Page 14 of Her Sensual Protector

Nic gave out a long-suffering sigh. Again Raiden and Leo grinned at one another. Even though Nic was closest to the light switch, in his opinion he was told to turn out the lights because he was the youngest. Max was going to have to pound some sense into the kid pretty soon and get rid of that chip on his shoulder.

“Aw fuck, caves.” Cullen groaned.

“Oh for God’s sake, Lyons, what else did you expect?” Asher demanded to know. “We’re in Afghanistan. Of course, the terrorists would be hiding out in caves.”

“They have bugs,” he whined.

Everybody in the tiny room laughed, which is what Cullen had intended. Leo saw Max rubbing the back of his neck.

Shit, this was worse than he thought. Usually, Max didn’t give away the game like this.

“Cut the crap, guys,” Leo commanded. “What are we up against?” he asked Kane.

“Right now we know he’s in the Pushtun Region of Afghanistan, we can extrapolate that their bases are in caves, which means the Hindu Kush mountain range,” Kane explained. He used his laser pointer to show the most likely area.

“It’s not going to be easy for Siraj Haqqani to get from Pakistan over to some cave in the Afghan side of the Hindu Kush mountains,” Leo noted.

“There’s always helicopters,” Nic said. “But how often do they use them?”

“Not often, Nic,” Kane answered. “But we can’t rule it out.”

“Nope, don’t think so,” Max said decisively. “Haqqani’s going to know we’re going to be carefully monitoring airspace because of the good doctor’s kidnapping. He won’t want to risk it.”

“That’s good news,” Leo said. “Gives us three or four days to find and rescue Dr. Squires.”

“Bad weather,” Kane said. “So closer to four or five days. It gives us more time.”

“Leo,” Max pointed at him. “Go call Tom Ludlum, make sure that the daughter is being watched immediately. We don’t need any problems on this side, we’ll have enough to deal with on the mission.”

Leo nodded and stepped out of the cramped office. He didn’t have Tom Ludlum’s number, but he wasn’t worried. He pulled out his cell phone and waited. It took less than a minute and a text message from Kane came through with the man’s number. Yep, their computer/communications guy sure could multitask.

He placed the call and got Tom’s voicemail.

“Tom, this is Leo Perez, I’m with the Night Storm team, under Max Hogan. We’ve met before in Virginia and I was in the ambassador’s office today during the poorly handled interview of Daisy Squires. I went to lunch with her this afternoon, I’m worried she’s going to try to get involved. We don’t need that. Can you make sure you have someone sit on her, to make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble? Call me if you need details.”

He hung up and went back into the conference room.

“—been reports of activity here.” Kane was using his pointer at a specific spot on a close-up shot on the mountain range. He flipped to another slide which showed some drone footage. “This is what the camp looked like two weeks ago. Three men and two dogs. Now, look at it two days ago.”

Leo did. There were two covered trucks and a jeep with netting over it, but it was easy to surmise that it had an anti-aircraft gun on the top of it. Leo also counted ten men, four dogs, and God knew how many were in the cave. They were taking their security seriously. Yep, something big was going on.

“We’re going to set down here,” Kane pointed to a spot a lot closer than any of the terrorists would ever expect.

Gotta love a Blackhawk helicopter.

“We don’t have any diversion or specific timetable, so we’re going to go in as soon as we can,” Max explained.

“We’re not going to make a play for Siraj?” Cullen asked. “Why not?”

“There’s a reliable source close to him that says he’ll be coming with an entourage of at least twenty. Yeah, it would be nice to take him out, but our number one mission is to get the doctor, and hopefully the reporter.”

“Does the reliable source say if the reporter is with the doctor?” Leo asked.

Max shook his head. “All we got is the fact that Siraj is coming with a group of people. The higher-ups are not giving me anything as to who the source is, which is fine by me. So it could be coming from someone unrelated to the Haqqani Network in Pakistan, who just observed Siraj moving out, or it could be someone embedded in Siraj’s organization. Either way, the brass is sure of the info.”

Everybody nodded.

“Tonight?” Asher asked.