“She’s been kidnapped. Or maybe something else. Intel’s a little sketchy. But we need you to find her.”
Chet was too raw to play it cool, too tired to even be curious about why the CIA had darkened his door to dangle this mission before him.
“When? How?”
“Yesterday. West of Gori, in the state of Georgia,” Carlson said.
Chet closed one eye to stave off the stabbing sensation in his brain. Clearly the cosmos, or perhaps providence, didn’t want to give him a break.
“We think she was taken by an aid worker from one of the refugee camps.”
Chet turned another page and stared at what could only be Mae’s nephew. Joshy? He recognized a hint of trouble in the kid’s green eyes, in the angled set of his jaw. Great. Two stubborn redheads running around Georgia for him to rescue.
“American?” Chet didn’t want to give too much away, just in case the CIA wasn’t tapping his cell phone.
“From Arizona, on a do-gooder trip. He’s nineteen. He’s been there for a month, working with some local mission group. We’re not sure how he met Bashim’s daughter, but they were last seen walking away together from the refugee camp.”
Miller leaned forward and turned the next page for Chet, revealing a map of the hot zones inside Georgia, demarcating troop movements on both sides of the no-man’s land. Gori sat smack in the middle. “I don’t have to tell you that we’re sitting on an international incident here, Stryker. Bashim hasn’t been easy to nail down over the past few years, and more than a few intel sources suggest he’s behind the Ossetia rebel forces.”
“I thought he’d moved to Chechnya.”
“We haven’t had an official sighting since, well, since you and your team moved out, really. We had an insider source who kept track of him until a few years ago. Since then, he’s gone dark.”
Chet said nothing, made no comment on their knowledge of his history. He just turned the page. Yep, there was Bashim, bearded, yellow teeth, his head swaddled in a tight black turban. Chet’s hand began to tremble.
“You know why we picked you, Stryker?”
Chet nodded as he looked up and closed the folder.
“But I’ll only make it worse.”
“You’re the only one who can do this. You know the territory, the languages—”
“It’s been a while since I’ve spoken Georgian—”
“Then study up. Most important, you understand why you must find this girl. The agency will make it worth your while—not only now, but later, too.”
Chet glared at them, hating how they knew so much—and the way they knew just how to use it.
Miller leaned forward, lowering his voice. “And if Darya did run away on her own power, you gotta talk her into going back home.”
Chet stared at him, fighting the urge to launch himself across the desk, take the man by his burly neck and have a go—frankly, it might make him feel better, flush out all this simmering frustration. Or perhaps, instead, he should fling the file off his desk and watch the papers scatter into the air, not unlike his life so many years ago. He was still working on scraping up the pieces.
“Has it occurred to either of you geniuses that she’s better off? Life at home in Bashim’s camp isn’t exactly peaches. Who knows what she’s had to endure, living on the run in the mountains of northern Georgia with terrorists?”
“She’s a student at Oxford.”
“She looks like a kid.”
“That was taken a few years ago, obviously.” Carlson got up, paced to Chet’s window and peered down at the courtyard. “She was in Western culture long enough to know just what her father is up to, and what it could mean for the world.” He turned to Chet, arms folded.
“She’s betrothed to Akeem Al-Jabar.”
The agent waited as if that name might ring a bell for Chet.
“I’m too tired—”
“Iranian prince. Son of Osama Al-Jabar.”
Oh. Of course. “The same oil tycoon who’s behind the truckloads of cash being poured into Iran’s nuclear program.”
“You do read the international news wires, then.”
“When I’m not catching up on Reader’s Digest. Just so I can connect the dots, Darya is educated, and I’m assuming since you know her political disposition—you, meaning the collective CIA—”
“And others.”
“Right. And others, have coerced—” he particularly enjoyed watching Carlson flinch “—her into a forced marriage so she can, what, spy on the Iranians for you?”
Carlson turned back to the window. Miller pursed his lips, staring at Chet.
“Great. So now I’m a matchmaking service. Let me get my wand.” He pushed back from the chair and stood. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, guys, but I’m not going to track down a runaway girl and drag her back by her hair like some caveman so I can throw her into marital slavery. Sorry, but I gotta draw the line somewhere.”
“I know you won’t draw the line at dressing like Snow White, but saving the world from nuclear holocaust puts you over the edge?”
Chet scooped up the folder and held it out. “Personally, I’m against human trafficking in all forms. You should have discovered that in your homework somewhere.” Before he started his company, he’d spent five years—and earned one spider-webbed scar low in his gut—bringing down a Chinese human trafficking ring. His last great mission.
He stared at Carlson, then Miller. “I can’t help you boys.”
Miller stood and took the folder. “That’s a real shame, because I hear that Bashim already has a price out for the kid who took her.” He met Chet’s eyes, speaking slowly. “And anyone caught aiding and abetting him.”
So they had been tapping his phone.
“Listen, Stryker,” Carlson said quietly. “Darya agreed to the marriage. In fact, she came to us with the idea of marrying Al-Jabar. They’re friends from London. We’re not the thugs you’ve drawn in your mind.”
“She ran away for a reason.”
“She’s nineteen. She got cold feet. Or maybe she has a thing for this kid. We don’t exactly know, but until someone finds them, Bashim is a powder keg. He gets itchy and invades Georgia again, and suddenly we have an international incident. Georgia fights back, Russia roars in to protect Ossetia, and with Georgia on track to be a member of NATO, well, who knows how far this thing could reach,” said Miller.
Translation: American troops on the front lines of another war.
“And, as Miller pointed out, this thing touches home for you in many ways, doesn’t it?”
Chet wasn’t sure what they might be referring to. Yes, he’d spent his years early in his career arming the Ossetian rebels, namely Akif Bashim and his tribesmen, for freedom during their civil war. Back in the late eighties, the powers that be had simply wanted Ossetia to break free of Russia’s grip, via the Republic of Georgia. But he held no allegiances to Ossetia—especially since, twenty years later, they had banded with the Russians to attack Georgia. Maybe Miller referred to Chet’s hope of revenge and the opportunity to see Bashim pay for murdering the woman Chet was tasked to protect. Or perhaps he referred to rescuing Mae Lund, the woman he couldn’t forget—didn’t want to forget—who was now flying right into the danger zone of southern Georgia without a clue about the hornet’s nest awaiting her.
He sighed.
Miller