Page 18 of Indirect Attack
But even in high school, when she very well might have had other people to hang out with, she’d chosen to be with me more often than not. Even in elementary school and junior high, she could have spent her time playing or shopping with friends at the mall. Instead, she would show up at my door, a bag of snacks in one hand and a movie in the other, dragging me away from my drawing notebooks just to spend time with me.
In my heart of hearts, I knew there was no way Jasmine could become the kind of person who told me she didn’t have a boyfriend when she did. Not me. Not with our history.
Not that I had done anything to deserve her friendship over the past years. The thought had been rankling since I had seen her name and photo in the dossier.
Over the past seven years, I had done a lot of growing up. Out of the four of us Rusev brothers, Tri had always been the consummate older brother, standing up for us, looking out for us, shielding us from our father’s heavy-handed thoughts on child-rearing and preparing kids for the real world. He had always been serious and watchful, even more so before he’d methis wife Ashley, and they’d had a daughter. Now he smiled more, but people had called him an old soul since he was a child.
I looked most like him, in build and in our faces, and with my quiet introversion, I’d been compared to him often growing up. But where Tri had a maturity that spoke of his status as the eldest brother, I had only been quiet, wrapped up in myself, my art, and my feelings in a family where you weren’t supposed to have any. But I was too much like our mom, and I felt too much, which had been a problem. I’d never learned how to handle those feelings, and I hadn’t had the maturity to deal with them.
But years, time, and growth had given me the space to understand what a child I’d been. And as many terrible things as I’d seen in the Marines, I’d also been given a chance to witness the world as it was, interact with those for whom life was far worse, who had dealt with horrible tragedies, more than I’d ever seen in my lifetime.
Perspective had changed me, and I could see now the mistakes I’d made, especially when it came to Jasmine.
Whatever chance life had given us, I wasn’t going to screw it up this time. If Jasmine was single, I wanted to see where this could go. I wanted to see if we couldn’t make up for our mistakes.
The only outlier in this equation was that guy, Greg. I couldn’t explain why he was on the trip, but if Jasmine didn’t care, neither did I. I might not even have to cross paths with him, anyway.
Duty for the day was uneventful, made up of mostly kicking myself for forgetting to get Jasmine’s number or room number. It was in the dossier, but that was back with the CO until I took over guard of the dig starting tomorrow. The only thing I could do was show up at the hotel lobby at eight and hope for the best. At least I knew where she was staying, and I knew the location ofthe dig. From there, it wouldn’t be hard to find Jasmine if I had to.
I had just been relieved from duty and was heading for the showers when someone called to me. I stopped, looking around to find a soldier I didn’t know hurrying toward me through the waning afternoon light.
We saluted, and I waited for the man to start talking.
“Sergeant, my name is Johnson. I’m with intelligence. Will you come with me?”
The man’s gaze swept the area around us, and my senses pricked. Nothing good ever came of needing a private place to speak. In fact, nothing good ever came of talking to intelligence officers because they never sought you out to deliver good news.
Nor was it good news when we returned to his tent, and he handed me a file.
“What’s this?” I asked, leafing through the various pages of transcripts. It was too much for me to read at one time—it would most likely take me days to sort through it, should that be the officer’s goal. I hoped not. That was his job, not mine. Mine was to respond to whatever resulted from reports like this.
There was enough of it to make me nervous, however.
“Chatter,” was the answer, and I had to take a deep breath, raising my eyes to meet the officer’s.
“I can see that. What about?” He was shorter than me, and I didn’t have to raise my gaze far before dropping it back to the pages, hoping he’s caught the look I’d flashed him.
“About your dig.” The man kept shifting his weight from foot to foot, the movement in the corner of my eye annoying. “It’s a lot, suddenly, from an international terrorist group. I think you’ve come into contact with them before.”
My annoyance vanished in the wake of his words because I knew without a doubt which international terrorist group he was speaking of. I’d only come into contact with them once andonly briefly. But by now, it seemed like some gruesome Rusev tradition. Or perhaps they had some vendetta. Or it was simply bad luck.
Triton had been the first to encounter the shadowy organization, one so secretive that the intelligence community had very little on them even after all these years. Taking down one of their bases had been one of Tri’s first missions as a newly minted Navy SEAL. But his second run-in with them, years later, had nearly killed him. He’d ended up narrowly escaping death only to be stranded on a deserted island to die.
Herman had been the next one to come into contact with the terrorists, escorting a flight of important civilians across enemy territory in his fighter jet. The terrorists had shot both planes down. That was when I had seen the organization, or at least witnessed the devastation from their attack, rescuing Herman and his now-wife Scarlett from the wreckage and the ever-present danger.
Sam, too, had fought against them. He’d managed to help save his platoon and the villagers of a town the terrorists had destroyed with his now-wife, then an Army medic, Rosa.
Now, it seemed, it was my turn.
“They’re looking for a high-profile target, something multi-national. Though none of the chatter has called out the dig specifically, that’s the only thing within miles. It’s an international team, and the find itself made international news. If the terrorists hit it, and casualties result, it would make headlines.”
“Why?” I asked.
The intelligence officer shook his head. “With these guys, it’s impossible to know. They don’t broadcast their goals or even take credit for what they’ve done.”
From the little Tri had told me, the terrorist group simply liked to sew chaos, then sit back and watch the result. They’dnearly started several international wars, and that was the only thing at which they seemed to aim—to throw the world into war-torn anarchy.
“Okay.” I closed the folder and handed it back to the officer. “I’m going to take this information to the dig. Whether they are the target or not, they need to be warned. I’ll ask for more guys to cover guard there. Let me know if anything else pops up.”
