That last part lands hard.
The room goes still.
“Three American doctors are still inside a pediatric relief zone near Kermanshah,” he continues. “They stayed after the evacuation order to treat injured civilians. Intelligence suggests regime forces have begun hunting foreign nationals house to house. We believe they’ll be dead inside forty-eight hours if we don’t move.”
I look back down at the file.
Three names.
Dr. Hannah Bowers.
Dr. Stephen Cole.
Dr. Olivia Taylor.
There’s a photo clipped to the last page.
Dark blonde hair pulled into a loose knot. No makeup. Tired blue eyes. A smudge of dirt streaked across one cheek. She’s kneeling beside a little girl with a bandaged leg, one hand on the child’s shoulder, her face set in the kind of quiet determination that says she’d stand in front of a firing squad before she let anyone touch those kids.
Something about the image hits me harder than it should.
“She’s the problem,” Murray Conrad says.
I glance up. “Meaning?”
“Meaning the other two are likely to come if we can reach them. Dr. Taylor won’t. Our sources say she’s been refusing extraction for days. She’s running what’s left of a makeshift clinic for displaced children.”
Miles exhales slowly. “So we’re rescuing someone who doesn’t want to be rescued.”
Clay catches the knife and slips it away. “Those are always my favorite.”
Murray taps the screen again, and new images appear—checkpoints, road closures, armed patrols, black vehicles without plates.
“Your insertion window is narrow. You’ll enter through northern Iraq, cross the border, and move on foot the last stretch. Minimal signature. No support once you’re inside. Get the doctors out and get back across the line.”
Lucas studies the map. “What’s the complication?”
Murray gives him a look that says all of it.
Then he says, “We’ve intercepted communications indicating the regime has orders to execute American nationals publicly if captured. They want a message. They want fear.”
Miles sets his coffee down.
No one speaks for a second.
Because we all know what that means.
This isn’t just a rescue.
It’s a race against a clock that’s already bleeding out.
I flip back to Olivia Taylor’s photo.
She’s not smiling.
She’s not posing.
She’s looking at that little girl like the rest of the world doesn’t matter.
