Upon landing in Kabul, and learning more about what Mike needed help with, the uncertainty of what Bette had to undertake, worried the brunette, in particular, although she tried to project confidence while soothing Tina before she’d taken off by helicopter. On her part, apart from the anxiety of Bette coming under fire while she would be out in the field, Tina was concerned about how the stress of combat-like situations that she had no preparation for, would impact Bette’s heart.

Tina reflected that the Colonel who ran the camp had assured Tina and Bette that he was taking every precaution to make sure she would be kept safe.  And indeed he had.  A team of his best men, he said, had accompanied Bette in the helicopter ride over from the US compound to the base camp.  And on their arrival, he had canceled the planned outing to the cave by Bette and the team, when he couldn’t get confirmation that the land route to a cave that Bette was going to document evidence of artifacts in, and photograph, had been cleared of mines.

Their mutual anxieties were exacerbated by the fact that Tina and Bette had only been able to speak briefly over the radio transmitter since the brunette had landed in the camp, as the Colonel preferred that communications between the camp and the compound be kept to a minimum, and only during the regularly scheduled time at mid-morning, particularly while a team like Mike’s, and now Bette, was in-camp, intending to do work “in the field.”

They’d only managed to squeeze into the end of a quick update to the Colonel on the status of supplies by a quartermaster in the US compound in Kabul – at the tail-end of that call, Bette and Tina had managed to barely eek out a two-minute conversation.  Tina quickly updated Bette that she’d been able to contact Kit, and that everything was fine in their home.  Before hanging up, Tina slipped a question in, to try to query whether or not Brom had managed to adjust his plans to keep a team on Bette, after Tina had texted him about the sudden shift in their schedule while they were making quick changes to their plans from the Dubai airport, from which they were transiting to connect to a flight to Hyderabad.