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She nodded and consulted with Griff and Adrian, then picked up her cell phone. GQ set his hand on her shoulder. “Same goes for you, guys. Hot meal and rest after you set this up. Ice is buying.”
Even through her concern, she smiled as Iceman scoffed and said in a gravelly voice, “If you weren’t so pretty…” He tapped GQ’s arm with his fist.
Preacher grinned and shook his head. He wouldn’t wish this kind of situation on anyone, but he was grateful to have his brothers here.
It was excruciating thinking about what the women were going through, especially Celeste who had no formal training. If there was a way for his Luna to muck up the works, she would kick ass and take names. Part of him was proud of her abilities, but the other part of him that feared for her life, wanted her to play it safe. He knew that she would never do that. She might have stepped out of the shadows of her past with courage that belied belief, but some of the darkness that made her an effective assassin was still there. He accepted it because he loved her.
She was fearless and brave to a fault.
He just hoped and prayed that it didn’t get her and either of the other two women killed.
* * *
Hazard closedhis locker and turned as Kodiak came into the locker room. It had been a frustrating day as he and Boomer had been discreet in tracking down Barry Turner. They had decided to forgo speaking to the man’s parents and friends, worried about tipping the guy off and subsequently having him go to ground. That strategy had limited their search. Most of the bars they had been to were rough ones, and the patrons were vague about the guy’s movements and whereabouts.
Yet, even with the disappointing results of the day, there seemed to be something lighter about Kodiak, and he had noticed that Kaiya had been more relaxed.
“What did you do to our liaison to make her more at ease?”
“Listened.”
“Oh, yeah. To what?”
The other guys crowded around. All of them were interested, mostly for the reason that there was a different vibe to Kodiak and Kaiya’s relationship now, and as a result, with them too. And, like any curious human beings, they were nosy.
“She was at Abbey Gate.”
A pall went over the room. “Fuck,” Hazard said before he realized it, experiencing several visceral emotions in succession, guilt, anger, and a healthy dose of resentment. He looked around and the other guys were reacting in their own way. Some had closed their eyes at the memory of those months building up to the evacuation, and the two harrowing weeks as his team desperately tried to do all they could to save as many people as possible.
Some were shaking their heads and looking off in the distance.
Skull sat down on a bench, reached out, and dragged Bones closer, burying his fingers in his fur. He was reacting to Bones getting hit by shrapnel when they were evacuating several Americans just outside of Kabul. That firefight had never been reported because the mission was covert, and the White House wanted no press where American forces were engaging with the Taliban. It was only the beginning of one risky mission after another.
When they’d heard those fuckers were going to help with security at the airport, Hazard and his team thought it was a joke at first, then when it was confirmed, he was as skeptical as the rest of the military. It smacked of letting the fox into the hen house.
His heart squeezed hard, aware of how the extreme danger of the casual approach to the evacuation had turned the whole retreat from Afghanistan into a complete goatfuck. That promise to leave no American behind had been nothing but smoke and mirrors. Even now, Americans were still in that country two years later. After taking a vow to protect all American citizens, it was a bitter pill to swallow.
His leaders along with the intelligence community had warned that a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan would be catastrophic, but the administration didn’t listen and on top of that, he’d learned from a state department official off the record that there hadn’t been any plan in place for the actual withdrawal. No plan at all.
Through a terrible cascade of incompetence, starting with giving up Bagram Air Force Base, to the repeated assurances that no one needed to panic, people had no clue that all of it was going to culminate into a run on the airport where not only civilians would be put at risk, but the US troops working to process everyone out. But that hadn’t been the case. Even the US Embassy personnel were still in the country as the Taliban advanced. Without NATO and US forces slowing any kind of takeover, the Taliban took back the country in a matter of days.
He wasn’t the only US service member who felt twenty years of war had been nothing but a waste of time, US resources, and many lives. Even with an agreement the Taliban signed, promising no support for al-Qaeda, their alliance remained strong. It was a pipe dream that the group was interested in peace. They weren’t ever going down that road.
“How did she get stuck in Kabul? Where was her government?” Boomer asked, setting his hands on his hips, his expression solemn. “That must have been…terrifying for her.”
“I don’t know all the details yet. She promised to elaborate, but all I know is that she was working with the Kabul police on training exercises, and like our government, there was misinformation and a pipe dream that the Taliban would take months to challenge the Afghani army. Apparently, she got caught in the chaos.”
“Man, I get her hostility now,” Breakneck said. “She lost someone there? Friends?”
“Yeah, I think so. As I said, she didn’t elaborate as we were chasing down leads, we got after talking to Mickey.”
“I still can’t believe how many Americans are still in the country,” Skull said, his eyes bleak, his fingers buried in Bones’s fur. The dog in turn licked his face several times, in tune with his handler. “We, at least, got most of our terps out.” He looked at Reck’d, Wraith, and Panda. “How about you guys?”
“We were at Bagram, trying to make the brass understand what a bad idea it was to pull out. We knew that the prisoners were some bad dudes and as soon as Bagram was evacuated, the Talis would set them free. They’d be stupid not to use them.”
“And use them they did,” Wraith said, his voice low and gruff. “I understand her pain,” he said. “We lost two terps and their families at the airport.” He closed his eyes. “At Abbey Gate.”
“Fuckers,” Panda said fiercely, his eyes gleaming. “If the Taliban was doing security at that gate, then hell froze over. That was a coordinated attack, one more fuck you from the Talis.”
