“Sorry to disappoint you, honey. I’m sure you’ll do fine. Just keep me posted.”
“Roger that,” he said before he retreated down the hallway and took up a position around the corner, just out of the line of sight from anyone exiting the room. His minutes were marked by glances down one side and peeks around the other.
“Do I still have company outside?” Hawk asked Alex after a few minutes.
“You know, that’s the strangest thing,” she said. “They drove up to your Jeep and after a few minutes just drove off, heading back where they came from.”
“Do you think they tried to sabotage it with a bomb?”
“I didn’t see anyone get inside or slide underneath the car.”
“Weird.”
An hour went by without any activity.
“Hawk,” Alex said, “you still awake?”
“Vigilant as ever. I’m beginning to wonder if this place isn’t a front for some other activity. I don’t even hear a light bulb humming overhead.”
“Just give it some time. Someone will come out of there eventually.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Hawk said. “Because eventually I’ll be asleep. This kind of assignment is exactly why I didn’t become a detective.”
“And being a sniper is so much different? You’re hunkered down prone in a blind just waiting for someone to move.”
“Far more exciting than sitting in a car or slumped against the wall in a hallway.”
Alex said something else, but Hawk had already tuned her out. A faint click in the direction of the door arrested his attention. Hawk crept closer to the corner and sat on his haunches as he waited for someone to poke their head outside. After a few seconds, a man lumbered through the exit and turned in the opposite direction of Hawk. Once his back was fully to the door, Hawk stealthily hustled up to it and wedged his foot inside. In a deft move, he slithered inside and let the door shut naturally. Without having to invoke a confrontation, Hawk could slip inside more easily. However, it also meant the man’s return would remain a mystery until Hawk escaped with Stone.
Hawk stopped and read a verse the Quran painted in Arabic on the entryway wall. The translation amounted to roughly this in English: “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter . . . and fight them until fitnah is no more, and religion is for Allah.”
After spending so much time in Afghanistan with the Peace Corps, Hawk was all too familiar with Quran 2:191. The passage always evoked a shiver, fearing that one day more Muslims than not might take that ancient scripture to heart. Peace was challenging to achieve in the Middle East when only a small portion of the Muslim community took those words literally. The moment that the majority of followers of Islam started to believe that was a command instead of just a suggestion, the world would fall into chaos.
Not surprised to see that verse here.
Hawk never looked at his role as an operative working in the Middle East as someone who was fighting against Islam. For him, the work was always about stopping terrorists bound and determined to visit harm on innocent people, whether they were American or any other nationality. And he enjoyed it, perhaps a little more than he should have.
“Found it,” Hawk said in a whisper over his coms.
“Roger that,” Alex said. “Just give me the word when you’ve secured Stone so I can send in the evac team. They’re on standby.”
Hawk checked his gun before continuing on. He tightened the silencer and removed the safety. As he forged ahead, he cleared each room and hallway, finding them empty with minimal furniture. The doors were made out of opaque glass, forcing Hawk to check each one. Still no signs of life other than the man who initially exited into the hallway.
When Hawk reached the end of the corridor, he only had one door remaining. Easing inside, he found a man sitting on a couch with his back to the entrance while watching television. He broke into laughter at the sitcom dubbed in Arabic. Hawk didn’t recognize the show, but he could tell the man was part of Al Fatihin. Unable to determine if anyone else was nearby, Hawk went ahead and put a bullet in the back of the man’s head as he was guffawing over the latest funny one liner.
Can’t be the worst way to go.
Hawk noticed a door just on the other side of the television. When he went inside, he found it starkly different than the comfortable confines the guard enjoyed. There was no plush chair or warm light. Instead, the prison cell was comprised of a cot on the concrete floor, a bucket to do his business in, and a pale fluorescent bulb that flickered every few seconds. And sitting with his back against the wall was Frank Stone.
His shirt was tattered, stained with a mixture of blood and dirt. With a scraggly beard and unkempt hair, Stone looked like he hadn’t showered since Al Fatihin captured him six months earlier.
“Well, I wouldn’t believe it unless I saw it with my own eyes,” Stone said.
“Gotta move now,” Hawk said. “There’ll be plenty of time for you to gush about your surprise.”
Stone didn’t move, instead grinning and pointing at Hawk. “Noah put you up to this, didn’t he?”
“We really need to go right now.”
“Who are you? CIA? Navy SEALs? Army Rangers?”
“I’m Hawk, and this isn’t a game, Lieutenant Colonel. But I think you know that.”
Stone shook his head. “You’re right. It’s not. But if there aren’t more of you, we’re screwed.”
“How come?”
“There are a dozen men who watch this facility twenty-four seven,” Stone said.
“There are only eleven now.”
Hawk led Stone into the adjacent room and pointed at the
