Page 38 of Stand Fast

“Not as well as we thought we would. Trucks are empty. Whatever they were carrying is long gone.”

That didn’t make any sense. “Has to be around here someplace. They must have buried it all.”

“If they did, let’s hope we find it.”

The search of the village turned up more weapons and bricks of hash, but nothing on the order of what they had expected. An expanded search of the immediate area turned up no sign of buried contraband.

The good news was, they had more than the fifty kilogram arrest threshold of hash, meaning they could arrest the men they’d cuffed and bring them in for questioning. The drugs themselves didn’t matter, but the information they stood to gain from the prisoners did.

Zaid stayed with Hamilton and the leader of the NIU to question the prisoners, trying to find answers. Upon separate questioning, the men who’d come in with the trucks all told the same story, insisting that they had been hired to drive the vehicles here and await further instructions.

“From The Jackal?” Zaid demanded of one, the youngest of the prisoners, a teenager barely old enough to grow a scraggly beard. His threadbare clothes and worn footwear told Zaid he was just a poor farm kid.

“Yes.”

And the little bit of money dangled in front of the kid had been more than enough to make him jump at the offer, no matter that it could have cost him his life. “You saw him?”

“No. I only know that was the name of the man who was going to pay us. But he was here.”

Zaid’s attention sharpened. “When?”

“Tonight. Before we got here.”

He exchanged a loaded look with Hamilton.

“Get me the village elder,” his team leader growled.

Zaid found him in one of the houses and brought him back for questioning. The man had a snow-white beard and looked like he was in his seventies, though he could have been much younger. Eking out a life here in this harsh terrain took its toll on people.

If the elder had seen The Jackal in person or knew who he was, he wasn’t saying, either too afraid or paid too well to snitch. But from what Zaid could deduce, the smuggler could have been here as little as a few hours ago.

Throughout the questioning, Hamilton stood listening with his arms folded across his chest, his expression giving away nothing. “Put a hood on him and take him over to the others, then get samples of those bricks,” he muttered to Zaid before walking away, pulling out his sat phone to contact HQ.

Zaid escorted the bound and hooded prisoner over to wait with the rest of them, all lined up against a rock wall. Leaving the NIU to guard them, he and his teammates began to collect samples of the hash before throwing it all into a pile and burning it.

In the darkness they waited for the Blackhawks to arrive. Zaid loaded the samples and confiscated weapons onto his team’s bird and jumped aboard as the NIU hustled the prisoners into two of the others. Frustration was starting to take its toll on them. It felt like they were playing a losing game of whack-a-mole out here, wasting their time—not to mention money and resources—for no reason.

Part of the job, man. Comes with the territory. You’ll get a big score next time.

Sometimes hope was the only thing that kept him from feeling his team’s efforts were completely useless over here.

Cold, clean air rushed through the Blackhawk’s open doors as the helo lifted into the sky for the trip back to base. Zaid stared out at the barren landscape passing beneath them and thought of Jaliya. Hopefully she and her team would at least be able to gain some valuable intel from the prisoners they were bringing in.

Time was slipping away from them. Only nine weeks more, and he’d be heading back home. That left him with one hell of a conundrum.

Because unlike all of his previous deployments over here, this time he’d be leaving his heart behind when he left. The countdown was on to make her his before that happened.

Chapter Nine

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Zaid murmured as he pulled the door open for her.

Jaliya shot him a grin and continued past him and Prentiss where they would stand guard outside the hotel dining room doors until she’d finished.

Their team had returned safe and sound after the op last night, bearing prisoners who had given her team the tip that had led to this hastily arranged meeting. And since FAST Bravo had some downtime this afternoon, Zaid and Prentiss had kindly volunteered to escort her here for this lunch meeting and act as her personal security detail.

Given the circumstances, she was nervous about it, but having Zaid nearby made her feel safe and bolstered her courage. Her boss had increased her responsibilities and given her more operational latitude over the past few weeks, because he’d said she’d earned it.

She was determined to prove he’d made the right decision. She was going to uncover the identity of The Jackal if it was the last thing she did, and cut off a major stream of revenue for terror groups in the region.

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