Steele climbed in last. Looked at his team one more time. Five men who would follow him into hell because he'd asked them to.
The truck rolled out of Fort Liberty. Behind them, the base continued its normal operations. Ahead of them, Iraq. Acompound in Mosul. An arms dealer who thought walls and money made him safe.
Steele leaned back against the truck's metal wall. Closed his eyes. Didn't sleep. Just waited. The way he always did. For the moment when waiting ended and the real work began.
HOSTILE TERRITORY
L'Abri Sûr, LouisianaSame Day
The alert came at 2:47 AM.
Mara was already awake. She'd been awake for the last three hours, sitting on the dock behind the main house with her feet dangling over dark water and a mug of cold coffee in her hands. Sleep had become optional over the years. Sometimes necessary. Rarely easy.
Her phone vibrated once. Then twice. Emergency protocol. All hands.
She was moving before the third vibration, coffee abandoned on the dock as she headed for the ops center. The Louisiana night pressed close around her, thick with humidity and the sounds of things hunting each other in the dark.
The lights were already on when she pushed through the door. Quinn sat at her station, multiple monitors glowing in the darkness. Sloane stood behind her, reading over her shoulder. They both looked up as Mara entered.
"G.I.D.E.O.N. flagged something," Quinn said without preamble. "Priority level red. You need to see this."
Mara crossed to the monitors. Data scrolled across the screens. Intelligence reports. Satellite imagery. Communications intercepts. Financial transactions.
And at the center of it all, two faces.
A woman, maybe thirty-five. Dark circles under her eyes. Bruises on her neck barely concealed by makeup. The kind of bruises Mara recognized instantly. Fingerprints. Someone's hands wrapped around her throat.
And a boy. Seven years old, maybe eight. His smile was gap-toothed in the photograph, but his eyes were wrong. Too old. Too aware.
"Amira and Karim Nazari," Quinn said, pulling up more data. "Mother and son. Currently being held at a compound outside Mosul. The husband is Rashid Nazari. Arms dealer. Big player in the regional weapons trade."
Mara's jaw tightened. "G.I.D.E.O.N. doesn't flag domestic situations. What made this a priority?"
Quinn's fingers flew across the keyboard. New windows opened. Intercepted communications. Translation matrices. Context algorithms.
"Because in four days, Rashid Nazari is moving a shipment of weapons to a buyer in Syria. And according to the communications G.I.D.E.O.N. decrypted, the boy is part of the inventory."
Silence dropped through the room like a stone.
Mara leaned closer to the screen, reading the translated communications. Clinical language. Transactional. A child reduced to an asset. Something to sweeten the deal. Something to be delivered along with crates of rifles and ammunition.
"The mother?" Mara asked.
"Collateral damage," Sloane said, her voice flat. "G.I.D.E.O.N. pulled medical records from a source we cultivated in Mosul. Amira Nazari has been hospitalized threetimes in the last two years. Broken ribs. Fractured orbital bone. Internal bleeding. The doctors know. They just can't do anything about it."
Mara stared at the woman's face on the screen. Recognized the expression. The careful blankness. The way she'd learned to make herself invisible. To take up less space. To breathe quietly and hope that maybe this time he wouldn't notice her.
"What's our window?" Mara asked.
"Ninety-six hours," Quinn said. "The weapons shipment moves in four days. If we're going to extract them, it has to be before that convoy leaves. Once Karim is in transit, we lose him."
"And the mother?"
Quinn's expression didn't change, but something flickered in her eyes. "Intel suggests she'll be eliminated once the boy is delivered. She's a liability. Knows too much. And Rashid doesn't tolerate liabilities."
Mara straightened. Turned to look at both of them. "How confident is G.I.D.E.O.N. in this assessment?"
"Ninety-one percent," Quinn said. "I've triple-checked the source data. Communications intercepts. Financial transactions showing payment for the boy separate from the weapons deal. Movement patterns at the compound suggesting preparation for a departure. It all tracks."
