“Well, I’m not going to decline your offer to help,” Sam told him. “Between your team and mine, I like our odds.”
“We’ll be a veritable Who’s Who of special forces,” Rush remarked, glancing back at the guys as they pulled their bags from the luggage hold.
“You guys can rack up near us in housing units,” Davis told them.
“Well, let’s get you all introduced then,” Sam smiled. “We can start planning the op at 0700 if that works?”
“The sooner, the better,” Davis smiled grimly. “Let’s get this asshole.”
Chapter 24
Dec 19th—Afternoon
Jaime’s House in Oak Park, Illinois
J A C K
“Look who’s back for Christmas, Maddie?” Jaime pulled back the curtain in the living room.
“Is it Babbo Natale?” she squealed, abruptly leaping up from her coloring books, nearly knocking her father over as she pressed her face against the windows.
“No, it’s not Santa Claus,” Jaime smiled down at her. “But Grandpa always brings excellent gifts, doesn’t he?”
“He’d better be here bearing gifts,” Jack muttered darkly as he hung the lights around an impressive Douglas fir.
Jaime shot him a warning look before steering Maddie toward the front door. “Go let Papa in, okay, baby?”
“I am not a baby,” she answered haughtily, pushing her dark curls over her shoulder, her ever-present ribbon neatly tied as she gave her father an admonishing look. “I’m five.”
“And soon going to college, I know,” Jaime nodded dutifully, tugging at one of her ringlets. “Go get the door, not-a-baby, okay, cara?”
“Oh okay, Daddy,” she huffed, making Jack chuckle as Jaime rolled his eyes.
“Of course you’re blessed with a daughter with a smart mouth,” Jack commented as he stepped off the ladder.
“I can’t wait until you become a father one day,” Jaime remarked, crossing his arms. “May you be blessed with a houseful of girls who drive you nuts with their hair products and bad attitudes.”
Jack stilled as images of children that looked like Samantha flashed into his mind’s eye. He’d never given much thought to having a family, just as he’d never given much thought to marriage. He assumed that it might happen one day when he was ready for it. But now, on the eve of Christmas, with the love of his life halfway across the world doing God only knew what, he wondered if such a possibility was in his future. Jack looked up at the tree, fingering the fragrant green bristles he’d covered in twinkling lights, imagining this moment shared with her instead, laughing over hot toddies and tossing tinsel at one another. Such a simple, banal pleasure seemed so unlikely now, so distant and impossible. Jack shook off his melancholia, turning to greet his parents as they came into the house in a flurry of hugs and kisses, each taking turns holding Maddie close as they took off their boots and shook the snow from their coats.
“Grassoccio,39 how are you feeling?” their mother, Lena, asked Jaime as she held his face in her hands.
“You look better,” Sandro added, patting his son on the shoulder as he held Maddie on his arm.
“I’m feeling better,” Jaime admitted. “I can make it up and down the stairs now without feeling like I’ve run a marathon.”
“You should stay downstairs,” Lena tutted. “Jack can trade rooms with you,” referring to the downstairs guest room Jack inhabited at least part of the week while Jaime was still on the mend.
“He’s fine, Ma,” Jack replied, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Don’t fuss over him. He enjoys the attention too much.”
“The last thing I need is more attention,” Jaime grumbled, rolling his eyes. “Between you guys, the nurse, and the nanny, I hardly get any peace.”
Lena then happened to glance over Jack’s shoulder. “Oh, you’ve already started putting up the tree!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, got the basics done,” Jack nodded. “Now you and Maddie can go to town.”
“Thank you, Gianni,” his mother smiled, patting his cheek. “Can you make us something warm to drink?”
“Sure,” he answered. “Dad, you want to come and help me spike the drinks?”
“Always,” Sandro replied, following him down the hall and into the kitchen.
The door hadn’t even fully swung closed before Jack leaned back against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms. “Where is she, Dad?”
“Where’s who?” Jaime asked, pushing in after Sandro.
“This is a private conversation, Jaime,” Jack told his brother pointedly.
Jaime slanted him a disbelieving look. “Since when is anything private in this family?”
“It’s about Samantha,” Jack answered meaningfully.
“So?” Jaime replied stubbornly, coming to stand by their father. “I care about her too. I’m staying.”
“Scorchamend’,40 Jaime—just get out!” Jack snapped.
“Lascia lui!41 Stop fighting, both of you,” Sandro replied, putting his hands between them before he turned to look at Jack. “Gianni, I thought things were over between you and Sam.”
Jack jutted his chin up. “They’re not.”
Sandro nodded, his gaze assessing. “When was the last time you two spoke?”
“When she was in Chicago a little more than a week ago, getting ready to leave,” Jack replied.
“You couldn’t convince her not to go to Afghanistan, could you?” Sandro asked.
“I think you know the answer to that,” Jack responded, crossing his arms. “That’s why I need you to tell me if she’s okay. You must be getting debriefs. I know you have information—”
“Sam’s definitely in Afghanistan,” Jaime interrupted, pulling out his phone. “I’ve been tracking her since she left.”
Their heads swiveled toward Jaime.
“What the fuck, Jaime—”
“Che cazzo—?”42 Sandro said at the same time.
“Do you two want to know how I know where she is or not?” Jaime asked, quickly opening the app on his phone, fingers working rapidly. “I knew she’d do something totally insane like going after whoever tried to kidnap her in Rio,” he explained. “So when I delivered her the locaters for testing, I dropped a tracker into her phone’s OS.”
“What does that mean?” Jack inquired.
“I programmed her phone to send me her location logs,” Jaime clarified.
“That violates I don’t even want to know how many laws—” Sandro started.
Jack raised his brows at their father. “This from a man who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee and hands over classified information to one of his sons. Seriously?”
Jaime showed them the map on his tracking app. “The logs transmit every few hours, or whenever she catches a signal or logs onto a network. Last log shows she’s in Herat.”
Jack snatched up the phone, glaring at his brother. “When were you planning on telling me that you’ve been tracking my girlfriend?”
Jaime shrugged a little, a look of contrition crossing his face. “Sam’d be furious if she knew what I did. I knew things didn’t end well with you two, but I thought if something happened and you needed to know where she was—”
“Stop! Just stop, Jaime,” Jack cut him off, slicing his hand through the air. “How is it that everybody in my family knows more about Samantha right now than I do?” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, blowing out a resentful breath.
“After Rio, I just wanted to help—”
“Jaime, you shouldn’t have done that,” Sandro admonished Jaime before turning to Jack. “He’s right about where she is though. Samantha landed in Afghanistan late last night, and I have good news and bad news.”
“Of course you do,” Jack replied sarcastically. “By all means, please start with whatever you think will upset me the most after learning that my brother basically tagged my woman like a wild deer. Let’s just rip this Band-Aid off right now.”
Sandro leaned against the counter,
leveling him a serious look. “Sam’s pulled together a team to go after Ibrahim Nazar,” he paused. “I didn’t like her odds. In fact, I still don’t, but I made sure she was assigned the best of the best. She’s working with SEAL Team Six now.”
Jack rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I thought what she was doing wasn’t officially supported?”
“It’s not,” Sandro admitted. “This is off-the-books. If anyone from her team is caught, they will be publicly disavowed. There will be no aid; no extractions in the event that she’s unsuccessful.”
“It’s a good thing I also gave her locaters I can track then, isn’t it?” Jaime responded with an arch look. “She has ingestible GPS prototypes. Once she and her men have swallowed them, I’ll be able to see where they are as long as they can pick up any kind of wireless signal.”
“I can’t decide if I want to punch you out or kiss you right now,” Jack confessed to Jaime as a sense of relief washed over him. He pulled out his phone, handing it to Jaime. “I want you to send those logs to my phone,” he said, his tone brooking no argument.
Jaime accepted the phone slowly. “She’ll kill me dead, Jack. You know she will.”
Jack tilted his head. “Should’ve thought of that when you cloned her phone, fratu.”43 He turned to his father. “Do you know where Nazar is?”
Sandro shrugged. “CIA has a best-guess. We’ve given the intel to the SEAL leader. He’s sharing all information we’ve got with Samantha.”
“Are you getting regular updates?”
Sandro nodded solemnly.
Jack nodded, running a hand through his hair. “Well, in that case, I should fill you both in on what I’ve been working on while you’ve been spying on Samantha behind my back.”
“Wait—before we violate more of Samantha’s privacy, there’s something I’m not clear about here,” Jaime began. “Are you back together with her, or are we just helping you stalk your ex-girlfriend?”
Jack sent his brother a look over his shoulder. “You didn’t seem to give a damn about that when you hacked her phone,” he pointed out. “And the only reason she and I are not together is because she doesn’t think she’s going to make it back from Afghanistan.”
Jaime’s brow creased. “So she broke up with you to protect you?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Jack admitted.
Sandro released a sigh, sitting down at the counter. “Gianni, Samantha has a point—”
“I thought you were for this now,” Jack taunted. “Isn’t that what you told me?”
“No, Gianni,” Sandro shook his head. “I said I was for you. There’s a difference. Samantha’s right to not want you involved in this—”
“Well, it’s a bit too late for that,” Jack replied. “I’m in the process of buying out her main competitor, Leviathan.”
“Lucien Lightner’s company?” Jaime asked with his brows rising as he leaned against the counter. “Damn, that’s bold.”
“Yeah, well, while she’s going after Nazar, I’m going to go after the man who’s protecting him,” Jack explained.
“Gianni—that’s a major capital investment in what amounts to retaliation for a lover,” Sandro pointed out. “Di guerra, caccia e amuri, pri un gustu milli duluri.”44
“If someone harmed Mom, would you not go to the ends of the earth to avenge her?” Jack replied. “Would you not use every weapon in your arsenal, every resource at your disposal, to put down anyone who would have her hurt?”
“Gianni, it’s not the same—”
“Don’t tell me that how I feel is not the same!” Jack retorted sharply. “Samantha is not just my lover. She’s vita mia45 now, Dad! She’s everything to me!”
“But what if she doesn’t come back to you, Jack?” Jaime asked quietly. “You’ll have a security company you don’t need and no Samantha. Then what?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“But if it does?”
Jack took a deep breath, pulling his mobile phone out of his pocket and handing it to his brother. “Just program my phone to receive her tracking logs, Jaime.” He turned to look at his father square in the eye. “There’s nothing worse than not knowing where she is and if she’s alright.”
Jack’s phone rang in Jaime’s hand.
“It’s Mitch,” Jaime said, handing the phone back to his brother.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Jack said, answering the phone.
“You’re not going to believe this—” Mitch started.
“Right now, you have no idea what I’m willing to believe,” Jack replied dryly.
“Stocks of Leviathan are plummeting on London Stock Exchange. The Guardian, the Financial Times, and The Daily Mirror are all running articles on Lightner’s shady business practices. The media is going nuts,” Mitch explained. “Jesus, Jack, at this rate, we won’t need to buy him out; he’s going to get run out of town on his own.”
“Not good enough,” Jack replied, looking up at the question mark on his father’s and Jaime’s faces. “Instruct the brokers to wait until the worst possible moment, and then buy up the lot. I want to own majority share of Leviathan by the time this is over.”
Sandro sat back in his chair, shaking his head in consternation as Jaime’s eyes widened.
“Jack, are you sure?” Mitch asked.
Jack nodded, his expression grim. “Lightner will have no place to hide and nowhere to go by the time I’m done with him. I’m going to take everything he has.”
*
Dec 19th—Afternoon
Kandahar, Afghanistan
W E S L E Y
“Ibrahim Nazar has control of three regions right now,” Ahmad Qadir explained, pointing to the map he’d spread out on the coffee table of Wes’s hotel room. He circled southern Afghanistan. “His production areas are here in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces. He pushes product into Pakistan and Iran from here and here,” Ahmad pointed to routes on the map. “But Nazar only recently gained control of the western region of Herat—”
“I thought that area was an Afghan Northern Alliance stronghold?” Wes asked, referring to the Tajik-run Islamic military front fighting against the Taliban.
“It is,” Ahmad nodded.
“Then wouldn’t they be against a Taliban-backer like Nazar muscling into the region?” Wes continued.
“In general, you would be right,” Ahmad agreed. “But what is it you American’s say? ‘Money talks and bullshit walks?’”
“So he bought his way into Herat to what?” Wes surmised, looking back down at the map. “To get another foothold into Iran?”
“Herat isn’t the highest-volume province for the heroin trade, but it’s the most profitable,” Ahmad explained. “Demand for opium is exceptionally high in Iran, and the Northern Alliance always needs funding to continue fighting the Taliban.”
“You don’t find it incredibly ironic that both Islamist movements are essentially funding themselves from the same source?” Wes asked.
“Opium funds everything in Afghanistan,” Ahmad shrugged. “Well, second only to Cannabis.”
“Too bad all that hashish hasn’t made everyone more relaxed,” Wes drawled. He glanced down at the map. “So you’re saying Nazar’s in Herat now?”
“My sources say so,” Ahmad shrugged. “He just bought a massive compound there and no one has seen him in Kandahar for weeks.”
Wes leaned forward, trying to gauge the distance. “That’s at least a ten hour drive, isn’t it?”
“I do not recommend driving, my friend,” Ahmad shook his head. “Too many checkpoints. Too many bribes to pay. I can have you put on a cargo plane tonight. The flight will only take one hour.”
“And how do I know I can trust your sources?”
Ahmad smiled. “You don’t. That is why there is faith. Inshallah.”46
Wes slanted him a look. “Texans have a saying too: ‘Don’t trust a man any farther than you can throw him.’”
Ahmad folded the map. “Then don’t thr
ow him, my friend,” he replied with a wink.
Chapter 25
Dec 19th—Afternoon
Herat, Afghanistan
S A M A N T H A
“These are the most recent photos we have of Nazar,” a bull-necked naval intelligence officer named Anthony “Winch” Winchell explained as he displayed various surveillance photos. “He’s built a compound just outside of Herat City.”
“I can’t imagine Nazar’s welcome in this town,” Sam drawled. “Pro-Taliban financiers aren’t exactly welcome into mujahedeen territory.”
“You’re not wrong,” Winch agreed. “But Nazar muscled in on the territory pretty quickly, winning over any hostile local mujahedeen warlords with above-market offers on poppy yields. When money’s on the table…” Winch shrugged. “Ideological differences can be set aside.”
Like Wright, Winch had been assigned to Samantha by Admiral Morrissey, another resource she’d not anticipated. His knowledge of the region and the intelligence he had prepared for them was top-notch, and she was incredibly grateful Morrissey had gifted her with his assistance, if only for a short time.
“So why is this particular province Nazar’s focal point?” Sam asked.
Winch pulled up aerial footage of the province. “Herat is situated in the valley of the Hari River, which makes this area incredibly fertile, and like the Kandahar region, is an excellent place for growing just about anything, though poppy is by far the most profitable cash crop,” Winch explained. “We also think Nazar chose this location for his newest heroin processing facility because only thirty minutes from the border into Iran.” Winch showed them a photo of a building nestled next to the river, surrounded by the austere cliffs of the Hindu Kush range. “We believe Nazar has set up his new processing facility near the road to Taybad in what appears to be an encampment near the Hari River.”
“And were you planning on doing anything about it?” Sam asked.
Complicated Creatures: Part Two Page 26