Edge of Courage (Edge Security Series Book 5) (5 page)

Two thumps on the door had the girls squeaking in their seats. Two more made Sarah smile and reassure them. “It’s just Rakin. It’s our secret knock to let me know he’s by himself.”

She unlocked the front door and Rakin slipped inside.

“Girls,” she said. “Why don’t you go downstairs?” They would probably just listen to their conversation from the basement stairs, but at least it was an illusion of privacy in the small house, and they’d be close to the hidden room if they had any more unexpected visitors.

She spoke with Rakin by the front door, as far from the basement stairs as their little house would let them get. “They were here,” she said quietly.

He frowned. “How many?”

“Just three, but Ahmed was with them. He’s going to be a problem. We should have taken care of him within the first month we were here.”

Now Rakin’s fierce frown was directed at her. “We don’t murder indiscriminately,” he said.

“He’s a liability,” she said.

“He has an elderly mother who depends on him. Without him, she would starve. Besides, he’s
hisbah
. There’d be an investigation.”

Sarah lifted her chin and moved back to the table, collecting the girls’ dishes. “And that is the only reason he still lives.”

“You’re a cold one.” Rakin sat at the table. “Bringing the girl back was the first time I’ve seen your heart overrule your head.”

“I’ve been rescuing girls since the first month I got here.”

He shook his head. “Not without intense planning, and never such a high-risk situation. I’ve seen you leave girls in horrific situations until you devised a safe plan to get them out. Yesterday, your emotions ruled you. They told you to save her.”

Sarah frowned. Was that what had happened?

Turning away, she busied herself with packing food, pulling out cold lamb leftovers, fresh bread, and cheese for Rakin and Claire to travel with. Rakin moved in beside her.

“Let me help.” He nudged her aside. “It’s my mission. No matter what I act like sometimes, I don’t need you to prep my food.”

“I’m only doing it because I’m the better cook.”

He smiled and the tension between them eased slightly. “That you are.” He sliced the spiced lamb and put it into a Tupperware container.

“I’ve been thinking, Sarah.” He spoke in a whisper the girls wouldn’t hear. “The situation in Mosul is getting hot. We’ve been here a long time. I’m burning out. I think we should leave while we still can.”

“Leave? Right now?” She took a step back. “But our orders…”

“Fuck our orders. You know as well as I that as soon as we feel compromised we’re supposed to get out.”

“But I haven’t been compromised.”

“Fine. Be stubborn.” He turned back to the food. “But the next time I check in, I’ll be asking my superiors to find a replacement for me.”

“But you can still help people,” she said.

“It’s getting too dangerous,” he said. “And we’ve been here for months.”

“The network needs a bit more time,” she said. “I just have to bring another contact into play. This guy should be able to take over my role, but I need time to convince him to do it.”

She spoke of an imam in hiding from ISIS. He and his brother could handle the logistics of rescuing children. He didn’t like risking his family and she didn’t blame him, but if he didn’t agree to take over her position, then her months of building the fragile underground railroad would be for nothing.

Rakin scrubbed his face with his hand. “I’ll think about it. That’s all I can say.” He shoved all the food containers into a small messenger bag and slung it over his shoulder. “I just hope this job doesn’t end with us dead.”

He walked to the stairs. “Claire,” he called down quietly. “Veil yourself. We’re going to get you home.”

Claire rushed up the steps, her veil askew. Sarah straightened it. “Rakin is smart. Listen to him and you’ll be fine.”

Claire nodded and then hugged her. “Thank you.”

Sarah stiffened and awkwardly patted the girl’s shoulder. She had never been easy with people touching her. She spoke to cover her reaction. “Be brave. You’re almost there.”

The girl just hugged her harder and then nodded.

“Stay inside,” Rakin said. “I’ll be back in two days.”

Sarah gritted her teeth to stop herself from telling him off. She didn’t want to start an argument in front of the girl.

Rakin and Claire left moments later, out the back door and into the alley. They had a spare truck parked in the lot of the apartment building behind them.

Rakin would drive Claire out of town. The paperwork would state that Claire was his sister and they’d put up their house as collateral to visit their ailing mother in Erbil. Claire’s father had wanted her out faster than their normal network could handle, which was why Rakin was personally escorting Claire. If Rakin wasn’t back within a week, then ISIS could take their house and she would be doubly screwed: a single woman in an ISIS-controlled city, and homeless.

Or worse, married to Ahmed.

After they’d left, she went to the hidden room, pulled out the encrypted satellite phone, and dialed a number.

“My tea isn’t fit for a Ghost.” She said the code phrase to verify her identity.

“Then brew it strong and sweet,” came the reply that verified the other side of the message. Was that Jake on the other end of the line?

No matter. She had to finish the authentication process.

“This is Ghost,” she said. “I authenticate, echo, delta, four, seven, niner.”

“Ghost, this is College. I authenticate, golf, echo, zero, five, two.”

Sarah smiled as she spoke next. “Hey, College, good to hear a friendly voice, but what are you doing answering the phone?”

“We have an op tomorrow night in your location.” His voice took on a serious tone. “We could use an extra set of eyes. Can you and Tea-man make it?”

Jake obviously had a mission, and it was in or around Mosul if he wanted their help. “Tea-man is en route with a package.”

“Roger that.”

“Tell me when and where and I’ll break out my party dress,” she said. No way would she be left out. She was tired of being treated as if she couldn’t handle the outside world because she was a woman.

“The team is recovering a lost asset.”

“About time,” she said. He spoke of the undercover CIA agent William Patel.

She didn’t think the agent had told ISIS yet that he was CIA or his head would have been decorating the front of ISIS headquarters, along with all the others ISIS thought were traitors and infidels. But he hadn’t been released yet either.

“ETA?” she asked.

“Oh-two-hundred. I’ll send the RV coordinates and mission parameters.”

“Copy that.”

“See you soon, Ghost.”

“Wilco. Ghost out.”

She disconnected the phone and turned to see Jalila sitting cross-legged behind her.

“Your name is Ghost?”

She looked at the girl. The fading bruise still marred her cheek. It didn’t matter whether Rakin was right. Perhaps she had let her emotions factor into the decision, but she hadn’t been impulsive. Although her sympathy had been stirred by the girl, it hadn’t been an emotional decision to rescue her.

And it certainly hadn’t anything to do with those blue eyes that reminded her of a man whose courage and zest for life she admired even more than his muscled body.

“It’s a nickname,” she said finally. “But it’s a secret one. Can you promise not to tell?”

Jalila nodded. Her face turned fierce. “Not even if they hurt me.”

Sarah crouched down beside her. “I’m going to do my best to never let that happen again. I’ll keep you safe.”

And again she made a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep.

She settled Jalila in for the night with an extra blanket and a glass of water.

“Will you be scared down here by yourself?”

Jalila shook her head. “I like the hidden room. But can I leave the light on?”

Sarah nodded. “I’ll leave the light on in the basement too. Remember I’m just upstairs.”

Jalila nodded. “Will you get my sister soon?”

“As soon as we can.”

The girl pulled her blanket tight around her and Sarah left the room, praying that she hadn’t just lied to the girl.

T
he next day
, after feeding Jalila breakfast, she spent the morning going over the plans College had sent about the mission to rescue Patel. Sarah memorized everything and then destroyed any evidence from her hard drive.

In the afternoon, she itched to go for a run and instead went through a hard routine of calisthenics and intervals in her basement. Jalila watched with wide eyes.

The workout eased a bit of the tension building in Sarah. The only reason she wasn’t going crazy from all the time she’d spent cooped up in the little apartment in the past months was because she knew she had a way out. She knew this wasn’t her real life, that she could go home and be free. She had no idea how women who lived here handled it without going insane.

After a quick shower, she came out of the bathroom to find Jalila waiting for her. The girl just sat quietly on the floor near the basement door, a rabbit waiting to bolt to its burrow.

It reminded her of when she was young, scared and unsure, having recently moved to a group home. She had to live with seven other teens, with the adults rotating in shifts to watch them, almost like jailors.

She’d been hungry one night and left the room she shared with another girl and made her way to the kitchen. A woman with steel-gray hair and a straight back turned from stirring a pot on the stove. Her dark eyes had softened while she’d studied Sarah.

And she’d asked her a question that had started one of the best relationships Sarah had ever had.

Sarah asked that question of Jalila now. “Would you like to make cookies with me?”

Sarah and Jalila decided to make a batch of
kleicha
. Over the next couple of hours, she found enough dates to make a sweet paste, which they log-rolled inside a buttery, flakey dough. She showed Jalila how to slice the log into pinwheels. The cookies took a long time to make, but they were worth it and the baking soothed her. She glanced at Jalila. The girl didn’t smile, but her shoulders weren’t hunched up around her ears anymore.

It was a start.

Most of her fellow operators at E.D.G.E. would probably be surprised that she cooked and baked, but being in the kitchen reminded her of some of the only times she’d been happy as a teenager.

Happy and safe.

Abuela, with her stern voice and kind eyes, had seen to that. Not that the old woman had actually been her grandmother. Sarah had never had one of those. Abuela was just what the woman had told the kids at the group home to call her. Sarah had met her when she’d entered the home at age twelve after she’d been returned from two foster homes. It hadn’t been long before Sarah had wished the woman were her grandmother in truth.

It was midafternoon when a knock at her door made her jump. She bit her lip. Were the soldiers back? Or was Ahmed at the door making trouble again? Jalila stared at her, frozen with her eyes wide.

“Go hide.” She kept her voice calm. “It will be okay.”

Jalila scampered silently down the stairs. Sarah counted to ten to give her time to get into the hidden room before she pulled on her black robe. She wrapped a scarf around her head with practiced hands and pulled the corner of it up and over the lower half of her face.

She peeked out the window. A veiled woman waited at the door with a sturdy man with a trimmed beard behind her. Sarah threw open her door.

“Amirah!”

Amirah stepped into her arms and hugged her. Sarah was careful to keep her hips with her gun holster out of the equation.

“I will be back in one hour,” her husband said. He walked back the three houses to their home. It made Sarah livid that Amirah wasn’t allowed to walk down the street by herself, but Ahmed kept a vigilant watch on his neighbors and would report any infractions.

Sarah ushered her friend inside. She’d originally made friends with Amirah because she’d seen a lot of women visiting her and had hoped this woman could be a way for her to gather more information. Although her husband was only a high school teacher, Amirah did indeed have a feel for the pulse of the community. She hadn’t proved exceptionally useful, but Sarah kept their friendship alive anyway. Amirah made her laugh, and Sarah needed laughter to combat the oppression of this place.

“I hadn’t thought I’d see you today,” Sarah said in Arabic.

“Is your brother home?” Amirah asked.

Sarah shook her head. “He forgot something at the market,” she lied. “I made him go back.”

Amirah laughed and pulled off her veil, revealing a young woman with a riot of dark curls and laughing brown eyes. “Men,” she said. “They have the memories of a camel. They only remember their grudges, not anything useful.”

Sarah smiled and pulled off her headscarf before she went to put the kettle on for tea.

“You’re making
kleicha.
Those are my favorite.”

“Yours and every other Iraqi.”

“It’s definitely the cookie of choice.” Amirah sighed as she snuck one off the cooling rack and bit into it. “But I’m only going to have one.”

“Sure you are,” Sarah teased. She put some of the
kleicha
on a plate as well as some
hajji badah,
cookies flavored with cardamom. She set them on the table between them.

“You’re going to make me fat,” Amirah said. “But I can’t resist these either.”

Sarah sat across from her friend. “Why don’t you bake them, if you love them so much?”

“Why, because my husband loves them too. And if I made them once, Fouad would expect them all the time. And then I really would be fat.” She laughed. “No, it’s better for him to think that I’m a bad baker.”

“How is it going with Fouad?” she asked in a low voice. “Is he still teaching?”

“The Da’esh have him teaching Islamic principles now.” Amirah sighed, using the derogatory term for ISIS. “He hates it. He loved teaching music, but the Da’esh have forbidden it. If he wants to get paid, then he teaches what they tell him. Life in Mosul is hellish since ISIS took over.”

It
had
been hellish. Sarah could see the strain around Amirah’s eyes. The people of Mosul were slowly having the life crushed out of them.

Sarah changed the topic, seeing how sad it made her bubbly friend. She reminded Sarah a bit of her friend Charlie—codename Q, the brainiac E.D.G.E. researcher, who had a similar approach to finding joy in life.

It was something that Sarah wished they could teach her. Sometimes she wasn’t sure she was even capable of joy, having had it leeched from her life at a young age by her drug-addicted mom and then foster care. But she liked being around the warmth of Amirah, even if it sometimes made her uncomfortable.

They talked of simple things: cooking and women Amirah knew. The hour was almost up when Amirah touched Sarah’s arm.

“You’re quiet today,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

Sarah couldn’t tell her about her mission that evening to free a CIA agent. Or the little girl stuck in her basement until Sarah could get her out of the city.

“I’m fine.” She forced a smile. “It was just a long day at the market yesterday.”

Amirah looked doubtful, but a loud knock on the door stopped her response. They both put their veils back on and Sarah opened it for Amirah’s husband.

“Right on time,” Amirah quipped.

Fouad smiled at his wife, genuine love in his eyes, and then gestured for them to leave. Sarah waved good-bye to her friend, but before she closed her door, she spotted Ahmed across the street, watching her.

Would he stay until evening prayer to make sure Rakin went to mosque? Was he hoping for an excuse to bring the soldiers back? She scowled behind her veil and locked the door.

The man gave her a headache.

She made dinner for Jalila and took it down to the hidden room for her, because the girl was scared to come back up. Sarah made a mental note to start arranging for Jalila to leave the city, with or without her sister.

“Don’t come up unless I open the door for you,” she told her, settling her in. They had a TV in the room and a bunch of DVDs of cartoons. “I’m going out for a while in the middle of the night. Stay hidden. It’s okay to watch movies while I’m gone, if you get scared. Just keep the volume low.”

“Are you going to save Besma?”

“Not tonight. Tonight I’m going to help save a man.” At Jalila’s frown, she continued. “A man who also tries to protect girls.” She kissed Jalila on the forehead because it seemed right. The girl smiled at her and pulled the thin blanket up to her chin.

“Come back,” she whispered.

Sarah nodded and went back upstairs. She knew better than to promise that.

She put Jalila out of her mind for the moment and concentrated on the mission ahead. She went into her bedroom to get ready. She dressed in black pants and a shirt, and wrapped her headscarf around her head and face, leaving only her eyes exposed. She didn’t want her face to reflect any light tonight and possibly give her away.

She shrugged into a webbing belt and stuck in her gun, two throwing knives, her lock pick kit and a small penlight, as well as a few other tools of her trade. As a precaution, she took the small, encrypted satellite phone and placed it in another pouch. E.D.G.E.—and more specifically, Dani or Mike, their resident computer geniuses—would track her movements through it.

Over everything she threw a lightweight
abaya
, but left the black robe open in the front for ease of movement.

The last prayer of the day,
Isha
,
had already been called. The city would start quieting down now, but she’d wait until after midnight before she made her way to the rendezvous point. She’d have to run through the smaller streets and alleys to get there. She couldn’t risk driving without Rakin. But it wasn’t too far, only a couple of miles.

At 0100, she did a last check on Jalila, who slept huddled on the mat, her face innocent in sleep. Then Sarah closed the door carefully and went back upstairs. She slipped out her back door and into the alley. She had to swallow back bile at the smell. She’d purposely placed the body of a dead dog under some boxes nearby. The stench of it kept anyone from loitering, especially Ahmed.

She ran through the night like a shadow. It was time to work.

D
ylan moved
down one side of a deserted street in Mosul, keeping tight to the shadows of the buildings. Dante “Gears” Moreno was his partner, the new guy on their team. He’d started working closely with them about five months ago, just about the time Sarah—

No. He locked that thought away. He wasn’t thinking about her anymore. He focused back on the op.

Jake, his team leader, worked with Marc, the ex-CSIS agent, on the far side of the street. They’d left the truck they’d hot-wired a few blocks away, wanting to make the last few blocks of the approach on foot. Tonight was all about stealth.

Most of the streetlights were out, either shot out or the grid was dead. He didn’t know or care; either way, it worked for them. Only the occasional white pickup truck with the ISIS symbol painted on the doors drove on the streets, the standard vehicle of the extremists. It had been another reason to ditch their ride. Too conspicuous so close to their target.

According to the two operators in the city, the CIA agent William Patel was being held in the building at the end of this street. E.D.G.E. had sent a four-man team, thinking a small unit could get in where a larger one wouldn’t be able to.

Dante, a tough and technically brilliant operative, was a good partner to have. The guy’s tats didn’t convey a man from the world of special ops, but rather one who’d come from civilian life. A harsh civilian life, judging by the scars he’d seen. Dylan would love to hear how this guy had made it into E.D.G.E. But Dante wasn’t one to share tales, as he’d found out on the long journey to Iraq.

But what he did know was that Dante was the car guy. He could commandeer anything with wheels and drive the shit out of it. He also knew engines and machines inside and out. Some people—okay, maybe it was Dani, one of E.D.G.E.’s tech goddesses—had whispered that he was a robot himself. Dylan smiled at that thought. It would be good to have some kind of cyborg along.

But it really didn’t matter to him as long as Dante did the job. Dylan signaled to him and then moved past a narrow alley to the next building. He covered while Dante crossed. They moved forward in tandem. The man had some kind of training; Dylan just couldn’t figure out what kind.

On the other side of the street and one block ahead, Jake and Marc stopped when a person stepped out of an alley ahead, motioned to them and then ducked back into the shadows.

Must be the embedded operator.

The radio in his ear clicked. “Cowboy, Gears. Get your asses over here. Change of route,” Jake told them.

Dylan frowned, but clicked an affirmative on his throat mic and headed across the dark street to their location. Their contact for the mission stood with Jake in an alley.

The contact stood shorter than Jake and was dressed in black. Dylan scowled now as he came up to them, stopping just a few feet away. Everything but the eyes were covered. He recognized those dark eyes.

Sarah Ramirez.

Fuck. He’d known she was in Iraq, but he hadn’t expected to see her tonight. And by the look of her wide eyes, she hadn’t expected to see him either.

The last time he’d seen those eyes, they’d been gazing at him from under his sheets. But then they’d been filled with warmth, with desire. Now they held the cold distance of a stranger.

Dammit. Sarah Ramirez. He’d really thought they’d had something together, that they’d been building something. And then she’d walked out of his apartment and never looked back, never contacted him again. Treating him like a spent shell, something to be discarded without thought. Anger traveled up his spine and into his throat as he looked at her, watching him as if he were just another guy on her team.

He gave his head a slight shake. He couldn’t process seeing her right now. He clenched his teeth and forced his thoughts back to the mission. Dylan turned from Sarah and scanned the street around him for movement; his MP5 moving in the same direction as his gaze.