Al-Ambhi tsked. “Come now, Agent Mortier. Let us stop playing these games. You know I am not really fighting for the rebels. And I know that you know. Ihaveknownthatyouknowforawhilenow.”
Herbreathwheezedoutofher, dry as the wind whipping around the concrete wall surrounding the perimeter of the general’s compound. The cold metal of her Sig P228 was an acute ache against the small of her back, and the smell of her own fear was sharp in her nose. “How?” she asked, surprised to hear her tone was steady, considering her heart was racing a mile a minute.
“Really?” He cocked his head, dropping the letter opener on his desk. The resultingthunksoundedparticularlyloud. Her insides winced, but her outside remained rock steady. “You find thehowmoreinterestingthanthewhy?”
Play along, Mortier. Just play along.
“Okay.” She shrugged unconcernedly, so he wouldn’t know she was sweating bullets and close to pissing her pants. There were a million ways for this to go horribly wrong and not one way she could fathom for it to go right. “Why? Why wait so long to let me know you’re on to me?”
“Because I needed leverage.” He smiled, his tanned face splitting around a mouthful of white teeth. Al-Ambhi was a handsome man. With curly black hair and flashing dark eyes. But that beauty was only skin deep. On the inside, he was hideous. What else could explain his affiliation with a group that slaughtered, raped, and beheaded on a whim?
“Leverage for what?” It was hard not to spit out the words like rancid meat.
“For blackmail, of course.” His smile widened. He sat forward, running one long, knobby-knuckled finger over the cellular phone lying faceup beside the letter opener. “You see, I am sick of this whole mess. The fighting. The sneaking around. The endless battle for this beastly country. I left my position in the Al-Assad regime because I thought, like in Libya and Egypt, the rebels would quickly see victory. Take over governing. And I wanted to make sure to position myself at the very top of that new government.”
Andsuddenlyitwasperfectlyclear. He had no morality. No conscience or cause. He was simply an opportunist, a man out for no one but himself. Andthatwaswhataccountedforhisinnerugliness. “And when that proved to take too long, you threw in your lot with IS,” she snarled, no longer able to maintain her emotionless facade.
“Exactly.” He continued to stroke the phone. A shiver of repulsion rippled through her. “But I have come to realize there is no hope for them. They are too violent, too unstable. They have too many enemies in the region now. They will never be allowed a caliphate. At most, they may be able to rule a small plot of sand somewhere no one wants or cares about. It is not the future I pictured for myself.”
“Which is where I come in.” She curled her hands into fists when he nodded. “What do you want?”
“Fifty million dollars in a Swiss bank account and assurances from your government that I will not be hunted.”
Jesus, fifty million? He’s got a giant set of brass clackers!
“And if I don’t give you these things, you’ll call your buddies in the IS and out my assets,” she said, gritting her teeth until they creaked.
“Precisely.”
Hermindracedthroughthepossibilities. She knew Morales wouldn’t go for fifty thousand, much less fifty million. The lives of the five locals she’d groomed and trained to infiltrate IS weren’t worth all that much to the CIA, worth even less to Uncle Sam. But they were worth something to her. Because those five men had families and homes. They had loved ones who were counting on them to come back to them. They had everything she’d never had. Soverymuchtoloseandyetthey’d still agreed to lay it all on the line. They were brave, good, valiant men, and she couldn’t just sit back and let them die.
“My boss will never agree,” she told the general.
“Then I am left with no other choice.” He grabbed the cell phone.
Olivia’s Sig was in her hands before she even realized she’d reached for it, pointing it straight at Al-Ambhi’s face. “Don’t.” Just the one word.
“Ah.” He smiled again. That oily smile. That wretched smile. “But you see, I must. If I cannot have the Americans and their money protecting me, then I will have the IS and theirgratitudeprotectingme.”
“I’ll kill you before you ever make the call,” she warned.
“No you won’t,” he scoffed. “If you kill me, my men will kill you. Youandthesoldieryouhavewaitingoutside.”
Thesoldiershehadwaitingoutside…Rusty Lawrence. The SEAL who’d been assigned her bodyguard for this meeting because, even though they were all supposed to be friends here, an unaccompanied female was always a target. Al-Ambhi was right. She and Rusty wouldn’t make it out alive if she pulled her trigger. But when she weighed two lives against five, she just couldn’t see how the ledger added up in their favor. Except, maybe…
“Not if I tell your men you’re really working for IS.” She was breathing hard now. She couldn’t help it. And her Sig was trembling in her grip.
“Pfft.” He waved a hand through the hot, arid air. “They will never believe you. You are an American, after all. A great infidel. A greatliar.” He waited a beat, and when she didn’t lower her weapon, he rolled his eyes and punched in a number, holding the phone to his ear.
Hewoulddoit. She could see it in his eyes.
Andhemusthaveseenthatshewoulddoittoo. Because his face slackened and his mouth fell open right before she squeezed her trigger.
Olivia gripped the handle on the door of the shower, anchoring herself in the here and now. Trying to forget the way the general’s skull had exploded, the horror of the blood and the gore. Trying to forget the way Rusty had burst into the room, taking one glance around before yelling at her to run. Trying to forget the sound of the rebel gunfire that had cut him down when they were racing through the hall toward the back of the general’s house.
A million times she’d gone over that day and tried to figure out what she could have done differently to keep everyone alive. And a million times she’d come up with nothing.
She blew out a ragged breath and stepped from the shower, draping her wet clothes over a towel rod. She was just slipping on the robe and cinching the belt when she heard raised voices out on deck. The hair along the back of her neck lifted in warning, and her heart took off like it was in a race and someone had fired the starting pistol. She was slipping out the door, running across the guest cabin, and dropping to her belly in the main living area two seconds later.
