Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
“I don’t like this.” Jack tapped his index finger on the table next to Natasha as if his trigger finger was itchy. They were at an outdoor café in the city center. The buildings around them dated back to the French colonial days with their whitewashed walls.
The overpowering smell of local spices hit her nose, and she stifled a sneeze with her hand when a breeze kicked up a touch of cumin her way from a vendor.
“Of course you don’t like this. You never like when I’m out in the city.” Less than a month in Algeria tracking down a lead, and every time she stepped outside the safety net of the Station, Jack became grouchy with worry about her.
She toyed with the ends of her headscarf, which served to hide her blonde hair. Aside from a touch of mascara, her face was clean of makeup.
This part of the world posed a significant challenge when it came to creating a legend—a fabricated background or biography for a deep-cover officer. Options were limited, especially for women.
Peace Corps, religious figures, and even journalists as cover stories were off-limits.
To make it even more problematic, a lone businesswoman didn’t add up in this region. Therefore, her companion played the role of businessman and, to make it more believable, her brother.
Jack was practically her brother, though.
After he left the Army Special Forces, he wound up serving in another way, by landing a paramilitary contractor gig with the CIA’s Special Operations Group (SOG), also known as the GRS (Global Response Team).
The CIA often hired former military guys to assist in the world’s hot zones.
And this CIA Station in Algiers qualified as a red-hot zone right now.
Tensions were rising due to the police-state repression, not to mention the presence of the terrorist group AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), whose main goal was to overthrow the government and insert the rule of religion throughout the country.
Jack side-eyed her as he brought his coffee to his mouth. “Don’t even think about it,” he warned as she fidgeted with the knot of her hijab, contemplating removing it to allow her blonde hair to flow free as a come-and-get-me beacon. “I know what you’re thinking.”
Jack, the man who’d never lost his humor, even after five deployments, was edgy today. Borderline broody even.
She heeded his warning and let go of the knot that anchored the red silk headscarf in place beneath her chin, dropping her hand to her lap.
He tapped at the comm in his ear. “What’s your position, G? Any movement overheard?”
The paramilitary contractors became widely known after the tragedy that went down in Benghazi a few years back. Those thirteen hours they’d held down the fort at the CIA annex had become front-page news.
Jack was one of the best men she’d ever worked with, and she’d been relieved to learn he’d landed a contract in Algeria shortly before her arrival.
She’d also immediately phoned her father to question whether or not he’d pulled the strings to make it happen, given this wasn’t the first time Jack had been assigned to her location.
Her father denied it, of course, but she had her suspicions.
Her father would do anything to keep her safe.
Maybe he’d even been the one to nudge Jack to serve again.
A year ago, Jack’s wife decided to call it quits.
In Jill’s defense, he’d promised not to go back into military work once he’d gotten out of the Army.
In his defense, the real estate business didn’t quite do it for him after the kind of life he’d lived.
Also, this was what he loved. Helping people. Taking down bad guys.
“What’d G say?” Garrison was on Jack’s team. Former Army Special Forces. Another man she’d trust with her life any day of the week.
“All clear from his vantage point,” Jack replied, his voice tense.
She shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked up at the rooftop in the distance where G was located. He had a sniper rifle positioned on them. Even though she couldn’t see him, she knew he could see her.
“But something doesn’t feel right. The air is charged.”
“The what is what?” She pitched her voice low and held on to the laugh that wanted to escape. It wouldn’t be good to call attention to herself and Jack by smiling and flashing her white teeth. No, she had to blend in as the sister of a businessman.
They were there to meet a potential asset, a man she hoped had valuable intelligence. Someone who was willing to sell out his group, the AQIM, in exchange for a hefty payout from the Agency.
He was her best chance to not only take down the terrorists, but to find the hacker who supplied the AQIM with the coordinates that led to the Black Hawk being taken down in the Atlas Mountains six weeks ago, killing two soldiers and severely injuring two more.
She closed her eyes, fighting back the memory of her own brother’s helo going down six years ago, which had led to his exit from the Army.
The road to recovery had been long, but he survived, and she had to remind herself of that whenever fear and nerves threatened to cut through.
The watch he’d given her, which she always wore, was hidden beneath her black sleeve on her left wrist.
“Something is going to happen, I’m telling you. I’ve got a feeling.”
She opened her eyes at the urgency in Jack’s words.
He was observing the streets, looking left and right. The area around them buzzed with conversation in Arabic, plus snippets of French here and there. A donkey hauling large bundles of trash strapped to its sides lumbered past just as their waiter delivered a plate of dolma, couscous, and lamb.
She gave her thanks in Arabic and eyed the food in front of her with uncertainty, her stomach knotting in protest. Jack’s sixth sense kicking in only served to make her nerves more tangled.
“I think your man is on approach.”
Natasha followed Jack’s gaze to the busy street off to their side, crowded with vendors selling local food.
A man with a thick black beard wearing dark denim jeans and a loose-fitting, white long-sleeved shirt headed their way. His eyes were focused. More observant than the men and women he passed.
It was her potential asset. Farid, with the AQIM.
He stopped a foot shy of their small, round table and flipped his gaze to the building off to their left, the one opposite of G.
“You came.” She offered a slight bow of the head to show subservience to the man to maintain her cover.
“We cannot talk here.” Farid’s dark brown eyes, the color of the soil from her mother’s tomato garden back home, met hers. “Follow me.” He turned back toward the street he’d come from.
Jack secured a grip around her bicep, attempting to stop her from rising to her feet. “We can’t blindly follow him. We need more coverage.”
Yeah, well, the Chief of Station didn’t think they needed additional support. He didn’t think Farid would actually show. He’d thought she’d wasted the last four weeks trying to turn him. This is a bullshit lead, her boss had said before she’d left the Station thirty minutes ago.
“I have to go. You know how important this is.” And damn it, they were already losing him.
Jack snarled but nodded for her to follow. “G, we’re moving.”
The steep, winding streets made it harder to keep up with Farid. “Where’s he taking us?” She brought her hand to the Sig Sauer P226 holstered at her hip beneath her top, and a sense of comfort washed over her knowing it was within reach.
Many officers in the field weren’t equipped for battle, but Natasha had completed the more rigorous courses at the Farm.
She’d earned her silver jump wings, too.
As an operations officer and part of the Directorate of Operations (DO) it was her job to develop, ID, create, and handle sources.
To acquire information to protect Americans and U.S.
policy. Most people who joined the Agency wanted to be in the field recruiting spies, turning foreign nationals into agents.
And she’d been lucky enough to land the gig.
CIA officers were notorious for walking a line between right and wrong, though, which was her least favorite part of the job—also, one she happened to be good at.
She often pissed off the wrong people, like last week, and she’d nearly gotten herself PNG’d (declared persona non grata and thrown out of country).
But if she wasn’t willing to offend the upper echelons of government every once in a while, she’d never catch as many bad guys.
So, following Farid down the streets, even if gun-wielding men skirted each corner with AKs, she was doing what she’d been trained to do.
She didn’t need Jack whispering in her ear every minute like he was currently doing, Are you sure?
Sometimes he still saw her as a kid sister, as the girl who could kill a deer like the best of them but would cry over the kill later and mourn the loss of life.
Yeah, that girl. Out in the field, he could forget she was an officer responsible for taking down multiple HVTs over the years and preventing terrorist attacks from happening.
But it was the attacks that had slipped through the cracks that would haunt her every day, like the Black Hawk that’d been taken down.
If she’d stopped the hacker after his last act three months ago, maybe those men on the chopper would’ve made it home to their families.
Guilt plunged like a knife in her chest, and another to her gut, which twisted for an extra zing of pain.
Jack tugged on her arm, bringing her to an abrupt stop, and a strange kind of energy surged and slammed into her. A feeling of danger.
Jack had been right. There was some sort of charge in the air.
Farid stood ten feet away facing them.
“What if he has an s-belt beneath that shirt?” Jack’s voice cracked as a looming threat filled the air. “He might set it off.”
“He’s not going to do that.” Jack’s protection was top-notch, but right now, she didn’t need that. She needed answers. Information. Actionable intelligence.
That was what she needed, and she believed Farid had it.
“We should stop following and abort mission, G,” Jack said into his comm.
“Absolutely not.” She started for Farid who was still staring at her as if . . . as if he was going to betray her.
She stilled when she got close enough to practically see the dilation of his pupils as he mouthed, “Sorry.”
Oh fuck.
“We’ve got tangos up ahead,” Jack said, catching her by the elbow. “Five by my count.” He touched his ear. “G says there are five more behind. We’re boxed in.”
Farid had already turned and was sprinting the opposite way, heading straight for the five armed men barreling at them.
She secured a hand on her weapon as Jack thrust her into an alley off to his right.
Her best lead was gone.
How the hell had she let this happen? She’d been played, and she was better than this.
Her father’s voice pushed into her head. I don’t know if you can handle this, he’d said when she applied to the CIA. What if you get yourself or others killed?
“Come in, G. I can’t hear what you just said.
Repeat.” Jack covered his ear, then cursed.
“They’re converging on our location. We need to get out of here,” he said as they continued to bolt down the alley, but there was a wall obstructing their path.
A dead end. “There’s a door up ahead on your left. Try it.”
Warning shots rang in the air and someone shouted in Arabic from behind.
He kept his chest to her back, serving as a shield as she gripped the knob.
The blood rushed to her ears as she twisted, as her chest squeezed with worry.
She pushed the door open with her Sig in hand, knowing full well they were about to be shit out of luck.
And she’d been right.
Three armed men were there waiting.