Page 51 of Lucky Charm

“SUVs, two. Destroyed. Medical equipment left behind and now lost. No answers on the missing agent.” Scott looked up from Hunt’s report.

“We searched. Thoroughly. Not there that we saw.”

“Why? He should have been there.” Stocker shot the words at him, like pounding him with more questions would get better answers.

Hunt shifted in his chair, stuffing his temper deep and responding in even tones. “Unknown.”

“Why were you in such a rush?”

“We’d spotted incoming movement. Given Haquiri’s surprise at our presence, I was concerned we were about to get trapped. A concern that was later confirmed.”

Stocker swore. “Thousands of dollars of military equipment, gone.”

Hunt raised a brow. “I was more concerned with the life of our doctor. The vehicles are not in the hands of the insurgents. That was the intent. The situation required their destruction.”

Scott spoke. “You didn’t sign for the equipment. Not your problem, Stocker.”

“True, it’s yours. But it’s another questionable decision, and we have no who. IQS? Someone else?”

“We never could identify them. Many seemed to be younger, some possibly villagers. Haquiri’s people would be my guess. We destroyed a weapons cache – a mix of Chinese and Russian weapons. There were no U.S. Weapons.”

“You didn’t find much of anything.” Stocker’s fingers tapped the table in an irritating staccato. “Didn’t accomplish much of anything.”

“Doc did the surgery. Successfully. We protected her. That was our mission.” Hunt struggled against volatile emotions at the debasement of Doc’s mission.

“Amazing how you succeeded with your mission but blew ours. I’m not sure you were committed to our need for intelligence from the beginning.”

The accusation stung. He’d been in this corner of the world too many times to count and gave one hundred percent every time. “We thoroughly searched. Your man wasn’t there, Stocker. We know he was there, though. Quaid found his camera.”

“Which was destroyed in one of the SUVs.”

“There was no memory card in the camera. No photos to recover.”

“How do you know it was Reid’s?”

“Quaid identified it.”

“You didn’t think to take the mother and the boy with you?”

Hunt took a careful inhale and exhale. “They were not our mission, and they were surrounded by men who were caring for them, protective of them, including Haquiri. That was a fight we could not win.”

“Do you only take on the fights you can win?”

Commander Scott broke in. “Our guidelines aren’t open for question.” He turned to Hunt. “You say Haquiri didn’t know about the whole medical setup?”

“Didn’t seem to.”

Scott opened his mouth to ask another question, but Stocker interrupted him. “How did Quaid get hurt?”

Hunt looked at Scott who nodded his head. “I wasn’t with him when it happened. Insurgent. Shot him. That was the report to me.”

“No hint of IQS?”

“None. That compound was as empty as a ghost town.” Hunt quirked a smile at Baxter’s description. “The population had obviously already evacuated against the coming winter storm. We never saw every man that followed us up the mountain, but I never laid eyes on him.”

Stocker pounded the table. “You find this funny, Lieutenant?”

Hunt bit back an impulsive reply. “I find nothing funny about putting Doc or my team in the crosshairs of some unidentified aggression and leaving us in a dangerous mess.” The details of Doc’s kidnapping washed over him, hardening his resolve. “Frankly, this whole thing was ill-conceived, and the accuracy of intel and what we retrieved wasn’t worth the assets lost.”