by Linda Howard
He never put a foot wrong, though, never did anything that would bring their discord into the open. His relationship with all three of the other men was both easy and professional. With her, he was unfailingly polite and impersonal, and even that was a measure of his professionalism. Tucker respected Dallas and certainly wasn’t going to disrupt the team or endanger the job by openly antagonizing his wife. That should have reassured Niema on a couple of levels—but it didn’t.
Until he put the blanket around her shoulders, there hadn’t been a word spoken between them since the others left. She wished it had remained that way; keeping Tucker at a distance, she thought, was the safest place for him.
He sat down, as relaxed and graceful as a cat. He seemed impervious to the cold, comfortable in a black T-shirt and fatigue pants. Dallas had the same sort of internal furnace, because he seldom felt the cold either. What was it about men like them that made them burn so much hotter than the rest of the human race? Maybe it was their physical conditioning, but she herself was in very good shape and she had been cold the entire time they had been in Iran. She didn’t wish they were cold, too, just that the damn anthrax facility had been built in the warm desert, instead of these chilly mountains.
“You’re afraid of me.”
The comment, coming out of the blue, startled her more than it had when he put the blanket around her, but not enough that she lost her composure. His voice had been calm, as if he were discussing the weather. She gave him a cool look. “Wary,” she corrected. If he thought she would hasten to deny her uneasiness, the way most people would do when cornered, he was mistaken. As Dallas had learned, to his amusement more often than not, there wasn’t much that could make Niema back down.
Tucker leaned his dark head back against the cold stone wall and drew one leg up, draping his arm loosely over his knee. Unreadable brown eyes studied her. “Wary, then,” he conceded. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Feminine intuition?”
He began to laugh. Laughter wasn’t something she had associated with Tucker, but he did it easily, his dark head tilted back against the wall. The sound was genuinely amused, as if he couldn’t help himself.
Niema watched him, one eyebrow tilted as she waited for him to stop. She didn’t feel the least impulse to join in his laughter, or even to smile. Nothing about this situation was funny. They were deep in Iran on a job that could get them all killed, and oh, by the way, she didn’t trust the team leader one inch, ha ha ha. Yeah, right.
“Jesus,” he groaned, wiping his eyes. “All this because of feminine intuition?” A shade of incredulousness colored his tone.
Niema gave him a stony look. “You make it sound as if I’ve been attacking you left and right.”
“Not overtly, at least.” He paused, a smile still curving his mouth. “Dallas and I have worked together before, you know. What does he say about your suspicions?”
He was utterly relaxed as he waited for her answer, as if he already knew what Dallas would have said—if she had mentioned her feelings to him, that is. She hadn’t uttered a word of misgiving to him, though. For one thing, she had nothing concrete to offer, and she wasn’t about to stir up trouble without proof other than her feminine intuition. She didn’t discount her uneasiness, but Dallas was a man who dealt in hard realities, who had learned to disconnect his emotions so he could function in the dangerous field he had chosen. Moreover, he obviously liked, trusted, and respected Tucker.
“I haven’t talked to him about it.”
“No? Why not?”
She shrugged. Other than not having proof, her main reason for not talking to Dallas about Tucker was that her husband hadn’t been wild about her coming on this job anyway, and she didn’t want to give him an opportunity to say I told you so. She was good at what she did, but she didn’t have the field experience the others had, so she was reluctant to cause trouble. And, she admitted, even had she known she wouldn’t be comfortable with Tucker, she would have come anyway. Something primitive in her thrilled to the tension, the danger, the utter importance of what she did. She had never wanted a nine-to-five; she wanted adventure, she wanted to work on the front line. She wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize a job she had worked hard to attain.
“Why not?” Tucker said again, and a hint of steel underlay the easiness of his tone. He wanted an answer, and she suspected he usually got what he wanted.
Oddly, though, she wasn’t intimidated. Part of her even relished this little showdown, getting their animosity out into the open and going one-on-one with Tucker.
“What difference does it make?” She returned his cool look with one of her own. “Regardless of my suspicions about you, I’m doing my job and keeping my mouth shut. My reasons aren’t any of your business. But I’d bet the farm your real name isn’t Darrell Tucker.”
He grinned suddenly, surprising her. “Dallas said you were stubborn. Not much of a reverse gear, was the way he put it,” he said, settling his shoulders more comfortably against the wall.
Because Niema had heard Dallas mutter something very close to that, after one of the few times they had gone head to head about something, she found herself smiling, too.
In that more relaxed atmosphere he said, “What makes you think my name isn’t Tucker?”
“I don’t know. Darrell Tucker is a good-old-boy Texas name, and every so often I hear a little bit of Texas in your accent, so the accent and the name fit—but you don’t, somehow.”
“I’ve traveled a bit since I left home,” he drawled.
She clapped her hands twice in mocking applause. “That was very well done. A homey piece of phrasing, the accent a little heavier.”
“But you don’t buy it.”
“I bet you’re very good with a lot of accents.”
Amused, he said, “Okay, you aren’t going to believe me. That’s fine. I don’t have any way of proving who I am. But believe me in this: My priorities are getting that building blown and all of us safely home.”
“How can you get us home? We’re splitting up, remember?”
“By doing all my preliminary work right, by anticipating as many problems as I can and taking steps to counteract them.”
“You can’t anticipate everything, though.”
“I try. That’s why my hair is going gray; I sit up nights worrying.”
His hair was as dark as her own, without a silver thread showing. His sense of humor was wry, tending toward the ironic; she wished he hadn’t shown it to her, wished he had maintained the silence between them. Why hadn’t he? Why now, of all times, had he suddenly breached the armed truce?
“We’re in.”
She whirled to the radio set as the whispered words came plainly through the speaker. Incredulously she checked the time; thirty minutes had passed since she had last looked. She had been so focused on her confrontation with Tucker that she had forgotten to fret.
Like a flash, she knew: That was why he had done it. He had distracted her, using the one subject he knew she wouldn’t be able to ignore.
Tucker was already at the radio, slipping on a Motorola headset. “Any problems?”
“Negative.”
That was all, just three whispered words, but they were in her husband’s voice and Niema knew that for now, at least, he was all right. She leaned back and focused on her breathing, in, out, keeping the rhythm regular.
There was nothing Tucker could do now to distract her, short of physical violence, so he left her alone. She checked the radio settings, though she knew they were right. She wished she had checked the radio detonator one more time, just to be certain. No—she knew it was working perfectly. And Dallas knew what he was doing.
“Has Dallas ever told you about his training?”
She flicked an impatient glance at Tucker. “I don’t need distracting. Thanks for doing it before, but not now, please.”
A faint quirk of his brows betrayed his surprise. “So you figured it out,” he said easily, and she immediately won
dered if distracting her had indeed been his intention. Tucker was so damn elusive that even when you thought you had him read, it was possible you were reading only what he intended you to read. “But this is more in the way of reassurance. Do you know about his training?”
“That he took BUD/S? Yes.” BUD/S was Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training: extensive, and so grueling only a tiny percentage of men who tried actually completed the course.
“But has he told you what that training entailed?”
“No, not in detail.”
“Then take my word for it, Dallas can do things no ordinary man would ever dream of doing.”
“I know. And—thanks. But he’s still human, and plans can go wrong—”
“He knows that. They all do. They’re prepared.”
“Why didn’t he want you to go in?”
There was an infinitesimal pause, so brief she wasn’t certain she had heard it. “Despite what he said, Dallas doesn’t think I’m as good as he is,” Tucker said with wry humor.
She didn’t believe him. For one thing, Dallas respected him too much. For another, that tiny pause before he spoke told her he had been weighing his response, and his answer wasn’t one that had required any weighing.
Whoever he was, whatever he was hiding, Niema accepted that she wasn’t going to get any straight answers from him. He was probably one of those paranoid spooks everyone read about, who saw spies and enemies everywhere, and, if you asked him if it was supposed to rain the next day, would wonder what you were planning that required bad weather.
Sayyed’s voice whispered over the radio. “Trouble. Activity in the warehouse. Looks like they’re getting ready to make a shipment.”
Tucker swore, his attention immediately focused on the situation. It was imperative the warehoused store of bacteria be completely destroyed before a shipment was made. The warehouse was usually deserted at night, with guards posted outside, but now there was activity that prevented Sayyed from planting his charges.
“How many?” Tucker asked.
“I make it . . . eight . . . no, nine. I took cover behind some barrels, but I can’t move around any.”
They couldn’t let the shipment leave the warehouse.
“Dallas.” Tucker spoke the name quietly into his headset.
“I’m on the way, Boss. My charges are set.”
Niema’s nails dug into her palms. Dallas was going to Sayyed’s aid, but they would still be badly outnumbered, and by moving, Dallas was risking exposure. She reached for the second headset; she didn’t know what she was going to say to her husband, but she didn’t have the chance. Tucker’s hand shot out; he jerked the plug out of the radio set and tossed the headset aside, his dark gaze cool and hard as he met her stunned look.
She found herself on her feet, her shoulders braced, hands knotted into fists. “He’s my husband,” she said fiercely.
Tucker put his hand over the tiny microphone. “And he doesn’t need the distraction of hearing you now.” He added deliberately, “If you try anything, I’ll tie and gag you.”
She wasn’t without some training herself, and Dallas, once he realized he couldn’t convince her to play it safe and sit home like a good little wife, had been teaching her how to fight in ways her self-defense class had never covered. Still, her level of expertise in no way matched his, or Tucker’s. The only way she could take him, she thought, was to catch him totally by surprise, from behind.
But he was right. Damn it, he was right. She didn’t dare say anything that could break Dallas’s concentration.
She held up her hands in a brief gesture of surrender and moved three steps away. The hut was so small she couldn’t go much farther anyway. She sat down on a pack of provisions and tried to beat down the suffocating waves of anxiety.
The minutes crawled by. She knew Dallas was creeping toward the warehouse section, using every bit of cover available to him, trying not to take chances. She also knew that every passing second put the terrorists that much closer to leaving with the shipment of bacteria. Dallas would be balancing caution with expediency.
Tucker spoke into the headset. “Sayyed. Report.”
“1 can’t budge an inch. The truck is almost loaded.”
“Two minutes,” Dallas said.
Two minutes. Niema closed her eyes. Cold sweat trickled down her back. Please, she found herself praying. Please. She couldn’t form any words other than that.
Two minutes could be a lifetime. Time itself could be strangely elastic, stretching until every second was ponderous, until the second hand on her watch seemed almost motionless.
“I’m in position.”
The words almost broke her control. She bit her lip until the taste of blood filled her mouth.
“How does it look?”
“Sayyed’s got his ass in a crack, all right. Hey, buddy, how many charges did you get set?”
“One.”
“Shit.”
One wasn’t enough. Niema had listened to them, knew how many charges Dallas estimated it would take to completely destroy the facility.
“Hadi?”
“In position. Can’t help you much.”
“Start pulling back.” Dallas’s voice was even. “Sayyed, arm all the charges.”
There was another silence, then Sayyed’s, “Done.”
“Get ready. Throw the pack under the truck, then run like hell. I’ll lay down covering fire. I’m gonna give us five seconds to get outta here before I hit the button.”
“Damn. Maybe you should make it six,” Sayyed said.
“Ready.” Dallas was still utterly calm. “Go!”
CHAPTER
TWO
The staccato thunder of gunfire blasted from the radio speaker. Niema jerked as if some of the bullets had hit her, her hands pressed hard to her mouth to hold back the scream that clogged her throat. Tucker swung around to face her, as if he didn’t trust her to keep silent. He needn’t have worried; she was frozen in place.
There was an animal-like sound, cut short.
“Son of a bitch! Sayyed bought it.”
“Pull out,” Tucker said, but there was a renewed burst of gunfire that drowned out his words.
And from the tinny speaker came a sound that made the hair on Niema’s neck stand on end, a kind of hollowed-out grunt, underlaid by gunfire and a thudding sound.
“Ah . . . shit.” The words were strained, thin; she could barely recognize Dallas’s voice.
“Hadi!” Tucker barked. “Dallas is down. Get him—”
“No.” The word came on an exhalation, long and deep.
“Hang on, buddy, I can be there—” Urgency was plain in Hadi’s voice.
“Save yourself . . . the trouble. I’m gut shot.”
The world went gray around her. Niema fought back the shock, fought back the sensation of her entire body falling apart as the bottom dropped out of her stomach and her lungs seized, unable to pump. Gut shot. Even if he had been in the States, with a trauma unit nearby, the injury was critical. Here in these cold, isolated mountains, with safety and cutting-edge medical help days away, it was a death sentence. She knew this; her mind knew it. But she rejected it anyway, recoiling from the knowledge.
There were more shots, very close. Dallas was still shooting, still holding them off.
“Boss. . .” The whisper floated around the hut.
“I’m here.” Tucker was still facing Niema, his gaze locked on her.
“Is. . . Can Niema hear?”
Dallas had to be going into shock, or he would never have asked, would have realized she could hear everything. She had wired the switch open.
Tucker’s gaze never wavered from her. “No,” he said.
More shots. The sound of Dallas’s breathing, shallow and quick. “Good. I . . . I’ve still got the detonator. Can’t let them leave with . . . that shit.”
“No,” Tucker said again. “You can’t.” His voice was almost gentle.
“Take . . . take care
of her.”
Tucker’s face was a mask, his gaze locked on her face. “I will.” He paused, and said, “Do it.”
The explosion shook the hut, sending dirt cascading down from the cracks in the ceiling, rattling the door on its frame. The blast wave hadn’t passed before Tucker was moving, ripping the headset from his ears and tossing it down. He picked up a hammer and began methodically destroying the radio; even though it was old and obsolete, it was functional, and their plan was to leave nothing that could be used. Reducing the radio to rubble took half a minute.
That done, he pulled Niema away from the packs of provisions and swiftly began repacking them, redistributing what they would carry. She stood numbly in the middle of the hut, unable to move, her brain frozen with shock. She was aware of pain; there was a great, clawing pain in her chest, as if her heart were exploding, and even that was somehow felt as if from a distance.
Tucker thrust a heavy coat at her. Niema stared at it, unable to comprehend what he wanted her to do with it. Silently he bundled her into it, putting her arms into the sleeves as if she were a toddler, zipping it up, tucking her hair under the collar as an extra buffer for her neck. He tugged gloves on her hands, and put a warm fur hat on her head.
He pulled a heavy sweater on over his head, then shrugged into his own coat. As he was pulling on his gloves, a low whistle sounded outside the hut, and he extinguished the light. Hadi slid in the door, and Tucker turned the light on again.
Even in the weakness of the single light, Hadi’s face was drawn and white. He looked immediately at Niema. “God—” he began, only to be silenced by a quick motion from Tucker.
“Not now. We have to move.” He shoved one of the consolidated packs into Hadi’s arms, and slung the other two onto his own shoulders. He picked up a rifle, took Niema’s arm, and led her into the night.