Page 100 of Wait for Me

She turned up the audio. Heard that voice again. More Arabic.

She hit the replay button and isolated the single sentence.

And she recognized him.

Zaid.

On the raid? No way.

“Someone get me Espy now!” Marie shouted.

In her headset, she heard more gunfire.

Distant explosions.

A crackle on Marie’s headset startled her.

“Mikonos? Come in, Mikonos!” It was Esperanza.

Before Esperanza could say a word, Marie jumped in. “Espy, I heard Zaid’s voice.”

“What?”

“Where are you?”

“We retreated around the corner. Can’t get in.”

It wasn’t Marie’s place to respond, but she was thinking that the MI5 reinforcement didn’t seem to help if Esperanza couldn’t get into the building to extricate Buchanan himself—that was, if he was really in there.

They had been chasing Buchanan across the Middle East and North Africa since that day his voice appeared in Marie’s stateroom on the cruise ship in Alaska. More than seven weeks later, intel led them to Libya. And here they were in Benghazi, a place of bad memories for the Americans.

The sounds of gunfire subsided.

“We’re going back in,” Esperanza said. “You sure about Zaid?”

“Tell him I say hello.” Marie prayed again for the safety of the team.

She leaned to her right, and her colleague made room at her workstation for Marie to watch the live camera.

Onscreen, Esperanza crossed the street in that dusty old town, straight toward Buchanan—if he was there at all.

The area had turned into a dystopian dust bowl few dared wander into in the last few years, more so than in decades past. The country was lost to anarchy, and the United States had pretty much abandoned it. In this nest of terrorists, Buchanan had found kindred spirits.

Buchanan had managed to bribe his way through the wasteland, dug into a safe hovel, and waited for a break in the dark clouds over him.

Radio silence.

All they had was video with no sound.

Marie’s eyes were on the screen. It was hard to see much since the body cam was on the last person in the back. She tried to spot Zaid and his team.

Would Omar be there too or was he with Aliyah and Abdul back home? Since the Victoria Police had successfully rescued both of them from the abductors in June in the short car chase, Aliyah’s husband had ordered the entire entourage to go home. Zaid had told Esperanza that much.

Marie couldn’t imagine what the interaction was like between Esperanza and Zaid, two competitive alpha leaders.

But why would Zaid be in Benghazi at all? Wasn’t his role simply as a bodyguard to the young prince and his mother?

Shots rang out.

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