“That sounds like Joey. She was always so practical. And she never let anyone struggle if she could help it. We’ll get her back.” I don’t finish my sentence, but the words echo in my head. Or die trying.
The Jeep bounces over rutted roads, jostling me awake. One thing you learn in the military? How to grab small bits of sleep here and there. Whenever you can. The past five hours, I’ve proved how much I still know.
“Finally awake? Thank God. You were starting to drool,” Trevor says from the front seat. With a glare, I swipe my hand over my mouth, only to find it dry as a bone. Jerk.
Darkness still holds sway over the sky, but a hint of light brightens the horizon in the east. Still, the stars shine this far from any major city. Checking my GPS, I sit up with a start. We’re not far outside of Mazari Sharif. Less than twenty minutes from where we think they’re holding Joey.
“Any news?” There’s no cell service here, but if I know Trevor, he’s been on and off his SAT phone the entire five hour drive.
“Maybe. Amir Abdul Faruk has been on the terrorist watch list for seven years,” Nomar says. He nods at Trevor, and the former spook passes me a tablet. On screen, a man stands outside a massive home surrounded by a tall, stone wall. Next to him, a smaller figure—a woman—dressed in burnt orange, and behind her, another man. Stockier. With something that looks vaguely like a gun. The time stamp reads two days ago.
“This is the best you got?” I ask, trying to zoom in. If this is Joey…
“The satellite only passes over this region once every forty-eight hours—usually. But we got it retasked to keep a constant watch until we know if she’s really there,” Nomar says. “If she goes outside again, we’ll get a better shot.”
“Do I want to know how many favors you called in to commandeer a satellite?”
“No,” he and Trevor answer at once, then share a chuckle. While I slept, they must have worked out some of their shit.
Trevor turns in the front seat and meets my gaze. “Faruk is a paranoid fucknut. There are guards at each corner of that wall with AK-47s. One way in and out—the gate. Razor wire everywhere else. This isn’t going to be easy.”
“I can call Ryker, but it’ll take him at least twenty-four hours to get his team here.”
“No.” Running his hand through his dark hair, Trevor frowns. “Look, I know the guy’s K&R. And it might come to that eventually. But we’re breaking so many laws, they could put us all away for the rest of our fucking lives if we’re caught.”
He meets my gaze, and I understand. He’s doing this for Wren. Keeping her safe by keeping the man she loves safe. And I can’t blame him. But this is Joey. I won’t lose her. I can’t. “Let me call him. At least tell him to stand by. Put his team on notice. Send him some of this intel. We don’t know what this Faruk is doing to Joey. Or how long she has left.”
With a grumbled response that might be a “fine,” he turns back to the road.
“Ford?” Nomar and I lock eyes in the rearview. “This isn’t like when we were deployed. There were rules there. Even with Saddam as batshit as he was. This is rural Afghanistan. And most of this area? It was a Taliban hotbed for years. The locals won’t be any help. They’ll actively try to kill us.”
And Joey.
“If you’re saying we shouldn’t rescue her—” My entire body vibrates with anger, and Nomar’s lucky he’s driving.
“Whoa, there. Nobody’s saying that. I wouldn’t leave a woman I hated in that situation, let alone one I cared for. But you haven’t been ‘in country’ for more than a dozen years. We have. And I need your guarantee you’ll follow our lead.”
I must have missed a hell of a lot of conversation while I was napping. “Trev and I already had this talk. Why are we rehashing it again?”
“Because I put in my retirement papers a month ago. When you called, I was wiping my apartment clean. Twenty minutes later, and I would have been gone. Headed back to the States. Everything we’re doing…we don’t have any sort of official support. I’m a civvie now. Just like you. And I’d rather not spend the rest of my life in an Afghan prison. Or…without my head if they find out we killed all those assholes at the auction.”
Shit.
Nomar eases the Jeep off the road and down a little hill to a group of tents as the dawn threatens to spill over the horizon. “These guys owe me. They’ll hide the Jeep and give us horses. We’ll never get a vehicle closer to the compound than this without being shot.”
Nothing said in the next ten minutes makes any sense to me. Trevor, Nomar, and two older Afghan men gesture and argue, until finally, another man brings out three tunics for us to put on over our fatigues and black t-shirts.
The horses look just as thrilled to be saddled up this early in the morning as I feel relying on an animal—one that can’t outrun a car—for our only transportation. But Trevor’s right. If we try to take the Jeep any closer, Faruk’s men will see and hear us coming, and that could be deadly—for us and for Joey.
“Good news,” Trevor says as we mount up and urge the horses forward. “One of Faruk’s men is…dissatisfied with the way the asshole runs things. He’ll get Nomar into the compound for the right price.”
“And what’s the right price?” I don’t really want to know, but after working with Dax for the past few years, I’ve socked away a nice nest egg. Private security work pays well.
“Ten grand.” With a shrug, he lets Nomar get twenty or thirty feet in front of us before lowering his voice. “Dax is funding this whole thing up to six figures. After that—”
“What?” Telling me the sky was made of horse shit wouldn’t have surprised me this much. A hundred thousand dollars? Money he clearly didn’t think twice about since he didn’t bother to mention it to me.
“The dude’s loaded.” Trevor arches a brow. “You didn’t know? Jesus, Ford. Look at how he lives. That tiny apartment? No car, no parking fees or insurance. He hasn’t taken a single day off since you two hired me. Who does that?”
