruited others to the radicals’ team.
Seven years ago, Abu Musab al Khalil’s men attacked a convoy. The terrorists kidnapped the four American soldiers not killed in the blast, including a female counterpart named Storm Meyers, who had not only served as a translator for special operations forces but also happened to be engaged to an Echo brother.
Echo put their noses to the ground and didn’t let up until they found the terrorist enclave. When they raided the camp, Ty had been first into the tent where Storm Meyers was held.
And though she lived
, she was never the same.
Echo had wanted to be the team that took down Abu Musab al Khalil. But he had disappeared after that branch of his followers was eliminated.
Echo had been led to believe this terrorist had been vaporized in a bombing.
“Not dead then.” T-Rex leaned back in his chair—a monster-sized man, glowering at the tiny woman.
Ty was surprised that White didn’t flinch or even take a step back.
“Not dead?” T-Rex repeated.
For the first time in Ty’s time with Echo, he heard menace slide into T-Rex’s low rumbling voice. A vein throbbed at the master chief’s temple.
The rest of Echo shifted around in their seats. Antsy. Ready to throw themselves out the door and onto this man’s track.
“Not dead,” White said, then took a breath. “We have DNA. We have fingerprints. It’s him.”
“Where?” Ty asked.
“He’s all cleaned up and hiding in Qatar as home base. New papers. New name, Omar Mohamed Imadi.” White pronounced the name slowly as she tapped the computer again. Up came a much different-looking man dressed in pristine, snow-white robes. His beard was groomed. He looked pampered and cosmopolitan. “I’ll be referring to Abu Musab al Khalil from now on under his adopted name. Omar has been rehabilitating himself as a Qatari businessman. Sort of.”
The men squinted at the image.
“An amazing transformation, isn’t it? DNA is the same,” White responded. “His ambitions are the same. He’s still the same level of crazy. But he’s accepted into polite society like this.”
“You’re sure. A hundred percent?” Ty asked.
“A change in appearance, grooming, styling, and with years having passed, a change of features. But no matter how much money you have, you can’t change your genetics. We have his right pinky in a deep freezer somewhere.” She lifted her brows and let them drop. “And among other forensic evidence, Omar is missing his pinky on his right hand. We’re a hundred percent certain it’s him.”
“Where is he now?” Ty asked.
“Who knows—he’s off-grid. Why? Because he’s back to his old tricks. But we know where he’ll be next Sunday.” A new slide showed on the screen. “This is Davidson Range on the western border of Lake Victoria in Tanzania. Omar was invited to join some businessmen for a retreat to discuss the future of fossil fuels and helium amidst the global environmental crisis. We just need you guys to be able to go in and surgically remove him.” She rolled her lips in and let her gaze move slowly around the room.
“Surgically,” T-Rex said. “We’ll need the intel to make that happen.”
White looked over at Ty. “Yes, I’m trying my best to get that for you.”
“And when you say surgical,” Nitro asked.
“No one should know you were there. ‘Good morning, have you seen Omar?’ ‘No. No, I haven’t. What could have happened to him, poor bloke?’” She stopped to grin, then let the smile fall away. “We’d like him alive so we can ask him some questions. But if that’s not possible, then he needs to be terminated with extreme prejudice before he follows through with his newest plot.”
The men were sharply focused.
She tapped her computer again, and another photo came up. “Momo Bourhan.”
“Is dead,” Nitro said.
“That’s right.” White nodded. “Last summer, he was orchestrating quite the string of terrorist attacks. Momo kidnapped and held the Helston oil CEO and his wife—found and recovered by Iniquus and the Navy. Then he moved on to part two of his plan. With his attack on the hotel in Ngorongoro, Tanzania, Momo hoped to destroy international business in the area and thus any further prosperity. But he got dead.” She shrugged then beamed a smile around the room. “And the international community was released from his crime streak. He had big plans for effecting terror strikes around the world to push power into the hands of a few.”
Ty said, “Can’t do much, moldering in the grave.”
“Well—in a way he can. His silent partner was—”
“Omar Mohamed Imadi,” T-Rex growled.
White put a finger on her nose and pointed her other hand at him like he’d gotten the answer right playing at charades.
This wasn’t a game. This guy came after and hurt one of their own. Whether he was the one who put his hands on Storm, or it was just one of his knuckle draggers, made no difference to them.
They were all in.
“The Tanzanian government would very much like to avert terrorism in their country. They have been so good as to welcome our operation on their soil and offer to turn a blind eye. We have not told them where we think Omar is heading or when. We simply have an agreement in place for our actions. And, unless absolutely necessary, they’d rather not be part of any of it. Just come in, get what we need, and get out again. On tiptoes.” She held her hand out to her colleague. “Angela, if you’ll continue with the brief for Echo. I’m going to go ahead and take Ty out of the group. He’ll be working one on one with me.”
“I—” Ty gestured angrily toward the screen.
White held up her index finger. “I assure you, you’re part of this mission. I know why this man would be particularly important to Echo and to you specifically. Storm, am I right?”
Ty was silent.
“You will be the lynchpin, but your work happens elsewhere.” Satisfied that she’d said what was necessary, her gaze took in each of the men. “We’re going to do this. This man is my white whale. I trust that you’re the right team to accomplish the mission.”
Chapter Seven
Kira
As much as Kira wanted to lay low and not communicate with her family right now, she needed to let her aunt know that the package had arrived safely.
Closing the album cover, she draped the top with an acid-free cloth that would block light and other environmental contaminants from damaging the books further.
Kira sat back with a frown dragging at the corners of her mouth, thinking jealously about the pleasurable hours she had in front of her, reading, translating, and studying the text. But that would have to be put on hold while she dealt with the demands of her situation.
If she didn’t have the pressures from her family, she would politely have said no to London, had a cup of tea, and gone back to the project.
Just this morning, in the European news—and then picked up as gloriously scandalous across world news outlets—had been the story of a princess in Bahrain. She’d tried to leave the country without her male protector’s permission. Having boarded a yacht in the Persian Gulf, the princess had been heading toward India, where she hoped to seek asylum. That was two years ago. The princess’s father sent armed men to “rescue her from a kidnapping attempt.” That was the picture the royals had painted of her attempt to leave. She hadn’t been heard from since.
Until now.
The princess, crouching low and whispering into the camera, had made a video in her bathroom. She told her story of how she was held against her will in solitary confinement, bars on her windows, locks on her doors, no visitors, no medical help.
Horrible.
Terrifying.
Real.
Many countries in the Middle East were making strides toward some independence and autonomy for women, but being under the thumb of a male protector was onerous.
Kira had cousins whose father died about the same time her own father had passed away. The power went to the next male in their household—an eighteen-year-old boy who then had control of his mother’s and his sisters’ daily lives. He was an evil kid. He did terrible things to the family, spending the money that the women made at work on whatever he wanted while he played video games all day. Kira’s cousins’ only hope was for them to marry a good man, but their marriages were up to that brother. That, or wait until she was twenty-five years old and could travel without a male guardian’s permission, and then they could escape. As a child, Kira’s female cousins had, in secret whispered conversations at night, talked
about turning that magical age and then going to Kira in America.
And now, Kira was coming to them instead.
It was a mess.
While the lack of personal agency was hard on the women who fell under the guardianship laws, Kira could only think how much more difficult it would be for her to live full-time under such a system. Kira’s whole life, she’d experienced a western lifestyle. She could wear what she wanted, go where she wanted, speak to whom she wanted, have sex with whom she wanted.
This article about the princess had been a gut punch.
Kira had become physically ill reading it.
Now, Kira sat in her office, staring at the wall, her hand resting on the phone, willing herself to dial her Aunt Fatima.
Long minutes must have passed. She was revived with the sharp pitched bark from her kitchen where Princess Beatrice was caged, followed by a mad series of squeaks from Bea’s favorite rubber chicken-shaped toy.
Kira pulled the phone closer, pressed the buttons, and took a deep breath.
“Aunt, it’s Kira.” She belatedly glanced at her clock. Doha, Qatar, was eight hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. Luckily, it was just now turning three in the afternoon in Durham; it was eleven there. Aunt Fatima liked to take a nap in the heat of the day, so she was up late into the night to enjoy the cool air. Kira would have caught her aunt reading on her bedroom balcony and drinking a nighttime cup of jasmine tea. Any later, though, would have been rude.
“Did the box get to you safely?” Her aunt’s words came in an excited rush.
“It did. When it’s a more reasonable hour, and I won't disturb her sleep, I’ll send a text to Sheikha Sara to let her know that it is safe with me.”
“Does it look interesting to you?”
“Immensely.” Kira tried to pull up the enthusiasm that she had felt earlier, so her aunt wouldn’t be concerned by her dour tone. “I promise it will be well cared for.”
“I know this to be true, or I would not have suggested it be sent to you.” Aunt Fatima was warmly generous.
