Advance to the Rear (Strike Force Book 3) Read online

  “Nikki?” Marc’s voice pierced her fog. “You still there? You didn’t hang up, did you? Because if—”

  “What? Oh. No, no, no. That sounds like a great idea. Really. Great.” And there she was, babbling like an idiot again.

  Shut up, Nikki.

  “Good. Whew.” A soft chuckle eased through the connection.

  “I can pick you up at the airport. No problem.”

  “Great.” His voice softened again. “I’m looking forward to this.”

  “Me, too.”

  After he disconnected she sat there with the phone hugged to her chest, smiling and a tad nervous. Was she making a big mistake here? She was just so stunned to meet someone in a place as dark as hers and finally see a little light shining in her world. Hopefully that light wouldn’t go out while they tried to figure the details of their very new situation.

  * * * *

  Jamal Baqri punched the button to disconnect the call on the burner phone in his hand and did his best to keep from swearing. The people who were supposed to facilitate this for him seemed to be hanging him out to dry. How did careful plans get fucked up so easily and quickly and turn to such shit? Six months ago, this had all looked so good, so well put together. The plans so carefully constructed. The target set, the arrangements made.

  But now, he decided, Allah must be punishing them for something.

  Two weeks ago, he and three others had left the training camp in Mexico after six months of intensive preparation. They had then been given their assignment—take out a specific target in San Antonio, Texas. A job that would kill a lot of people. They had contacts for the materials they needed and the date and location of their target. They had then been connected with a coyote to take them across the border. And that was where it turned to shit.

  They had just about made it across some rancher’s land headed toward a two-lane highway for pickup when a ranch hand, out late, had spotted them and shot at them.

  Two shots. Blam! Blam!

  Jamal had thought for a moment they had escaped unscathed, but then he’d heard a groan and a string of curse words. He’d turned to see that Malik Kouli, at the end of their single file, had taken a bullet in his leg.

  ‘Help me,’ he’d hissed at the others. ‘Those assholes are on horseback. We need to get him in the van and get the fuck out of here.’

  They’d dragged him the last few yards to the road, where the driver hired by the coyote had swooped them up into a van. But now they had a big problem. Malik, groaning and sweating in the rear seat, needed medical help. Now.

  “That got me nowhere,” he told the driver. “I want you to contact the man who sent you to pick us up.”

  “If he refused your request, I doubt he will pay attention to mine.”

  “Do it anyway. And get us the fuck out of here.”

  As they hauled ass down the highway, the driver made a call to the person arranging all this.

  “It is not my fault he got shot,” he said into the phone for the third time. “He needs medical attention.” He paused. “But I was told to take them to the apartment that is waiting for them.”

  An apartment in San Antonio, Jamal knew, where they would begin to build the bombs. He wanted to smash something when he heard the driver asking where to take them instead. Then he hung up the phone.

  “What did he say?” Jamal asked. “The contact. We need help for Malik. Right now. Right this minute.”

  “He said he will call me back.”

  “Call you back? That’s what he said? Telhas Teeze.” Son of a bitch.

  The driver lifted one shoulder. “I just do what I am told. I do not make the decisions.”

  “Well, you’d fucking well better make one soon. If my friend dies because of this, you’re next.”

  “He will call,” the drive said in a hasty voice. “He will call. Soon.”

  “And tell you where to take us? When will he do that?” Ya eben al shar-moo-ta. Son of a bitch. “I told you. I have to get my friend inside someplace and tend to his wound.” Jamal hauled in a breath and reached for calm. “He is badly hurt. If I don’t take care of him, he might die. I don’t think that would look very good to whoever takes your report.”

  “He will call back in good time,” the driver repeated again, although he didn’t sound quite so positive.

  Jamal wanted to reach over and snap his neck, except the man was behind the wheel, driving. Waiting for whoever that was to call back didn’t satisfy him at all. They had a deadline to meet and Malik needed medical attention.

  “I will tell you again, my friend could be dead in good time,” Jamal protested. “Plus, we have a deadline to meet. I am not prepared to meet Allah because someone is too busy to call back.”

  “Perhaps if you had not managed to make a mess of things, there would not be a problem.”

  “A mess of things? Did you think we planned for one of us to get shot? Well?”

  The other man ignored him and just kept driving.

  “We are still on the same road,” Jamal commented. “Will this take us to where we need to go?”

  “We will be fine,” the driver told him, although by now his voice had a little edge to it.

  Jamal couldn’t exactly blame him. The man was stuck with four strangers, one of them with a bullet in his leg, a sudden change of plans and no new directions. Jamal was getting pissed off himself. But sitting there wringing his hands didn’t help.

  He took off the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing, leaving him just in a T-shirt, and wrapped the cloth around Malik’s thigh, hoping to slow the bleeding. He had to figure out a way to remove the bullet that was still in Malik’s leg. None of them had any medical training and he didn’t want to make matters worse.

  Malik’s skin felt feverish and he continued to moan softly. The other two men, occupying the bench seat in back, just sat quietly. Neither of them had spoken since the van had picked them up, even though one of them was a brother to the wounded man.

  At the moment, Jamal wished fervently they had never left Syria. Surely Allah would have tasks for them to perform in their own country? He should never have listened to the man who’d recruited him and told him he would do the greatest service to Allah in the United States.

  They drove on in a silence punctuated only by Malik’s soft moans. Five minutes later, the phone rang again. The driver held a brief conversation with the person on the other end then hung up.

  “We have an alternate site for you,” he told Jamal. “Just until your friend is better.”

  “Better?” Jamal wanted to scream. “How can he get better when I have nothing to treat him with? And why can’t we just go to the apartment that is ready for us? We have a deadline.”

  He was not liking this one bit. Everything had turned to shit and they had no control over anything. This was not what they had been promised. Not even close.

  “Too many people around,” the driver explained. “If someone sees your friend, there could be a problem.”

  “Maybe if our crossing had been worked out better, my friend would not have gotten shot. Did you think of that?”

  The driver shrugged. “I only do what I am told.”

  Scant minutes later, they reached an intersection with some civilization in it. Too small, Jamal thought, to consider calling a town. It had a gas station, café, a couple of nondescript buildings and—wonder of wonders—a convenience store.

  “Wait here,” the driver told him, climbed out and headed for the store. During the ten minutes he was inside, Jamal kept looking nervously around. The other two men on his little team didn’t look any more comfortable than he did. Praise Allah, he thought, not too many people were at this little intersection so there was hardly anyone to stare at them.

  He was just about ready to go inside the store and see what was taking so fucking long when out came the driver, at last, carrying a filled plastic bag. He handed it to Jamal.

  “This will help you treat his wound.”

  Jamal l
ooked through it and found bandages of different sizes, alcohol, antibiotic ointment, surgical gloves and scissors. It also contained a large bottle of aspirin and one of liquor.

  “He needs medicine,” Jamal protested. “Not just aspirin. Antibiotics, and not in a cream. And we do not use liquor.”

  “If you want to knock him out from the pain, you do. I will see what I can do about anything else. Meanwhile, this is what you’ve got. Make it work.”

  The driver put the van in gear and pulled away from the curb. In a few minutes, he turned onto a very narrow road with trees thick on both sides, heading away from the country road they’d been on.

  “Where are you taking us?” Jamal wanted to know.

  “You will see. It is a place where we sometimes take people to hide out. It is fully stocked with food and you will be comfortable there.”

  “I don’t care about comfort except for my friend,” Jamal protested. “I came here on a mission and I want to complete it.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. In good time.”

  Jamal wondered what this idiot considered ‘good time’.

  The road curved suddenly and now he could see they were at a lake. A lake? The land was overgrown with high grass and natural shrubbery, shielding everything from view and giving plenty of privacy from the road. They could just see the water sparkling in the sun between the leaves of the trees. Just when he was wondering if there were even any houses in this godforsaken spot, the road forked. They turned to the right and, after another quarter of a mile, pulled into a clearing and parked next to a house. No, not a house. A small cottage. One story, made of weathered wood, it had a porch in front and faced the lake. If he was on a vacation. it might be tempting, but that was not the case. He was on a mission and everything had gotten fucked up.

  “We are here,” the driver said, and heaved himself out of the van.

  With the help of Farid and Kasim, he maneuvered Malik out and into the house. Although there was a couch in the living room, he insisted they put Malik in one of the two bedrooms. He placed the bag from the store on the nightstand. As soon as the driver left, he would go to work on his friend.

  “Is there any food here?” he demanded. “A refrigerator with ice? A stove.”

  “Of course, of course. Look here.”

  The man—whose name he still did not know—led him into the kitchen. The refrigerator wasn’t large, but it had plenty of fresh food and the icemaker was full. At one corner of the room was a pantry closet, small but also well stocked.

  “When was this done?” Jamal asked. “It’s only been a couple of hours since you picked us up and plans had to be changed.”

  The other man shrugged. “He had someone take care of it. That’s all I know. He has a friend who arranged it all.”

  “All of that is good, but what about a car? You cannot leave us out in the middle of noplace without some kind of transportation.”

  The man just shook his head. “I am told it will be taken care of. Soon. Wait a moment.”

  He hurried back out to the car and Jamal worried he’d leave with too many questions unanswered. But in a moment he was back with a large hard plastic case and three cell phones that he handed to Jamal.

  “There is one number programmed into each of them. The same number. I am told alternate plans are being worked on and you should call that number every day at noon for an update. Alternate the phones, so you do not use one on successive days. Do you understand?”

  Jamal glared at the man. “Do I look stupid to you? Of course I understand. What’s in the case?”

  Jamal felt a little better when the man opened it to show him the handguns and ammunition.

  “We hope you will not need this, but just in case. There are only four cottages on this lake and three of them are unoccupied at the moment.”

  Jamal wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. In case of an emergency, it would have been nice to have an alternative to the driver who would not even give them his name.

  “What about other arms? AK-47s? And the materials we need for our assignment in the city? Which, by the way, is coming up very soon. We have trained for this for a very long time.”

  The man gave one sharp nod. “I am assured all will be handled.”

  Jamal wanted to smack the man. All will be handled? There were too many loose ends dangling here.

  “And that’s it?”

  Jamal had not heard Farid Kouli, Malik’s brother, come up behind him, but he stood there now, glaring at the driver.

  “My brother is badly injured,” Farid said. “He could die if not properly attended to. And you just plan to walk off and leave us? No car? No other information?”

  “I can only follow orders,” the driver said. “Our people know of your brother’s situation.”

  “The man needs a doctor,” Jamal insisted.

  “Yes, yes,” the driver soothed. “I will bring one.”

  “When?” he pushed.

  “Soon. Soon.”

  But Jamal got the feeling that if Malik died, the other man couldn’t care less. None of his business.

  “Tell me again why you are not taking us to San Antonio?”

  The man hesitated. “We have to make sure you can arrive with little attention.”

  In other words, not dragging a man with a bullet hole in his leg.

  “I want to know when you will be back,” Jamal insisted.

  “I will call you tomorrow with arrangements. And now I must go.”

  He all but ran from the cottage and, in seconds, they heard the motor crank. The car pulled away, leaving Jamal with the three men, one with a bad leg wound, no transportation and no idea of what would happen next.

  He was doing his best to hold on to his temper and also tamp down the fear that everything had fallen apart. It was just so fucked-up. He had been assured ISIS planned well for everything, but this sure didn’t look like it. The contact they’d been given to use once they arrived in town was apparently unavailable at the moment. They had no transportation and, even if they did, no idea how to get anywhere.

  They had none of the explosive supplies they needed to build the bombs. None of the maps and information they’d been promised. He supposed he was damn lucky the place had satellite, so they had an internet connection. But here they were, alone in a foreign country with no credentials and no way to get anywhere. Were they supposed to just stay here and wait?

  Great. Just fucking great.

  He clapped his hand on Farid’s shoulder. “I promise Malik will pull through this. Let’s go take care of him right now.”

  He only hoped he was not lying through his teeth.

  Chapter Three

  Traffic was a bummer on the main streets and the interstate when Nikki left work. She kept her eye on the time and cursed every driver under her breath as she headed for the airport. She’d texted Marc when she walked out of the hospital so he’d have her message when he deplaned, that she’d pick him up at the Arrivals area.

  It was twenty to eight when she drove into the airport and headed to the pickup spot. The cars in front of her seemed to be inching along as if they had no place else to go and she had to stop herself from pounding the steering wheel with impatience. She spotted Marc standing out on the covered sidewalk, duffel by his side, scanning the cars for her. She honked her horn and he looked over and waved.

  In seconds he had tossed his bag into the back seat and climbed into the front. As they pulled out onto the exit road, he reached over and squeezed her thigh.

  “I’ve been thinking about you. A lot.”

  “Me, too.” A tiny laugh bubbled out. “Of you, I mean. I don’t think of myself. That is…” Oh, crap. She was babbling like an idiot.

  “It’s okay. I know what you mean.” He turned to look at her and grinned. “And I’m glad.”

  He stretched out his legs as much as he could. His six-foot-four frame didn’t fit easily into her small hatchback.

  “I think that seat moves back a little,” she tol
d him.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve folded myself into tighter places before.” He reached over and squeezed her thigh again. “I think this is the first time I’ve looked forward to downtime in two years.”

  She slid a quick glance at him. “I’m glad. I mean, not that you never looked forward to it, but that you did this time.” Then, before she could put her foot any further in her mouth, she said, “Tell me about this place you’ve found for us.”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ve got a couple of pictures Slade texted me. I’ll show them to you as soon as we get to your place. I think—I hope—you’ll like it. We didn’t really get into a lot of specifics, but I’m not one for noisy, busy places or being around a lot of people. At least, not anymore.”

  “Neither am I. And speaking of noisy, busy places, I had a feeling you wouldn’t want to go out for dinner tonight. Not after just coming in off a mission and wanting to unwind. But I don’t really know what you like to eat.”

  “I’m easy to please.” He slid a grin at her. “Cross my heart.”

  Heat flashed over her at the implied double meaning of what he said.

  “Well, anyway, we had pizza both nights you were at my place last time so I thought we’d try Mexican food for tonight. There’s a great little restaurant down the street from my apartment and they deliver.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  It was dark now, so when they reached her apartment, she flicked on lamps in the living room then dropped her keys on the little table in the foyer. Marc stood there with his duffel, obviously waiting for her to tell him where to put his things.

  Holy shit. What was the matter with her? She was acting like a nervous virgin. Talk about being out of practice.

  “This way,” she told him and led him to her bedroom with its en suite bath. “I, uh, wasn’t quite sure what you’d need, so I made room in a drawer for you and some space in the closet. And there’s room on the vanity in the bathroom for whatever stuff you want to put there.”