Lady Death

out fine.”
“You would know.”
Raven raised an eyebrow.
“She snuck into your room at the embassy, right?”
“I wouldn’t say she snuck in.”
“You let her in.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Same old Raven.” Wilson sipped his coffee.
“Nothing happened, Clark.”
“Sure.”
“She only wanted reassurance I wasn’t going to skip out.”
Wilson laughed. “Sure.”
Raven gave up and changed the subject. “How’s your family?”
Wilson blinked. He seemed surprised by the question, and Raven understood the reaction. He didn’t normally ask. He had his reasons.
“They’re good. Brenda is checking out colleges.”
“Does she have her eye on any in particular?”
“California.”
“Ouch.”
“My wife isn’t pleased.”
“I have another question,” Raven said.
“Sure.”
“Tomorrow, next day, I’d like to take Tanya out. Show her the area, help her get settled. It might help to see what her new life might be like.”
“We can arrange something. But not for long.”
“Won’t need long. Couple hours.”
“It’ll help for sure,” Wilson said. “We’re going to have her here a while. Cabin fever isn’t something we want to deal with.”
“Does the crew here rotate?”
“Two weeks in, two weeks out. Yeah.”
Raven sipped his tea. The female officer and Tanya returned. Wilson and Raven stood.
“Shall we continue?” Wilson said.
Tanya didn’t look enthusiastic. But she agreed.

15
Hayden hated being stuck in the basement.
He paced the floor behind Lymann’s chair. The extra personnel Wilson had redirected to Damascus had come in handy. They’d had White Widow’s apartment building under surveillance in shifts.
The extra men, with their various shades of skin tone, helped with security. The locals didn’t always see the same three people hanging around the produce souk. Hayden, Lymann, and Colleen had exposed themselves too much over the last 24-hours.
But now the tactical team had point. And Hayden was stuck in the basement.
“Eyes on target,” a voice crackled over the radio. “Two Toyota vans.”
“I see the woman,” said another. “Tiger-striped hijab. Face uncovered.”
“Copy.”
“Moving now.”
“Alpha Team, stay ahead of her. Bravo, pick up the rear and look casual.”
Hayden stopped and shook his head. He wanted to be there. But he couldn’t risk ruining his cover as a humanitarian aid worker. He was too important to the CIA’s needs to play cowboy.
He hadn’t always been a behind-the-scenes chess master. Iraqi rebels fighting against the Hussein regime had given him the “Tiger” nickname during a battle. A special ops soldier lay wounded in need of rescue. Running into the middle of the battlefield, ignoring salvos of heavy fire, Hayden scooped up a fallen enemy’s Kalashnikov. He fired bursts of covering fire as he dragged the wounded man to safety. The Iraqis exclaimed, “He fights like a tiger!” and the name stuck.
Now he paced a basement. A tiger in a cage.
Lymann said, “We got pictures.”
The middle monitor showed overhead drone footage of the Toyota vehicles leaving Damascus. Another screen displayed Bravo Team’s in-dash camera and their point-of-view progress.
“How long till they reach the desert?” Colleen said. She sipped yet another mug of cardamom coffee.
“They’re on Route 90,” Lymann said. “About a half hour if traffic isn’t too bad.”
“And then a seven-hour ride to Sukkariyeh,” Hayden said. “Going to be a long wait.”
“Too bad she’s not going to get there,” Lymann said.
The CIA wanted the drone strike to occur before the Route 53 connection. A long stretch of straight roadway between a cement mixing plant and a gas station made the perfect spot. After the gas station, they’d change to Route 53. They had a “53 Backup” in case of a miss, but Hayden didn’t think it would be necessary.
He scoffed.
“You okay?” Colleen said.
“I wish I was there.”
“Hey,” Lymann said, “you and me both. I got this—” he smacked his fake leg. “What’s your excuse?”
“I gotta babysit you two.”
“You change diapers too?” Colleen said.
“You want to wear that coffee?”
She laughed.
Hayden went to another workstation. A tap of the keys pulled up secondary drone footage of the Sukkariyeh IU base. It was an L-shaped building near a stream outside the crowded city. The stream was part of the Euphrates. It was ridiculous the CIA lawyers refused a drone strike on the building. It was isolated enough for the missiles not to hurt civilians. It was also isolated enough for the tac team in the area to strike and get out before Syrian authorities arrived. A raid would better serve their purposes if there was information to be had within the building, but Hayden’s frustration didn’t subside. They were being micromanaged, as always, by old men who didn’t know what it was like at ground zero and, worse, didn’t care. They cared about optics and rules.
There could be no rules in war if you were going to win.
Which begged the question, were they supposed to win, or maintain a status quo to give the military industrial complex an excuse to build bombs and send young soldiers to fight? If victory wasn’t the goal, why bother?
He didn’t want to think about power brokers stoking war for the sake of profit, but also couldn’t deny it seemed like it was the only reason he was sent around the world to do his job.
Hayden put the internal argument out of his mind. He examined the building further. Trees surrounded the structure. The trees looked tall, and more spread out on the empty lot adjacent to the building. A good shield to prevent helicopters from landing too close to the building. They’d created obstacles on the single roadway leading to the building. Wrecked cars sat on either side and in the center in a random pattern.
The footage rotated as the drone drifted overhead.
Hayden stared at the picture. A chill crawled up his back.
No sentries.
No sign of a welcoming committee for the Islamic Union commander.
No activity whatsoever.
The building appeared empty.
Hayden spotted Lymann in the chair while the latter took a break. He ignored the dashcam footage of Bravo Team and instead watched the drone footage. The drone’s camera kept the two Toyotas dead-center.
Radio chatter filled the basement.
“Target approaching kill zone.”
“Alpha Team breaking off.”
“Copy, break. Bravo still behind.”
A new voice, this one from the drone pilot somewhere outside Syria. “Missile lock. One away. Two away. Ten seconds to impact.”
The “drone’s eye