Page 37 of Stand Fast

He was so damn cute. “You guess right. And you sure know how to sweet talk a girl.”

His hazel eyes heated with the promise of what was to come. “Sweetheart, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

With that he turned and jogged away, leaving her staring after him with an unfamiliar ache of longing filling the center of her chest.

****

Man, it was colder than a hair on a polar bear’s ass out here.

Zaid dropped into a crouch behind Kai, using his buddy as a human windbreaker while they waited in position for Hamilton’s next command. As usual the team leader was up front with Freeman, scouting out what was happening in the village from their vantage point on top of a low rise about two hundred yards away.

They’d inserted a couple klicks to the west along with the NIU guys, using a ridge in the topography to help muffle the noise of the helos’ rotors, and then covered the distance to here in under ten minutes. The NIU force was fanned out ahead of them, ready to lead the charge into the village. As planned, the Blackhawks had pulled back to another location, where they would await the order for extraction from the target once the op was over.

On one knee, Zaid shifted his grip on his rifle and scanned the dusty terrain through his NVGs. It was slightly warmer out than during their previous op, but the slicing wind made it feel way colder. Thankfully Kai’s big frame blocked the worst of it for him as they waited, the other five guys behind Zaid.

He had a good feeling about this one. Nothing he could point to with certainty or even give a reason for; more like a gut-deep knowledge that this time their efforts were going to pay dividends. Jaliya had grilled Barakat on the drive back to Bagram, and relayed everything she’d learned to her boss over the phone en route. By the time they’d made it back, the wheels for this op had already been set into motion.

But he hadn’t been able to focus on any of that with all the emotions swirling through him, too caught up in the need to touch her. Hold her. Taste her.

Make her his.

He still couldn’t believe she’d broken contact with him all those months ago over a goddamn joke. There was no way she could have misunderstood what that kiss tonight had said, however.

He wanted her, plain and simple. All of her, everything she had to give. He refused to be the only one risking his heart here. So he would break through whatever barriers she put between them to make that happen.

“Okay, listen up,” Hamilton said through their headsets, jerking Zaid back to the present. “We’ve got movement in the southeast part of the village, and HQ confirms there are five vehicles on site. Two old five-ton, three pickups. Minimal number of men with them, maybe a dozen total.”

Zaid couldn’t wait to get in there and ruin the party with his teammates. To jam a monkey wrench in the guts of The Jackal’s smuggling machine and bring that bastard to justice.

“We’re going in in two teams. NIU’s ready to go. Let’s move.”

Zaid’s blood pumped hot and heavy in his veins as he stood and followed Maka over the other side of the rise. Prentiss hustled past him to get his part of the team in position, and together they started for the unsuspecting village.

The NIU got there first. Sporadic fire erupted from the men manning the trucks, but they were quickly subdued by the NIU’s immediate and decisive response.

For the first time, Zaid’s confidence about the raid wavered. Was that it? A shipment big enough to fill two five-tons, and that was all the resistance they mounted? Something was off.

When he and his team reached the village, they immediately moved to assist the NIU in securing the village. The Afghan unit had wounded two men and were in the process of cuffing another nine.

Zaid broke off with Maka to check the first house they came to. A young family of four sat huddled on the dirt floor in the front room, hands on heads. Zaid found a hunting rifle in the bedroom and took it outside, explaining to the husband that he would return it when the teams left the village.

“Village secure. Let’s see what we’ve got,” Hamilton said.

Zaid and Maka went through the little house, found nothing, and moved to the next one. The NIU was already tearing apart the five-ton trucks while Freeman and Prentiss went through the pickups.

In the second house, Zaid found a small cache of weapons. A dozen pistols and four rifles hurriedly wrapped in a rug and tossed into the corner, probably moments after the NIU had arrived. “Anything?” he called out to Maka, who was in another room.

“Yeah, got something.”

Zaid walked through the mud-brick doorway to find his buddy pulling black plastic-wrapped bricks out of an old wooden crate. “How much have you got?”

“Five. They find anything in those trucks?”

“Hope so. Here, gimme those. I’ll take them to Hamilton and see what I can find out.” He took the bricks to his team leader, who was standing beside one of the five-tons talking with the NIU commander. “Maka found these in the second house,” Zaid said, pointing.

Hamilton grunted. “Nothing else?”

“Few weapons.” He looked back at where everyone was still conducting the search. “How we doing so far?”

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