Taking Fire

by Cindy Gerard

  Al-Attar lifted a hand, swatting the issue away. “I promised you a meeting in my home. I did not promise the circumstances of your arrival.”

  Because al-Attar smiled, Bobby smiled. “We’ll have to get more specific the next time.”

  “More tea?” his host asked, dodging the subject.

  “I need to get back to base before they know I’m gone.” Bobby stood.

  “And my price?” his host wanted to know.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Do not keep me waiting long. There are others who would also pay for the service I provide.”

  It was a bluff, and Bobby knew it. He didn’t call al-Attar on it, though, and risk angering him. “How will I contact you?”

  It was an old game between them.

  Al-Attar nodded to the guy who had taken Bobby’s phone. He reached into his robes and handed it to him.

  Relieved to have the cell phone back, Bobby pocketed it quickly before al-Attar could change his mind and take it back again.

  Al-Attar smiled. “I will contact you. Do not wor—”

  A blinding flash of light exploded inside the room. A series of loud bangs and choking smoke followed.

  “Sonofabitch,” Bobby swore, and ducked for cover. The cavalry had arrived after all, and they’d brought their flashbangs with them.

  He must have missed a memo, though, because he didn’t remember the part about the shemaghs; the black hoods with narrow slits for eyes and mouth, however, were a nice twist. And they infiltrated the house exactly as they had drilled. Fast and decisive. Excellent. He didn’t know exactly how they’d found him; he only cared that they had.

  “Hands in the air! Drop your weapons!” The guys yelled in Arabic and English as they stormed through the room in choreographed precision, employing the “slicing the pie” method to clear the room, then immobilizing their targets quickly and efficiently by shoving rifle barrels to the backs of their heads. It took only minutes, and they’d flex-cuffed the lot of them with their hands behind their backs.

  “Hey. Take it easy,” Bobby grumbled when he was hauled roughly to his feet and shoved against a wall. “I’m one of the good guys, remember?”

  He got a hard push and ducked—just not fast enough. Instead of cracking open his skull, a rifle butt grazed his jaw.

  Pain exploded inside his mouth, along with the taste of blood.

  That was when he realized it wasn’t the cavalry after all—and for the second time that night, he figured he was a dead man walking.

  They wore Afghan military uniforms, and they very well could be military, but then why had they shouted their orders in Arabic and English but not Pashtu? Something was off here, but whoever they were, they knew what they were doing as they roughly lined al-Attar and his men up against the wall with Bobby.

  He stood beside al-Attar, staring at the business ends of twenty automatic rifles, waiting for the bullets to rip through him.

  Al-Attar wasn’t going down without a fight. “Whatever it is you want, you need only ask.”

  The leader of the group walked up in front of him, hauled back, and rammed the stock of his rifle into al-Attar’s face.

  He screamed in pain and dropped to his knees, his nose bleeding heavily.

  Bobby measured his breath and kept his mouth shut, looking for a way out. Seeing nothing.

  The leader walked down the line of men, studying their faces one at a time through the slits in his face mask. When he stopped in front of Bobby, cold black eyes seemed to cut straight through him before he turned away and nodded to his men.

  Two of them broke rank; each one grabbed an arm and dragged Bobby toward the door.

  Shit. He knew where this was going. He was an American in Kabul. They were taking him outside to execute him.

  Now, though, at least he had a glimmer of hope. His odds had just dropped from twenty-to-one to two-to-one.

  He knew exactly how he’d take them down—­except, as one held the rifle dead center at his heart, the other stepped behind him and cut off his flex cuffs. Then they shoved him out into the alley and slammed the door closed behind him.

  What the hell?

  He didn’t know what had just happened or why he’d been released, but he wasn’t going to hang around and ask questions. Adrenaline pumped so hard his chest ached. He drew several deep breaths, cleared his head, and ran like hell.

  When he’d put several blocks behind him, he ducked into an alley, bent over, and puked his guts out. Then he fumbled around for his phone and hit speed dial.

  “Taggart, where the hell are you?”

  It was Bridgedale himself, manning the SAT phone for the operation.

  “Just listen.” He quickly told Bridgedale what had happened.

  “Tell us where you are.”

  “If I knew, I’d already have told you.”

  He stuck his head out of the alley, saw that the streets were still empty, and took off running again until he hit a cross street.

  “Taggart, you still there?”

  “Hold on.” He caught his breath, then gave Bridgedale the names of the two intersecting streets.

  In the background, he heard Bridgedale shout at Leavens to plug them into their on-board nav system. Fargis had top-of-the-line electronics that would pinpoint his location and map the most direct route.

  “Get your ass out of the street, and find concealment,” Bridgedale barked. “We’re looking at twenty minutes, but we’re on our way.”

  Bobby had started running toward a deep, shadowed doorway before Bridgedale broke their connection. He ducked into the cover of the wide, tall threshold and made himself small. No one would spot him unless they walked right past him, and even then, he figured he had a fifty-fifty shot that they wouldn’t see him if he held still as stone.

  His adrenaline finally dropped to the manageable zone. A good thing and a bad thing. Good because his heartbeat and respiration had slowed to those of a Sunday jogger instead of a sprinter hitting the finish line. Bad because without the adrenaline rush, his jaw hurt like hell, and so did the leg he’d broken in the chopper crash several years ago.

  He was pretty well wired again, though, when the team’s twenty-minute ETA turned into twenty-five and then thirty. He had a sudden craving for a ­cigarette—and he’d never been a smoker.

  Finally, he heard the growl of the up-armored Humvees roaring toward him.

  The first Hummer braked to a stop, and Bobby sprinted toward it, barely hauling himself inside before it took off again.

  Bridgedale looked him over as Bobby gripped the M4 rifle Gomez handed him. “You sure you’re up for action?”

  “When am I not?” He got Leavens’s attention and gave him directions to al-Attar’s nest from there. “Look for a market flying a blue banner.”

  Then he sat back, breathed deep, and hoped they would get to al-Attar in time. He’d worked the bastard for months, worked him hard, taken a helluva lot of chances. He wanted to close the deal. He did not want some team of ninja assholes doing it for him. He wanted al-Attar in custody, and he wanted to be the one who put him there. Wanted him to know that he’d been played and who had played him.

  “Got a bad feeling we’ve already lost him,” Bridgedale said into the darkness of the Hummer.

  “Which is going to royally screw up my day,” Bobby muttered, and cupped a palm to his aching jaw. “Whoever those guys are, they weren’t playing patty-cake.”

  A few moments later, within three blocks of the compound, a monster flash of light electrified the sky ahead of them. The driver slammed on the brakes and asked God to save him.

  The blast that followed rocked the Humvee, as pieces of adobe and wood and glass rained down on them like Vesuvius spitting fiery rocks over Pompeii.

  “Sonofabitch!” Bobby pounded his fist on the back of the shotgun seat
. “Son. Of. A. Bitch,” he repeated in total defeat, as smoke and flames boiled up from the ground where al-Attar’s compound used to be.

  The blast had destroyed any opportunity to gather intelligence for analysis—documents, hard drives, whatever. Bridgedale ordered the small convoy to turn around and head back toward base. There was no point in going farther.

  Whatever was left of al-Attar would have to be scooped up with a shovel, along with all the other debris.

  9

  “Better have Hutchinson take a look at your jaw,” Bridgedale advised Bobby after they’d all finished the debriefing.

  “I’m fine,” Bobby assured him. “Just need some shut-eye.” His ears would be ringing for a week from the explosion.

  He sat in the chair after everyone else had filed out of the room.

  “You got something you need to say?” Bridgedale asked, watching Bobby carefully.

  He hoped not. He hoped to hell he had nothing to say that his boss would want to hear.

  “About who did it? Or why they let you go?” Bridgedale pushed.

  They’d already hashed this over at the debriefing, and, like a lot of bombings that took place in Afghanistan, in the end all they had was speculation.

  Taliban warlords bent on retribution for al-Attar’s betrayal? Al-Qaeda unhappy when they’d found out he was helping the Americans? Al-Attar’s competition wanting him out of the picture so they could get a bigger cut and wanting to keep Bobby alive so they could make deals with him?

  But none of those explanations washed. He was still stuck with the disaster’s biggest damn question: Why had they let him go?

  He looked up at Bridgedale, who held his gaze, and finally shook his head.

  “You have no ideas?”

  “Not one.”

  Then he walked out of the briefing room, hoping he hadn’t just lied. Because if what he feared was true, he wasn’t certain he could live with the guilt.

  * * *

  One of the guys gave him a ride to Talia’s hotel. The sun was almost up, and a few merchants were starting to set up their shops on the sidewalk by the time he got there. His eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep; his jaw throbbed. Above all, a tight knot of dread clutched his chest as he sprinted up the stairs to Talia’s room.

  For a long moment, he stood outside her door, hoping like hell he was wrong. He really didn’t want to believe the worst. Not of her, and sure as hell not of himself—that she’d taken him for a fool.

  Finally, he opened the door and felt the last of his hope die, along with a piece of his heart. The room was empty. Stone cold empty.

  Jaw hardening, his emotions turning to ice, he strode past the bed and wrenched open the bathroom door. There was nothing—not a toothbrush, not a comb.

  He did the same to the wardrobe, swinging the door wide, only to find more nothing.

  No laptop. No camera. No ugly shirts.

  No note explaining where she was. That she’d been unexpectedly called away to cover a bigger story somewhere else.

  No note telling him she was sorry.

  Because, of course, she wasn’t.

  She’d gotten exactly what she’d wanted—and he’d gotten played. It took everything he had just to stand there and keep breathing.

  He looked around the room again, making sure he hadn’t missed anything, some small something to tell him she’d be back. But all he saw were memories—of her naked body stretched out beneath him on the bed, her skin so soft, her hair a wild mane, her voice with his name on her lips.

  He hadn’t dreamed her response. He hadn’t dreamed how good they were together.

  His cell phone rang, and, like a fool, he felt a rush of hope and yanked it out of his pocket. Then he saw the message and felt gut-shot. It wasn’t Talia with explanations and innocence. It was a reminder he’d sent to himself days ago about a briefing scheduled for this morning.

  Fuck! He threw the phone against the wall, and it fell to the floor in pieces. And then his day hit rock-fucking-bottom.

  Disbelieving, he leaned over and picked up a piece of metal about the size of the battery. An RFID tag. He’d planted plenty of them over the years while tracking bad guys.

  And it had fallen out of his phone.

  He closed his eyes, and his head fell back in absolute misery. Honey trap.

  Because of his stupidity, not only was al-Attar dead, but so was all the information the intelligence community could have gathered from him. Important information. Lifesaving information.

  He thought back to all the signs that he’d missed.

  He’d seen her passport, and she maintained dual citizenship with the United States and Israel.

  Al-Attar was a known Hamas leader with a price on his head in Israel.

  Now al-Attar was dead.

  And Talia was gone.

  It felt as if she’d hammered a stake clean through his heart. Talia Levine was dead to him now.

  As dead as he felt inside.

  PART II

  * * *

  Retribution

  “The more you trust, the greater the betrayal.

  The more you love, the greater the harm.”

  —Unknown

  10

  U.S. Embassy, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman,

  six years later

  “Lord love a duck.” Looking shocked and pleased, Ted Jensen pushed back his desk chair and stood when he saw Bobby Taggart standing in his doorway. “Would you look what the cat dragged in.”

  Jensen was the principal security attaché to the U.S. Ambassador in the American embassy in Oman, but when that grin split his face, Bobby saw traces of the Alabama farm boy he knew and loved to hassle.

  “Thought someone woulda killed you by now,” Jensen added, his grin widening.

  Bobby gripped the rough hand his old friend extended across a sleek, lacquered desk. “So did I. Trust me, it’s not for lack of trying on their part.”

  Jensen laughed, rounded his desk, and trapped Bobby in a hard bear hug.

  Bobby hugged him back, truly glad to see him. Back when he and Ted had been Special Forces, they’d served together on many deployments. Saved each other’s ass more than once, too.

  “Damn, it’s good to see you, man!” Jensen finally released him. “I really was afraid you were dead.”

  “Highly exaggerated rumors,” Bobby assured him.

  “You look damn good, given that ugly mug of yours.”

  “Says the man with the face like a waffle iron.”

  Jensen chuckled. “So how’ve you been, Boom Boom? I heard about the exoneration. I always thought those charges were bogus; it never made sense that they charged you in the first place.”

  Jensen’s expression invited both venting and a sympathetic ear if he needed it. Maybe if he were good and drunk, he’d indulge in a little info share. But when he was sober, he rarely talked about the Operation Slam Dunk debacle.

  “Water. Bridge,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “In the meantime, I’m good. Apparently, not as good as you.” He made an appreciative scan of the lavishly furnished office. “You’re clearly top dog in these parts.”

  Jensen sank down into his cushy desk chair. “The doghouse may be fancy, but I’m still guarding a junkyard.”

  “So I’ve heard. That’s why I’m here.”

  Jensen narrowed his eyes and studied Taggart’s face as if he’d mistaken him for someone else. Then he figured it out. “No shit? You’re the big-shot, hush-hush badass the Department of Defense sent to bust my chops?”

  “Drew the short straw, yeah.”

  “Huh.” Thoughtful, Jensen reached into his top desk drawer, pulled out two glasses and a bottle of Scotch, then poured them each two fingers.

  “All the straws seem to come up short these days,” Bobby added after tossing back the Scotch. �
�You okay with me trying to poke holes in your operation?”

  Oman wasn’t exactly a hotbed of terrorist activity, but given its strategic importance at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and the volatility of the entire Middle East, the State Department wasn’t taking any chances. So the DOD had deployed the International Threat Analysis and Prevention team to assess the embassy’s security, recommend upgrades if necessary, and authorize the resources to ensure that it got done. Because Mike Brown and the rest of the ITAP team were running training maneuvers in Central America, Bobby had caught the first flight over. And since Jensen was in charge of security here, Bobby was going to be tromping mud all over his nice, clean floor.

  “Well,” Jensen said, “I’ve got a good team here. We’ve got a solid plan in place. But if I’ve got problems, I want them found. I don’t want a Benghazi disaster on my watch.”

  “Ditto.” Bobby leaned forward. “So where do you want me to start?”

  “You mean right this minute? Well, that’s a big hell no. We haven’t seen each other in five years, it’s almost six o’clock, and we need to catch up. So you can attack the defenses first thing in the morning. Tonight we’re gonna go tie one on for old times’ sake.”

  “All right,” Bobby agreed, although if he wasn’t going to work, he’d rather get some shut-eye. “I guess I’m in.”

  “Great. Just give me a minute to deal with some of this paper.”

  Bobby sank back into the chair as Ted rifled through the stack of paperwork on his desk. Maybe his friend was right. Maybe a stiff drink, some “good ol’ days” conversation, and then a good night’s sleep were in order. Especially after the ridiculously long flight with the requisite delays and jet lag.

  It was funny how they’d ended up together again. After Jensen had retired from the military with a stellar record, he’d joined the diplomatic service. After Bobby had been booted out of the Army on a trumped-up less-than-honorable discharge, his only opportunity to stay in the action had been with Fargis, the private military contractor he’d worked for in Afghanistan. Yet now he worked for an elite covert branch of the Department of Defense. How was that for irony?