numbers. Time to make some new friends.”
“Good luck with that, Brent. You’ll need it. Because we’re going to pin a medal on your ass or boot it. Either way, when this is over, you and I will sit down and have a nice, long talk about the way you handled this.”
He took a deep breath. “Understood.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Good luck.”
Bang, he ended the call.
Well, there it was. Even if he brought in the Snow Maiden, Grey would still burn him for going over her head. So it didn’t matter anymore, really. He wasn’t supposed to be here for himself, right? He was here to complete the mission, which in turn was vital to the security and stability of his country. That’s the promise he’d made. That’s the promise he’d keep, career be damned.
But just to show her how good he was, he’d capture the Snow Maiden, drag her kicking and screaming all the way back to Fort Bragg, and dump her in Grey’s lap.
“Ghost Lead, this is Lakota. We’ve made contact.”
Nice thing about the suits. Both her location and a suggested route were already superimposed in his HUD.
He followed the glowing yellow line (or yellow brick road, as they liked to quip) to her location between the towers, where she, Park, and Heston were standing beside two militants who’d been wearing MOPP gear but had removed their heavy face masks.
Brent was surprised to find that both heavily bearded men spoke Pashto (which he understood) and had migrated down from southern Afghanistan. They said they were being paid a small wage by a man they referred to as Sheikh Juma, who had (unsurprisingly) established a camp on Kish Island from where he directed his operations. They’d called Juma, who’d said he was willing to meet with Brent. Juma said that since the Iranian holocaust, as he called it, they rarely received visitors from Russia, Europe, or the United States.
Lakota said it was a two-to-three-hour boat ride to K ish, and Brent was concerned that the Snow Maiden might arrive while they were gone. He asked the men to see if Juma could come over to see them, but Juma refused. This was, Brent knew, part of the “power game” of negotiations, and if Brent wanted anything out of Juma he needed to play along.
“All right,” Brent said. “Tell him we’re coming out to see him. Copeland? Daugherty? You guys are in charge of your teams. Lakota and I are going out to Kish Island. Schleck, Riggs? Keep eyes on.”
The snipers acknowledged.
“I want to be back before nightfall,” Brent told Lakota.
She nodded. “All we can do is try.”
They climbed into in the militia guys’ battered SUV and drove toward the coast.
Chopra could not believe the power that lay within the Snow Maiden’s arms. She threw him off as though he were weightless. He sailed off the bed, toward the back wall, as she dove for the pistol lying on the floor.
Hussein just sat there, frozen. He could have reached the gun before she did.
The Snow Maiden snatched up the pistol, then came around and back toward Chopra, her eyes fiery as she reared back and pistol-whipped him at the base of his neck. His glasses flew off, so he didn’t see the second blow coming, only felt the sudden pain in his cheek. Had that been a fist or a boot? He wasn’t sure. The blood came warm and salty into his mouth. He slid down the wall and slammed onto his rump.
Hussein screamed for her to stop, but the Snow Maiden shouted more loudly, “Just when I was thanking you for making it easy, you do this?”
“Don’t hit him anymore! Please!” the boy cried again.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “You don’t care about him. You didn’t care about your country, your father, your family. You don’t give a damn about anything but yourself. You’re a selfish little bastard, and maybe, after you give me what I want, I’ll cut off your head and put it on a stick outside the vault. What do you think of that?”
“I think you’re a crazy bitch.”
“Then you should’ve gotten my gun. You’re a little boy. A fool. That’s what you are. You’ve thrown away everything your family stood for so you could be a pig watching movies and playing games all day. If your parents could see you now, they would vomit.”
Chopra reached out, fumbled across the carpet, and found his glasses. He slipped them on, but they’d been bent and the nosepiece dug in sharply. He removed them, made an adjustment, then pushed back against the wall, trying to stand. His cheek was already swelling, and his neck throbbed and ached. He began to feel nauseated himself as he swallowed back more blood.
“You can take me to the vault,” he told the Snow Maiden. “But I won’t let you in. I won’t.”
“You will,” she said confidently. “Because I know how much you care about him. And I’ll torture him slowly, right in front of you, if you don’t do what I say.” She raised a brow. “I won’t remind you of this again. I’ll just do it.”
Chopra looked fire at her.
Hussein just stared.
“You’re not a sheikh,” she said, turning back to the boy. “You’ll never be.”
Chopra glanced at Hussein, the gears obviously turning in his youthful head.
There was no deal to strike with the Snow Maiden. The boy should understand that by now. They had but one goal: escape. Chopra wasn’t sure how else to convince the boy.
Brent wished he could have sent Lakota and Daugherty over to Kish Island to meet with Juma, but he knew how these warlord/militia leader types operated. First, Juma would not respect Lakota’s authority because she was a woman. Second, Juma would feel slighted because Brent had sent his underlings instead of coming himself. You had to show face to save face. What Juma lacked in numbers and technological superiority, he made up for in demands of dignity and respect. Brent was certain he would hear phrases like “We are a proud people” and “The invaders who come to rob our land will be executed.”
While riding aboard the small and agonizingly slow fishing boat, he contacted Grey and had her tap Ghost Recon’s intelligence sources to positively identify Juma. Grey said once they had an image of his face they could do so immediately.
They reached the east side of the island and were met at the dock by a security force of six men, all wearing MOPP gear. They climbed into two trucks and were driven out to the postwar remnants of the Dariush Grand Hotel, once a 125-million-dollar five-star affair with more than two hundred guest rooms. Cross-Com data indicated the place had been built to resemble Persepolis, a city of ancient Iranian civilization and the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire.
Now the hotel’s once-magnificent grand columns and towering archways that reminded Brent more of ancient Rome than Persia lay in piles of rubble through which they threaded, finding what had once been an ornate marble stairway framed by rubble and leading down into the shadows.
Two of the security men fired up torches, which made Lakota glance strangely at Brent. He assumed they’d at least have flashlights powered by solar cells or other conventional batteries, but they clearly had limited resources.
In the eerie and flickering torchlight, Brent noted that the walls, once adorned by ornate murals of gardens and waterfalls, had been scorched black by terrible fires, and as they descended farther, Brent experienced the enormity of what had happened in this region. They had been far from ground zero, but there had been an unrelenting shower of conventional bombing prior to the nuclear exchange. Kish, though not a primary military target, had been flattened as an economic blow, because it had been one of the most popular tourist destinations and helped bolster the Iranian economy.
They continued on, winding their way through a labyrinth of bombed-out hallways intersected by fallen walls and doors blasted off their hinges. Once they had descended two more flights of stairs that had been sloppily repaired with bricks and thick mortar, they finally reached an open area that might have been a small ball-room or conference room, Brent wasn’t sure. Giant chandeliers hung like twinkling mother ships from the ceiling but remained dark. The room was in fact lit by dozens of candles.
Two unmasked men stood at the entrance, both clutching AK-47s. They allowed the group to pass. Several
