The Woman Left Behind: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  “In pancakes.”

  She snorted, but said, “Got it,” and left him to it, hurried back to the kitchen. As it happened she was short on eggs—she had one—but she did have a Shake ‘N Pour pancake mix, and a couple of packs of precooked bacon. She got out her griddle pan and began getting it hot while she nuked some of the bacon. Because she was smart that way, she also started some coffee brewing.

  Poor Donnelly. She tried to think of the last time she’d seen him . . . maybe two weeks ago? They’d run into each other briefly, stopped to chat, nothing special. He was enjoying being on Kodak’s team. Some last meetings were humdrum, completely forgettable. The same with last words; she couldn’t remember what they’d said, specifically. The last time you saw someone should be special, marked in your memory by a sense of importance, but no; she couldn’t remember what they’d said.

  The dead guy in the jungle didn’t seem nearly as important now. Someone very much like him had killed Donnelly.

  The sad realization that she’d never see him again settled inside her. If he’d quit, moved to a different part of the country, she wouldn’t even have truly missed him, she’d have shrugged and moved on. Knowing that he was no longer alive was different, because he was truly gone; the part of the world that his soul and spirit had occupied was now empty.

  She had the first two pancakes plated and buttered when Levi came into the kitchen, dressed in the same pants and shoes but bare chested. She knew why; putting that dirty shirt on over his uncovered wound wouldn’t be smart. She wasn’t in the mood to ogle his naked chest anyway, despite how impressive it was. The sadness in her filled up the space that was normally occupied by lust. She lifted her brows at him. “Which do you want first, food or bandage?”

  “Food,” he replied, no hesitation.

  She poured two more rounds of batter onto the griddle pan, then took the plate with the two pancakes to the table, along with a fork, the bottle of syrup, and the plate of bacon. “Go ahead and get started, I’ll bring these two when they’re finished.” Then she took a cup of coffee to him, not asking if he wanted sugar or creamer because as far as she knew all the team drank it black; they kept things simple.

  “Thanks,” Levi said, his gaze on the pancakes. She understood; she’d felt that way about her plate at IHOP earlier.

  He was taking the last bite of the first two when she brought the second two to him. “Two more coming,” she said. “Tell me when you’re finished.”

  “Six should do it.”

  He was slower on the second two; there was still some left when she brought the last pair. She liked feeding him, she thought. She liked that he’d used her shower. If they were together this was how it would be . . . ah well, no point in dreaming.

  After setting the plate down, she took the time to look at the wound on his back. The piece of wood had left a jagged puncture that would definitely need stitches; the wound was deep, the area around it swollen and discolored, red and deep purple. “Hope you’re up to date on your tetanus shot,” she said. “You should have had that wound taken care of before you came here. But I know why you did . . . thank you.”

  There was something of the predator in the fierce darkness of his gaze that slanted toward her. “I am. You’re welcome.”

  While he was finishing she fetched her first aid kit, then he sat while she plastered an antiseptic pad over the wound and taped it. Afterward he pulled on his dirty shirt, took his dirty plate and fork to the sink. She let him, though a proper hostess would have protested. She wasn’t a proper hostess; she was a teammate, and teammates could take their own dirty plates to the sink.

  “Thanks for breakfast,” he said, turning toward her. His gaze flickered to her mouth, then his eyes shuttered; he turned and went to the door. When he reached it, he looked back at her.

  “I’m sorry about Donnelly. I’d tell you not to let it eat at you, but it will. It’s eating at me, too. You drone operators are supposed to be in safe places, but the truth is, on a mission, there aren’t any safe places.”

  No, there wasn’t. After he left, silently closing the door behind him, she crossed the room and secured the locks. The irony wasn’t lost on her. She could lock the door, but when it came down to it, Donnelly hadn’t been safe, and neither was she.

  Eighteen

  In April, the South African banker, Graeme Burger, cleared Customs with his family and for four days gave every appearance of being nothing other than a tourist, hitting all the usual historical sites in D.C. None of the GO-Teams were deployed to follow him; Axel MacNamara preferred to keep a level of separation between his teams and any domestic issues. Let the FBI handle it. That way any triumph was theirs, but so was any failure.

  Mac’s policy was proved to be a smart choice. On the fifth day, Mr. Burger somehow managed to ditch his surveillance. In D.C., where cameras were everywhere, that was an impressive feat for even the most experienced agent. For a banker from a foreign country to do it sent alarm flags flying at every intelligence agency in the federal government. He connected with his wife and children four hours later, smiling, and resumed doing touristy things.

  Joan Kingsley, alone in her big house, smiled too as she imagined all the intensifying interest being focused on Graeme Burger. The banker was garnering all sorts of attention, and as of now Axel MacNamara would double down on his efforts to find out what was going on. The bastard always assumed the worst, assumed massive, complicated conspiracies were going on all around him—and sometimes he was right. Like now. Only national security wasn’t the target this time, he was.

  She knew how it worked, because she had seen the system in action so many times. Now Devan would begin feeding them bits of crucial information that would pull Ace Butcher’s GO-Team into an ambush—the big step that would hook MacNamara himself.

  She could hardly wait.

  July came in hot and humid. Jina realized it had been a little over a year since she’d begun training, but whoop-dee-doo, something like that didn’t call for a celebration. It was a guideline for marking time, nothing more.

  On one level, everything continued as normal. Another drone operator was being trained to join Kodak’s team, and this time Kodak and the rest of his team were involved from the beginning. She thought that would become the accepted way of doing things from now on. Donnelly’s death had brought it home to everyone that the drone operators were only as safe as the situation allowed them to be, and that the situation could change at the drop of a hat. What could be done to ensure their safety was already being done, and when it came down to it, it was the team operators’ safety that was the most important, not the drone operators.

  As Levi had so pointedly told her on the first day of training, she was the least important member of the team. There was far more money and training invested in the guys, and their expertise was off the charts in comparison with hers.

  In the middle of July, they were notified of an upcoming mission into Syria.

  At the news, a heavy sense of dread settled in Jina’s stomach. Syria was one of the most dangerous places on Earth. She was more politically aware now than she’d ever been before, and she knew Syria was a war zone. Government forces had lost control of most of the country, battles continued with ISIS, and, boy, did she not want to get in the middle of that.

  At least they didn’t have to leave in the middle of the night. The mission required meticulous planning and timing, because of the uncertainty of the ground situation. They were to meet up with a Syrian sympathizer who would lead them to where an informant was hiding; their mission was to get the informant safely out of Syria, because he wouldn’t tell them what he knew until then. The first reaction had been to leave him there; if he wanted to play games when his own safety was ostensibly at risk, then his information likely wasn’t that valuable. Then he’d mentioned a name that had gotten their attention: Graeme Burger.

  What they knew about Graeme Burger was getting murkier, rather than clearer. First he had ties with the Suda
nese Nawal Daw, and now his name was cropping up in Syria. Someone who had at first seemed to be low tier was assuming more and more prominence. His ties and influence were looking like a spiderweb, with far-reaching consequences. The world of terrorist groups was Byzantine. They were as often enemies with each other as they were with the Western governments; they were less effective because of that. No one wanted them to link together and begin working as a cohesive force, and it was beginning to look as if Graeme Burger might be trying to do that very thing.

  Jina completely understood why they were going to Syria. What she hated was the how—because they had to parachute in.

  As soon as she heard the plan during their mission briefing, she got the familiar sick feeling. She’d done more jumps—she’d had to, to keep current with her training—but at best she’d learned how to function. That was it. She dreaded each and every jump, was sick with nerves beforehand, panicked when she first left the plane, and her landings were clumsy at best; usually she landed on her fourth point of contact, namely, her butt. Still, she did it, and hated every second of it.

  Sitting in the briefing room, she could feel each team member giving her a quick, concerned glance, because they all knew how much she hated it. And because they were concerned, she had to do it. She couldn’t let them down.

  They were lucky in that the new moon was in thirty-six hours, so at least they’d be jumping in the dark. It would have to be a high-altitude jump, to evade radar; the region they were jumping into was sparsely populated, but the Russians had supplied the Syrians with mobile radar/missile batteries that could be anywhere. Theoretically the batteries were deployed near the ports, but “theoretically” was the key word.

  Parachute in, meet the sympathizer who would take them to the informant. Then they’d have to get out. That was the hard part. There would be nine of them; a truck would be easier, stealthier, as long as they didn’t encounter any ISIS forces. A helicopter would be faster, but would have to fly the nap of the earth to stay under the radar horizon, and would attract more attention. Neither option was great, in Jina’s opinion.

  But the GO-Teams were built to take such difficulties in stride. Every operation had problems peculiar to it, and their job was to solve those problems and execute the mission. How they did it was up to them.

  “Our LZ is here,” Levi said, pointing to a spot in the southern Syrian desert. “Our contact will have a truck fueled and ready to go, here.” He pointed to another location, about two kilometers from the LZ. “Babe, there’s some ruins there where you’ll set up. We’ll collect our package, haul ass for Iraq where we’ll have transport home.” He paused. “We’re operating with one eye closed, here, because we don’t know exactly where the informer is holed up. He could be close, he could be several klicks away, and we don’t know in which direction. Regardless of where he is, if the situation goes tits up, our secondary exfil point will be here. A bird will come in low from Iraq and pick us up.” He gave the coordinates, and everyone made note.

  It was understood that, in the event they had to use the secondary point, it would likely be an emergency situation and they wouldn’t have the truck. They’d possibly be under hostile fire, double-timing it on foot across the desert in miserable heat, at night, for—Jina did some rough conversion of kilometers to miles in her head—over twenty miles. Closer to twenty-five miles, likely, which was almost a freakin’ marathon. If they were military, a helicopter would fly through hell to pick them up, but they weren’t military and they had to do the best they could while keeping as low a profile as possible.

  Summer. Desert. It was going to be hellishly hot.

  “Go home, get ready, get some rest,” Levi finished. “We leave at oh three hundred.”

  Getting some rest sounded like a good idea. When Jina climbed the stairs to the small landing outside her door, though, a tall man was sitting on the floor against the wall and got to his feet as she approached.

  “Taz!” she gaped at him. “What’re you doing here? Why didn’t you call?”

  “Just passing through, had some time to kill, thought I’d come see you,” he said, which didn’t at all explain why he hadn’t called.

  She gave him a sisterly get-real look. Just passing through? He was military, he didn’t just “pass through” anywhere. He was in fatigues, and his camo duffel bag was at his feet. “Where are you being deployed to?”

  He shrugged, meaning he couldn’t say.

  As she unlocked the door, Jina thought the military had been good for her little brother, giving focus to what had been a lot of energy and an inclination to try anything with the possibility of breaking his neck. He was a man now, not a boy; the staff sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve said so.

  She eyed the stripes. “When did you make E6?” He’d been an E5 the last time she’d seen him, at Christmas.

  “Couple of months ago.” He shut the door behind him. “When did you learn what the stripes mean?”

  Oops. Civilians without prior military service wouldn’t recognize most ranks by the insignia. “I live in D.C.,” she pointed out, thinking fast. “You can’t walk ten steps without running into someone who’s in the military.”

  He gave her his own version of a get-real look. “C’mon, sis, ‘fess up. I’m not Mom and Dad, I know you aren’t working on software.” His encompassing assessment started at her head and swept down to her feet.

  “What?” She looked down at herself. She was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and her latest pair of sneakers, which in her view was pretty damn normal. “I do too work with software. Do you think I should have a pocket protector, or something?”

  “You look hard as a rock. You were never as girly-girl as Ashley and Caleigh, but you always had on some face stuff.” He circled his finger around his eyes. “Lipstick and shit. Not now, though. Yeah, running a lot will tone you up, but it won’t give you those arms.”

  At least he hasn’t mentioned that my boobs have gone away, too, she thought in exasperation. “I work out, I don’t just run. My job is classified, I’ll give you that, but do you know how many people in the area work on classified stuff?” She glanced at her phone, checked the time. “Do you have time for dinner?”

  “I do. You cooking?”

  The get-real expression came out again. “I’ll treat you—as long as your taste runs to a pizza joint, or maybe Italian.”

  He hooked his arm around her shoulder. “Now you’re talking.”

  Taz had six hours to kill before he had to report for duty and seemed determined to spend every minute with her. Normally she’d have loved his company, but not when she needed to get her gear ready and get some sleep. She watched the clock the whole time they were at the pizza joint, mentally counting down how much sleep she could get. When he finally left at eight p.m., she figured she was good for a solid four, then more on the flight.

  She wanted those four hours, though, so she intended to zip through repacking her go-bag. Then her phone rang: her mom, who had just talked to Taz. Jina chatted while she packed, grabbing her boots because they were going to the desert, extra socks, a change of clothes, some wet wipes and sunscreen, lip balm, extra water, some protein bars and hard candy. By the time she got off the phone and got showered, she was a little short on those solid four, but—family. What could she do? She loved them anyway.

  About eight hours into the flight the next day, Jina wasn’t so certain about loving them. She’d slept, she’d read some in the book she’d brought along, and time was still dragging. There was nothing about a long flight that was enjoyable, even on a chartered jet. She changed out of her sneakers into her boots—and as soon as she shoved her foot into the first boot she knew.

  “Ah, crap!” Completely disgusted with herself, she leaned her head back against the seat. Yes, Taz and her mom had distracted her, but bringing the right gear was her responsibility.

  “What’s wrong?” Boom asked beside her.

  “I grabbed the wrong boots.”

  He opened bot
h eyes, looked at them. “They look okay to me.”

  “They don’t fit as well as the others.” She scowled, dug an extra pair of socks out of the bag and put them on, too. When they got home, she’d drop these boots in a donation box, get them out of her closet so she didn’t make the same mistake again. She’d already thought about doing so, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Now she was stuck wearing boots that were too big. Well, she’d made it through weeks of training with them, so she supposed she’d live through a single mission wearing them. Lesson learned.

  Besides, if she could focus on fretting about the boots, maybe she wouldn’t fret so much about jumping out of a plane. In the dark. Into Syria.

  Nope, needed something worse than the boots.

  Jumping from a high altitude required oxygen. Jumping at night required night-vision goggles. Jumping at all required either nerves of steel or the brain of a hamster. Her nerves definitely weren’t steel, so Jina figured her brain was rodentlike.

  The equipment bag went first, rigged for an automatic HALO, so it would be on the ground waiting for them. Then one by one the guys went out of the lowered ramp, disappearing into the night. Jina was next to the last; she would have been last, but they never let her take that position because they weren’t certain she’d actually jump if there wasn’t someone behind her. Tonight, the last one was Snake.

  Tweety and the laptop were strapped to her back, along with her regular bag. She had her oxygen mask in place. She had her NVD, night-vision device, on. She took a steadying breath, closed her eyes, and took a small leap into the night.

  The experience was still terrifying; the cold and the wind tore at her, almost pulled her oxygen mask off. With one hand she secured it, resettled the goggles, looked for the rest of the team. She couldn’t see them—wait, there was movement. She maintained her body position, monitored her altitude, kept an eye on the team member she could see. The only available ambient light was starlight, and the NVD turned everything green, but if she could see one, then she figured Snake, above her, could see her. That made her feel more secure, which was asinine when she was plummeting through nothing, in the dark, toward Earth.