The Socotra Incident Read Online Free

Shannon from now on.”
    Natalie stared at Shannon/Genevieve, and suddenly a series of events from her deployment to Iraq made sense. The CIA had been lurking around her unit from the time two Soldiers were kidnapped by al Qaeda to the moment Eric Ritter had vanished from the face of the earth.
    “Please”—Shannon motioned to a chair across from her—“before you fall down.”
    Natalie accepted the invitation. The leather of the chair was supple and thick beneath her touch.
    “Camel leather, latest craze among Gulf Arabs. They found another use for those stink beasts besides racing and milk. You like it?”
    Natalie just kept staring at her, still dumbfounded.
    Shannon folded her hands on the desk.
    “Let’s get a few things out of the way. Yes, I used USAID as cover while I was in Iraq. I went with you to that little army base in the middle of Iraq terrorist country to check up on Eric Ritter, who was working with us to recover the two Soldiers kidnapped by al-Qaeda. You caught our eye, and we approached you after your deployment. You did very well in training, and now you’re here for evaluation.”
    Natalie managed to nod while her mind raced. She knew Ritter had gone well beyond the limits of what an officer in the US Army could do to find the two missing Soldiers. Natalie had accepted those means only because they had led to that patch of desert where the Soldiers were buried.
    Were Shannon and this organization still playing by those rules? Were murder, torture, and deceit the rules of Shannon’s game?
    “So what do you think we do here?” Shannon asked.
    Natalie worked her jaw from side to side, a horrible clue alerting anyone paying attention that she was nervous.
    “If we’d met like this in Iraq, I would have said counterterrorism. But now…I doubt there are many al-Qaeda cells in Vienna,” Natalie said.
    “We still have a counterterrorism mission, just at a higher level than what you glimpsed in Iraq. What does any terrorist need to function?”
    “Money…and a populace to hide in,” Natalie answered.
    “Very good. As gratifying as it is to shoot a Hellfire missile into some jihadi’s face, that won’t win the long war. We’re here for their money and, by immediate extension, their weapons.”
    “How does a shipping company”—Natalie looked around—“do that?”
    Shannon smiled and leaned back in her chair, a predatory smile on her face. “Now you’re asking the right questions. Russians, my dear, Russians. The best retirement plan for a Russian officer is to ‘lose’ a shipment of rifles, explosives, IED components. There are other players in the arms black market, but our focus is on Soviet-era surplus.
    “A shipping company is good cover for interacting with the sellers and the buyers. We have operations on the buy side of the equation, but that doesn’t concern you just yet.”
    “That’s why I had to spend five hours a day, six days a week, learning Russian on top of my field training?” Natalie asked.
    “Yes. Your instructor rates your Russian is passable,” Shannon said. “With enough practice we’ll get you to a near native level.”
    Natalie swallowed hard. Passable? She could keep up a half hour long conversation over the finer points of Lermontov’s fiction and her instructor rated her as “passable?” She’d display her mastery of Moscow slang and insults the next time she saw the bloated potato-headed bore of a man that taught her the language of the Czars.
    She choked down her anger and focused on the task at hand. Might as well get her other concerns out of the way before she went too far down the rabbit hole to turn back.
    “How do we…do this? The schoolhouse beat us over the head with plenty of what we can’t do. Things that Ritter and, I guess, you, did in Iraq.”
    “We do what we must, Natalie. If it comes to morality or saving lives, we choose to save lives. If something makes you uncomfortable, say the word, and you can leave.”
    Natalie