“He doesn’t leave Morocco alive, do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir, I will let them know.”
“Jesus, no wonder we are losing the fucking war,” he said, moving to the window.
“Duke, what are we going to do about Collins?”
“Don’t worry about him — that’s my job. I need you to do what you do best: collect intelligence and prosecute targets. If we can’t get those inept motherfuckers to execute the plan that I put together, then taking care of Collins is going to be the least of our problems. What does the timetable look like?”
“There was a slight hiccup at the handoff; apparently someone at the DoD is having problems following orders.”
“What happened?”
“They tried to grab the package and got their asses shot off.”
“Is it going to come back on us?”
“No, sir, I know a guy with the local news. He wrote the story up as a narcotics operation gone wrong. Local PD is going to play ball, so there is no blowback on us.”
“Who’s taking point on the cleanup operation?”
“A guy named Green; he’s the assistant agent in charge or some shit like that. He’s clueless; the man couldn’t find his asshole with two hands and a map. Duke, it’s covered. Trust me.”
“So what happens now?”
“Decklin gets the case out of the country, and the DoD will get the FBI to hit the doctor’s. It will be a routine warrant, but the doctor will be taken out during the operation. It’s too easy.”
“Is that everything?”
Simmons hesitated before getting up, and Duke caught it.
“What else?”
“Sir, it’s just a hunch, but—”
“Jesus, Jacob, I’ve got work to do, just spit it out.”
“It’s General Swift. I don’t think he’s going to play ball.”
“Are you worried about him, or are you worried about yourself?” Duke asked honestly.
“Duke, you know I’m good to go, but I don’t think the old man has it in him.”
“Let me handle that. Swift will get in line, or he will be put in line. Trust me, it’s going to work out.”
“Yes, sir.” Jacob smiled and headed for the door as Duke picked up the phone and dialed a number from memory.
“Nantz, it’s Duke. The package is on the way to Barnes.” He paused, listening to the man on the other end of the line. “Yes, I understand, but I need you to do something. Have the team test the gas. I want to see what Swift does.”
CHAPTER 5
The EMT had told Renee that she might have a concussion, but she had declined a ride to the local emergency room. She finally got back to her hotel room at three o’clock in the morning. Tossing the room key on the table, she set her camera and blood-spattered computer on the bed before heading over to the minibar.
The blood under her nails appeared dark brown in the light cast by the small refrigerator as she bent down to grab an airplane-sized bottle of vodka. Sparks of pain radiated out from the back of her skull as she stood upright. It hurt like hell, but the dizziness wasn’t that bad.
She downed the bottle in one long gulp, hoping it would dull the pain. She was tired and looked longingly at the king-sized bed and inviting pillows but remembered an instructor in North Carolina telling her that she could sleep when she was dead.
She knew she still had more in the tank, so she tore her gaze from the bed.
Sliding the holster and pistol off her belt, she placed them next to the camera and laptop already resting on the bed. She pulled the bloodstained blouse over her head, tossed it in the trash, and headed to the bathroom.
Renee flipped on the light and turned the shower on full blast. The mirror fogged from the steam of the hot shower, and Renee wiped her hand across the glass to see herself.
Gingerly she touched the bruise forming on her sternum. The dark red and blue welt was getting darker between her well-formed breasts, and it hurt to touch. The trauma plate had saved her life and she knew it.
“You look like shit,” she said to her reflection.
Renee had been forced to learn doggedness at an early age just to keep up with everyone else. Looking back, her struggles seemed like such a little thing compared to where she was now, but back then, having to work twice as hard as everyone else had seemed so unfair.
Her mother had always told her she could do whatever she wanted as long as she was willing to work for it. While her father and brothers played outside, romping in the yard, she would watch them through the window as she sat at the table, drowning in schoolwork, just trying to keep up with her classes. She was a prisoner of her own weakness, and she swore that one day nothing would keep her down.
In third grade Renee’s mom had gotten her a tutor named Maleeha. She was a middle-aged Pakistani whose husband worked at her mother’s real estate company, and Renee was fascinated with the stories of her home. This was her first exposure to a life outside of Mississippi, and it was intoxicating. She would rush through her schoolwork and spend the rest of the time trying to learn Pashto from her tutor, a skill that would bear fruit later in life.
The day she arrived at basic training, Renee had been like an uncut jewel, waiting for the master’s hand. Her drill sergeants had chipped away at the rough edges and smoothed and refined her strengths until she was polished and tightly anchored in her new setting.
Renee’s first duty assignment was in PsyOps, where the time she had spent with Maleeha gave her a unique insight into the mind of women in the Mideast. The army was struggling to find a niche for women in the Special Operations community by setting up the Lioness Program, which attached women to Special Forces teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. Renee had been in the army for less than nine months when she was chosen from a pool of applicants to try out.
She breezed through the selection course and soon found herself deployed, but it wasn’t what she’d expected. The grizzled Green Berets viewed her as a burden, which she hated, and only used her when they had to. So Renee set out to make herself indispensable. Her halting grasp of Pashto allowed her to talk to the women in southern Afghanistan without a male being present, and she soon developed a rapport with the women of the region. Before long she had a network set up that fed her information from the local villages. The wives and mothers who came in contact with the Taliban would tell her anything she wanted to know, and her unit began to make real progress in the area.
When her deployment was over, the army sent her to the language school at Monterey and immersed her in Arabic. It was hard, and she hated every moment of it, but she knew that she had a toehold in a world denied to most women and she wasn’t about to give it up.
After graduation, they sent her team to Ramadi, where there was an offensive under way. Despite her previous deployments, she had no frame of reference for her new role at the tip of the spear. The firefights were loud, savage, and in-your-face — like a knife fight in a dark alley. In her new unit, you either carried your weight, or you went home in a bag, and it was too much for many of the women she had graduated with.
Renee was an anomaly. She came alive in the cauldron of Ramadi. The first time she saved a teammate’s life, dragging him to safety despite his bulk, everything changed for her. No longer was she a burden; she was now an asset who had proved her worth under fire.
Turning on the sink, she began scrubbing Joseph’s blood from her hands and forearms. The manicure she’d gotten the day prior was ruined, proving how frivolous pampering herself really was.
Rinsing her hands filled the stark white basin of the sink with a rust-colored mixture of dried blood and soap. She reflected on the dead bodies, empty hotel rooms, and sand-filled tents as she dried her hands on the plush hotel towel. Death and loneliness were all she had.