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ELLE JAMES
CHAPTER1
Kyla Russell was donewith killing.
Especially when her target didn’t deserve to die.
Camouflaged as an Afghan male in a long white thobe, the ankle-length white shirt Afghan men wore, she stood on a street in Kandahar, Afghanistan, a pistol with a silencer attached strapped to her thigh. Beneath the thobe, she wore dark jeans and a dark shirt for night movement.
She’d pulled her long, black hair up and wrapped it in a dark turban like the ones worn by men in the city. To complete her disguise, she’d applied a fake beard, bushy eyebrows and dark makeup to make her appear more masculine and able to walk freely around the city of over six hundred thousand people.
Kyla had spent the better part of the day before studying her target, both through the windows of his home and by tailing him as he’d left for work and returned. What about this man made him toxic? Why had her government deemed him dangerous to the world?
She made it a priority to research her assignments, to find out about the persons she was assigned to eliminate. Prior to accepting her current mission, she’d reviewed the dossier her handler had given her for Abdul Naser Ahmadi and had done her own background check on the man via her connections on the internet and the Dark Web.
The dossier had listed Ahmadi as an arms trafficker, supplying American weapons to the Taliban. Nothing in Kyla’s own research indicated the same. In fact, Ahmadi was like a black hole of information. All she could find was that he lived with his wife in Kandahar and worked at a local university as a professor of language and literature.
Kyla had no qualms about ridding the world of pedophiles or people who tortured and killed others for their race or religious beliefs. She’d taken out cult leaders who’d planned terrorist activities in the United States and some who were killers in foreign countries.
Some of her targets had been dirty politicians, selling secrets to US enemies, placing her country’s military in jeopardy. Those targets, she’d taken out with no problem and no regrets. The world was a better place without them.
Kyla took pride in never completing a mission without first understanding the target and the necessity of taking him out.
Ahmadi was not raising any red flags. Still, she planned to observe the man for a couple of days in case she was wrong.
Standing on a street corner, her back to the wall of a building, she casually observed Ahmadi at a local tea shop where he sat with another man. Maybe this was the reason for the hit—this meeting with Ahmadi’s guest.
Using her cellphone, Kyla snapped a picture of the man and sent it to her contact on the Dark Web, who had access to facial recognition software.
Within minutes she was surprised to receive a response.
Jalal Malik CIA.
Kyla frowned at the message.CIA? What the hell?
Kyla sent the picture of Malik and Ahmadi along with a message to an old friend she’d known from her days in the CIA. A man who had access to more than he should.
Jalal Malik CIA…Legit? Clean?
Her contact responded several minutes later:
Born in the US to first-generation Afghans who escaped Afghanistan and Taliban rule thirty years before and earned their US citizenship. Malik speaks fluent Pashto and joined the CIA to give back to the country that saved his parents. Now working to uncover a mole in the US government, who is feeding information and arms to the Taliban. Ahmadi is his trusted informant.
With Ahmadi in her sights, Kyla could have picked him off any time that day and disappeared. However, she couldn’t pull the trigger, not when her gut told her something was off. Ahmadi wasn’t dangerous to the US. In fact, his willingness to help the US find the traitor within made him an asset and put him in danger of Taliban retaliation. Why had he been targeted for extermination?
She’d followed him home to ask him that question. By the time he’d returned to his home, darkness had settled over Kandahar.
Kyla ducked into the shadows of the wall surrounding Ahmadi’s home, where she stripped out of the white thobe and trousers and tucked them behind a stack of stones. Then she pulled herself up and over the wall, dropped down into Ahmadi’s yard and watched for her chance to corner the target.
That chance presented itself within the hour.
Ahmadi’s wife had gone to the bedroom. Ahmadi stepped out his back door onto the hardpacked dirt within the stone wall to smoke a cigarette.
Kyla slipped up behind him, clamped her hand over his mouth and pressed a pistol with the silencer attachment to his temple. She lowered her voice and spoke in Pashto, “Tell me why my government wants you dead.”
He stood still, making no attempt to fight back. “Who is your government?”
