The closest he’d gotten to Bagish’s inner circle was his nephew Abed Omar. Gaining Abed’s trust had been a huge milestone in his mission to find and kill the man’s uncle. Whether Abed was loyal to him or was one of Ghafor’s secret followers, remained to be seen.
>
He hoped that soon everything he’d planned and worked for would finally happen, and then he’d be on his way back to the States while Bagish would be headed straight to hell.
The call came in at zero three hundred, alerting Mantis that the Taliban was scheduled to gather with Afghan forces in the Rodat district of the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.
This meeting posed a significant threat to the Islamic State and was of enough importance that Bagish’s attendance was likely.
Shortly after the group from Kabul arrived in Nangarhar, a suicide bomber almost derailed Mantis’ mission. At least thirty-six people were killed and another sixty-five had been injured in the bombing—Bagish among them.
Instead of thwarting his mission, the bombing and ensuing chaos gave Mantis the one shot he’d been waiting for, but he didn’t use his gun to kill Bagish.
“I saw him lie there, barking orders at the one or two men still alive, and who looked to me to be much worse off than he was. I was overcome by a rage unlike any I’d ever felt. He thought I was coming to help him. Instead I put a knife in his heart and watched him bleed out.”
“Why was it so important that you kill Bagish?”
“He was the last direct link to Ian’s death.”
Alegria closed her eyes. “What happened next?”
“I didn’t go back to Kabul. I connected with one of the men on Shiver’s MI6 team, who arranged transport to the UK.”
He had no idea how many days he’d been holed up in the London hotel room—maybe four or five? He’d chased off anyone, other than room service, who came to his door, and he’d refused access even to them.
“Leave it,” he’d holler from his side of the door, and they would. Once word got out about the generosity of the tips he left, not a single bellman would question his demands.
When he heard the knock mid-morning, he figured it was housekeeping and they hadn’t seen, or chose to ignore, his do not disturb sign.
“Go away,” he shouted, filling his glass with whiskey. He’d stopped bothering with ice after his first few hours, and while each bottle was delivered with a bucket of it, he let it melt.
“Mantis,” said the familiar voice. “You can open the door and let me in, or I’ll use the master key the manager so graciously gave to me.”
“Go away, Shiver.”
“Cannot do. Open the damn door.”
“How did he convince you to come home?” Alegria asked.
Mantis didn’t really remember anything other than it involved a lot more drinking, followed by Shiver sharing the outcome of a mission that had nearly destroyed his career.
His reason for revenge had been entirely different than Mantis’, but that didn’t change the fact that an op undertaken with a reason other than the mission was destined to either fail or destroy the operative.
In both cases, the mission hadn’t failed, but had taken a great toll on the man who carried it out.
—:—
Alegria watched Mantis’ face as he told her the story he’d never told anyone else. His pain sat so close to the surface, she could feel it.
All those years, it had been about avenging his brother’s death. Why hadn’t he ever said so? The better question was, why hadn’t she sensed it?
“That’s what it was. The reason you accepted every mission put in front of you.”
Mantis nodded.
“How many others?”
He shrugged. No one liked to keep track of the number of people they’d killed, herself included.