Page 53 of Steel Vengeance

I couldn’t live with myself if I thought you were unhappy.

He stood up and brushed himself off. Enough with the self-pity. It was what it was, and he had to deal with it.

Soon, he’d get his revenge. The people responsible would pay. He’d make sure of it.

It wouldn’t bring Soraya back, of course. He knew that. Or the life he should’ve had. Husband, father, village doctor.

But it would damn sure make him feel better.

He dropped the bike back at the rental place and paid extra for the condition it was in. He was walking back to Mrs. Bhatti’s when his phone rang.

Only two people had this number. Make that three, includingher.

“Blade?” he answered right away.

His buddy chuckled. “Glad to see you were expecting my call. How’s life in our favorite border town?”

“Hotter than usual,” Stitch replied.

“This is a secure line,” his friend said, picking up on their code for ‘trouble.’

“Someone on a motorbike tried to take Sloane out,” he said. “I had to pull a bullet out and stitch her up.”

“Shit. She okay?”

“Yeah, resting at Mrs. B’s.”

“You took her to the safe house? Was that wise?”

Blade knew Sloane was CIA. When they’d talked a few days ago, Stitch had laid it all out, no holding back.

“Yeah, she was pretty out of it on the way here. Besides, her own people put a hit out on her. She’s got nowhere else to go.”

“You know that for sure?” Blade asked.

“Has to be. Her boss was the only one she told about her handler, Jeremy, meeting Omari. No one else knew.”

There was a pause.

“We did some digging,” Blade said. “Well, Pat did. Quietly, if you get my drift. Didn’t want to step on any toes.”

“Find anything?” Stitch asked.

“Yeah. Matthew Sullivan runs a branch of the CIA focused on watching the Taliban’s drug cartels. Officially, they track the big players and report back to Washington. Drug trafficking’s blown up in the past few years, and it’s a big deal for the U.S. government. They want to crack down, but the Afghan economy depends on poppy production. Shutting it down would tank the economy, and in its fragile state…”

He didn’t need to finish.

After decades of war, people were already starving, and farmers turned to growing poppies because it was the only way to make a decent living. Stitch knew better than most how hard life was for rural communities.

“So, they might be getting paid to look the other way, or…” Blade hesitated. “And here’s the kicker—they could be running the whole operation.”

“Fuck.”

“Exactly,” Blade said. “Sullivan might seem like a desk jockey, but he was part of a specialist team sent to Afghanistan in 2014 to help suppress drug production, get farmers to plant wheat, stuff like that. That year saw a huge opium crop, which tanked heroin prices, so wheat became more competitive. Heroin production dropped, but still enough to keep the Taliban going.”

Stitch took it all in.

“So, these guys, this specialist team, would’ve made connections with local farmers, maybe even the Taliban warlords running things?”