by Kaylea Cross
He nodded once and they crossed the base together while she stemmed the urge to reach for his hand, to link their fingers together just to feel connected to him. When they got into the briefing room, everyone was already there except for David and the two men he’d taken with him to question Barakat.
Zaid joined his teammates on the far side of the room to talk amongst themselves while Jaliya, Commander Taggart, Colonel Shah and General Nasar gathered around a table strewn with intelligence reports and satellite images. The reports coming back from her team said that Barakat’s intel seemed solid. A few helo crews were present as well, including SA Tess Dubrovski, who Jaliya had met twice before, and her copilot. They’d be flying the FAST and NIU teams to the insertion point.
When she had verified all the latest intel and had everything ready to go, she put two fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle to get everyone’s attention. Barakat better not be playing them, or he’d be sorry.
“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” she began. “Since you’ve already been briefed on the latest intel, let’s get right to it. Our informant has identified the site of a drop scheduled to happen at oh-two-hundred hours, down near Kandahar, and our team has pieced together intelligence saying the same. If we’re right, this is going to be a big one. No word on whether The Jackal will be handling it himself, but if we can capture some of his men, we may be able to find out who he is and get a lock on his location.”
Right now there were just too many unknowns for them to narrow down their list of suspects any more. They needed a big break, and they were sure as hell due for one.
Using the maps and satellite imagery she outlined the village and the routes leading to and away from it, then spoke to the helo crews. The urge to look at Zaid was strong, but she squelched it.
“Your insertion point will be here,” she told the pilots, indicating a spot on the topography map on the table. “The teams will insert and approach the village on foot. You’re to fall back and wait within easy reach of the village. If all goes smoothly and the village is declared secure, you’ll extract them from there, along with any prisoners and contraband seized.”
Hopefully a crap ton of drugs and at least someone who knew The Jackal personally.
Commander Taggart took over from there, going over the operation in detail with his team while General Nasar and Colonel Shah watched on, saying little as one of Shah’s men translated for the NIU. “The NIU will take care of the arrests while you carry out the search and seizure,” Taggart told FAST Bravo.
Jaliya listened to his instructions while the low-grade buzz of nerves that always hit her prior to an operation she was involved with intensified in the pit of her stomach. Against her will, her gaze strayed to Zaid on the other side of the table.
He was focused on his commander, both hands braced on the tabletop as he leaned over it, the stance emphasizing the muscles in his arms and shoulders. Muscles that only a matter of minutes ago had held her tight against his equally hard body.
A large knot seemed to lodge in her chest and her mind began working overtime. Was this intel accurate? Had Barakat told them the truth, or had he just made up a story to get her off his back? That risk always came with the territory. Everyone on the taskforce understood it, even though her team had agreed this target looked solid.
Zaid and his teammates, along with the NIU and the flight crews, were executing this op based on her recommendation, and acting on the intel she’d provided. She wasn’t directing it or solely responsible, but she was responsible enough. If anything went wrong, or if this one ended in failure like last time…
She shook away the thought and attempted to quiet her busy mind. Zaid and his team were pros. They would be careful, and this time, the drugs and weapons would be there.
Right at that moment Zaid glanced up and caught her looking.
Jaliya lowered her gaze and fought the blush working up into her cheeks. Her personal feelings for him didn’t matter here. She couldn’t give him any more focus than she would give any other member of the taskforce, or she would risk others figuring out that something was going on between them. Also, she didn’t want to distract him when his and his teammate’s lives depended on planning this op carefully.
Taggart addressed the flight crews next, reiterating some of what Jaliya had said earlier, and adding a few more things. “Any questions?” he asked as he finished.
Agent Dubrovski shook her head, her honey-blond hair wound into a sleek knot at the nape of her neck above the collar of her flight suit. “No, sir.” She and the others left for the flight line, where the crew chiefs were already busy checking and readying both Blackhawks.
Jaliya answered some questions from the FAST Bravo guys, and one from General Nasar about the expected size of the anticipated shipment, conscious of Zaid’s eyes on her the whole time.
After the NIU left to get kitted up for the coming op, FAST Bravo conducted their own meeting. Jaliya stood off to one side, remaining out of their way but close by if any of them needed her to clarify a point.
It was fascinating to watch them. So different from the conventional units she’d worked with before, their process very similar to SOF units. Less authoritarian, more democratic.
Rather than having Taggart or even Hamilton dictate how things would go, all the members were involved in the discussion, and even though the chain of command was clear and everyone deferred to both Hamilton and Taggart, each man had his say.
“All right, boys,” Taggart finished a few minutes later, straightening. “Go suit up and be ready to hit the flight line at oh-one-twenty.”
The team filed out of the room after its commander, but Zaid hung back, waiting by the door for her when she’d gathered up all her files. “Will you be watching from the TOC?” he asked her.
She wanted so badly to pull him back into the room and slam the door shut so they could be alone for even another minute, just so she could kiss him again. Run her hands all over the hard muscles beneath his shirt. Tell him without words how much she cared about him, that she would worry about him when he was out there, and silently beg him to come back unharmed.
But that would take her one step closer to the point of no return with him, and that was a place she couldn’t go. She wasn’t ready to make herself that vulnerable to him, or to risk losing her heart when their lives and careers were too different to make any hope of a relationship possible.
“Yes.” She would be there the entire time, and not leave until they’d landed safely back at Bagram. They were risking their lives because she and her team had convinced command that this operation was necessary.
She prayed they were right.
He headed for the exit with her, his sheer presence and masculine energy holding her spellbound. “So, we didn’t get to have our game night.”
“I’d forgotten all about it.”
One side of his mouth tipped up. “Well, we kinda had a lot on our minds tonight. Anyway, the guys never got around to it anyway. You busy tomorrow night? They’re planning for it after dinner. It’ll be like a secret date,” he added, his eyes brimming with amusement.
She really shouldn’t. Especially not with whatever was happening between them increasing in intensity. Certainly not when her job required her to provide intel that sent him and his team into potentially deadly situations each time they went on an op to investigate her team’s findings.
He gave her shoulder a friendly nudge. “What, you already got a better offer or something?”
That made her grin. “Not sure yet.” She should have just said no, made some excuse. But she couldn’t. She was already too addicted to him to stay away. And on some level that scared the hell out of her, but at that moment she just didn’t care.
“It’ll be fun,” he coaxed.
Probably, but all she cared about was being able to spend time with him. “No promises. But I’ll see what I can do.”
His answering smile made her heart squeeze. �
�I’ll look forward to it.” He stopped to open the exterior door for her. A blast of cold air slapped her in the face, instantly clearing her head. In the space of a heartbeat she was back in work mode.
The wind was picking up again. Might affect visibility for the flight crews, and the team members on the ground once they inserted.
Stepping through the doorway, she paused. She was heading right to the TOC, and he left, to join his teammates. Walking away from him felt wrong on a visceral level. She simply couldn’t do it.
She turned to face him, let her eyes drink in every rugged, masculine detail of his face. Just in case. You’d better come back to me. “Be safe out there.”
He gave her a soft smile that made the ache beneath her ribs even worse. “I will. And because I’m guessing you’re not the kind of girl who gets all mushy over flowers, I’ll bring you drugs and weapons when I come back instead.”
He was so damn cute. “You guess right. And you sure know how to sweet talk a girl.”
His hazel eyes heated with the promise of what was to come. “Sweetheart, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
With that he turned and jogged away, leaving her staring after him with an unfamiliar ache of longing filling the center of her chest.
****
Man, it was colder than a hair on a polar bear’s ass out here.
Zaid dropped into a crouch behind Kai, using his buddy as a human windbreaker while they waited in position for Hamilton’s next command. As usual the team leader was up front with Freeman, scouting out what was happening in the village from their vantage point on top of a low rise about two hundred yards away.
They’d inserted a couple klicks to the west along with the NIU guys, using a ridge in the topography to help muffle the noise of the helos’ rotors, and then covered the distance to here in under ten minutes. The NIU force was fanned out ahead of them, ready to lead the charge into the village. As planned, the Blackhawks had pulled back to another location, where they would await the order for extraction from the target once the op was over.
On one knee, Zaid shifted his grip on his rifle and scanned the dusty terrain through his NVGs. It was slightly warmer out than during their previous op, but the slicing wind made it feel way colder. Thankfully Kai’s big frame blocked the worst of it for him as they waited, the other five guys behind Zaid.
He had a good feeling about this one. Nothing he could point to with certainty or even give a reason for; more like a gut-deep knowledge that this time their efforts were going to pay dividends. Jaliya had grilled Barakat on the drive back to Bagram, and relayed everything she’d learned to her boss over the phone en route. By the time they’d made it back, the wheels for this op had already been set into motion.
But he hadn’t been able to focus on any of that with all the emotions swirling through him, too caught up in the need to touch her. Hold her. Taste her.
Make her his.
He still couldn’t believe she’d broken contact with him all those months ago over a goddamn joke. There was no way she could have misunderstood what that kiss tonight had said, however.
He wanted her, plain and simple. All of her, everything she had to give. He refused to be the only one risking his heart here. So he would break through whatever barriers she put between them to make that happen.
“Okay, listen up,” Hamilton said through their headsets, jerking Zaid back to the present. “We’ve got movement in the southeast part of the village, and HQ confirms there are five vehicles on site. Two old five-ton, three pickups. Minimal number of men with them, maybe a dozen total.”
Zaid couldn’t wait to get in there and ruin the party with his teammates. To jam a monkey wrench in the guts of The Jackal’s smuggling machine and bring that bastard to justice.
“We’re going in in two teams. NIU’s ready to go. Let’s move.”
Zaid’s blood pumped hot and heavy in his veins as he stood and followed Maka over the other side of the rise. Prentiss hustled past him to get his part of the team in position, and together they started for the unsuspecting village.
The NIU got there first. Sporadic fire erupted from the men manning the trucks, but they were quickly subdued by the NIU’s immediate and decisive response.
For the first time, Zaid’s confidence about the raid wavered. Was that it? A shipment big enough to fill two five-tons, and that was all the resistance they mounted? Something was off.
When he and his team reached the village, they immediately moved to assist the NIU in securing the village. The Afghan unit had wounded two men and were in the process of cuffing another nine.
Zaid broke off with Maka to check the first house they came to. A young family of four sat huddled on the dirt floor in the front room, hands on heads. Zaid found a hunting rifle in the bedroom and took it outside, explaining to the husband that he would return it when the teams left the village.
“Village secure. Let’s see what we’ve got,” Hamilton said.
Zaid and Maka went through the little house, found nothing, and moved to the next one. The NIU was already tearing apart the five-ton trucks while Freeman and Prentiss went through the pickups.
In the second house, Zaid found a small cache of weapons. A dozen pistols and four rifles hurriedly wrapped in a rug and tossed into the corner, probably moments after the NIU had arrived. “Anything?” he called out to Maka, who was in another room.
“Yeah, got something.”
Zaid walked through the mud-brick doorway to find his buddy pulling black plastic-wrapped bricks out of an old wooden crate. “How much have you got?”
“Five. They find anything in those trucks?”
“Hope so. Here, gimme those. I’ll take them to Hamilton and see what I can find out.” He took the bricks to his team leader, who was standing beside one of the five-tons talking with the NIU commander. “Maka found these in the second house,” Zaid said, pointing.
Hamilton grunted. “Nothing else?”
“Few weapons.” He looked back at where everyone was still conducting the search. “How we doing so far?”
“Not as well as we thought we would. Trucks are empty. Whatever they were carrying is long gone.”
That didn’t make any sense. “Has to be around here someplace. They must have buried it all.”
“If they did, let’s hope we find it.”
The search of the village turned up more weapons and bricks of hash, but nothing on the order of what they had expected. An expanded search of the immediate area turned up no sign of buried contraband.
The good news was, they had more than the fifty kilogram arrest threshold of hash, meaning they could arrest the men they’d cuffed and bring them in for questioning. The drugs themselves didn’t matter, but the information they stood to gain from the prisoners did.
Zaid stayed with Hamilton and the leader of the NIU to question the prisoners, trying to find answers. Upon separate questioning, the men who’d come in with the trucks all told the same story, insisting that they had been hired to drive the vehicles here and await further instructions.
“From The Jackal?” Zaid demanded of one, the youngest of the prisoners, a teenager barely old enough to grow a scraggly beard. His threadbare clothes and worn footwear told Zaid he was just a poor farm kid.
“Yes.”
And the little bit of money dangled in front of the kid had been more than enough to make him jump at the offer, no matter that it could have cost him his life. “You saw him?”
“No. I only know that was the name of the man who was going to pay us. But he was here.”
Zaid’s attention sharpened. “When?”
“Tonight. Before we got here.”
He exchanged a loaded look with Hamilton.
“Get me the village elder,” his team leader growled.
Zaid found him in one of the houses and brought him back for questioning. The man had a snow-white beard and looked like he was in his seventies, though he could have been much younger. Eking out a life here
in this harsh terrain took its toll on people.
If the elder had seen The Jackal in person or knew who he was, he wasn’t saying, either too afraid or paid too well to snitch. But from what Zaid could deduce, the smuggler could have been here as little as a few hours ago.
Throughout the questioning, Hamilton stood listening with his arms folded across his chest, his expression giving away nothing. “Put a hood on him and take him over to the others, then get samples of those bricks,” he muttered to Zaid before walking away, pulling out his sat phone to contact HQ.
Zaid escorted the bound and hooded prisoner over to wait with the rest of them, all lined up against a rock wall. Leaving the NIU to guard them, he and his teammates began to collect samples of the hash before throwing it all into a pile and burning it.
In the darkness they waited for the Blackhawks to arrive. Zaid loaded the samples and confiscated weapons onto his team’s bird and jumped aboard as the NIU hustled the prisoners into two of the others. Frustration was starting to take its toll on them. It felt like they were playing a losing game of whack-a-mole out here, wasting their time—not to mention money and resources—for no reason.
Part of the job, man. Comes with the territory. You’ll get a big score next time.
Sometimes hope was the only thing that kept him from feeling his team’s efforts were completely useless over here.
Cold, clean air rushed through the Blackhawk’s open doors as the helo lifted into the sky for the trip back to base. Zaid stared out at the barren landscape passing beneath them and thought of Jaliya. Hopefully she and her team would at least be able to gain some valuable intel from the prisoners they were bringing in.
Time was slipping away from them. Only nine weeks more, and he’d be heading back home. That left him with one hell of a conundrum.
Because unlike all of his previous deployments over here, this time he’d be leaving his heart behind when he left. The countdown was on to make her his before that happened.
