by Cindy Dees
“You know, don’t you?” she demanded.
With that same uncanny simpatico they shared while making love, he plucked the unspoken thought out of her head. “Why you took the mission? Yeah. I know.”
“And you want me to reconsider, don’t you? Is that was this seduction was all about today? Giving me exactly what I wanted so I wouldn’t go through with the mission just to make love with you again?”
He sat up, staring at her incredulously. “What?”
“You planned this whole tryst, didn’t you? You gave me my perfect moment in hopes that once I had it, I’d get out of your hair and go back to my knitting and my desk job. What? Don’t you think I’m good enough? Do you think I’m going to screw it up? Is that why you’re trying to drive me off?”
“Sophie, I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about, but I can tell you, you’re talking crazy.”
“That would serve your purposes just wonderfully if I were crazy, wouldn’t it? Well, I’m not crazy. Yes, I agreed to this whole insane project because of you. Yes, I wanted to make love with you again. Yes, I wanted to spend every moment, day and night with you. And no, I’m bloody well not planning to quit just because now we’ve had mind-blowing, amazing, incredible, perfect sex!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m not going to be the one to say good bye and walk away. You’re going to have to be the one to do it.”
Chapter 9
Brian surged to his feet, oblivious to his nudity. He paced the confines of the paper walls, the woven grass tatami mats rough against the soles of his feet. Sophie huddled on the pillows, awash in the misery that he’d somehow caused her. How could the glory of their lovemaking have crashed so fast into this mess?
The delicacy of the room around her only accented her intense femininity. Something close to obsessive need ripped through him. In spite of his fury, his palms itched to reach out for her, to explore her body, to change her anger and betrayal to mindless passion, to lose himself in her once more.
He burst out, “I cannot believe you think that’s what this was about!”
She pulled the silk throw close around her shoulders. “You do everything for the sake of your job. You just said so yourself. So you tell me. What purpose did this little seduction serve this afternoon?”
He ate up another circuit of the room with angry strides, then whirled, glaring. “It accomplished absolutely nothing except jeopardizing the hell out of my career.”
“Far be it from me to spill the beans on you. After all, I’d hate to take away the one thing from you that’s more important than life itself.”
Ahh. Understanding slammed into him like a bolt of lightning. He was too used to dealing with men. Of not stopping to consider how his colleagues might feel. He stopped mid-stride. Turned to face her. Moved swiftly to her side and dropped to his knees on the pillows in front of her. “Is that what this is about?” he asked softly.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“That my job’s more important to me than you are? Oh, God, honey. I’ve been tearing myself up inside, worrying over you. It’s my job to get you ready for this op and send you out, but I’d do anything—up to and including throwing away my career—to talk you out of it and keep you safe if I thought I could do it!”
She stared at him, looking stunned, then declared, “I don’t buy it. You’re driving me off the only way you can, yet not look like you failed in your job.”
What in the hell had gotten into her? Where was this attack coming from? Clamping down on his reaction with the force of a bear trap, he replied evenly, “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s too pat an explanation. You taught me how to lie convincingly yourself. You said that when the logic doesn’t match up, it’s a lie, no matter how honestly the line’s delivered.”
He stared, truly shocked—an emotion he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Did she honestly believe he’d casually seduce her and try to drive her away, heartbroken, because he didn’t think she could hack it?
“I swear, Sophie. My only motive in bringing you here today was to give you a little break from your training. It’s killing me to push you like I am. To stand by and watch you suffer day after day. I wanted to give you a moment of joy. Something pleasurable in the midst of the misery I’ve made out of your life.”
“Oh, Brian. I’m not miserable. If you’d have paid the slightest bit of attention over the past few weeks, you’d have seen that.”
Dammit, she was starting to cry. He fell completely apart at the sight of those big brown eyes swimming in tears. “Huh. Now who’s lying?”
“You’ve been so wrapped up in your own issues you haven’t looked at me. Really seen me.” A sob wracked her.
His control as thin as the paper walls, he asked, “Then why are you crying?”
She dashed the wetness from her cheeks. “It’s a girl thing. I cry whenever I get emotional. This training has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But, Brian. I’ve done it! Don’t you understand what an accomplishment this is for me? How amazing it makes me feel to know I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me and I’ve given this training my absolute best shot?”
He studied her skeptically. It would be just like her to say something like that to make him feel better. No matter whether or not it was true. She was the kind of woman who worried more about how the people around her felt than about herself.
She continued, “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, physically and mentally. I’m more confident. More…alive. You’ve given me an incredible gift. It’s frosting on the cake that you also make me feel pretty. A little desirable, even.”
He laughed painfully. “You’ve been the talk of the entire base ever since you started running up and down the beach. Entire barracks full of men from here to downtown San Diego are having dirty dreams about you at night.”
She gaped, appalled.
He laughed and reached out with a finger to gently close her sagging jaw. “Look in the mirror when we get back to the house. You’re a knockout, sweetheart.”
“You’re blind.”
He retorted, “And you’re beautiful. Get over it.”
She blinked rapidly and looked startled. Hard to believe a woman like her really had no idea of her appeal.
She picked up the thread of her previous logic. “That’s why it hurts so bad that you’re trying to get me to quit now.”
He drew breath to tell her she was talking nonsense, but she interrupted, rushing on. “If you want to end our personal relationship, that’s okay. I never expected forever from you. I’m capable of separating the mission from us. I can go on with the training even if you want to break it off with me.”
He stalked across the room then whirled, glaring her down. “For the last time, I am not trying to make you quit. And I most certainly am not trying to end our relationship! Trust me, if I wanted to drive you away from me or the job, I’d have succeeded long ago. I’m the guy who’s so damned good at what he does, remember?”
Doubt gleamed in her pensive gaze. He swore under his breath. “Please believe me. I’m not trying to get you to quit.”
She sighed. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize.” He didn’t know about her, but his memory of this perfect place had been permanently modified. Henceforth, whenever he reached for the teahouse’s calm, the picture would include Sophie’s sleek body wrapped around him, her big brown eyes wide in wonder, watching her pleasure as she came apart in his arms. Now he had a perfect memory.
As much as he’d have loved for this afternoon to go on forever, time was inevitably racing on. And theirs here had expired. Like it or not, it was time to say good bye to this place and this moment. Reluctantly, he bent down to gather up their clothes. “It’s getting dark out. If we don’t get back to the base pretty soon, Major Hollister’s going to send out the troops looking for us.”
They dressed, packed the remains of their lunch
and tidied the teahouse. Sophie paused on her hands and knees in the doorway and looked back one last time in the fading dusk. He prayed she was cementing in her memory for all time the sights and sounds and smells of this little piece of paradise.
If only he didn’t have to let her go. But the time was fast approaching when his job would demand exactly that of him. And he dreaded it more than anything he’d ever faced in his entire life. And judging from Sophie’s earlier outburst, she was dreading it, too.
“Incoming,” Isabella murmured, rousing Vanessa from a quick power nap.
Vanessa Blake, commander of the first all-female Special Forces team in the U.S. military, sat up abruptly, on full battle alert. They’d been out here for nearly three months now, and her whole team was edgy. Looking for a fight.
Isabella reported, “I’ve got movement in the compound—eight to ten robed and armed men approaching the front gate. And, I’ve got vehicles approaching from the north.”
The entire team notched up their alertness to another level. It wasn’t anything they did or said. It was an electricity that came over them; controlled energy waiting for release. The Medusas were ready to move in for the kill. If they were lucky, maybe one of those men in the compound was their target, Freddie Sollem. She’d clearly love for Katrina, her sniper, to get a bead on the guy and take him out once and for all. Then she and her team could go home, the woman Brian Riley was training in California to come help them could get on with her life, and the world would be a safer place. But after months of unsuccessful waiting for Sollem to show a crack in his armor, she wasn’t hopeful. At least the guy hadn’t shown any indication that he was on the verge of launching a major terrorist attack…not until this incoming convoy, at any rate.
Vanessa trained her binoculars on the puff of dust approaching fast from the east. Several black blobs resolved themselves into military-style trucks, high flatbeds with canvas roofs stretched over arched metal ribs. The trucks’ suspensions were compressed and the vehicles swayed sluggishly where the road curved a bit. Whatever load those trucks were carrying was heavy. Really heavy.
“Get a visual on the cargo if you can, Sidewinder,” Vanessa directed Misty—the team’s Air Force pilot and resident unmanned drone flyer—who was at the controls of an aerial-surveillance drone.
“Gimme a sec,” Misty murmured, manipulating what looked like the controls of a video game mounted on a laptop-sized box. “I’ve got to bring the drone around behind the trucks to peek in the backs.”
“Hurry,” Isabella piped up. “Those trucks are moving fast. They won’t be out in the open much longer.”
“Almost there,” Misty replied. “Get eyeballs on the monitor. This’ll have to be a fast pass so they don’t spot the bird.”
Vanessa and the others crowded around the monitor playing the video feed from the drone. A strip of asphalt came into view. The drone banked and followed the gray strip. Misty was going to fly her bird right up the trucks’ backsides.
“The targets should come into view any second,” Misty murmured.
Sure enough, the blurry shape of a truck entered the top of the screen. Isabella quickly tweaked the camera controls to bring the picture into focus. They’d only get one pass on the trucks. Maybe two or three seconds per vehicle. Fortunately, Isabella was the best real-time photo-intelligence analyst Vanessa had ever seen. Two seconds was all Adder needed to identify the trucks’ cargo.
Vanessa held her breath as the drone closed in on the trucks. Her gut said this was no caravan of food and toilet paper for the Sollem compound. Maybe they’d finally get a definitive idea of what Freddie was planning.
The rear opening of the first canvas truck cover came into clear view. Vanessa stared hard. A single box, oblong in shape. Bulky.
And then the drone was past.
Isabella gasped.
What had she picked out that Vanessa had missed?
The next truck rushed into view.
“Slow down,” Isabella hissed at Misty.
“Can’t,” Misty retorted.
Vanessa leaned forward. Another box in this truck, looking rather lonely in the middle of the truck bed. Same cargo in the remaining trucks. Six steamer trunk-sized boxes in all. Holding something dense. Metal, most likely. Big. Like weapons.
The video picture tilted crazily as Misty peeled the drone off and flew it back out into the desert at a safer distance from the Sollem compound. Isabella sat back on her heels, staring intently at the now-blank screen.
“You need a replay?” Vanessa asked quietly.
“Yeah. I want to verify this one before I make the call.”
That was unusual. Isabella was unerring in knowing exactly what she’d seen the first time around.
Aleesha—the team’s Jamaican-born doctor and computer guru—typed quickly into the laptop attached to the monitor, and the video sequence they’d just seen played again.
“Slow it down,” Isabella murmured, never taking her eyes from the screen.
Vanessa leaned forward, studying the half-time images again. Still boxes. She made out yellow-painted Arabic-style script on the side of one. Vanessa spoke Arabic, but she couldn’t read this.
“What does that writing say?” Vanessa asked.
Isabella looked up, her gaze wide with dismay. “It’s Urdu.”
Vanessa frowned. Urdu was the official language of Pakistan.
Isabella continued. “I think it says ‘fissionable material.’”
Vanessa gasped like Isabella had just buried a fist in her gut. “As in nuclear weapons?”
Isabella’s gaze was already back on the screen. She leaned in close as the second truck came into view. As the pair of trunks came into view, she paused the image on screen. Stabbed a finger at the top of the rearmost box. “Mamba, enlarge this image here.”
A smudge of yellow came into view on top of the box, too blurry to read.
“Digitally enhance it,” Vanessa murmured.
“Already on it, girlie.” Aleesha engaged the high-tech software that analyzed pictures and forecasted what color missing pixels would be based on the existing pixels around them. The program made several passes through the image, each one clearer than the one before. Finally, the swirling Urdu came into reasonable focus. Vanessa pulled out a small pad of paper and copied down the writing to the best of her ability.
While Isabella continued to study the rest of the video footage, Vanessa reached over and powered up the satellite phone. She dialed General Wittenauer’s direct line. It was mid-afternoon in Washington.
“General Wittenauer’s office,” a familiar female voice answered.
His secretary. Which meant the general was not at his desk. “Hi Mary, it’s Viper. I need to speak to the boss. Now.”
“He’s in a national-security briefing at the White House and can’t be disturbed.”
Vanessa replied briskly, “Perfect. Patch me through to his cell phone.”
There was a brief pause. Then Mary said, “He’s in the situation room. A signal won’t get through.”
“Have the White House operator patch me through to the phone in front of him, then. Don’t take no for an answer. I have to talk to him right now.”
“Is this a matter of national security?”
“Oh yeah.”
“One moment, dear.”
As grandmotherly as Mary Norton might sound, the woman had worked for JSOC for nigh unto thirty years and was sharp as a tack. She’d get Vanessa’s call through.
In less than thirty seconds, a ringing phone sounded in Vanessa’s ear. Wow. Mary was good.
Wittenauer muttered low and irritated, “Go.”
“Sir, it’s Viper. Sorry to disturb you. I thought you might like to know we just got visual on what we believe to be three complete nuclear devices being transported into the Sollem compound.”
“What?”
She’d bet that squawk had just brought whatever briefing was in progress in the sit room to a screeching halt.
&
nbsp; “Just a second, Viper. I’m going to put you on speaker and I want you to repeat what you just said.”
She gulped. Nothing like having to drop a bomb on the president of the United States and his entire cabinet. She repeated her statement. Stony silence reigned for about three seconds, and then every voice in the room spoke at once. The momentary chaos subsided.
Vanessa said, “If you’ll have one of your signals technicians come on the line, we’ll transmit the images we just collected. You can have your own photo-intel folks confirm our analysis.” Not that she doubted Isabella’s call for a second.
Wittenauer’s voice came back on the line after she’d finished talking to the signals guys and relaying the video data to them. “You sure as hell know how to liven up a security briefing, girl.”
Vanessa replied grimly, “Just doing my job, sir.”
“Keep up the good work. It goes without saying that you may have any resources whatsoever that you need to continue this mission while we verify your findings at this end and figure out what to do next.”
“Roger, sir. Tell Brian Riley he’s out of time. I need the Giovanni woman out here ASAP.”
“I’ll make the call now, Viper.”
Out of general principles, Sophie glared at Brian’s back five yards or so in front of her. He was pacing her for this run down the beach. The object was to maintain an eight-minute mile for four miles. So far she didn’t feel too bad, but they were only a little over a mile into this exercise in torture. It helped her to get mad, and Brian was the logical target. He didn’t seem to mind her glares and snarky comments as long as she did whatever he asked of her. And she had to admit, under his tutelage, she was doing things now that she would never have imagined possible six weeks ago.