The room was completely empty except for the portable CD player sitting in the middle of the table, Turkish and Arabic voices coming from the speakers.
Alina cursed. “It’s a trap. Get out!”
But it was too late. Men armed with automatic rifles flooded into the hallway. Alina scrambled over the table along with Fred and Rodney just as the men started shooting.
Fred flipped the table over, and Alina knelt behind it and returned fire, putting round after round through the group of men charging through the doorway. At this distance, it was impossible to miss her targets, and several of them went down.
But the reverse was also true.
Rodney went down first, a bullet hitting him right in the forehead. Alina felt her heart break as her friend slumped to the floor, but she couldn’t even spare him a glance. It was all she could do to drop the empty magazine out of her 9mm and reload so she could keep shooting.
Jodi shouted over the radio in her ear, but Alina had no more time for her than she had for Rodney. A bullet zipped past her shoulder while another whizzed past her head. Yet a third shattered the wood of the table she hid behind, showering her with splinters. Even though she knew any one of those shots could have finished her, she forced herself to ignore them, to accept that she wasn’t dead yet, and to shoot back as fast as she could.
Just when Alina was sure it was over, that there was absolutely no chance she and Fred would live through this, their attackers halted as another one of them fell to the floor dead. The remaining two spun and fled for the door. Alina clipped one in the hip just as he and his buddy disappeared around the corner.
Alina quickly reloaded in the event that the men came back with reinforcements. She’d just slammed the magazine home when a flash of movement on her right caught her eye. She turned in time to catch Fred as he started to sag to the floor.
“Oh God, Fred. Not you, too,” she whispered.
She got her arms around his shoulders and tried to settle him to the rough concrete as gently as she could. Still holding on to her gun with her right hand, she used her left to put pressure on the wound that was soaking the front of his jacket with blood. Those two assholes had shot him before turning tail and running.
Fred looked up at her, a mix of pain and fear in his gray gaze. He tried to talk, but no words came out. Tears in her eyes, Alina rocked him and murmured that it was going to be okay, even though she knew it wasn’t. As Fred died in her arms, she wondered if the Agency would ever tell his wife and kids what had really happened to him. She doubted it. That wasn’t how they worked.
She was just easing him to the floor when she realized Jodi was still shouting at her over the secure radio channel to tell her what was happening.
Alina reached up to adjust the volume on her wireless earbud, not sure what the hell she was going to tell Jodi, when she realized she wasn’t even wearing her earbud anymore. It had gotten dislodged in the fight. She had no idea where it had gone.
And yet she could still hear Jodi’s voice.
She looked around and saw a radio lying on the floor near one of the dead shooters. It was too big to be one of theirs, but Jodi’s voice was coming out of it loud and clear.
That’s when everything hit her. The prerecorded voices designed to lure them into this room, the way the well-armed attackers had known exactly when to ambush them, the low-tech rebels having access to a CIA-encrypted radio frequency, and Wade never showing for the mission. A mission he’d set up almost completely on his own.
Wade had betrayed them. He never showed because he’d set them up to die.
Heart pounding, Alina ran out into the hall and snatched the radio off the floor. This ambush might not be over.
“Jodi, get out now!” she yelled into the radio as she ran for the front entrance, her heart hammering in her chest. “The mission is compromised. Communications are compromised. Cut and run!”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then, “What about Fred and Rodney?”
“Dammit, Jodi. Go now!”
More silence. “Understood,” Jodi finally said, and it tore at Alina’s heart to hear the fear in her voice. “Falling back to rally point Charlie now.”
Alina almost stepped into another trap outside as the two shooters who’d disappeared earlier stepped out of the darkness and started shooting. She fired off one shot to make them duck, then darted back into the safety of the alcove.
“Negative, Jodi,” she said into the radio as she peeked around the concrete corner of the entryway to make sure the men weren’t coming toward her. “It’s not just the operation that was compromised. It was the team. Don’t use any rally points, safe houses, transportation assets, or money drops that were set up for the mission. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
There was a moment of hesitation, then, “I understand. Good luck, Alina. I hope I see you again.”
“You will,” Alina promised.
She heard the pounding of footsteps over the radio and knew Jodi was on the run.
Alina shoved the radio in her jacket, then stepped out to face the two men. If they still had their radios, they’d know Jodi was making a run for it. Alina would be damned if she’d let them kill Jodi, too.
She walked across the street, ignoring the downpour as she aimed slow, steady shots at the corner of the building the two men were hiding behind. That kept their heads down until she was close enough to put herself right in their sights, encouraging them to come at her.
