Slim To None. Taylor Smith

Hannah said quietly. “For Yasmin here, and for those two grandsons in London you’ve never seen. All we can do is what’s best for them. What’s best for Yasmin now is to get her to a place where she’ll be safe, have enough to eat, go to school and become the young woman her parents would have wanted her to be. That’s the gift you can give her. And Mumtaz, too. Your daughter must be frantic to have you and Yasmin safe with her.”

      The old woman’s eyes teared up, but she nodded.

      “Do you have a small bag we can put your things in?” Hannah asked.

      The old woman’s forehead creased in thought, and then she turned to her granddaughter. “Your old school satchel will hold everything, I think. It’s in the other bedroom. Run and fetch it. It’s under the bed, I think. Or…no, on top of the wardrobe.”

      “I’ll help you get it down, Yasmin,” Hannah said, grabbing her rifle and flashlight.

      “Ready?” Ladwell asked as they emerged from the bedroom.

      “Yup,” Hannah said. “Just getting a bag to put their stuff in and then we can hit the road.”

      She followed Yasmin into the bedroom on the other side of the sitting area and reached up to retrieve a blue nylon backpack that was sitting on top of the armoire. The wardrobe stood opposite a double bed covered in a pink chenille bedspread. A ruffled white lampshade topped a pink-striped ginger jar lamp, while a woven jute rug just next to the bed was designed to protect bare feet from the cool, decoratively tiled floor. As in the rest of the house, the impression here was of a middle-class family fallen on hard times. And yet oddly, Hannah thought, this room looked more decorated than the one Yasmin and her grandmother had been using.

      By the odd, crumpled look on the child’s face, Hannah guessed that this must have been her parents’ room. She put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “All set?”

      Yasmin pressed her lips together and nodded, starting for the other room. Hannah was right behind her, but stopped short as the beam of her flashlight fell on something behind the door. “Hold up a second, Yasmin.”

      On a chair hidden by the open door sat an expensive-looking hiker’s pack with a North Face embroidered patch on the flap. A bright blue Nalgene hiker’s water bottle hung from a carabiner hooked on one of the pack’s carrying loops, and a tan, multi-pocketed jacket hung on the back of the chair. When Hannah shone her flashlight on it, she spotted an L. L. Bean label inside the collar.

      She frowned. “Where did these things come from?”

      The girl’s shoulders gave a hesitant shrug. “They’re not ours. We’re just…I don’t know how it got there,” she said, suddenly fearful. “We should go now?”

      “Hang on.” Hannah tucked the flashlight under her left arm and patted down the jacket pockets. Encountering resistance, she fumbled until she found a hidden inside pocket which she unzipped, withdrawing the object she’d felt through the fabric. It was a blue passport with a gold eagle and the words United States of America embossed on the cover. She opened it by the light of her flashlight. The young woman’s smiling face on the inside photograph seemed vaguely familiar. When Hannah read the name of the passport holder, she understood why.

      “Holy smoke.”

      She hung onto the jacket and passport as she bounded out of the room.

      “What the hell…?” Ladwell muttered behind her as she flew across the sitting room and into the bedroom on the other side.

      “Zaynab,” Hannah said, holding up her discoveries, “how did these get here? And that pack in the other room?”

      “I don’t…” The old woman hesitated, as if trying to guess what the right answer might be. It was a common response among people who lived in countries where the wrong answer could mean torture or death.

      Hannah amped down her excitement. “You know Amy Fitzgerald,” she said gently, telegraphing the message that there was no wrong answer here.

      The old woman nodded. “She was renting the room of my son and his wife. I didn’t like to take money, because really, she is a guest and it was good that she had come here to help the people. But Amy insisted, and it allowed me to buy better food for Yasmin and other things she needed, so in the end, I let her pay me.”

      “What the hell is going on?” Ladwell asked coming in behind Hannah. “We need to go, Nicks. This is no time for a bloody gabfest.”

      “I found this in the other room,” Hannah said, switching to English. She held up the L.L. Bean jacket and the passport. “You’ll never guess who they belong to. Amy Fitzgerald.”

      “And who’s that when she’s at home?”

      “Daughter of Patrick Fitzgerald, whose family owns half of Boston or something? Amy Fitzgerald’s a doctor. She was working in-country for the Red Cross/Red Crescent when she was kidnapped a week or two ago. I read about it on the flight over here.”

      “And that is significant to me why?”

      “Because she’s a hostage, and we’re here, and there’s a million-dollar reward for her return.” Before Ladwell could reply, Hannah turned back to Zaynab and asked in Arabic, “Do you know who took her?”

      “Salahuddin’s men. People said there were wounded men in his compound.”

      “And they’re holding her at this compound?”

      “I don’t know. Maybe.”

      “Aha.” Hannah turned back to Ladwell and translated. “She says there’s a chance Amy’s at the compound of Sheikh Salahuddin, here in town.”

      “I don’t give a toss if she is. It’s not my concern. We’re being paid to get this woman and her granddaughter out safely. Now, get them ready and let’s get the hell on the road.”

      “We can’t just walk away and leave, now that we’ve discovered where she is.”

      “Allegedly is. She could also be in Syria or upcountry or dead by now.” Ladwell passed a finger across his throat. “Beheaded like those other poor sods.”

      Still, Hannah held back. “Sean, listen, this is worthwhile. Think about it. A million-dollar reward. We could radio the chopper to pick us up at the LZ tonight and take the day to check this out. One day, that’s all. I can dress up in one of these burqas in here, scout around and see if I can find out if they’re still holding her in the compound in town. If we could get her out…”

      “Not a chance. That’s not what we were sent in to do. There will be no compromising this mission on my watch.”

      “Just let’s—”

      “No. We’ll report what we learned after we get these civilians safely out, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go. End of discussion. If you want to get paid for your part in this mission, Nicks, you’ll put your ass in gear right now, or I swear to God, I will leave you behind and you’ll get sweet bloody zip. Now, move it!”

      Hannah hesitated, but she knew when she was beaten.

      CHAPTER

       9

      Al Zawra, Iraq: Compound of Sheikh Ali Mokhtar Salahuddin

      Kenner hung back in the shadows, watching the young American doctor through the window. He had spent most of his life living in the shadows. It was where he felt the most comfortable.

      Soft light from a smoky kerosene lamp illuminated the infirmary like an old oil painting of some nineteenth-century battlefield hospital. The room was a classroom of the madrassah, the Koranic school behind the town’s mosque, used for teaching the young to read and understand the holy texts. Now, rows of straw-filled pallets lined one side of the room. The gray metal supply shelves on the opposite wall held bandages, medicines and other equipment removed from the Red Crescent clinic across town.

      The