Page 15 of A Spark of Luck (The Defenders #2)

“Not a newbie. Marine Expeditionary. Delta cross-training before I went CIA.” Daniels’s monotone grated.

Stocker’s deep voice interrupted. “You don’t need his resume.

We’re here for the same reasons you are.

U.S. weapons and IQS. Finding the how, the who, and the where.

CIA’s man in the field hasn’t checked in.

His last location was near Ali Haquiri’s.

We have intel that puts IQS in that area.

We want to kill two birds with one stone and search for our man as well as do a recon of the area for IQS.

All on the down low so we don’t expose our man. ”

Hunt snorted. “With one man? Who is this guy, Zeke?

Pratt pointed upward.

Great a higher up.

Stocker growled. “Sit, Pratt.”

Scott stood. “Enough.”

Fed up with the unusual adversarial relationship between the two agencies, Hunt interrupted the standoff. “My mission is to protect the doctor, first and foremost. We’ll help how we can, but where there’s a conflict, he comes first.”

“She,” Scott inserted, dropping back in his seat .

Stopped cold, Hunt forced stillness as a sharp premotion washed over him. “She?”

“Dr. Cait Michaels, combat trauma surgeon from the Army’s contingent at Craig Joint Theatre.”

Hunt’s stomach jumped like a skittish frog and then tumbled headfirst onto the rocks.

Cait Michaels. Was she back in Afghanistan?

Bagram Air Base housed a small military community staffed by all the military branches and running the spectrum from medical to logistical to special operations, and even though he wasn’t here on a continuous basis, the dynamic, personable doctor sewed him up the last time he was here.

That was before they dropped into a brief personal moment that still plagued his excellent memory.

Hunt stifled the “no way” that wanted to fly out of his mouth while rubbing the leg she’d sewn up.

Doogie said what he was thinking. His face was locked in a ‘don’t mess with me’ scowl. “Seriously? You know how they treat women out in the rural areas. They will not respect her. She’s a commodity to them. That’s a bigger risk. She’ll be a target.”

“We told them. They know anyway. She’s the best according to them. Has the humanitarian missions, the in-depth experience here and abroad, the skill and the guts to handle anything, they say. Not our decision. ”

Stocker inserted himself back in the conversation. “Our current mission is the same as yours – to find those weapons, stop the distribution, make friends with Haquiri, and nail IQS. The Doc is secondary.” Stocker shifted his body to full height.

Hunt didn’t care for the attempt to intimidate, and nobody dismissed the doctor’s safety. “Nobody makes friends with Haquiri, and IQS has been elusive, as you well know. The doctor is my primary concern.”

“You can’t manage both?” The antagonism in the man’s tone had Doogie dropping his feet and Hernandez shifting in his seat.

Hunt waved them back. “If we come face-to-face with IQS, we’ll shoot him and hand him off to you, dead or alive.

If the action endangers the doctor, I’ll jump in front of the bullet, and your agenda will be secondary.

We can manage dual purposes, but our top priority here is protecting the doc unless I misunderstood the instructions.

” He looked at Scott who shook his head.

Hunt swallowed a whole bunch of overprotective protests. “You want to send another spec ops team with the doc, we’ll help you with your problem.” Even as he said it, he knew he wouldn’t let Doc out of his sight .

He studied both men. He could do hard and dark objectives.

He lived to blow things up and come out on top in a firefight.

He could do challenging, ethical, and moral situations in a snap.

He could even handle complex missions with lots of moving parts.

He’d been at this for close to ten years.

Occasionally, though, he was forced to handle stupid.

He hated stupid. Hopefully, this wouldn’t be one of those times.

Stocker looked ready to settle in for a good argument, but Scott interrupted.

“That’s per our orders from our command.

We’re out of our assigned lane, but we’re being tasked to help you because of the overlap with our primary mission.

The hospital is taking a risk sending the doctor to Haquiri.

But joint operations requested the medical courtesy. Was that at the request of the CIA?”

Stocker shrugged. “Not my department.”

Scott turned away. Only Hunt saw his eyes roll. “We’ll get you in, but it’s up to you to achieve your objectives.”

“If we find weapons there, Daniels may need support.” Stocker apparently couldn’t help pushing. “And we do have unconfirmed reports that IQS is in the area.”

Quaid Daniels finally spoke. “Unconfirmed is a crap shoot. We have no guarantee we’ll find anything, and I don’t need all of us looking around like we know we’ll find something. Too conspicuous. Let’s be discreet, shall we? Not trying to get Reid killed.”

“We aren’t going to execute a full take-down then and there no matter what you find,” Scott added.

“It’ll be tracking purposes only. We’ve tried your placement of an operative.

We’ve tried pushing Special Forces their way.

We’re getting nowhere. We need tendrils planted and reliable intelligence.

Unless you find your man and he’s hurt, your mission objective and the doctor’s mission are two separate actions.

The few rumors we’ve heard and the sightings of IQS we’ve had aren’t enough to justify more than that. Use the time wisely.”

Hunt sometimes didn’t see eye-to-eye with Scott, but this was one time where he could live with those parameters. The only way to make things better was for Doc not to go at all. There was no way he’d let her be compromised.

Daniels stood. “We’ll take it. It’ll get us started.”

Stocker growled a low “Quaid,” but Daniels ignored him. “Where do I stow my gear?”

“I’ll show you,” Tommy muttered, taking his time to get out of the chair.

“I’ll get that squared away now.” Daniels eyed Scott and Stocker and gave Reynolds a two-finger salute then judiciously left the room .

Hunt wanted no part of any conversation between Scott and Stocker either. Reynolds could referee or fend for himself. He pivoted to Scott as the door snapped closed. “We’ll get to mission planning, sir.”

“Go.”

“Sutter, Pratt, join us,” Hunt ordered, and they filed out of the building. Outside, he stopped where they gathered. “Let Tommy get Daniels settled, and we’ll work this through. Get some food.”

The men broke up, their grumbling tense.

Hunt turned in the opposite direction and ran into the brick wall of Doogie.

Fuck. He’d confessed his feelings for Cait Michaels in a weak moment back in Coronado right before the deployment.

Doogie now knew as much as he was willing to say about his quick tryst with the beautiful doctor a year ago.

“You gonna handle this okay?” Doogie had lowered his normally robust voice to a field whisper that wouldn’t attract the enemy.

“I need a minute.”

Doogie’s dark eyes drilled into him with a whole boatload of serious attached. “That didn’t answer my question.”

“I didn’t know she was here, Doog. I promise. I haven’t had a chance to look for her or talk to her. Give me a minute to absorb that, will you?” Anticipation, guilt, regrets sat edgy in his gut.

Doogie crossed his arms. “This has all the markings of a clusterfuck, and you don’t want her to go.”

“Do you?” He hated his defensive tone. Putting the screw to all his feelings, he restated. “Do you? Really?”

“Hell, no. Not for the same reason you don’t.”

“We need to game out every possible thing that can go wrong and prep for anything.” He stared out across the compound. This was not how he’d imagined seeing Cait again.

“I hear that. You going to go talk to her?”

“Yes.”

Doogie raised a brow and grinned. “Good luck with that.”

Drawing a breath, he made a mental note to check the weather. The cold Afghanistan November air had chilled more since they’d entered ops.

He stopped at the pit, the place they usually socially gathered, and sat on a wooden bench rolling details through his head.

Mission time was always filled with planning, adrenaline, and more planning.

This time his brain was on high warp while swamped in anticipation of seeing the woman who’d stolen his common sense and turned his normally squared away brain into churning mush in a blender.

He’d only slept with her once, and she’d attached herself deep inside him.

It had taken a year for him to understand that was okay.

He scrubbed his close-cut hair while forcing himself to stop grinding his teeth.

His wariness about the CIA op and his tingling intuition aside, this caveman-like instinct pushed his what-the-fuck button.

Doc would slap him. She had command of herself, knew what she wanted, and handled herself like the pro she was.

But thoughts of her safety agitated his internal balance and challenged the unbiased neutral mindset he brought to these situations.

He might respect the hell out of her skill, her rank, and her judgement, but it meant nothing out there. Haquiri was a manipulating, nasty bastard who shouldn’t be allowed to bring his oozing, disgusting presence near Doc.

He never argued with his assignments, though.

He wouldn’t call attention to himself by doing so now.

They shouldn’t have touched each other. That explosive touch led to mind-wrecking kisses to breathtaking sex.

Each had a serious job to do, and a war zone was no place for complicated emotional involvement, especially not when he got called out on a mission directly from her bed and never saw her again.

That was not a good start to anything more serious, and the time and place once again sucked.