Lieutenant Court and his men did not return.

She expanded her search of the perimeter of the village then, scouring the entire area every night, thinking they might have set up camp somewhere else. One night, she encountered a Taliban patrol. Thank Allah, she heard them before they saw her.

She dropped to the ground, lay as still as the earth, and listened as they passed within twenty yards of where she hid in the open with only the dark as cover.

As frightened as she had been, she still came back every night for five more nights.

The Americans did not return.

She did not know how that could be. The blood and hair—they had to find a match. Jeffery’s letter. The message he had left on the roof.

Finally, her father made her accept the truth. They had not believed her. They were not coming back.

JEFF LAY ON the roof, his refuge, and attempted to deal with the disappointment and despair. Beside him, Rabia lay in troubled silence. It had been more than a week since she’d returned from Emarat, tears in her eyes because she feared she’d failed him.

He stared at the night sky. She didn’t understand. He was the one who had failed. He’d let her risk her life for him, and because of his guilt, he’d died a thousand times alone in that cave, waiting, certain something had happened to her. Certain she lay dying or dead somewhere with a Taliban bullet in her head.

He’d been half out of his mind with fear for her when she finally came back to him. That’s when he made up his mind. No matter what happened, she had to leave here—or he did.

“You need to go,” he said again, as he’d said every day since she’d returned. “How can I convince you? You and your father need to go to Kabul. You have relatives there who will take you in. You have a life there as a teacher. You have rights there that you’ll never have if you stay here with me.”

“And what of you. Jeffery? If I go, what happens to you?”

How did he tell her that he no longer cared what happened to him? How did he tell her that the patrol had been his last chance?

“They’ll come for me,” he said, not believing it but wanting to convince her that he did. “They’ll put it all together, and they’ll come. And they’ll come here. That’s why you have to leave.”

He still couldn’t figure out what had happened. Had the lieutenant simply written off her story as fantasy? Had he thought she was trying to lead them into a trap?

In the end, it didn’t matter. They hadn’t come. They weren’t going to come.

And he was done. Done putting her at risk. Done hiding out like a coward.

The Taliban would not give up searching for him, and because of that, Rabia would always be in danger—unless he could persuade her to leave.

“Let us not talk of this tonight,” she whispered, and snuggled closer. “Let us be together. The world and war do not exist in these moments when we are together this way.”

When she bared herself to him like this—heart, body, soul—it was so easy to let himself be lulled by her soft words, her soft lips, her giving flesh. But when it was over and she slept, exhausted and sweet beside him, the guilt beat at him like a fist.

One more week. If he couldn’t persuade her to leave, he vowed on everything he had once been that he would sneak away and put as much distance between himself and Rabia as he could.

Let the Taliban do what they would to him.

He would not put her in danger any longer.

And he would no longer be less than a man.

Chapter 22

Langley, Virginia, late October


THE INTERNATIONAL THREAT ANALYSIS AND Prevention unit at Langley was Mike Brown’s baby. ITAP officially fell under the Department of Defense table of organization as contracted labor. Unofficially, the ITAP unit was a front for a covert rapid-response tactical team that DOD did not want on anyone’s radar, nationally or abroad.

Mike and his boys operated dark and lean—the way they all liked it. They also operated with complete impunity. That was the pro. The con was that with impunity came deniability. If they screwed up and an operation went south, DOD would not come storming in, showing U.S. military muscle and getting them out of their fix. They swam or sank on their own.

So when Brown got the call from DOD that morning and was told to set up the ITAP briefing room at thirteen hundred hours and to expect company, he’d known something big was about to go down.

“Listen up, gentlemen.” Brown addressed his team from behind the podium at the front of the small room. Behind him, a map of Kandahar Province bordering Pakistan was projected on the wall from a laptop. The map had been requested by DOD. “Best behavior, OK? We’ve got big-leaguers on the way.”

“How big?” Peter Davis, ITAP’s operations manager, had arrived in his wheelchair, a tablet in his lap and a puzzled look on his face.

“You’ll know when I know,” Brown said, glancing at his go-to guys, Jamie Cooper and Bobbie Taggart. Both looked alert and curious, as did the team’s new recruits, Brett Carlyle, Enrique Santos, and Josh Waldrop, all former independent private securities specialists who had recently been brought into the fold.

“When’s this little powwow supposed to start?” Cooper asked, crossing an ankle over a knee, his foot going a hundred miles an hour, relaying that he was both excited and impatient.

Before Brown could respond, the door opened, and six members of DOD’s other “off the books” team walked in.

“Holy crap,” Taggart muttered when he saw them. “Did the red phone ring in the White House?”

Now that Nate Black and his team had shown up, Brown wondered the same thing. Calling together DOD’s two top covert and highly specialized tactical teams suggested a major development.

Nate Black, former U.S. Marine captain, former CEO of his independent contract firm Black Ops Inc., and now the Black team’s CO, was the ranking operator in the room. Nate shook Mike’s hand, then joined him at the podium.

“Not sure intros are necessary,” Mike said, “but let’s dot the Is and cross the Ts, shall we?”

“Oh, by all means, let’s.” Johnny Reed grinned as he sat and gave the room in general a nod. “Top dog here, in case you didn’t remember. You can call me TD.”

“Just this one time, dial it down, OK, Reed?” Black nodded to the front row, and the rest of the team introduced themselves. In addition to Reed, Gabe Jones, Rafe Mendoza, Luke Coulter, and Joe Green nodded hellos.

“I’m going to cut right to the chase,” Black said, and passed out hard copies of an operations order—called an OPORD—to the members of both teams. “Everyone got a copy? Good. Read along with me, boys. Please hold your questions until I’m finished.”

Mike flipped open the document and followed the report while Black started reading aloud.

“Operation Aces High—Background Summary OPORD: In October this year, while conducting a routine patrol in Sperwan Ghundey, Panjwai, Kandahar, Afghanistan, an Air Force patrol operating out of recently established FOB (forward operating base) Shaker was approached by a female Afghan (Pashtun) subject on the outskirts of Emarat. Subject claimed that an American Special Forces sergeant had taken shelter with her family following his escape from enemy forces after being held hostage approximately three years. The subject provided correspondence stating it was written by the SF soldier, as well as physical evidence for verification.”

Black stopped and took a sip of water when Mike handed him a glass.

“Operational constraints precluded immediate authentication of said missing SF sergeant’s existence. Subsequent analysis of physical evidence, however, confirmed it did, in fact, belong to an American military service member believed to be KIA (killed in action) in February 2011, following hostile action near Chamkani, Paktia Providence, Afghanistan, on the Pakistan side of the border. His body was never recovered.

“Despite repeated attempts to subsequently contact the female Afghan subject at a prearranged meeting place, contact failed. Two weeks ago, however, overflights of the area by drone assets revealed the letters ‘DOL’ and ‘JA’ formed on the roof of a dwelling in the village of Salawat as the woman had promised they would be. It could be surmised that ‘JA’ represents the initials of the missing team member, and ‘DOL’ could represent ‘De Oppresso Liber,” Army Special Forces credo. Note: one week later, the letters had been removed.”

“Holy crap,” Taggart muttered under his breath.

Black continued. “Findings: Probability of said SF sergeant’s existence: 85 percent.

“Recommendations: Current political climate in Afghanistan during the draw-down coupled with increased Taliban activity in the area necessitates extreme care in handling this situation. Sanctioned military involvement is not advised. It is therefore recommended to deploy black ops and ITAP teams to conduct a surveillance mission, gather further intel on the existence of KIA/MIA service member and the Afghan subject who contacted the patrol and then report back to DOD for further orders, should an extraction of the SF sergeant, if he actually exists, becomes necessary.”

Black downed another sip of water. “Enemy Forces: Taliban, both foreign and local, are expected to inhabit the area and number fewer than fifty. They have conventional commbloc (Soviet) weapons including RPG-7s, RPDs (machine guns), AK-47s. No evidence of heavy weapons, including DShK 12.7mm heavy machine guns or mortars. Communication with their command staff is limited to radio and cell phones. They utilize a wide variety of vehicles, including small to large pickup-type trucks, passenger vans, small buses, and cars. Their mobility is limited by road conditions, and they are often able to travel only by foot or using animals.

“Assets Available for Mission,” Black continued. “Troop assets will be available for a rescue of the SF sergeant, should he be found; however, there will be complete deniability and no participation by U.S. military sources to rescue black teams if it is not also in conjunction with the rescue of the reported KIA. Intelligence assets will be available as required, including drone, satellite, and Elint (electronics intelligence) to monitor enemy radio traffic. Air assets include aerial vehicles ranging from drones to fighter/bomber air strikes, B-52s, B-1s, and AC-130s. Further information on required air assets will be determined at a later date—by us,” he added pointedly.