“You want to tell them, or should I?” Webb looked to McDowell for direction.
“I think you’ve told them enough, don’t you?”
A shot rang out, and Webb’s bodyjerked from the bullet’s impact. Van looked back to see McDowell holding a literal smoking gun.
What the fuck?
“Drop the weapon!” He stormed toward the murderous V.P.
The man dropped the pistol they didn’t know he had. Van rushed over to where it lay, kicking it away, the metal scraping against the dirty concrete as it slid well out of anyone’s reach.
“Get down on your knees, you son of a bitch!”
Surprisingly, McDowell followed Van’s command. “It’s too bad you won’t be able to hear the rest of the story. It’s quite entertaining, really.”
As he secured the V.P.’s wrists with plastic ties, Van looked over to where Webb lay. There was a bullet hole in the center of his chest, and a crimson stain was rapidly covering the man’s stark white shirt.
“I-It was my f-fault…” The injured man stuttered as he attempted to talk. “Kaamisha’s mother and I…w-we had an affair back then. She c-contacted me…three years ago. T-tried blackmailing me into using my p-position to send aid to Kanda…har. She wanted U.S. t-troops there to help stop the T-Taliban extremists.”
“But you couldn’t agree to something like that, because then you’d have to explain your sudden interest in sending troops to that part of the country.”
“Too many questions.” Webb nodded. “Too high a…risk.”
“What did you do?” Van demanded.
It was McDowell who answered.
“We did what we always do.” The kneeling man smirked. “We took care of the problem.”
“So you two have this secret about the truth behind my dad’s death, which created this sort of quid pro quo between you,” Logan summarized all that they knew. “You stuck together throughout the years, supported each other in yourpolitical endeavors…and it was all going according to plan until Kam’s mom contactedyou—”Logan added even more pressure to Webb’s wound—“and asked for help.”
The injured man groaned as his face twisted with pain. “She…demanded. Would have ruined…everything. F-Family…career…I would have l-lost it…all.”
“And once again, you put yourself above an innocent human life and made it so Ayrana Dawari could never bother you again.”
These two men, thesemonsters, had killed Logan’s dad and Kam’s mom?
“N-Not…m-me.” Webb sputtered a cough. “J-John.”
“It doesn’t matterwhogave the orders,” Logan seethed. With his hand covering the wound, he continued trying to stop the bleeding. Giving aid to a man who was clearly their enemy.
“What about us?” Van asked next. “Why go after our team?”
“Because we were there the day Kam’s mom was killed.” Archer appeared at Van’s side. “The V.P. here probably got paranoid that we’d keep looking into what happened that day. It was our first and only failed op, remember? That shit never did sit right with any of us, and Webb knew it.”
“He’s…right,” Webb confirmed Archer’s educated guess. “J-John was worried you’d keep…digging. Then you’d figure out…Ayrana’s death wasn’t an accident, but…an execution.”
Van recalled that day three years ago in Kandahar. The meeting they’d been sent in to observe. A pre-arranged meeting supposedly set up by the leaders of the two most powerful groups of Taliban extremists at that time.
Now they were all beginning to understand it wasn’t the Taliban who’d arranged the meeting but players in their own damn government.
Their SEAL unit had been sent in to watch the top lieutenants of those groups and to gather intel. They’d sat atthose tables, sipping on drinks across the street. Watching as the men they were observing exited the small café.
Van and his team had witnessed the unexpected gunfight right there, out in the open. They’d gone straight into action, taking cover while trying to protect the civilians who were around them and doing their damnedest to avoid catching a stray bullet in the process.
In the end, the groups of men had all taken each other out. When the dust had settled, they’d realized an innocent woman was lying dead in the street.
Ayrana Dawari.
