The man crouched down. Got close. "Rashid Nazari wants to know who sent you. Who gave you orders to breach his home. To terrorize his family."
Steele almost laughed. Terrorize his family. The same family Nazari was planning to sell piece by piece.
"You will tell us," the man continued. "Or you will die slowly."
Probably true. They'd torture him for information. When he didn't give them anything useful, they'd kill him and dump his body somewhere it wouldn't be found for weeks.
Unless his team came back.
Bulldog would be arguing for immediate recovery. Hawk would be calculating odds and resources. Ghost would be monitoring communications trying to locate him. Risk would be prepping medical equipment because when they found him, he was going to need it. Joker would be volunteering to drive straight back into Mosul if that's what it took.
But the mission had failed. Nazari was gone. The team had orders to exfil. Command would make the calculation: one operator versus strategic objectives. Intelligence value versus risk.
He might be on his own.
The man stood. Said something in Arabic to the others. They dragged Steele upright, zip ties cutting into his wrists. The movement sent fresh waves of pain through his arm and leg. He felt blood soaking through his pants. Still bleeding. Still dying by inches.
They shoved him into a chair. One of them hit him across the face. Testing. Seeing what he'd give them.
Steele tasted blood. Didn't make a sound.
This was going to be a long night.
The hits came fast. Professional. Designed to hurt without causing death. Steele absorbed them. Kept his breathing steady. Focused on staying present.
But his mind kept drifting. Back to the compound. To the chaos. To her.
Dark blue eyes above a tactical mask. Fierce and focused and alive in a way that had made him forget about the pain in his leg for half a second. The woman from the other team. The one who'd extracted the civilians. The one who'd looked at him like she was trying to decide if he was worth saving.
He wondered if she made it out. Wondered if the kid was safe. Wondered if she thought about him at all or if he was just another tactical problem she'd solved and moved on from.
Another hit. He focused on breathing. On her eyes. Strange anchor to hold onto. A woman whose name he didn't know. Whose face he'd barely seen. But those eyes. He remembered those eyes.
The interrogation continued. Questions in broken English. Silence from Steele. More pain. The cycle repeating like some kind of nightmare he couldn't wake from.
But every time his mind threatened to fracture, to give in to the pain and the fear and the knowledge that rescue might not come, he thought about her. About the way she'd moved through that compound. Competent. Lethal. The kind of operator who got the job done no matter what stood in her way.
She'd made it out. He was sure of that. She was too good not to. The kid was safe because of her. Because of the choice they'd both made in that chaos.
Worth it. Even if this was how it ended. Even if those dark eyes were the last thing he saw before Nazari's men killed him. Worth it.
Erbil Air Base Rally Point
Bulldog paced like a caged animal while Hawk stood perfectly still and Ghost monitored every frequency hoping for a signal that wasn't coming.
"We have to go back," Bulldog said for the third time.
"We don't know where he is," Hawk replied, voice calm but strained.
"Then we find him. We search every building in that compound until?—"
"The compound's hot," Ghost interrupted. "Iraqi security forces are responding. Local militia's been alerted. If we go back now, we're walking into a hornet's nest."
"So we just leave him?"
"I didn't say that."
Risk sat on an equipment crate, medical pack at his feet, ready to move the second they had a target location. "He's injured. I saw blood. If he's not treated soon, he won't make it anyway."
