Chapter 10
TEN
Gaziantep Airport, Turkey
“All right. Here’s the plan.” Adam trudged down the last few steps and dumped his duffel on the shiny concrete floor of the hangar, trying to ignore the close heat and the way the sun beat through the open doors. It was barely five in the morning.
The plane had taxied all the way into this rickety hangar so they could disembark away from prying eyes. Except it was even hotter in here and he didn’t have shorts on anymore.
Ice turned from a huddle with Ash and Kai toward Adam. “We had a plan, Nix. Then you went to sleep. Now we have a new plan?”
Kai dug in his duffel and pulled out a protein bar, which he held out to Ice. “Once you get your foot out of your mouth, put this in there instead.”
Adam folded his arms. “The CIA wants us to retrieve one of their assets. We’re splitting into two groups and tackling both problems.”
Across the hangar a guy wearing sandals, khaki shorts, and a light-blue polo sat in a plastic lawn chair with a white canvas hat pulled down over his face, ostensibly completely asleep. Newspaper on his lap.
Dan came down the airplane stairs, and Adam shifted out of the way. Dan didn’t even look up from his tablet. “The drone is on the ground and the signal was lost, but we have its last known location.” He looked up at Kai and Ash. “Or…you guys do.”
“Because you’re calling dibs on going with Nix?” Kai didn’t have another protein bar, so he sucker punched Dan in the arm.
Dan didn’t even flinch, but his arm was probably numb now. “I’ll give you the tablet. When you’re close enough, the Earthnet program will connect with the drone and you’ll be able to find it.”
Adam motioned to Ice and Dan. “You’re coming with me.” Then glanced at Ash. “Jay is coming in to meet you. He’ll catch up when he’s on the ground.”
“He gets to parachute into Syria! No fair!”
Ash whirled around to face Kai. “Bro, did you forget to take your meds this morning or what?”
Kai whirled around to punch Ash, who blocked him.
“Cool it.” Adam shook his head. “You should’ve slept more on the plane, Kai.”
“Couldn’t fall asleep.” Kai looked perturbed. “Was thinkin’ about somethin’.”
Ice muttered, “Thinking about a girl.”
Adam sighed. “Maybe take out some of your restless energy on any insurgents you come across, yeah?”
Kai perked up. “Whatever means necessary?”
Adam pointed at Ash. “His call. We aren’t the threat here. In and out. That’s why you’re wearing disguises. We blend in. We try to go unnoticed.”
Stealth wasn’t exactly Kai’s strong suit, but he figured the former marine could pull it off well enough while he was charging into battle at full speed.
Kai’s chest expanded. “I identify—”
Ash slapped him upside the back of the head. “We all know. You identify as a threat.” He grabbed his duffel from the floor and flung it over his shoulder. “Can we go?”
Adam grabbed his duffel. “Anyone else still exhausted?”
Dan glanced at him and almost smiled. “You should’ve slept more, Nix.”
Adam shook his head. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Bye, Phoenix!” Kai swung around with a rifle case in one hand, nearly taking out Ash’s knees. “See you soon, Phoenix!”
Adam just shook his head, then yelled, “Henry!” across the hangar. The guy with the white hat over his face stood abruptly, and the newspaper fell to the floor.
“What?” Henry turned one way, then the other, noting them all and the plane behind them. “Good. Right on time.” To Ash and Kai, he said, “This way,” and led them through a door near where he’d been waiting for them to arrive.
Ice snorted. “Ouch.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Sure you’re up for this?” Adam was fully aware that Ice was nowhere near a hundred percent—but the guy was more of a liability left behind than he’d be while glued to Adam’s side the whole mission.
“Good to go, Boss.” Ice strode after Kai and Ash.
“Ever get the feeling your day is going to turn into a disaster?” Adam glanced at Dan, and the smile dropped away. “Sorry.”
Dan gave a quick shake of his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
Adam winced, watching Dan walk after the others. He flicked two fingers to the pilot in the door of the plane and grabbed the weapons crate and the tech crate, lugging both out the side door of the hangar. Down a hall to the exit where he had to blink against the sun as he emerged outside.
Ice took the tech crate to a rust-colored Toyota pickup truck. “Guess I’m riding in the back.” He hauled the crate in and climbed into the bed, sitting down with his back to it while Dan got in the driver’s side.
Ash slid into the driver’s seat of the other vehicle, an aging Mercedes. Kai looked at Adam over the roof and gave him a chin lift. Good to see he was in operational mode now, and whatever that had been inside the hangar had blown over.
“You have what you need from Dan?” Adam called over to him.
Kai nodded. “Got it.” He lowered into the car and shut the door. A second later, Ash peeled out of the parking spot, burning rubber in a hurry to illegally cross into Syria, retrieve a drone that belonged to a private tech company, and get back out with Jay in tow, watching their backs.
“Phoenix.” The man who’d been asleep on the plastic chair stuck his hand out now, his expression concealed behind sunglasses. Gray stubble on his chin. “Good to see you.”
“Been a while, Henry.” Adam shook his hand. “Appreciate your help. And the use of two vehicles.”
Henry lifted both hands. “I don’t want them back.”
“Understood.”
“We’re square?”
“Sure,” Adam said. They shook again. “Take care of the plane.”
Adam headed for the truck and got in. Dan pulled out slower than Ash had, going in the same direction, passing the guard shack. Where Ice flipped a tarp over his head, and turning the opposite way Ash had gone.
Adam watched them in the side mirror until he couldn’t see the Mercedes anymore.
The window behind their heads slid open, making his hair flicker against his forehead. Adam grabbed a ball cap from his duffel and slid it on.
“That thing didn’t fall apart yet?” Ice practically stuck his head through the window.
Adam tugged on the bill of the dark-green cap. “This thing is family.”
Ice yawned. “Fill us in on this asset we’re going after. Who is it?”
“You think the CIA gave me her name?” Adam shot him a look.
“At least they told you it’s a woman.” Dan gripped the wheel with both hands, driving like he was transporting his grandmother’s soufflé to the church potluck. “Did they provide a way to confirm her identity?”
“She has a pass phrase.” Adam used his own tablet to access the files the CIA had sent, which weren’t much. He navigated to the image and tapped it.
“There’s a quicker way to do that.”
Adam ignored Ice and turned the tablet so they could see the woman’s personnel photo.
“Doesn’t look like she belongs in the field.” Ice’s expression shifted.
“Don’t say it,” Adam warned, cutting him off before he could talk. “Whatever you’re thinking, just keep it to yourself.”
“Fine.” Ice huffed. “What else do we know?”
Dan glanced over. “It’s gonna be a long drive. I doubt what we know will fill five minutes.”
“True enough,” Adam said. “Her name is Stephanie-Jo. She was on an op in another country, though they didn’t say which.
They also didn’t say why they believe she’s in this town.
” He showed them the spot, a two-hour drive northwest of here.
“Or who took her. Or why. But we’re closer than anyone else the CIA has available. ”
Dan shook his head. “I won’t ask how they knew that.”
Ice said, “So what you do know fits on a penny, and that’s all of it?”
“She’s an asset whose life is in danger. She’s believed to be a captive and has been for hours, maybe days. And they believe she’s here.”
“We’ve done more on less.” Dan didn’t seem super put out. His lack of excitement or joy translated to him also having a distinct lack of frustration. The guy never got worked up about anything in any way.
Problem was, that bothered Adam. He’d never been the guy to sit around and do nothing if there was someone on his team who wasn’t all right or had a beef with someone else. Too bad wading in got him involved in the mess of trouble.
TL;DR.
Here he was.
Sure, the story was long and pretty interesting.
But none of it was relevant to his life right now.
He wasn’t even the same guy he’d been back then.
High school football captain. Track star.
These days he didn’t even recognize the kid who’d joined the army right after graduation, the one who wanted to change the world and do it carrying a gun.
The team leader he was now had the scars of that life, but he also had a new name.
“What did Noah tell you when he called?”
Adam pushed away his morose thoughts and realized he’d been drifting for a while according to the dash clock.
Long enough to nap a little and find himself out of the city, in a more rural area where a single-lane road stretched out ahead of them.
Farmland on either side, with rundown residences overseeing them.
He shifted in the seat, trying to work out the kinks of not enough sleep. “Marina’s cousin is missing. They’re going to see if they can find out what happened to her.”
“Caleb and Tessa’s baby is good?” Dan cleared his throat. “Everything is all right?”
“Yeah, bro. Everything is fine with that.” Over his shoulder, Adam spotted Ice hunkered down in the back. Probably in the tech crate or getting some more sleep. Adam continued, “Noah told me we’re the new Division Zero team for the CIA.”
“He got them to approve it?” Dan sounded impressed. “Whatever he said to convince them, I’d love to know.”
“Guess we’re doing good this week. Proving to Earthnet that we’re pros. Working for the CIA.”
“Don’t say it.” Dan rolled his shoulders. “Don’t get cocky.”
“Things are in a good place because we’re the real deal.”
“Mmm.”
Adam said, “Anyway, he didn’t have time to tell me much else. Other than about this assignment.”
“I suppose rescuing an asset of theirs goes a long way to showing them how capable we are.”
“Exactly.” So don’t screw it up. Adam looked at the tablet. “We’re almost there.”
“You were snoring like an old dog, so I left you to it.” Dan slowed the truck and took a right turn at a T-junction.
Someone had taken the turn too fast and slammed into a low brick wall, which hadn’t been fixed.
“We’re coming around from the back, and we’ll have to cross a field. Want to wait until it’s dark?”
Ice stuck his head in the window and nearly took ten years off Adam’s life. Of course, he pretended he hadn’t been startled. Ice said, “I vote we knock on the front door.”
Adam frowned. “You guys smell that?” He grabbed the handle and wound the window down, which squeaked as it descended into the door. “Smoke in the air.”
“Someone burning their weeds?” Dan slowed with the front end of the truck sticking out from behind a hedge that hadn’t been trimmed in a decade. “That house is toast.”
“Burned toast.” Adam peered down the hill to the structure at the bottom, about half a mile away and scratched his chin—the stubble situation was worse than he’d thought. He’d have a full-blown beard in twelve hours.
“That’s where she was?” Dan put the truck in Park.
“According to the CIA.” Adam shoved the tablet back into his duffel, exchanging it for a vest, and zipped the bag. He lowered the vest over his head. “We should check it out. If she died in there, they’ll want confirmation she’s gone.”
Dan pocketed the keys. “Ice, stay here so the stuff doesn’t get stolen. We’ll be back.”
Adam pushed his door open and holstered a pistol at the back of his belt, flipping his T-shirt over it.
Dan met him at the front of the truck, and they headed over a split-rail fence that had seen better days.
Between sporadic Anatolian black pine trees, they kept to cover and watched the house as they headed that way.
“It’s been burning a while.”
Dan said, “Maybe all night. But no emergency services?”
Adam shrugged, mostly to roll his shoulders and get his muscles to relax. “Who knows why no one came to put it out. Maybe they don’t like whoever lives here.”
He didn’t like jogging down the hill with no weapon in his hands toward two burned-out upstairs windows trailing soot up the exterior walls and a black space where the back door used to be.
Something about it just didn’t sit right, but this wasn’t a warzone—it was someone’s neighborhood, regardless of what this house had been used for.
“Barn to the left. That looks intact,” Dan said. “The house is giving off some serious heat. The fire hasn’t been out long. It’s probably still smoldering inside.”
“Let’s go all the way around. Then we can check out that barn.”
The front of the house didn’t look better than the back, except it explained the fire. As he rounded the front corner, Adam whistled. “The whole second floor is gone.” A burned corpse that used to be a person hung out one of the downstairs windows.
“Explosion. Not a fire.” Dan scanned the burned-out hole that used to be the roof and half of upstairs, his gaze avoiding the dead guy. “Gas leak?”
“Someone used whatever it was to destroy the house.”
“Hopefully our asset,” Dan said. “Guess we’ll have to catch up long enough to explain we’re the cavalry—and that’s a good thing.” He headed for the barn, using two hands to pull the door open.
A car turned off the road to their right, with the two of them in plain view.
“I’ll go see what they know.” Dan let go of the door.
“Watch your back.” Adam pulled his pistol and stepped into the barn through the opening. Giving himself a second so his eyes could adjust, he spotted a rusty old tractor that was just an engine and two wheels with a leather seat on top that had probably been in this barn for seventy years.
His feet kicked up straw and dust, which danced in the beam of light. Something skittered along the wall to his left, but that tiny creature had four legs.
She was also here. He couldn’t hear her breathing outside of his imagination, but the sense he wasn’t alone resounded in him like church bells.
Adam lowered the gun slowly and pushed out a long breath.
Two more steps, and she was on him—one arm around his throat to hold him steady, the other pointing a knife at the skin under his chin. No wonder Ice was so moody today. He’d been used as leverage by that woman, the one at the facility. Just like this.
“Steph?”
She clasped him tighter, and his throat closed.
Adam sucked in a breath, feeling the sting of a knife against his throat. It was the scent of her that told him she was the asset they’d come here looking for. “I’m a traveler from the north seeking that which was lost.”
He heard the gasp of breath rush past his ears.
“It’s hokey, but I like your style.”