The Medusa Game

by Cindy Dees

  The Medusas’ reports were sketchy, but intelligence indicated the girl came from a fairly conservative family who’d lived a low-key lifestyle in Australia. The girl had more freedom there than she would have had in Bhoukar—enough to take up figure skating—but probably not anywhere near as much freedom as a typical Australian girl. Thankfully, Isabella knew a whole lot more about life in conservative Muslim households than any of her temporary bosses in the Olympic Security Group.

  She shouldn’t have worried about spotting Anya. As soon as the girl appeared in the jet bridge, a swarm of reporters rushed forward to the glass window behind Isabella and flash-bulbs went off like strobes. The girl recoiled beneath her red silk head scarf. Her coach, a petite, blond Australian named Liz Cartwright, looked alarmed as well.

  Isabella stepped forward. “Welcome to Lake Placid, Ms. Khalid, Mrs. Cartwright. My name is Isabella Torres, and I’m here to escort you to the Olympic village.”

  The Australian stuck out her hand and Isabella shook it briefly. Normally, she wouldn’t tie up her hands in such a manner while on the job, but this wasn’t a high-threat situation, and she had no authorization to use force anyway. She’d been specifically ordered to lay low and stay out of sight.

  Technically, Isabella wasn’t Anya’s bodyguard. She was merely under orders to keep an eye on the girl and steer her away from serious threats. How had the IOC security chairman, Manfred Schmidt of Germany, put it? “We do not wish for the United States to act like a police state, for that would be contrary to the spirit of these games.”

  “The exit’s this way.” Isabella turned and led them to a revolving door. She stepped through first and nobody paid her any heed. But when Anya and her coach passed through the turning glass, the mob of Middle Eastern-looking journalists descended on them.

  Isabella’s first impulse was to jump in front of the pair. The two women had stopped, recoiling from the cameras and microphones being shoved in their faces. Orders, schmorders. Those two needed help. She wasn’t about to stand here and let the paparazzi harass her charge.

  There were only a dozen photographers, but the mood among them was nasty. Their tones of voice as they shouted over each other to ask questions were distinctly rude. Isabella’s internal alarm system sent a low-level warning humming through her gut. That guy snarling in Farsi sounded Iraqi. His rant about Anya outrageously flaunting her religion was worrisome.

  She eased forward to inject herself between the guy and Anya. When the Iraqi refused to get out of her way, Isabella put a casual nerve pinch on the guy’s arm that made him howl. As he bent over in pain, she sidestepped him and moved forward until she stood right in front of the girl.

  She made eye contact with Anya. “How about we get out of here?”

  The girl nodded quickly. Somebody shoved Isabella from behind, almost knocking her into Anya. Eyes narrowed threateningly, she turned and said firmly, “Let us through, please.”

  Nada. If anything, the journalists surged closer. As a lone woman without a proper chaperone, they weren’t about to give her the time of day, let alone a shred of respect. Enough was enough. She snapped, “C’mon guys. Make a hole.”

  A few of them stepped back, but immediately, journalists from the rear of the group stepped into the gap. Fine. She could play their game. She planted a strategic heel on the top of the nearest reporter’s foot. He squawked and hopped out of the way. She gave the same treatment to the guy beside him. Will you look at that? A hole magically opened up.

  Grabbing the coach’s arm with her left hand and Anya’s with her right, Isabella said under her breath, “Stick to me like glue.” And then she proceeded to glare her way through the remaining journalists.

  In a few seconds, she and her charges burst outside. A half-frozen crowd of media types milled around on the sidewalk, trying to keep their equipment dry in the falling snow, and although every camera swung toward the photogenic skater, nobody made a move to rush them. Hallelujah.

  She guided the women to a waiting white minivan with blacked out windows and official Olympic license plates. She ushered them into the back seats and climbed in the front passenger seat. “Let’s go, Python.”

  The vehicle, driven by Karen Turner, the Medusas’ six-foot tall Marine officer, pulled away from the curb smoothly.

  “What about our bags?” the Australian coach asked in alarm.

  Isabella answered, “We have some people inside the terminal now who will get them and bring them to your rooms.” And go over them with a fine-toothed comb to make sure everything is as it should be inside them. Anya stared at her in shock.

  “What?” Isabella asked.

  “You laid a hand on those men!”

  Isabella shrugged. “Technically, I used my foot. And they wouldn’t get out of the way. They were being rude.” She grinned crookedly and added, “Welcome to the United States. Where women take charge and kick butt.”

  A slow smile spread across Anya’s face. “I think I’m going to like it here.”

  Anya and her coach were duly installed in their side-by-side rooms in the Olympic village, in the same wing of the giant, hotel-like facility as the delegations from Belgium, Brazil and Canada, among other A to C countries. The athletes, all three thousand of them plus the coaches, doctors and trainers who made up the delegations, were housed alphabetically in the brand-new building, which was crafted of rustic stone and wood and would be turned into a high-end resort when the Games were over. The village perched on a mountainside overlooking the hamlet of Lake Placid, which was nestled beside Mirror Lake and the frozen tip of Lake Placid.

  Security in and around the village was extensive. The small black domes of security cameras perched on every street corner, and in the public access areas of every building. They were manned around the clock by the best counterterrorism specialists America had to offer. Practically every Special Forces operator in the U.S. Armed Forces who wasn’t deployed overseas had been pulled in to work the Games. No Munich Massacre repeats for America, thank you very much.

  If there was a juicier terrorist target than an Olympic games on American soil with television coverage going out to billions of people all over the planet, Isabella surely couldn’t think of it.

  She stepped into the charged quiet of the OSG—Olympic Security Group—headquarters in the large administrative building next door to the village. The OSG was the detachment of U.S. military types working alongside the IOC security committee. The OSG ops center looked like mission control at a NASA rocket launch facility. Bank after bank of video monitors lined the walls. Rows of security men sat in front of them, studying them intently, moving the joy sticks on their consoles to swivel the cameras. Computer screens scrolled a steady stream of information to the soldiers manning them. Everyone wore headsets and received constant audio updates. She didn’t even want to think about what all this must have cost. Plus, the civilian IOC security team next door had its own control room on an even grander scale.

  Behind her a voice barked, “Torres! In here.”

  She turned to identify the speaker. And scowled. Major Dexter G. Thorpe IV, commander of the OSG. And possibly the biggest jerk in the Western Hemisphere. He’d been ordering the Medusas around and sticking them with menial “girl” jobs ever since they’d arrived in Lake Placid. He’d made it crystal clear that he thought the whole idea of women in the Special Forces was a bad joke. But, he was her boss. For now. She gritted her teeth and marched toward the large conference room where this afternoon’s overview briefing was to start in about one minute.

  “And bring me a cup of black coffee while you’re at it,” he called across the Ops Center.

  That remark stopped the general buzz cold. Making and serving coffee was a traditional insult to women in uniform, and one that female soldiers had rebelled against en masse decades ago. Every gaze in the room turned on her to see how the newbie Spec Ops chick would react. Was this a test, or just another demonstration of Thorpe’s contempt for the idea of women as spec
ial operators?

  Eyes narrowed, she strolled over to the coffeepot and poured a big, steaming mug of the brew. Close to a hundred men and the five women of the Medusas crowded in the conference room. Thorpe stood by the podium up front, glaring at her expectantly. Gonna make her deliver his coffee in front of everyone, was he?

  One foot in front of the other, she walked through the thick silence. Everyone stared at that mug. She set it down gently on the corner of the podium and joined her teammates, who were lounging against the wall near the front.

  Thorpe picked up the coffee and took a long, conspicuous sip.

  What an asshole. Isabella spoke up loudly enough to be heard across the quiet room. “So, Viper. Wanna guess which one it was?”

  The Medusas’ commanding officer, Air Force Major Vanessa Blake, replied, “Which one what?”

  Isabella paused until Thorpe lifted the mug to his mouth again. “Remember prisoner-of-war school? Whenever the aggressors made us get coffee for them, we either spat in it or picked our noses and stirred snot into it? Wanna guess which one I did?”

  Thorpe spewed hot coffee across his notes as the roomful of special operators burst into loud guffaws. Laughter drifted in from the ops center outside as well, where the audio feed of this briefing was being piped to everyone’s headsets. Thorpe threw a look in her direction that promised revenge. She gazed back at him blandly.

  Red-faced, Thorpe began the briefing. He ran through several dozen security issues, assigning operators to each. “A press conference will be given this afternoon by the Bhoukari figure skater, Anya Khalid. She’s expected to announce her intention to compete in the Olympics.”

  Somebody snorted from the back. “Wow. Big news. Athlete comes to Lake Placid and says she’ll compete.”

  Isabella rolled her eyes. The guy didn’t know the half of it. She’d spent the last few days reading Middle Eastern newspapers and surfing Internet chat rooms that were discussing this unprecedented event. Opinion was sharply divided. As sharply divided as the conservative fundamentalists and the more liberal moderates within the Islamic faith itself. Women’s rights were among the thorniest issues facing the Muslim world today. Centuries-old tradition held that an unmarried young woman figure skating in skimpy clothes with suggestive poses—and furthermore, doing it in front of men—was nothing short of blasphemy. As in punishable by flogging or even death. Anya declaring that she intended to skate, particularly after she’d been specifically ordered by Bhoukari mullahs—Muslim clerics—not to, was a direct challenge to the leaders of her country’s faith. This press conference was a huge deal.

  “Torres, if you can keep your fingers out of your nose, I want you to cover the Khalid girl at her press conference,” Thorpe barked.

  “Define cover,” she retorted. “Am I her bodyguard or simply her minder?”

  “Stay out of the cameras and keep her alive.”

  An ambiguous answer. It gave her plenty of wiggle room to operate, but no clear authority to do a darned thing. A politically correct answer. And damned annoying. But then, everything about Major Dexter Thorpe was annoying.

  The press briefing room was surprisingly full. Isabella glanced around and spotted her five teammates spaced unobtrusively around the edges of the crowd. Several faces from the unpleasant encounter at the airport were here, too.

  She looked over her shoulder at Anya, who was sporting a dark suit and a black scarf over her head, its ends thrown back over her shoulders. The girl was stunning in the stark outfit. “Ready?” Isabella murmured.

  The girl nodded resolutely.

  They stepped into the room, and camera lights burst on in a blinding glare. Anya lurched. Steady, girl. Isabella stepped onto the dais and backed into a corner as Anya moved to the podium clutching a sheet of paper.

  A man shouted, “Tell us, Anya, are you going to skate in the Olympics?”

  The girl took a shaky breath. “I have a short statement to read.” She cleared her throat and began, “I would like to thank His Most Serene Highness, the emir of Bhoukar, for allowing me to represent my homeland in these Olympic Games. It is an honor I shall do my utmost to live up to. To that end, I do intend to skate and compete in the ladies’ figure skating competition, and I shall do my best—”

  The rest of what she had to say was drowned out by the sudden uproar of male voices shouting in outrage. Apparently, not all the people here were reporters. A gray-bearded man sporting an embroidered skull cap stood up near the back of the room and began to shout in Arabic. His bellowed words reverberated throughout the space.

  Isabella listened in burgeoning horror while the roars of his supporters grew louder and louder. Finally, the mullah ended his diatribe on a howl of rage and his avid audience turned, surging toward the stage.

  Holy shit. With one look at the frenzied mob advancing on her charge, Isabella took a running leap at Anya, knocking the girl clean off her feet and slamming the skater to the floor.

  “Help!” she shouted into her microphone.

  Please God, let the Medusas get up here in time.

  Chapter 2

  A female voice barked in Arabic for the men to stop where they were or be subdued by force. That was Vanessa. Isabella glanced up and saw five women parked defensively around her. The Medusas. Isabella allowed herself a millisecond of relief.

  She spoke urgently in Anya’s ear. “I’m going to stand up, and then I’m going to help you to your feet. A bunch of women are going to crowd in close and we’re going to hustle you out of here. Just go with the flow and let us move you. Okay?”

  The skater stared up at her, terrified. No way to tell if the girl understood or not. No time to calm her down, though. That mob was out for blood. The maneuver went off exactly as Isabella had described it. The mostly Middle Eastern men were taken aback by the aggressive posture of the Medusas long enough for the women to whisk Anya into a back hallway, closed off from public access.

  Python slammed a door shut behind them, and sudden quiet enveloped the seven women. “What was that all about?” the Marine asked tersely.

  Isabella answered, “That gray-bearded guy said he’s a Bhoukari cleric of some kind. He just declared a fatwa on Ms. Khalid.”

  Karen asked, “And a fatwa is…”

  Isabella finished for her. “A formal ruling on a matter of Islamic law. The guy with the beard declared a death sentence on our girl here. Every Muslim is essentially ordered to kill Anya on sight. They’ll get in trouble with Allah if they don’t.”

  Karen retorted in disbelief, “And some guy is just allowed to stand up in the back of the room and declare this for the entire billion plus Muslims in the world? No trial, no discussion, just boom, she’s to be killed?”

  Isabella shrugged. “If he’s a cleric of sufficient authority, yes, he can. We’ll have to find out who that man was, ASAP.”

  Anya spoke from behind her. “That was Ahmed al Abhoud. He’s the high mufti for all of Bhoukar.”

  Isabella swore. A mufti was a Muslim scholar who interpreted Islamic law. He would, indeed, have the authority to declare a fatwa. “Anya, do you understand what he just did?”

  The girl shrugged. “I haven’t lived in Bhoukar since I was a little girl. I grew up in Australia. People there don’t listen to crazy old men like him.”

  Isabella stared. “If you don’t mind my asking a personal question, how religious is your family?”

  Another shrug. “They’re as religious as they have to be when they’re back in Bhoukar. But in Brisbane…” The girl paused, searching for words. “We wanted to fit in. My family lives by western rules there.”

  “How familiar are you with the conservative ways in Bhoukar?”

  “I’ve heard stories. I mean, I know about the five pillars of Islam and all that.”

  Great. This girl was up to her neck in a religious controversy, and she hardly knew a thing about it.

  Karen asked, “How seriously will people take this man and his fatwa?”

  Isabella expl
ained carefully, “What that mufti just did is very serious. While the majority of Muslims may not try to act on that order, plenty of them will.”

  “You mean people Anya’s never met are going to try to kill her?” Karen exclaimed.

  Isabella looked her square in the eye. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  Manfred Schmidt rolled his eyes. “Ms. Torres, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. This is the twenty-first century. These are the Olympic Games. Athletes aren’t going to run around trying to kill each other because some guy stood up and told them to.”

  Isabella huffed in frustration. “The Olympics bring together people from around the world. It’s a microcosm of mankind. We’ve got three thousand athletes and their support staffs here, and several dozen of them are Muslim. Statistically, at least a few of them will feel obliged to act on that fatwa, Olympics or not.”

  “Preposterous.”

  “Actually, Captain Torres is right.”

  Isabella whirled at the sound of the male voice behind her. Major Thorpe had just stepped into the room. Was he actually backing her up? Surely her ears deceived her.

  He spoke with quiet certainty. “Anya Khalid is in danger, not only from outside the Olympic village, but potentially from within it.”

  Schmidt scowled at Thorpe. “And what do you propose to do about it?”

  The major scowled back. “I’m going to assign Torres and her pals to pull around-the-clock bodyguard duty on the Khalid girl.”

  Schmidt drew himself up officiously. “We do not put bodyguards on athletes. It goes against everything the Olympics stand for.”

  Isabella dived into the argument. “So did the Munich Massacre. But it happened anyway. If you don’t want blood on your hands, you’d better let us protect this girl.” It was a low blow, invoking Munich to the German, but this guy had to understand the threat.