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Would a fully tricked-out SEAL be able to pass through it?
If they tried, they’d be exposed, forced to enter the camp single file.
They needed better aerial images.
Some time ago, an intel breakdown on a hostage rescue had resulted in the deaths of two members of Chris’s Fire Team. The fourth team member, Xavier Rivera, had been shot and would have died if Chris hadn’t gotten him out when he did.
He’d been with SEALs who’d died on missions before, but the circumstances of that particular night had made it the worst op of his career—until nine months ago, when a training exercise went sideways.
Maybe Chris should have gotten out then. Leave the ops to the younger guys. Rivera had also been part of the nightmare training, and he’d parted ways with the Navy a few months later without hesitation or regret.
But Xavier had a wife waiting for him at the end of the day, while Chris’s wife had cheated—with another SEAL. He’d filed for divorce less than two weeks after escaping the training that went FUBAR. If Chris left the SEALs, he’d have nothing after spending most of his adult life in the service.
No purpose. No family.
Instead, he’d moved, changing SEAL teams so he wouldn’t have to deal with his ex and her new boyfriend.
And now here he was, on a carrier in the Mediterranean, preparing for yet another hostage rescue. She was an archaeologist, like Xavier’s wife, Audrey, but she hadn’t stumbled into this situation in the same way Audrey had last January.
No. Dr. Edwards had chosen to track down artifact traffickers to shut down funding for terrorists.
They needed to determine if there were other hostages who could be caught in cross fire and see if they could get a count on how many tangos were in the small camp. He studied the satellite image on the screen. No vehicles in the vicinity of the tents. No camels.
They were stranded.
Fallon stood and circled the table to stand to the right of the monitor, staring at the image. After a long silence, he pointed to the gap between two smaller tents on the north end of the camp. “With Dr. Edwards’s location within the camp unknown, we can’t go in with a show of force that will alert her captors. We need to move in with just a Squad. Two four-man Fire Teams, one from the east end of the wadi and the other from here.” He pointed to a third approach to the west that looked wider than the slot canyon to the north.
Chris studied that route and saw the wisdom of it. It was more twisted, a zigzag through rocks, but it would keep them hidden from the tents longer, and it looked wide enough in places to stand side by side if warranted.
Fallon looked to Chris. “Which route do you want?”
“West approach.”
Fallon nodded. “No moon tonight, which is good. We’ll need full darkness given the narrow valley.”
They all agreed the op wouldn’t be a go until after midnight. They’d just have to take the chance Dr. Edwards wouldn’t be moved before then.
They spent the next hour going over the layout of the tents and discussing scenarios, developing a plan to invade the temporary terrorist camp on foot in the middle of the night.
Diana’s shoulders ached after an hour of sitting on the floor with her hands tied above her head to the center post of one of the larger Bedouin tents. She’d been brought here and bound after she claimed they didn’t have the necessary supplies for her to clean the artifacts.
Harun—she’d heard another man call him by that name—had backhanded her again before ordering two younger men to tie her up in the bigger tent. This tent was more traditional than the others, having two rooms. The side she occupied didn’t have an exit panel that could easily be swept aside. No windows. No doors.
Tied as she was, if she rose onto her knees, lifting her butt from the rug-covered floor, her nose could possibly reach the spot on her left arm where the tracker had been embedded.
It was so tempting, but she still hadn’t spotted a working phone, nor was she certain she’d be here for hours or days. She didn’t dare initiate the tracker without knowing if she would be here when her rescue arrived. This could be a long game. She had three months and one week before the battery would be naturally depleted without being triggered.
That gave her two months on the safe side.
The idea of being captive for days or even months was chilling, but she couldn’t blow it. She had to be patient. Alert. And while she was at it, she could gather intel.
These men were part of the antiquities supply chain. They were probably getting the artifacts from ISIS or al Qaeda. If she could identify the sites where the artifacts were coming from before she was rescued, she could share what she learned with the military. Cut off the supply chain that was putting money in terrorist pockets.
Wasn’t that why she’d signed on for this job in the first place?
Now she was here, presumably in the heart of the operation. She could make a difference. That was what she’d wanted when she’d approached Morgan all those months ago—a job that would make her feel again. Give her purpose.
But it was hard to think of noble goals when her shoulders ached and cheek throbbed from two blows.
