Safe House Four Hours Later
Mara's phone rang at 0600. She'd been lying on one of the cots in the small bedroom, staring at the ceiling and not sleeping. Quinn.
"He's alive," Quinn said without preamble. "The American. I've got confirmation."
Mara sat up, her heart kicking against her ribs. Relief crashed through her so hard it was almost painful. "How?"
"Iraqi security communications. They're reporting a captured American soldier at Nazari's compound. Wounded but conscious. Under guard."
Wounded but conscious. Still alive. Still breathing. Still waiting for someone to come.
"His team?"
"At Erbil Air Base. Command ordered them to stand down. But I'm monitoring their communications. They're not standing down. They're planning something."
Mara stood and walked to the window. Dawn had fully broken now, the Iraqi countryside bathed in early morning light that made everything look deceptively peaceful. She pressed her hand against the glass and tried not to think about what "wounded" meant. Tried not to imagine him in pain. Tried not to remember the blood she'd seen soaking through his pants.
"Can we beat them to it?" she asked.
"Beat them to what?"
"The rescue. Can we get to him before his team does?"
Silence on the line. Then: "Why would we do that?"
"Because we left him behind. Because it's the right thing to do. Because I'm not okay with an American operator dying because we were there." Because I can't stop seeing his eyes. Because four hours of trying to sleep just meant four hours of hearing his voice. Because something happened in that compound and I need to know if it was real.
She didn't say the last part.
"Mara, this is insane. We're four women in hostile territory with two civilians to protect. We don't have the resources for a combat rescue against a fortified position."
"Then we get creative."
"This isn't our mission."
"It is now."
Another pause. Then Quinn's voice, resigned: "What do you need?"
Mara smiled despite everything. Despite the risk. Despite the impossibility. Despite the fact that she was about to commit Shadow Veil to a rescue operation for a man whose name she didn't even know. A man whose face she couldn't stop seeing. Whose voice she couldn't stop hearing. Who'd looked at her like he'd seen something in her worth dying for.
"Everything you've got."
CONNECTIONS
L'Abri Sûr, Louisiana
The plane touched down at 0347 local time. Mara had been awake for twenty-three hours straight and could feel every single one of them in the weight behind her eyes and the tension locked in her shoulders.
Amira and Karim were asleep in the back, sedated by exhaustion and Kira's careful administration of something mild enough to let them rest without knocking them out completely. The boy had finally stopped asking about the bad men somewhere over the Atlantic. His mother had stopped asking about her husband around the same time.
Mara hadn't stopped thinking about Steele since they'd left Erbil. Hadn't stopped seeing his face. Hadn't stopped hearing his voice, calm and steady even while bleeding out. Go. I've got this. Like it was that simple. Like sacrificing himself was just another tactical problem to solve.
The aircraft rolled to a stop on the private airstrip carved out of bayou land. Quinn would've already scrubbed the flight logs, rerouted the transponder data, and made sure there was no digital trail leading back to this location. The kind of operational security that had kept L'Abri Sûr hidden for nine years.
Harper was waiting at the hangar with the intake team, ready to take Amira and Karim through the first steps of processing. Medical evaluation. Clean clothes. A room with a lock that worked from the inside. The basics of dignity restored.
Nadia touched her shoulder. "You need to sleep."
