Hard Target: A Cobra Elite Novel Read online

“My presence there could provoke an attack on the hospital.” Did Hamilton not understand this? “By sending me, you could bring about the crisis you hope to avert.”

  The local militias and likely the Taliban, too, would know that some American military guy was hanging out around the hospital before Derek’s boots hit the dirt, and that might prove irresistible to someone looking to put another notch in his AK-47.

  “I thought you special operators were the best. I thought you could go anywhere unseen, change how you look, disappear into the local population.”

  Derek was about to explain that there was a world of difference between a covert military operation and driving up to a hospital in an armored vehicle and standing guard in broad daylight, but Hamilton cut him off.

  “If you don’t get your ass on a plane tonight and do your best to bring Jenna home, I will ruin Cobra. I’ll make sure the company is never tasked with a government assignment again.”

  It wasn’t an idle threat. Hamilton sat on the Armed Services Committee. Cobra could probably survive without his support, but he could make life rough for a while, especially given the demise of Derek’s company.

  Derek’s reputation in the private military field had been rock solid—until the day al-Qaeda had used a new kind of cell phone hack to get the jump on his men, killing his team and kidnapping Laura Nilsson, Corbray’s wife. The attack had happened live during one of Laura’s news broadcasts. Millions had watched terrorists gun down his men and carry Laura, screaming, from the room. The resulting backlash had driven his company into bankruptcy.

  Derek didn’t want to bring controversy down on Cobra.

  “Don’t threaten me.” He tried to meet Hamilton halfway. “I’ll get in touch with our assets in Mazar and get men I trust—”

  “I want you there. I know you would do anything to keep James’ little sister safe.”

  Stick the dagger in and twist it, why don’t you?

  Fuck.

  Jimmy had been Derek’s best bud in the Green Berets. He had died saving Derek’s life, and Derek truly didn’t want his little sister to get hurt or killed. Derek could fly to Afghanistan and explain the dangers to her. If she refused to come home, at least he would know that he’d tried.

  You’re going to regret this.

  “Okay, I’ll take the job, but I won’t abduct her. That’s not even open to discussion. Expect an invoice this afternoon.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t care about the cost. Just get on that plane, and talk her into coming home.”

  That was the other thing.

  “I won’t be able to head to Afghanistan for a few days because of a priority operation that has the president’s signature on it. I’m due in Istanbul tomorrow.”

  “Just bring Jenna home.”

  Derek ended the call and walked back to the conference room, where the debriefing was all but completed. His fury must have shown on his face because the discussion stopped when he walked in.

  “What’s wrong?” Holly asked.

  Derek looked up at Corbray’s image on the screen. “I need to catch my ride to the airport, so I’ll fill you in on the way. In the meantime, start pulling assets together for Balkh Province. After Istanbul, I head to Afghanistan.”

  * * *

  Jenna Hamilton sat on the floor, surrounded by village women and doing her best to keep the conversation on the subject of prenatal warning signs. This village was the last stop on her three-day education and outreach tour of the countryside. Almost forty women of all ages had come and now packed the small space, their burqas cast off or pulled back like veils, smiles on their beautiful faces.

  Their enthusiasm and their welcome were heartening. Their lack of knowledge about their bodies was not.

  It was a tragedy. Afghanistan had once been a developed country where women walked the streets without veils, went to college, and worked as professors and doctors and artists. Now, thanks to religious extremism and decades of fruitless war, those days were gone. A generation of women had been deprived of education, forced to stay indoors, isolated from the world, their lives controlled entirely by men.

  “Swollen ankles—who has seen a pregnant woman with swollen ankles?” Jenna spoke in Dari, using words that everyone would understand and not clinical terminology.

  Faces old and young lit up, and the women spoke all at once.

  “My daughter’s ankles were fat with her first child.”

  “Swollen ankles are part of being pregnant, aren’t they?”

  “I had swollen ankles with all eight of my children, but I am well.”

  Jenna waited until the talk died down to go on. “When a pregnant woman has swollen ankles, it is a warning sign. Her relatives should bring her to the hospital so that we can check her and make sure she isn’t getting sick. Swollen ankles can be a sign of a serious problem like high blood pressure, and that can kill both the mother and the baby.”

  She wasn’t sure the women understood what blood pressure was, but that didn’t matter. As long as they knew what to watch for, lives could be saved.

  Jenna knew what it was to grow up without a mother. Her mother had committed suicide when Jenna had been tiny. She barely remembered her mom—but the hole that her death had left in Jenna’s life was too real. If Jenna could save even one mother, this entire trip would be worth it.

  Then a woman named Afarin spoke. “My daughter-in-law’s ankles were swollen for weeks. One day she fell to the ground and started to shake. We asked my husband to take her to the hospital, but he refused. She died that night with the baby still inside her.”

  It was one of the harsh realities of life here. Men controlled women’s access to healthcare, and too many of them refused to let their wives, daughters, and daughters-in-law leave home for medical treatment, even when it meant days of needless pain—and preventable deaths.

  Delara, one of the Afghan midwives at the hospital, had said it best.

  “It is better to be a goat in Afghanistan than a woman.”

  Afarin took in the words of comfort offered by the other women. This exchange of sympathy had become a social ritual in the lives of Afghan women—a response to oppression and suffering beyond anything Jenna could comprehend.

  It was their suffering that had brought her to Afghanistan. She’d read the statistics about the one-in-eight lifetime risk Afghan women faced of dying from pregnancy-related causes. As a midwife, she’d felt she had to do something, so she had signed up to teach and work at a hospital that also served as a midwifery school. Training a generation of Afghan women to become skilled birth attendants was the key to improving maternal and infant mortality in the short term—and enabling Afghanistan in the long term to meet its own healthcare needs.

  Jenna waited for a lull in the conversation to make her point. “If your husband had brought your daughter-in-law to the hospital, we could have given her medicine and done surgery to take the baby out. We might have been able to save both her and her baby.”

  The women fell silent again.

  Jenna let that sink in. “Bleeding is another warning sign that you should come to the hospital. Sometimes early in pregnancy, it’s normal to bleed a little, but lots of blood means you should come to the hospital right away.”

  “We soak cotton in whiskey to stop bleeding,” said an older woman, her face wrinkled like an old apple. “We put that inside a woman if she bleeds too much after giving birth.”

  Heads turned to see what Jenna would say about this.

  “Bleeding happens when the womb won’t contract hard enough after a baby is born—or when a piece of the afterbirth is stuck inside. At the clinic, we can give a mother medicine to make her womb contract. We can also put her to sleep so she won’t feel pain and take out the part of the afterbirth that’s stuck. If she has lost a lot of blood, we can give her a blood transfusion. All of this can save her life so that her child will have a mother.”

  “Won’t you hurt her liver if you reach inside her?”

  Jenna
turned and pointed to the side-view cut-away diagram of the pregnant woman behind her. “The womb is closed at the top. See? You can’t reach a woman’s liver through her womb. The liver is here.”

  The conversation went on for another two hours over sugared almonds and cups of sweet kahwah, a kind of green tea spiced with cardamom and cinnamon bark, prepared by Sayah, their hostess and the wife of the village headman.

  Jenna had just finished telling them that fever was also a warning sign when she heard the rumble of big engines and a shout outside the door.

  The room fell silent, and the women donned their burqas. None of them had known an Afghanistan that wasn’t at war.

  Jenna drew her gray headscarf over her hair, stood, and closed the anatomy chart just in case. “I’m sure all is well.”

  “Inshallah,” Sayah whispered. God willing.

  Farzad and two of his men stood guard, together with men loyal to Sayah’s husband, against any incursions by the militias or local Talibs. Farzad had her paperwork—the letter from the region’s governor, Abdul Jawad Kazi, that gave her permission to work in Balkh Province. But written words meant nothing to men who couldn’t read and wouldn’t help her at all in the case of the Taliban.

  She heard Farzad telling someone that it was the will of both God and The Lion of the North—the name Kazi had earned during his days fighting Soviets as a Mujahedeen—that the women of this village should meet today.

  Someone shouted something in a dialect Jenna didn’t understand.

  Farzad spoke again in Dari. “It is a meeting of only married women discussing childbirth. It’s of no consequence. If you have questions, you should call The Lion.”

  Then Sayah’s husband spoke. “Friends, we have no disputes between us. Come. Let us drink tea together.”

  The silence stretched on, Jenna’s pulse ratcheting.

  Men’s laughter.

  The rumble of engines as the intruders drove away.

  Jenna exhaled, smiled. “All is well.”

  A moment later, Farzad knocked on the door. “Miss Jenna, it is time to go!”

  Farzad, an Afghan of Tajik heritage who had trained and worked with U.S. forces, had been head of the clinic’s security unit for the six months that she’d been here. She trusted him with her life. If he said it was time to go…

  Jenna embraced Sayah, thanked her for her hospitality and kindness, and urged the women to share what she’d taught them today. Then she gathered up her anatomy chart and other materials and wished the women farewell. “Khoda hafiz.”

  May God protect you.

  A chorus of good wishes followed her out the door, putting a knot in her chest. In the six months she’d been here, she’d come to love Afghan women. She’d never met people who were more welcoming than they were. In six months, they had taught her so much about generosity, hospitality, and resilience.

  Had she taught them anything today?

  She had no way of knowing.

  Jenna hurried with Farzad through the cold to their vehicle. “Who were they?”

  “Militia.” Farzad opened the rear passenger door for her, rifle slung over his shoulder. “I’ve seen their leader before. He’s Uyghur, a foreigner. I don’t trust him. Never trust the motives of a man who won’t share a cup of tea.”

  If Farzad didn’t trust him, neither did Jenna. “Let’s get back to the hospital.”

  2

  They drove through the gate at Kazi Women’s Hospital just after sunset, Jenna breathing a sigh of relief as the heavy panel of steel closed behind them. Snow was beginning to fall and—

  What the hell?

  An armored Land Cruiser sat in the courtyard.

  “That’s not Afghan Security Forces,” Farzad called back to her before she could ask, shouting so that she could hear him through the Plexiglas that separated the men in the front seats from any women who might ride in the back.

  “Is it militia or Coalition?” Jenna called back.

  She had yet to run into the Polish troops that patrolled the province.

  “I don’t think so. Stop the vehicle.”

  The driver stopped just as a man stepped out of the Land Cruiser. Tall and dressed in khaki pants and a parka, he looked military to Jenna. She’d bet her life he was armed.

  “Stay here, miss.” Farzad climbed out, weapon in hand, and closed the door behind him. “Salaam aalaikum.” Peace be upon you.

  “Wa’alaikum salaam.” Peace be upon you, as well.

  The man returned the Arabic greeting, then broke into flawless Dari. But there was no way he was Afghan. He had no beard, his jaw square and clean-shaven. His short hair gleamed blond in the headlights, and he stood at least a head taller than Farzad, who was taller than most Afghan men.

  “I’ve just been to pay my respects to The Lion of the North,” he told Farzad. “Abdul Jawad Kazi sends his wishes for peace and health to you all.”

  As Jenna listened, she found herself wondering where she’d seen him before. He looked familiar somehow. Had he told Farzad his name? No, she didn’t think so.

  Farzad seemed to relax. “Health and peace be upon him as well. I am Farzad Mazari, head of security here.”

  “I’m Derek Tower, Jenna Hamilton’s half-brother. I’ve been sent by her father to bring her home.”

  Stunned, Jenna gaped at him through the closed window.

  Derek Tower.

  She recognized that name, but he wasn’t her half-brother. He’d been her brother James’ best friend, the fellow Green Beret whose life her brother had saved at the cost of his own. But Derek’s lie wasn’t what made her blood boil.

  Her father had sent Derek to bring her back to the United States.

  To hell with that!

  Jenna threw open the door and jumped to the snowy ground. “You can turn your fancy Land Cruiser around and get out of here. I’m not going back to the U.S.”

  She knew she had probably startled Farzad with her lack of hospitality, but this wasn’t any of his concern.

  She’d spoken to Derek in English, but he kept speaking Dari, a smile on his face as if he were happy to see her. “Hey, sister. I’ve missed you.”

  “This man is your relative?” Farzad asked in Dari.

  Jenna had no choice but to go along with the lie—unless she wanted Farzad and his men to beat the hell out of Derek and drag him away. “Yes.”

  Farzad seemed satisfied. “He says he has come at your father’s request to take you home to America.”

  “That’s too bad.” Jenna turned and reached inside the Land Cruiser for her anatomy chart and other things. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Farzad seemed surprised. “But your father sent him.”

  Jenna took the venom out of her voice. None of this was Farzad’s fault. It wasn’t Derek’s fault either. “In the United States, a grown daughter can do as she chooses without her father’s approval.”

  Farzad turned to Derek as if to confirm this.

  “She tells the truth,” Derek said. “She can go wherever she wants—even if it is unsafe and gets her killed.”

  “I came here to save women’s lives and train student midwives, not to be safe. I’m sorry you made the trip for nothing, brother.” Jenna shut the vehicle’s door and stomped off through the snow to the dormitory, leaving Farzad and Derek in the cold.

  She keyed herself in and walked back to her small dorm room, where she dropped the chart and other materials on her bed.

  Oh, the gall!

  It was just like her father to do something like this. He always claimed he was acting in her interests, but it was really about control. She was thirty years old, for God’s sake, not seventeen. The man had no say in any aspect of her life. It wasn’t really about her anyway. Her father was a toxic narcissist who viewed his children, his staff, and everyone around him as nothing more than extensions of himself. The more she tried to block him out of her life, the more he tried to interfere.

  “We need to talk.”

  Jenna whirle
d to find Derek behind her. “You can’t be here. It’s a women’s dorm. You’ll get all of us in trouble.”

  “I won’t stay.” He was so tall that his head almost touched the top of the door frame, his body filling the space. He stood there, arms crossed over his chest, watching her through hard blue eyes, his skin tanned from the sun, his face rugged—and irritatingly handsome. “Your father is worried about you.”

  She ignored the punch of attraction—or tried to. “He told you that?”

  Derek nodded. “You’re his only surviving child, and he wants you out of the line of fire. He paid me a fortune to fly here just to ask you to come home.”

  “Well, you’ve got your answer. Hopefully, he paid for your return flight as well.”

  The room went dark—another power outage. Then the generator kicked in, and the lights came back on.

  “He did—but I’m not leaving yet.”

  Delara buzzed her on the old intercom system. “If you’re back, Jenna, I need your help. We have six women in labor, and one is in distress.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Jenna hung up her coat and adjusted her headscarf. “I need to go. You know the way out.”

  Derek moved just enough to let her through. “We’ll finish this conversation later.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.” She caught the clean, masculine scent of his skin as she passed, the warmth of it curling inside her.

  Ignore it. You’re probably just ovulating.

  She didn’t look back but made her way through the secured doors into the hospital’s labor and delivery wing.

  * * *

  Derek watched Jenna disappear, cries of pain drifting through the doorway. Well, this was going exactly as he’d thought it would. Why had he let Hamilton guilt him into taking this job?

  You’re a fucking idiot. That’s why.

  Behind him, someone pounded on the door. “Tower! Come out!”

  Women poked their heads out of their rooms to see what was happening. Some gasped when they saw him, disappearing quickly behind closed doors again. Others pulled scarves over their faces, their eyes wide.