“We have activity on runway two,” someone reported in a low voice. “Doors opening!”
“Other passengers will be helping the injured off the plane,” Gina continued. “Do not, I repeat, do not approach the runway until they have gone back on board and locked the doors. At that point, you’ll have only twenty minutes to bring out water and food and to collect the injured. Twenty minutes. Do you copy, Max?”
Twenty minutes wasn’t a lot of time, but they could definitely get the job done.
Tom Paoletti turned to Stan. “Call Jazz.” Stan knew that the XO had an additional three-man team on standby. They were already here at the airport with the equipment in hand, ready to go.
Stan had already punched Jazz’s code into his cell phone.
“I copy all that, Karen,” Max said calmly as if the room weren’t erupting with activity around him. “Well done. Over.”
“There’s more,” she said. “You have to make the delivery by one of those . . . those luggage carts. You know, with the open sides? And you need to stay a hundred meters back from the plane. If you come any closer they’ll . . .” She took a deep breath. “They’ll kill me. Over.”
Silence.
All of the elation was instantly gone from the room.
Stan shut off his phone before Jazz picked up.
“Shit,” Max Bhagat said softly. “Options? Anyone.” No one spoke. He looked at Tom. “Lieutenant?”
Tom glanced at Stan, who shook his head. If the distance between the truck and the plane were a few meters, sure, they might want to risk it. Or if it were twilight. But for even one man to move the distance of a football field across a concrete runway in broad daylight . . . The urban camouflage gear they used was good, but it didn’t make a man invisible.
“I wouldn’t want to risk it,” Paoletti said. “Let’s focus on small victories—bringing those injured people to safety and getting those supplies to the plane within the time limit.”
“You heard the man,” Bhagat told his team. “Let’s move!”
Stan was already halfway down the hall.
Once again, lunch and a nap were going to have to wait.
By the time Sam Starrett made it into the hotel restaurant for lunch, by the time he’d filled his tray with pasta and a thick meat sauce, Alyssa Locke was already there.
Oh, man. She was sitting at his table. In his seat, no less.
Fucking A.
It had to be plain bad luck.
She couldn’t have sat there just to piss him off, could she have?
Surely she didn’t realize that he sat at that exact same table at every meal. Just because the other men in the team had left it empty for him because they knew he had a stupid superstition about this kind of thing during an op, well, that didn’t mean Alyssa knew.
After all, there was no sign on the table: reserved for the crazy seal team leader.
Alyssa had been avoiding him like the plague—why would she start seeking him out now?
Unless she was purposely trying to irritate him. That was always a possibility.
And Jesus, if that was her goal, it was working.
Sam knew that superstitions were just that—superstitions. It was ridiculous. What, was he really going to get the job done better, with fewer mishaps, by sitting in the same place in this room every time he ate here?
No.
Probably not.
But with 120 lives at stake, it sure as hell didn’t hurt to follow some crazy rituals that helped him feel more in control. What could it hurt?
Right now, it could hurt a lot, Sam realized as he carried his tray toward his table and Alyssa Locke. She was sitting there, right in the middle of her lunch break, with her fruit of a partner, reminding Sam of everything in life that he wanted but couldn’t have.
Worst case scenario, they wouldn’t scram, and Sam would be forced to eat lunch with a woman he’d dreamed about making love to just a few short hours ago when he’d grabbed a quick nap.
And wouldn’t that be fun?
Alyssa saw him coming and her eyes widened before she wiped her expression clean. He set his tray down on the table. May I join you? He knew he should probably smile—at least pretend to be friendly and polite. “You’re at my table,” he said instead.
Alyssa looked at her gay partner, Jules, and laughed. “Yeah, right. Nice try, Roger, but—”
Jules took one look at Sam and half stood up. “We can move.”
Alyssa grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. “No, we most certainly cannot—”
“Suit yourself.” Sam picked up her chair with her in it and moved her about two feet to her right.
“Hey!”
He pulled another chair over and sat, pushing her plate, all her utensils, and her bottle of water in front of her, pulling his own tray in front of him.
“What is wrong with you?” Alyssa asked between clenched teeth.
He ignored her, looking up at Jules instead. “Got a pen?”
“Excuse me, Lieutenant, I’m talking to you,” Alyssa said hotly as Jules searched his pockets.
“Never mind,” Sam said as he remembered the Paper Mate he’d stuck in the back pocket of his pants. “I’ve got one.”
He leaned back and took a napkin from another table and wrote right on the dingy gray of the linen, “Reserved for Lt. Sam Starrett.” His name was Sam, not Roger. His own mother didn’t call him Roger anymore. Alyssa was the only one who did.
“What gives you the right to come over here like that and—” Alyssa broke off as he set the napkin smack in the middle of the table.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “You’ve got a—” She shut her mouth abruptly and gave all of her attention back to her salad.
“A teeny little superstition,” Sam finished for her, feeling his ears heat with embarrassment. Thank God his hair was long and they were covered. “Big fucking deal, all right?”
“I didn’t say it was.” But she looked at him when she said it, instead of through him. For the first time all day, he didn’t feel like the invisible man. That would’ve been nice, except she was trying—and not very hard either—to hide a smile that was just a little too smug.
“And you don’t have a single superstition, right?” he countered. “Of course not, you’re Ms. Perfect. You never make any mistakes— oh, wait . . . I can think of four. Or was it five?”
Something flashed behind her eyes. It was very brief and then it was gone. His needling was getting to her—particularly this latest comment that referred to the record number of times they’d made love in that one short night and morning they’d shared.
But his surge of triumph was short-lived, leaving a bad taste in his mouth.
Jules, meanwhile, was focused completely on his sandwich, like a kid caught in the middle of warring parents.
It was time to shut the fuck up and carboload. He had a long afternoon ahead of him. Sam got down to eating, trying to shut out Alyssa Locke.
Trying not to smell her subtle perfume, trying not to stare at the smoothness of her cheek, at the delicate line of her jaw, her perfect ear, her eyes, her mouth, her breasts.
Great. Fantastic. Now she caught him staring at her breasts.
It was her fault entirely for wearing a shirt that . . . wasn’t low cut or too tight or even remotely transparent. It was a button-down shirt, white, cotton. It was like the one Jules was wearing beneath his purple tie, except it was tailored to fit Alyssa’s female curves.
Was it really her fault that it fit her so damn well?
Fuck, yes. She should be wearing something loose, something baggy, something completely unflattering in this shithole of a country, where women were second-class citizens, arrested for showing the least little bit of their ankles.
“You should have your jacket on,” Sam growled.
“It’s warm in here.”
“Tough shit. You’re in public.”
“The book says—”
“Screw the book!”
“—
nothing about keeping my jacket on. As long as I’m wearing long sleeves—”
“What you’re wearing is inappropriate—”
“You don’t approve?” she asked. The look she was giving him was meant to skewer, but at least she was still looking at him instead of through him. “Tough shit back at you, Roger. I don’t answer to you.”
“Oh, yeah? Give me five minutes with Max Bhagat.”
Jules stood up, muttering something about coffee. Alyssa didn’t seem to notice he was gone.
“I spent the morning playing tango for your team in the one hundred degree heat with my required long sleeves and long pants, Lieutenant,” she spat back at Sam. “Unlike you and my other male counterparts, while I’m in Kazbekistan, I don’t have the option to strip down to my underwear when I start to sweat. I think Max would agree that it’s okay for me to have lunch without my jacket on.”
“It’s dangerous, god damn it,” he said through a mouthful of pasta. “You look too good.”
Oh, fuck. There it was. Out on the table for Alyssa to see. He’d just given himself away.
She was looking down at her salad, her eyelashes long and dark against her cheeks.
Oh, God. The wave of longing that hit him came in such a rush that he almost choked. Was he ever going to stop wanting her? It was all he could do not to bend his fork in half in frustration.
And then she surprised the hell out of him. “You look really good too, Sam,” she said quietly, giving him a glimpse of her ocean-colored eyes as she looked up and too briefly met his gaze. “Let’s try to get along. Try to be nice to each other. Okay?”
Yes. The correct response was yes, please, let’s. Instead Sam leaned toward her and said, “You want to be nice to me, sugar? Let’s go to my room and—”
She sat back in her chair. “You’re such an asshole.”
No doubt about it—he was an asshole. But what was he supposed to say now? Sorry? He couldn’t help himself? She brought out the worst in him? Of course, she brought out the best in him, too.
Maybe if he threw himself at her feet, grabbed her around the legs, and wept as he explained that she’d been driving him crazy for months, that he hadn’t forgotten her, that he needed her . . .
That he was doomed never to forget her.
“You want a war?” Alyssa said coldly as she pushed her chair away from the table. “Fine, Lieutenant. You got it. You’ve got yourself a war.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Twelve
“Who is she?” one of the British officials asked.
Teri didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But the observers’tent was small. And the sun was scorchingly hot this time of the afternoon, so she, like they, were beneath it, watching the SEALs practicing the takedown of the plane. It was kind of hard not to hear their conversation.
“Alyssa Locke,” Lt. Tom Paoletti answered. “Former Navy, currently with the FBI. Counterterrorism unit.”
“Ah,” said the one who looked like James Bond. Suave and sophisticated, charismatic and handsome with a touch of gray at his temples, he was obviously in command.
All three of the Brits were from the Secret Intelligence Service or SIS, although they’d probably never admit it.
“She’s quite good,” said the one who looked like a younger version of Q.
The SEALs had just completed another practice run, and, second time in a row, Alyssa Locke had killed one of the SEALs before being killed herself.
“This isn’t even her real strength. She’s one of the best snipers I’ve ever worked with,” Tom Paoletti said easily. “But her instincts are excellent across the board. It was a lucky day for the Teams when she went into the Bureau. I know I sleep easier knowing she’s part of the FBI unit backing up my men.”
All four of them were silent for a moment, watching as Alyssa and the others who’d been recruited to play mock terrorists came out of the plane—the real World Airlines 747 that had finally arrived.
As hot as it was out here, there was no doubt it was really heating up on board the aircraft.
And what it must be like on the hijacked plane with the doors locked shut and no working sanitary facilities was too terrible to try to imagine.
“Lieutenant Starrett’s still working the kinks out,” Paoletti continued. “Having Locke play tango would be a challenge for anyone. He’ll get her next time.”
As they watched, Alyssa Locke accepted a bottle of water from the senior chief with a smile. She opened it and drank deeply, nodding as he spoke to her.
“Lovely woman,” commented James Bond.
Alyssa Locke was lovely to look at. She’d changed her clothes since this morning when Teri had first officially met her. She’d put on some kind of lightweight jumpsuit that covered her from her ankles to her wrists as per the customs of K-stan. But the suit was belted, which accentuated her trim figure. She wasn’t a voluptuous woman by any definition, but in that outfit, surrounded by a crowd of testosterone, she was unquestionably, strikingly female.
It was more than obvious that Alyssa was old friends with Stan Wolchonok. But how old and how friendly Teri didn’t know.
She walked toward them, wishing that she didn’t have to check in with Lieutenant Starrett, knowing that it would look strange if she walked past Stan without saying anything, hoping it wouldn’t look as if she were checking out the competition if she stopped to say hello while he was talking to Alyssa Locke.
“Hey, Lieutenant.” Stan greeted her first, and her heart leapt at his welcoming smile. “Where’s your flack jacket?”
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Up by the observers’tent.”
“Better than in the helo but not by much. It belongs on your body. Hey, Mike Muldoon’s looking for you.”
Great. So much for leaping hearts. She didn’t stop walking. “Thanks, Stan.”
She headed away from him, toward Sam Starrett, who was deep in discussion with two other men.
“Hey, Lieutenant, how’s the head?” Jay Lopez asked as she walked past. He was sprawled in the shade of the wing, next to Cosmo and Silverman, but now he sat up.
“The head . . . ?” She was clueless.
“The bump,” he reminded her. “Uh-oh,” Silverman teased. “Amnesia strikes. That’s not a good sign.”
“No,” she said. “No, I’m fine. I just . . . It was so not a big deal, I didn’t even . . .”
Silverman was grinning at her. “Maybe Lopez should, you know, check you out again, as the team’s medical corpsman, huh? Like maybe during dinner tonight?”
Jay Lopez was a handsome man with heavily lidded brown eyes and exotic cheekbones that were flushing with embarrassment.
“You’re Reserve, Lieutenant, right?” Silverman continued. “Which means in a few weeks you’ll be a civilian again. Which means the fact that Lopez here is enlisted won’t matter. Which means—”
“Stop,” Lopez said. “Sorry, Lieutenant.” He met her eyes briefly, then glanced past her.
Teri turned to see that Stan had come up behind her. He wasn’t close enough to be part of the conversation, yet it was more than clear that he was there if she needed him.
But there was nothing threatening in either Silverman’s or Lopez’s eyes. Silverman was teasing, claiming that Lopez was interested in her. Although . . . was it possible this was just another exercise Stan had set up in advance?
But then Silverman suddenly looked as if he’d swallowed a pincushion as Cosmo said something into his ear. “I beg your pardon, Lieutenant,” he said. “I didn’t realize you and the senior were, uh, special friends.”
She glanced behind her again, uncertain how to reply to that with Stan listening in, but the senior chief was gone.
She murmured some nonsense—“Don’t worry about it”—and went to find Starrett.
A quick “I’m here if you need me, sir,” and she was heading back toward the observers’tent, trying not to be too obvious as she looked around fo
r Stan.
But then there he was. Maneuvering Muldoon to an intercept point directly in her path.
“Hey, Teri.” Mike Muldoon really was remarkably good-looking. Even with a smudge of dirt on his face.
“Hey, Mike.” She forced a smile as Stan all but pushed Muldoon toward her. Dammit, Stan, don’t do this. “Sorry about this morning.”
Muldoon shook his head. “It’s not your fault that I choked.”
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