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“Anyone who works for me who breaks an artifact will lose a hand. Break two and they lose a foot. Break three and…what is the term in American? Three strikes and out.”
“Why risk losing men and artifacts when I can do it?”
The man gave her a cold smile. He had to know she was trying to make herself indispensable. He then frowned and reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. She saw the screen light up. A call coming in.
He stared at the screen, then said, “Fine. You have two days to clean them so they can be inspected and photographed then wrapped again for shipment.” He dismissed her as he answered the phone.
She had what she needed: Rafiq’s location, knowledge she’d be here for days, and confirmation of an active cell signal.
Her hands remained bound, but she was able to twist her wrists so her right hand could reach the spot on her left arm where the tracker had been embedded.
She needed to rub the spot for several seconds. It could be triggered with a hard press that lasted ten seconds or longer too. She did both.
Once activated, there was no turning it off. The SOS would go out with her location, which would be snagged from the cell or satellite phone signal the tracker had jumped on.
As before, her rescue would probably come in the wee hours of the night, but unlike before, this time, she’d know they were coming. She’d be ready.
Chapter Fifteen
The team assembled in the conference room, but this time, Chris could tell something had changed after thirty-eight days of waiting. There was a buzz of excitement as no less than the carrier group’s commanding admiral entered the room.
Without preamble, the captain at the head of the table immediately stood and pointed to the large monitor, which showed a satellite image of a cluster of residences on the outskirts of Aqaba.
“Dr. Diana Edwards initiated her subdermal tracker at three forty-one this morning.”
Chris’s heart pounded in a way it shouldn’t. This was just a mission.
Right. Like she hadn’t been two millimeters from his conscious thought every minute of every day since she mouthed those words.
Half the time, he wrote her off as dead. The other half, he just considered she might be dead. Now she was resurrected. Alive.
And then his brain nearly exploded with the implication, voiced by someone else at the table who was faster on the uptake. “Do we know if Rafiq is at her location?”
A glance at the digital clock on the monitor’s upper right corner showed it had been two and a half hours since Edwards had sent her call for rescue.
“We were only able to get clear satellite images of the dwelling where she’s being held in the last forty minutes. Right now, there is no movement on the property, no way to confirm either Dr. Edwards’s presence or Makram Rafiq’s.”
“But we know Edwards is there, because the tracker is still transmitting?”
The captain nodded. “We’d like to get a visual on Rafiq before making our move. We will have drones in the area within the hour and a team of intelligence officers on the ground by nightfall.”
“We aren’t going in tonight?” Fallon asked. “We’ve got nearly twenty hours to prepare and get into position.”
“We’ll make a move if we find evidence Edwards is in imminent danger, but we feel waiting gives us the highest chance of a favorable outcome. It would be one thing if the location were remote, as it was last time, but this is a house in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Aqaba. If Rafiq is there, we need to approach with extra caution. This is likely to be our only shot.”
Chris understood. It was the right plan. The only plan, really. Rafiq was too big a target. But it also meant more time in captivity for Dr. Edwards. Anything could happen. Hell, she could be dead before lunchtime if Rafiq was done with her.
Did she have any clue what she’d been signing up for when she sabotaged her rescue nearly six weeks ago?
Sleep was always difficult for Diana, but trying to rest in Rafiq’s base of operations was next-level impossible. She should be dead on her feet after a long night of driving and then the tense meeting with Rafiq. She’d then helped unload the truck, carefully placing the boxes of artifacts in an empty room that had been designated her conservation laboratory.
She’d labored all day, unpacking artifacts and cleaning off the remaining layers of dirt once Rafiq had acquired the proper tools for the delicate work. She guessed they were near a city. It had only taken a few hours for the supplies to be purchased after she gave a henchman the shopping list.
After a dinner of rice and mutton, she was finally permitted to stretch out on a pallet and sleep for the first time since she’d dozed on the hot, endless ride that had lasted until the early hours of this morning.
Once she lay down, however, she’d felt like a kid on Christmas Eve, in spite of the fact that she feared the moment bullets and grenades would start flying.
She’d seen the movie Zero Dark Thirty several times. The re-creation of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s residence in Pakistan was seared in her brain.
