Page 4 of Delta Mission
“I’ll watch Goodspeed. You men check those fucking huts again.” Channing barked the order. “Look for trapdoors and keep your eyes on a swivel.”
“Yes, Captain,” the soldiers answered in unison and marched away.
Channing shuddered. Probably with rage over the waste of time—and me.
Drawing on that rage, I squatted in front of the woman whose glare could carve stone and spoke to her in Dari Persian. Her eyes narrowed to pinpricks as she gave a slight head shake, indicating she didn’t understand my question. I was certain she did. I’d heard the women whispering as I strode in.
I was fluent in six languages, two were the official languages of Afghanistan. My language skills had helped forge my DEA career, but I didn’t just want to be the intermediary between us and the bad guys. I wanted to be at the forefront of an operation that took down the bad guys.
Illicit drugs ruined lives. My sister’s life had been a pathetic mess since she’d pushed that first heroin needle into her vein after she’d found her husband in bed with their kid’s nanny. I was too late for her, but I still had to do something.
Trying to establish a line of communication, I asked how old the two kids were, but other than blinking eyes, they were all statues.
I shifted my gaze to the woman in the pale blue headscarf, who was still holding the spoon. She gave the slightest of head shakes. If I hadn’t been looking right at her, I would have missed it.
Was she trying to convey something?
Is she Blue Hawk?
I hadn’t heard from Blue Hawk, the woman who gave me the tip-off for months. Could this woman be her?
I was tempted to switch to another language, Pashto, but I didn’t need to. These women knew what I was saying.
Were they terrified by me and my team?
Or were they terrified by what would happen after we left?
Either way, they knew something.
I needed leverage to get them talking.
They all wore black burqas, and their different colored scarves were the only way to distinguish them. I gazed at the three women seated at the back, but they snapped their attention downward.
Scanning the room, I searched for something of interest. But there was nothing. Not even a table and chairs, or plates andcutlery. This was not a home; this was a kitchen. And barely even that.
Is it a front?
The fire blazed, yet the liquid in the enormous pot wasn’t bubbling.
It wasn’t hot enough! Meaning it had only just been put on the flames.
Three patterned rugs hung on the walls in a rudimentary attempt at decoration. Or they were hiding secret doorways.
I marched to the nearest one and yanked it aside.
It revealed nothing but a mud wall.
Behind the woman with the pale blue scarf hung another rug. Keeping one eye on her, I pushed past a child, but the woman grabbed my wrist.
I glared at her, and she shook her head, no longer being discreet.
Shouts erupted from outside. I peered through the open doorway but didn’t see anyone in the empty street. The soldiers may have finished searching the rest of the village.
Desperation crawled through me like ants.
After what had happened in Colombia, I’d worked so fucking hard to prove myself. But none of that would matter. I would never recover from this failure.
I shifted my attention to the woman in the green scarf. Her killer glare intensified. “Where are the drugs?”
