Page 61 of The Woman Left Behind

July came in hot and humid. Jina realized it had been a little over a year since she’d begun training, but whoop-de-do, something like that didn’t call for a celebration. It was a guideline for marking time, nothing more.

On one level, everything continued as normal. Another drone operator was being trained to join Kodak’s team, and this time Kodak and the rest of his team were involved from the beginning. She thought that would become the accepted way of doing things from now on. Donnelly’s death had brought it home to everyone that the drone operators were only as safe as the situation allowed them to be, and that the situation could change at the drop of a hat. What could be done to ensure their safety was already being done, and when it came down to it, it was theteamoperators’safety that was the most important, not the drone operators.

As Levi had so pointedly told her on the first day of training, she was the least important member of the team. There was far more money and training invested in the guys, and their expertise was off the charts in comparison with hers.

In the middle of July, they were notified of an upcoming mission in Syria.

At the news, a heavy sense of dread settled in Jina’s stomach. Syria was one of the most dangerous places on Earth. She was more politically aware now than she’d ever been before, and she knew Syria was a war zone. Government forces had lost control of most of the country, battles continued with ISIS, and, boy, she did not want to get in the middle of that.

At least they didn’t have to leave in the middle of the night. The mission required meticulous planning and timing, because of the uncertainty of the ground situation. They were to meet up with a Syrian sympathizer who would lead them to where an informant was hiding; their mission was to get the informant safely out of Syria, because he wouldn’t tell them what he knew until then. The first reaction had been to leave him there; if he wanted to play games when his own safety was ostensibly at risk, then his information likely wasn’t that valuable. Then he’d mentioned a name that had gotten their attention: Graeme Burger.

What they knew about Graeme Burger was getting murkier, rather than clearer. First he had ties with the Sudanese Nawal Daw, and now his name was cropping up in Syria. Someone who had at first seemed to be low tier was assuming more and more prominence. His ties and influence were looking like a spiderweb, with far-reaching consequences. The world of terrorist groups was Byzantine. They were as often enemies with each other as they were with the Western governments; they were less effective because of that. No one wanted them to link together and begin working as a cohesive force, and it was beginning to look as if Graeme Burger might be trying to do that very thing.

Jina completely understoodwhythey were going to Syria. What she hated was thehow—because they had to parachute in.

As soon as she heard the plan during their mission briefing, she got the familiar sick feeling. She’d done more jumps—she’d had to, to keep current with her training—but at best she’d learned how to function. That was it. She dreaded each and every jump, was sick with nerves beforehand, panicked when she first left the plane, and her landings were clumsy at best; usually she landed on her fourth point of contact, namely, her butt. Still, she did it, and hated every second of it.

Sitting in the briefing room, she could feel each team member giving her a quick, concerned glance, because they all knew how much she hated it. And because they were concerned, she had to do it. She couldn’t let them down.

They were lucky in that the new moon was in thirty-six hours, so at least they’d be jumping in the dark. It would have to be a high-altitude jump, to evade radar; the region they were jumping into was sparsely populated, but the Russians had supplied the Syrians with mobile radar/missile batteries that could be anywhere. Theoretically the batteries were deployed near the ports, but “theoretically” was the key word.

Parachute in, meet the sympathizer who would take them to the informant. Then they’d have to get out. That was the hard part. There would be nine of them; a truck would be easier, stealthier, as long as they didn’t encounter any ISIS forces. A helicopter would be faster, but would have to fly the nap of the Earth to stay under the radar horizon, and would attract more attention. Neither option was great, in Jina’s opinion.

But the GO-Teams were built to take such difficulties in stride. Every operation had problems peculiar to it, and their job was to solve those problems and execute the mission. How they did it was up to them.

“Our LZ is here,” Levi said, pointing to a spot in the southern Syrian desert. “Our contact will have a truck fueled and ready to go, here.” He pointed to another location, about two kilometers from the LZ. “Babe, there’re some ruins there where you’ll set up. We’ll collect our package, haul ass for Iraq where we’ll have transport home.” He paused. “We’re operating with one eye closed, here, because we don’t know exactly where the informer is holed up. He could be close, he could be several klicks away, and we don’t know in which direction. Regardless of where he is, if the situation goes tits up, our secondary exfil point will be here. A bird will come in low from Iraq and pick us up.” He gave the coordinates, and everyone made note.

It was understood that, in the event they had to use the secondary point, it would likely be an emergency situation and they wouldn’t have the truck. They’d possibly be under hostile fire, double-timing it on foot across the desert in miserable heat, at night, for—Jina did some rough conversion of kilometers to miles in her head—over twenty miles. Closer to twenty-five miles, likely, which was almost a freakin’ marathon. If they were military, a helicopter would fly through hell to pick them up, but they weren’t military and they had to do the best they could while keeping as low a profile as possible.

Summer. Desert. It was going to be hellishly hot.

“Go home, get ready, get some rest,” Levi finished. “We leave at oh three hundred.”

Getting some rest sounded like a good idea. When Jina climbed the stairs to the small landing outside her door, though, a tall man was sitting on the floor against the wall and got to his feet as she approached.

“Taz!” she gaped at him. “What’re you doing here? Why didn’t you call?”

“Just passing through, had some time to kill, thought I’d come see you,” he said, which didn’t at all explain why he hadn’t called.

She gave him a sisterly get-real look. Just passing through? He was military, he didn’t just “pass through” anywhere. He was in fatigues, and his camo duffel bag was at his feet. “Where are you being deployed to?”

He shrugged, meaning he couldn’t say.

As she unlocked the door, Jina thought the military had been good for her little brother, giving focus to what had been a lot of energy and an inclination to try anything with the possibility of breaking his neck. He was a man now, not a boy; the staff sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve said so.

She eyed the stripes. “When did you make E6?” He’d been an E5 the last time she’d seen him, at Christmas.

“Couple of months ago.” He shut the door behind him. “When did you learn what the stripes mean?”

Oops. Civilians without prior military service wouldn’t recognize most ranks by the insignia. “I live in D.C.,” she pointed out, thinking fast. “You can’t walk ten steps without running into someone who’s in the military.”

He gave her his own version of a get-real look. “C’mon, sis, fess up. I’m not Mom and Dad, I know you aren’t working on software.” His encompassing assessment started at her head and swept down to her feet.

“What?” She looked down at herself. She was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and her latest pair of sneakers, which in her view was pretty damn normal. “I do too work with software. Do you think I should have a pocket protector, or something?”

“You look hard as a rock. You were never as girly-girl as Ashley and Caleigh, but you always had on some face stuff.” He circled his finger around his eyes. “Lipstick and shit. Not now, though. Yeah, running a lot will tone you up, but it won’t give you those arms.”

At least he hasn’t mentioned that my boobs have gone away, too,she thought in exasperation. “I work out, I don’t just run. My job is classified, I’ll give you that, but do you know how many people in the area work on classified stuff?” She glanced at her phone, checked the time. “Do you have time for dinner?”

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