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Weapons.
Jamal cut himself and cursed. Both their attention was on Jamal’s bleeding hand. With their focus elsewhere, Diana took a chance and palmed a larger, sharp piece, then brushed at her forehead to wipe away the very real sweat that had appeared the moment the tears stopped flowing.
Still, she dabbed at her cheeks as if the tears might be a problem and hoped neither Jamal or Bassam were paying attention as she slipped the glass blade into the headscarf’s hidden pocket.
Did her two guards even know the pocket was there? The man who’d taken her phone from her on that first day had known, but Jamal and Bassam hadn’t been there, and they were young and might not know the ways of modern women’s headscarves.
She thought about palming another piece, but decided not to risk it.
They swept the floor with small brushes they’d used to clean the artifacts. The smallest of the debris was whisked under a woven rug.
Diana placed a layer of padding over the shards inside the box. The boys agreed to take turns removing them, one pocketful at a time.
After changing the number of ingots on the inventory sheet, Diana resumed her task of unpacking and cleaning, while the brothers took a series of breaks.
It was a shame they no longer had the pit toilets they’d required in the field camp. Flushing toilets wouldn’t work for disposing of chunks of glass, but once they left the room, artifact disposal was their problem, not hers. She would claim to know nothing about the brothers’ theft or destruction of the artifact.
Bassam returned after one such trip smelling of cigarettes, and she guessed he’d dropped some of the glass in the garden. He gave Diana a hard look, and she resumed her job of unpacking boxes and checking them off in the field catalog.
Sheer exhaustion having finally caught up with her, Diana managed to sleep fitfully that night. She woke often. Each time she listened for rescue, but all she heard was the sound of Jamal’s even breathing as he blocked the door.
The glass shard remained in the pocket of her headscarf.
It was her new hope.
Her only hope.
Once the tears had stopped flowing, she’d been able to think again. If the SEALs weren’t coming, she’d rescue herself. She had valuable intel. She’d find a way out of this house. She’d escape and bring what she knew to the CIA or DIA. If she could get to an embassy or consulate, she’d deliver news of Makram Rafiq’s operation directly to the US Department of State.
She would probably die before all this was over, but she wouldn’t die here.
Chapter Seventeen
The early morning briefing promised to be more of the same. In the two days since Diana Edwards had initiated the tracker, there hadn’t been a glimpse of the woman or the terrorist leader. Now the signal was long dead.
Was Diana as dead as the signal? Had they failed her by not moving in immediately?
“As previously noted,” the analyst who was giving the morning update said, “this isn’t a single or even multifamily residence. We’ve counted at least a dozen armed men coming and going, with at least eight who appear to be living there.”
She tapped the mouse, and another image appeared. “In contrast, we’ve identified two women—wives, housekeepers, or both, we don’t know—but no children or anything else to indicate this is a family and not a militant group using the property.” She cleared her throat and added, “Yesterday afternoon, our drone captured this recording.”
The high-resolution video showed a man leaving the residence by a side door and crossing to what looked like a dry fountain or other decoration of some sort. He wore a rifle slung over one shoulder. The man glanced around, then pulled something from a pocket and dropped it. He kicked at the ground as he took a drag from a cigarette.
The analyst zoomed in on the fountain. The image pixelated, but it looked like a rock garden of sorts.
“He was hiding something in the rocks?” Chris asked.
“We think so,” the analyst said. “It could be nothing, but it was unusual compared to the other outside activity we’ve been able to capture.”
The man appeared to stay in the garden long enough to finish the cigarette, then returned to the main house. The analyst clicked again, and now they had a different angle on the same man.
She zoomed in on his face, and Chris took in a strangled breath. “It’s him,” he said, the words coming out almost unconsciously.
“Yes, Lieutenant Flyte, we agree,” the analyst said.
Now another image appeared side by side with the zoomed-in face, this one taken from Chris’s bodycam the night of the raid. There was Edwards, her eyes strangely calm as her fingers were frozen in the position that indicated the word diamond. There was a knife at her throat. The face of the man who held the knife was clearly visible to the right of Diana’s head.
Side by side, it was unmistakable. The terrorist who had escaped with Edwards that night was alive and well and at the house on the outskirts of Aqaba.
