Stand Fast (DEA FAST Series Book 3) Page 3

  “And you do it well.”

  Jaliya wasn’t sure how to respond. It wouldn’t do to get too friendly with any of them, for professional reasons. To do her job well, she needed to maintain a certain distance and not let personal feelings muddy the waters when she helped plan an op they participated in, but she could make small talk for a little while, and she appreciated his support. “Thank you,” she murmured, and turned her attention back to her dinner.

  “We were just talking about the holidays,” he added, gesturing to his eight teammates seated around the table, all engaged in animated discussion except for the big man next to him. Agent Maka seemed far more interested in what she and Khan were talking about. “Kai here was telling me how he used to celebrate Christmas back home in Hawaii when he was a kid.”

  “That’s right,” Agent Maka said, shifting to lean toward her more, his thick forearms braced on the table, black tribal tattoos snaking up beneath the left sleeve of the T-shirt stretched over his massive chest and shoulders.

  He was a giant of a man, at least six-foot-five, and ripped. She wasn’t sure what size shirt he wore, but it had to be at least XXL. She couldn’t imagine what it took to feed a man his size, but his tray was piled high with a mountain of food she would have thought impossible for one man to eat all by himself.

  “You ever been to Hawaii?” he asked her, scooping up a giant forkful of food.

  It was way easier to make conversation with him than Khan. “Sadly, no. I’ve always wanted to, though. Were you born there?”

  “Born and raised.”

  “Which island?”

  “Maui.” He stuffed a huge mouthful of food into his mouth, chewed fast and swallowed, eyeing her the whole time. “I guess you don’t…” He frowned slightly. “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

  She smiled and picked up her bottle of water. “No, but I still love the season and its message.” Peace on Earth and goodwill to mankind? Yes please. The world could use a whole hell of a lot more of it.

  He nodded. “Ah. Well anyway, the guys were interested to know how we celebrated back home. I told them how my extended family would have a big dinner together after church. The day before, the men would all get together to roast a Kalua pig. Do you know what that is?”

  “No.” The passionate way he talked about it was infectious, and charming.

  “It’s a whole pig that we roast in a pit in the ground called an imu. It’s all about having the right temperature and enough moisture. We build a fire and wait for it to burn down to coals, then add rocks and let them heat up before we put in the prepared pig on top of a bed of banana leaves. You cover the pig in soaked burlap, add water, then bury it and cook it for about twelve to fourteen hours.”

  “That sounds like an awful lot of work.”

  “Yeah, but it’s the traditional way, and nothing else tastes like it.” He rolled his eyes heavenward before looking at her again. “Best thing you’ll ever put in your mouth. You should—” He stopped dead and shut his mouth, the tops of his cheeks turning a dusky red above the line of his dark beard as he cleared his throat and looked down at his plate. “Course, you and Zaid don’t eat pork though,” he muttered in a low voice.

  She couldn’t help a smile. She wasn’t all that strict about the way she practiced her religion—at least not as strict as her parents would have liked—but some things were just taboo. “No. But that was really interesting. Do you hang stockings and all that too?”

  “Yeah, but from the palm tree out front of my grandma’s house, because we don’t have a fireplace.”

  Not much need for one in Hawaii. “That’s so neat.”

  Maka nodded as he gobbled down another bite of his dinner, still looking slightly embarrassed.

  Agent Khan seemed to be fighting a laugh as he drained the last of his coffee. She shot him a warning look and he lowered his mug to reach out and grasp Maka’s massive shoulder with his left hand. “Don’t worry about it, man. She doesn’t seem offended.”

  “Not at all,” she assured him with another smile. “I really do love this time of year. When I was growing up in Britain I used to love seeing all the Christmas trees and decorations everywhere, and we had good friends who used to have us over for Christmas dinner. They roasted their turkey in the oven instead of a pit in the ground, but it was still amazing.”

  Agent Khan’s green-and-gold-flecked eyes warmed and the corners of his mouth tilted upward in the midst of his beard in a sexy smile, and damned if her heart didn’t speed up. “Where did you grow up over there?”

  “Manchester, then London.”

  “And when did you come to the States?”

  “After high school. My dad got hired at a private hospital in Michigan.”

  “He a doctor?”

  “Neurosurgeon.”

  “Ah. So brains run in the family, then.”

  Her lips quirked. He was charming, she’d give him that. “Yeah, I guess they do.” She loved and admired her father, but they sure didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things—like her career.

  “Bet that Christmas turkey would have been juicier and tastier if they’d used an imu,” Maka said with a grin.

  “Sadly, I guess I’ll never know.”

  “Kai’s a master of resourcing stuff. I bet he could scrounge up a turkey and dig us an imu right here on base so you could test it out,” Khan said to her.

  “Oh, no, that’s not nece—”

  “Yeah, I bet I could,” Maka said, a far-off look in his eyes as though he was already planning it out. Then his gaze flicked to her. “Let me see what I can do. I’ll get back to you on it.”

  Okay, he sounded serious about this. “I…all right.”

  Khan winked at her and continued eating his dinner.

  To avoid looking at him or encouraging further conversation, she went back to eating her meal while the team talked around her. It was impossible not to like Khan, even if he was the same guy she’d met online. Another reason not to let him get too close.

  Under different circumstances, she might have been tempted to indulge in a little flirtation and see where it went. But not here, and not with him.

  A relief, really. In a few hours his team would go into harm’s way to carry out an operation based on her team’s intelligence reports and recommendations.

  It would be dangerous out there far away from base. They could be hurt. Even killed.

  The sobering reality made the food congeal into a hard lump in her stomach.

  It wasn’t the first time the weight of responsibility had sat heavy on her shoulders. But even with the little time she’d spent with the team tonight, instead of a list of names and faces they were now all individuals with different personalities, and all of them had people who loved them waiting back home.

  Jaliya mentally shook her head at herself. She should never have opened that door in the first place. Fraternizing with men who would go into dangerous situations on her recommendation was never a good idea.

  Forcing down the bite of suddenly dry chicken stuck in her throat, she washed it down with a few sips of water, then gathered her tray and stood. “I’ve got some more things to prepare,” she said to them both as they looked up at her questioningly. “See you at the debriefing.” She left the table and didn’t look back, hoping her anxiety about the coming op didn’t show.

  Chapter Three

  Zaid cupped his gloved hands together and blew on them as he crouched in the frigid darkness at the base of a rise with his teammates. Overhead, the thick cloud cover obscured the moon and stars.

  The temperature here in the foothills of the Hindu Kush Mountains had dropped well below freezing over the past hour and a light snow had begun to fall. Forecasters expected an accumulation of between six and nine inches by morning, meaning FAST Bravo had to make this quick if they wanted to avoid being stuck here in the bitter cold until the storm passed sometime tomorrow.

  Back at the comparative warmth of Bagram hours ago, they’d attended a briefi
ng given by Agent Rabani and her team, based on the interview he’d helped with that morning. The tiny village Barakat had mentioned lay nestled in a small valley three hundred yards up the side of the mountain. Zaid hoped like hell the kid hadn’t been lying, because this would be a damn waste of manpower and resources.

  An icy blast of wind roared down the mountainside, slicing against his face like the blade of a knife. They were way out in no man’s land. The terrain here was too rugged for their helo to set down, so they’d had to fast rope in and hump it to the target on foot.

  Above him, Freeman was already halfway up the face of the hillside, in the lead as usual as he set the anchors in the rock. Hamilton was next, and Prentiss was a dozen yards behind him.

  Zaid slung his weapon across his back to keep it out of the way as he clipped his harness onto the guide rope and reached for the bit of rock sticking out of the snow-covered earth, using it as a handhold as he pulled himself up. The rest of his teammates all waited below for their turn, maintaining a secure perimeter along with the twelve members of the Afghan National Interdiction Unit they were working with for this op.

  The twenty-yard climb was no joke with the swirling snow and wind. By the time he reached the top, he was breathing hard and sweating, and his fingers were numb. The instant he cleared the edge of the cliff and unhooked from the rope, the wind howled around him, blowing dust and the light covering of snow around enough to screw with his visibility.

  After adjusting his goggles, he hurried over to where Hamilton was crouched near a large boulder and added his own eyes and ears to form a secure perimeter while the others began the ascent. Once everyone was with them, Hamilton gave Prentiss the order to deploy the drone.

  Prentiss launched it and flew it up the steep hillside, turning it to the left to give them a bird’s eye view of the target village. He and Hamilton watched the screen while Prentiss maneuvered their tiny spy from his remote control with the dexterity of a lifelong gamer.

  “Two sentries posted, one appears asleep,” Hamilton’s low voice said through Zaid’s headset. The NIU had its own translator with them so Zaid didn’t have to do the honors.

  Not surprising one sentry was asleep, given the time of night and weather conditions. Only freaking lunatics would dare come to this remote place right now.

  “Suspected cache location appears unguarded.”

  Bonus. Now if they could just get up there and take the villagers by surprise, they might not only find what they were looking for, but make it out unscathed as well. And if they were really lucky, they might even get a lock on The Jackal’s location.

  “It’s a go,” Hamilton said. “Let’s move.”

  Good, because he hated waiting around out here in the open, exposed to both the elements and potential enemy eyes, and a brisk hike would at least keep their blood moving. It was freaking freezing even with all the layers and specialized material they wore.

  Together the combined units made the two-mile hike up the steep switchbacks carved into the hillside, and paused just out of sight of the alert sentry’s position. Hamilton waved Zaid over. He jogged to him, leaned in close so he could hear his team leader over the swirling wind.

  “NIU will go in first. I want you with them, so you can translate what’s going on for the rest of us.”

  “Roger.” He motioned for the head of the NIU to join them and relayed the information, then waited for the Afghan force to move in. When their commander gave the order, Zaid stayed near the front of the column, weapon up and ready, scanning for threats.

  “This is the police,” one of the NIU members said in Pashto into a bullhorn as they reached the edge of the village.

  The wide-eyed sentry stared at them in astonishment, and slowly raised his hands. His sleeping counterpart had dashed to his feet and grabbed for his rifle amidst the layers of robes he had wrapped around him, but froze when he saw how badly he was outnumbered.

  “If you are armed, put down your weapons,” the NIU member continued. “We are searching the village.”

  The second sentry dropped his AK like it was red-hot and stuck his hands in the air. While two members of the NIU engaged him to check for more weapons, Zaid stayed with the main force as they moved into the village, which was made up of a dozen or so dun-colored mud brick buildings.

  Shouts of alarm and cries erupted from inside the dwellings. Zaid kept his weapon up, his finger on the trigger guard. They were here to seize drugs, weapons, cash, and hopefully net one very annoyed Jackal. The rules of engagement stated that they could only fire in self-defense or to protect the NIU members.

  Through the confusion heightened by the darkness and swirling snow, men began to emerge from the buildings. Zaid watched their hands, assessing each man individually before moving to the next.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” yelled one old man, his white beard and tunic blowing in the wind.

  “We are conducting a search,” the NIU spokesman answered.

  “A search for what?” he demanded amidst a rumble of dissent from the other men now gathered in their doorways. “We are a peaceful village. No Taliban here.”

  The NIU member ignored him. “Stand back while we search each house.”

  Zaid passed on the info to Hamilton and the others via his headset. They all knew a little Pashto and Dari, but none were fluent except Zaid, who spoke both like a native thanks to his parents.

  The teams moved quickly to check and secure each building before beginning the search while Hamilton and the NIU leader tried to get intel about The Jackal. Prentiss and Colebrook went with Zaid into one dwelling and together they swept the place in a few minutes. Several women were in the back room, comforting frightened children, and frantically covered their heads and faces with their shawls.

  “Be at ease, sisters,” Zaid told them. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”

  But they were here to search every nook and cranny and get whatever intel they could.

  He approached one woman, who was sitting on the floor with a crying infant in her lap, and hunkered down in front of her. “The Jackal. Have you heard that name before?”

  She shrank away from him, hugging her child tighter to her.

  “He’s a dangerous man. There is a large reward for information leading to his capture. Have you heard anything about him?”

  She shook her head, her body language screaming her fear and uncertainty.

  Zaid moved to the next. “What about you? Have you heard something about The Jackal? Has he been here?”

  “No,” the woman said, completely hidden from view by her shawl. “Now leave us in peace.”

  The third woman also denied knowing anything about The Jackal. Zaid didn’t buy it. Even out here people would know who he was. They might be telling the truth about him not being here, but Zaid wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

  All the intel said The Jackal had either been here within the past few days, or was about to move a shipment through here. And Zaid had noticed that all of the women had remained seated atop a threadbare rug on the floor with their children, rather than retreat to the corners of the room when he and his teammates had burst in.

  With a few calm orders, he got the women and children up and moved to the front room of the tiny house, leaving the woven rug vacant. Lifting a corner of it from the dirt floor, Zaid found a sheet of plywood beneath it.

  Bingo. “Got something,” he said to the others, who came over immediately.

  Holding a flashlight in one hand, he checked for anything that hinted at a booby trap before pulling the plywood aside, revealing a shallow, rectangular pit in the ground. A thin layer of plant material covered the bottom of it.

  He reached in to grab some and brought it to his nose to smell it, then looked up at his teammates. “Hash.” Only a tiny amount, though, not nearly enough to reach the arrest threshold. And definitely no Jackal hiding in the hole with it. “You guys find anything?”

  “No.”

  Zaid relaye
d his findings to Hamilton, who reported the same from the rest of the team. “Anything?” Zaid asked him.

  “A few old rifles, probably for hunting. Nothing to write home about. Target’s not here, and neither is the dope. NIU’s turned up nothing either.”

  Damn. The taskforce had seemed so sure that they were closing in on The Jackal, that this op might nail him. Agent Rabani was gonna be pissed that they’d hit yet another dead end even with Barakat’s tip, and Zaid didn’t blame her. He actually felt bad for her. She’d been working her ass off trying to get a break in this case, and because he liked and admired her, he wanted to see her succeed.

  Setting aside his frustration, Zaid took pictures of the pit and checked a few crates stacked in the corner to make sure he hadn’t missed something. Back outside, the bitter wind stung his face as he reconvened with his disgruntled teammates. Looked like this op was a total bust. “Maybe we’re early.”

  “Maybe,” Hamilton muttered, sounding totally unconvinced as he looked around at the NIU finishing their own search of the village. The wind continued to howl around them, buffeting against the rock wall the village was set into, slicing at their faces. “Go with the NIU and start questioning some of the elders. Find out what they know.”

  “You got it.”

  Within half an hour, it was evident that the elders knew nothing. Or at least pretended they didn’t. If The Jackal had planned to use this village as a smuggling base, no one knew anything about it. Oh, they’d heard of him. Everyone had. But there hadn’t been a shipment of drugs or any outsiders here recently, and none were expected.

  Bullfuckingshit, but they’d definitely hit a dead end. All they had for their trouble was a small pile of weapons they’d confiscated, including a British Enfield left over from the 1800s. These people needed rifles to hunt to feed their families, so the NIU would only confiscate the handful of automatic weapons.

  Zaid relayed the disappointing info to Hamilton, who gave a terse nod and reported it back to HQ. Agent Rabani would be there, waiting for word. She and her superiors weren’t going to be happy that they were no closer to finding The Jackal’s trail after all her work on this. She needed to have another talk with young Barakat and find out what the hell had gone wrong.