CHAPTER ONE
Three Years Ago
Nomar
Fucking timing.If I’d been twenty minutes faster, I’d be back in the States, nursing a beer at a baseball game. Not in the middle of the fucking Afghan desert setting off on a suicide mission with men I thought I’d never see again.
For ten years, I’ve woken with the sun every day. No matter what. Except for last Tuesday. When sleeping in meant I was still here to take Ford’s call. Now, I’m fastening a button camera to my tunic at oh-dark-thirty in the morning, preparing to breach the most heavily guarded compound in the whole country.
The headscarf makes it hard to see anything in my periphery, and I have sand ineverycrevice.
These clothes—agiftfrom the tribal elders I paid off—will help us blend in, but they’re far from clean. Hell, this whole goddamn country smells like horse shit, goat shit, and cow shit, all laced with spices.
The only two men in this world I consider friends stand in front of me, waiting for orders. Trevor Moana, former CIA sniper, and Ford Lawton, a Marine I served with more than twenty years ago.
“Make your way to the back of the compound, and for fuck’s sake, stay out of sight,” I say, slinging my AK-47 over my shoulder, slipping out of the old barn, and mounting one of the horses.
The ride up the hill is quiet this time of the morning. Only a handful of goats crossing my path, herded by a kid who can’t be more than fifteen. But even the animals don’t get too close to the compound.
Anyone who’s spent even a few months in country knows the name Amir Abdul Faruk. Weapons, drugs, women… The man traffics in them all.
According to our intel, Ford’s former fiancée is inside that compound. Faruk had Dr. Josephine Taylor kidnapped from a Doctors Without Borders caravan in Turkmenistan a week ago. God only knows what he’s done to her since.
At the front gate, I pass my contact a pouch with five thousand dollars in cash tucked inside.
“You have thirty minutes,” he says in Pashto. “Any longer, and I will not be able to get you back out again.”
The gate rolls open on wheels that shriek under its weight, welcoming me into the lion’s den.
A handful of cars are parked haphazardly along the walls. Good cover. If we need it. But the center courtyard is wide open—except for a group of men on prayer mats near a fucking water fountain? It’s the middle of the damn desert.
One of them…tall, jet black hair, full beard, wearing a tunic inlaid with golden threads paces until another exits the massive house pulling a woman behind him.
Joey.
She’s panicked, dragging her heels in the dirt, but the brute is almost twice her size.
When she cries out, Faruk strides over to her and slaps her hard enough,Ifeel it. “You are making him worse, not better!”
“No!” Joey cries. “All of his numbers were better last night. You saw the report.”
Faruk shoves her, grabs the back of her neck, and forces her head down so she’s only inches from a young boy lying on one of the prayer mats.
“Does helookbetter to you? He fell over and he will not get up!”
Her next words are too quiet to hear, but she’s defiant. Far from broken, thank God.
Faruk kicks her in the stomach, then rains blows down on her back until another man calls, “Amir Faruk, sir. The doctor cannot cure your son if you…break her.”
Straightening his tunic, Faruk steps back. “Zaman! Take her to the lab, along with my son. I expect him to join me for prayers by nightfall, Josephine. If he does not, I will hold you responsible.”
I duck behind one of the vehicles as the big man drags Joey back toward the house by the neck of her tunic. Another, shorter man picks up the boy and follows.
“Leave us,” Faruk shouts at a woman in a dark blue abaya. She flinches, her gaze pinned to the ground. “Watch over my son or you will be sorry.”
* * *
“I’m goingto try to find out where they took Joey,” I whisper. If Trevor and Ford followed orders, they’ll be hiding by the back wall of the compound and will have seen everything. The camera’s range is absolute shit, but our comms units—courtesy of Ford’s company—are state of the art.
