Page 15 of Brooks

Ace and Gumby had said they were in Bahrain on a special assignment, but hadn’t elaborated. Other than us knowing they were staying on base and some woman had caught Rocco’s eye, we were flying blind. Hell, they hadn’t even told us the woman’s name that Rocco had the hots for.

“Manama seems like a good place.”

Manama was not a good place, it was a hotbed of criminal activity. A slum that you didn’t want to be in after dark. But it was the perfect place for a Navy SEAL to go hunting.

Max and Kyle came back with their kit, reminding me I needed to go grab my go-bag. I made my way to the bedroom I’d been staying in and glanced around the small space. Not the worst accommodations, not even in the bottom hundred shittastic places I’d had to bed down over the last ten years.

Sometimes it was easier sleeping out in the desert under the stars, with distant gunfire and bombs to lull me to sleep. Hotel rooms, military quarters, and temporary compounds were a tease. Just enough comfort to make you miss home. Wherever home was. I didn’t have one of those anymore. Uncle Sam had provided everything I’d needed to survive for eight years and Zane Lewis had kept me moving for the last two. I didn’t own a damn thing; I was as free as the wind. I had a bank account I rarely touched and my passport, albeit an alias, was stamped full. We’d been back to the states three times in the last few years.

We were supposed to be INCONUS for sixty-days of R and R. I’d planned on going off grid and finding a place to be alone. Now all I could think about was what it would be like to have a few days of down time with the elusive Tatiana. Alone didn’t sound all that appealing anymore. Not when I couldn’t stop thinking about the beautiful woman’s smile. Not to mention, the way she’d handled her gun, reminding me of a way sexier upgrade of Sarah Connor. Days later, I still couldn’t purge her from my thoughts. It was driving me crazy not knowing where she was or who exactly she worked for.

“Two minutes.” Dec’s voice pulled me from my thoughts.

* * *

“You got eyes on the woman in the black and pink abaya?” I quietly asked. “Two o’clock. Just got out of a taxi.”

“Roger,” Declan came back through my earpiece.

It was after eleven at night, we were smack dab in the middle of a red zone. An area the US embassy and common sense would tell you to stay the fuck away from. It was out of the touristy section of the city. The streets were dirty, building and shops dilapidated, the stench of poverty thick in the air. It was mere miles from the heart of opulence and wealth, but it might as well have been a whole other country. The Crowne Plaza Bahrain this place was not.

A woman walking by herself stood out. A woman who was struggling to walk in the long abaya that looked to be brand new might as well have had a flashing strobe over her saying, violate me. Women were not supposed to be out by themselves without a male accompanying them. Unless of course they were a woman of the night working a street corner. Which this woman clearly was not.

“Is she crazy? She’s gonna get herself killed out here,” Max added.

“What are you thinking?” Declan asked.

Bahrain was our first official mission with Declan at the helm. So far, he was proving to be a good leader. During the planning of the operation he’d asked us our thoughts and how we would run the op. Once he’d had all of our input, he’d adjusted his initial plan. Not all of it, but he’d seen the value in other’s perspectives.

“The abaya is new. Too expensive for this area. She can barely walk in it. She’s adjusted her hijab several times. Her head is on a swivel. There’s no way she belongs here, and I doubt she’s ever worn a head covering, or the long robe.”

“Agreed,” Dec said.

“What’s your gut telling you, Brooks?”

“We follow her.”

“Stay spread out. Do not engage,” he reminded us.

We were all armed to the teeth. Though none of us needed to draw a weapon to neutralize a threat, we’d never be in this neighborhood of Manama unarmed.

Sweat was pouring down my back under my heavy body armor. Even this late in the evening it was hotter than Hades. What I wouldn’t give for a cold brew and a nice cool breeze.

“What the hell is she doing?” Max asked.

We’d followed the woman almost a mile into an alleyway behind a grocery store.

I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t see any of my teammates through the darkness, they blended into the shadows like the ghosts we were. I flipped down my night vision goggles. With everything tinted green, I watched the woman push a box under a window and hoist herself through.

“Is she robbing a grocery store?” Max inquired, as the woman slipped through the small space.

A grocery store in this area was a loose term. The shops in Manama would sell everything from near rotting food to a variety of household items.

“Doubt it,” I answered.

Call it a gut feeling or hard-won intuition. There was zero chance she was simply out for a stroll this late at night to rob a store this far into the heart of a shithole. Her clean abaya was another tell, she wasn’t a street rat scrounging for her next meal. And she was too clumsy to be a professional.

“We’ll give it five minutes,” Declan instructed.