“Safekeeping.” Corbray’s tone was sharp with sarcasm. “What a hero.”
If Hollyhadbeen an ordinary tourist, her life would have ended that day. Hansen would have destroyed the phone, taken his time raping and beating her, and then blown her head off and tossed her body in a marsh.
Holly finished her part of the story. “He told his guys to get out of the vehicle because he and I were going to have some fun. I waited till his pants were down and then threw up on him. He slapped me, but he lost his erection.”
Andris’ jaw tightened, his expression hard. “The target stepped out of the vehicle to clean himself up and still had his pants around his ankles when we moved on him. We eliminated the two bodyguards, bagged Hansen, shoved him into the back of our vehicle, and headed straight for the airport. It took less than two minutes. I might or might not have punched him square in the face.”
Hansen was lucky Andris hadn’t gelded him on the spot.
“Did you run into any—” Derek was cut off by the persistent buzzing of his cell phone. He glanced at the display.Fuck. “I need to take this.”
“Istanbul?” Corbray asked.
Derek shook his head, got to his feet. “Senator Hamilton.”
Corbray grimaced. “What the fuck does he want?”
“I’m about to find out.”
* * *
Derek bitback a burst of laughter. “You want me to fly into Afghanistan with a team and abduct your daughter? I can’t do that, sir. It’s illegal.”
What a crazy son of a bitch.
“I don’t give a goddamn what’s legal!” Hamilton shouted into his ear. “Jenna won’t listen to reason. She has no business being there. The Talibankillmidwives.”
It was the truth. Talibs deliberately targeted midwives. When they’d attacked the town of Ghazni last summer, they’d made their way to a midwifery school in the city and put a round through a midwife’s head while the student midwives hid in a safe room. They claimed that midwives were violating the rules of Islam by giving women contraception, even though Islam permitted the use of contraception.
The truth was more straightforward than that. Nothing frightened Talibs more than an educated woman. But that wasn’t the issue here.
“Cobra cannot use force to bring a U.S. citizen back to the country without a warrant and the orders of DOJ.”
“Don’t forget what you owe my family.” Hamilton’s voice turned cold. “My son died for you. He—”
Derek knew what Jimmy had done for him, butno waywas he putting up with this guilt trip. “Nothing changes the fact that I cannot kidnap a U.S. citizen. Once she’s here, what happens then? After she sues Cobra and wins, she’s free to fly back to Afghanistan—unless you’re willing to lock her up.”
“I would do no such thing.”
Derek wasn’t so sure.
Before Jimmy had joined the Army, his old man had tried to control every aspect of his life—how he wore his hair, where he went to college, the classes he took, the girls he dated, his choice of career, even his diet. If Jenna had gotten the same treatment as her brother, she’d no doubt left the country to get away from her asshole father.
For a moment, Senator Hamilton was silent. When he spoke again, there was an oily tone to his voice. “Jenna is my only living child. Grab your gear, get on a fucking plane, and talk her into coming home.”
“You want me to act as her bodyguard?”
“Jenna is wasting her potential over there. I didn’t raise her and send her to the best schools so that she could help poor people overpopulate the world with kids they can’t feed. She needs to come home, find a husband, and stop trying to fix that place.”
Could the man be any more of an asshole?
Derek knew what it was to be poor. The orphan son of a teen mom who’d overdosed on heroin, he’d been found in an alley and had grown up with nothing, moving from foster home to foster home, being raised by drunks and losers who liked the extra money from the state but didn’t give a damn about him.
“Where is she?”
“At a clinic in a rural area outside of Mazar-e-Sharif.”
Balkh Province.