by Cherry Adair
Oh, she'd get over this. She would. If by nothing more than sheer determination.
But when?
Before Kane sent in a scathing well-deserved report of her failure? Before she was asking, "Do you want fries with that?"
Kane Wright was everything she aspired to be.
Determined. Focused.
She had those down.
It was the fearless aspect of Wright's personality she needed to emulate. Now seemed like a good time to start.
The man never made mistakes. Stupid or otherwise. He'd never zig when he should've zagged. Everything he did was perfect and precise. He was a god at the T-FLAC training academy. AJ wasn't the only rookie who worshiped the ground Kane Wright walked on.
His ability to blend into the scenery like a chameleon was legend. His calm, almost detached calm, had never been ruffled. And he never lost his temper. Ever. AJ knew she should study that aspect other hero's personality a lot harder. She tended to go off half-cocked when pissed off. Or scared. A bad trait, her instructors had warned, for a good T-FLAC agent.
She fired off a volley of shots. The windshield of the front chase vehicle exploded. Of course, half-cocked was better than scared shi—
"Good shot. Cooper. Now we're talking!" Wright said in her ear as their vehicle careened onto a blacktop road at close to eighty miles an hour, sand pluming behind them like a rogue wave on a dusty ocean.
AJ sighted the scope of her weapon and discharged a barrage of shots at the headlights behind them. The second chase vehicle swerved, then followed them onto the road in a wide arc, moving in faster.
"They're closing," Struben yelled.
She went into the automatic mode she'd learned during training. Steady. Scope. Target. Fire. Move on. Again and again, she squeezed the trigger with command and precision. But there were so many of them. Every few meters it seemed as if another pseudo-military vehicle full of armed men appeared. Even roaches couldn't reproduce this fast.
With the baddies' barrage of fire right on their tail, they flew across the Giza Plateau and onto Pyramid Road, headed for downtown. Several minutes later they encountered the bright headlights of oncoming vehicles as a procession of cars and tour buses headed toward the light show at the Great Pyramid. Lit up for the tourists, the pyramids appeared eerie and otherworldly as they floated surreally in the darkness.
With the approach of civilians and civilization, shooting came to a halt, but neither Kane nor the chase vehicles slowed down. Traffic on the other side of the road was stop-and-go, but as far as AJ could tell, no one bothered to glance their way as they sped by in the opposite direction.
"Might as well get comfortable," Kane told them. Struben turned around from his ready position in back. His eyes met AJ's, cold and unforgiving.
Apparently his ego didn't appreciate her fine display of marksmanship. Too bad, she thought. He could shove his ego up his ass.
AJ twisted in the seat, sliding down to face forward. Silently she reloaded the AK-47, and checked her Sig, keeping both close to hand. She used her sleeve to swipe some of the sand and sweat from her face.
Hopefully, Kane was rethinking his plans. Hadn't she just redeemed herself a bit? Besides, who'd come to Egypt in time to make the hit she'd blown? Savage was out of commission. And the cold hard fact was, only a woman was going to be able to get close enough to Raazaq to kill him now that the sniper thing was history. The reason they'd sent her was because there was no one else.
It didn't matter that she'd blown the first attempt. Or how scared she was.
She was it.
No doubt there'd be time for recriminations later. In the meantime she might still be able to salvage her reputation—not to mention some of her pride—by not missing her target the next time.
And taking what Wright was sure to dish out like a man.
No do-overs.
Grateful for a few moments' reprieve to let her adrenaline level subside a bit, AJ concentrated on taking slow, even breaths, and regulating her heartbeat.
She didn't know why Raazaq's men had ceased fire. They weren't the type to be bothered by hitting a civilian. She glanced at Kane's face, impassive as he navigated the increasing volume of traffic. Eighteen kilometers from Cairo and closing. Would the teeming city streets deter Raazaq's men from following them?
AJ doubted it.
Buildings whizzed by, Kane took a sharp left, sped up, and zoomed onto the ramp of Sharia Comiche el Nil freeway going north, then crossed the El-Giza Bridge over the Nile, weaving expertly through the traffic heading for Imbaba and their safe house. It was hard to see any difference between one street and the next. Everything was ecru-colored, and decorated in varying degrees of poverty. AJ inhaled what felt like her first real breath in twelve hours.
"We lost them," Struben said into the mic.
"No we didn't," AJ said flatly, pulling her ball cap more firmly over her hair. "They'll take the other freeway and come back at us and try to box us in. Arterials?" she asked Kane.
"Yeah." He paused. "Is that what you were reading on the flight over? Street maps?"
"Among other things, yes." She'd tried to cram as much intel into the twenty-two-hour flight as possible.
"Should have seen Coop in logistics," Escobar said admiringly from the floor of the backseat. "She's amazing. Remembers everything. Right, Coop?"
Having a photographic memory certainly helped in the academic part other courses. "I remember that you still owe me seventeen bucks and twelve cents, Escobar," AJ teased her attention never wavering from the vehicles surrounding them.
Kane missed a produce truck by an inch and a prayer as he wove in and out of traffic. He wouldn't lead the tangos home. AJ knew how his mind worked. She'd studied him—and his ops—at length. She probably knew more about Kane Wright than Kane Wright did.
He took an off-ramp, twisted and turned through back streets and alleys, and shot onto another freeway. AJ twisted to look behind them. They'd lost one vehicle, but the others had done just what she'd said they would. Came in behind them from another direction, and now they remained right on their tail like stink on poop.
So close she could clearly see the large, black mole on the passenger's beak of a nose through the glare of the headlights. He raised a handgun.
AJ took a chance and fired off one quick round, grinning when the driver swerved, sending beak nose's aim off.
"Goddamn it." Kane spread his open palm on top of AJ's head and pushed it down. The shot went wild, hit the fly-speckled real-view mirror and kept on going as she collapsed over onto his lap like a soufflé, her face buried in his crotch.
Jesus, Kane thought, wouldn't you know she'd find her guts now? She was damn lucky he'd seen the glint of the weapon in the side mirror and grabbed her at just the right moment.
Her breath felt hot and moist through his thin cotton pants. He realized he was still clasping the back of her head in his palm, and removed his hold. "Clear. You can g—"
She put a hand on his thigh to push herself upright just as he threw the steering wheel in a quick jitterbug to snag a side street. Her hand slid off his thigh and dove into his groin for purchase. "Christ, woman!"
"Hey!" She yanked her hand from between Kane's legs, retrieved the Sig Sauer off the center console where she'd dropped it, and resumed her backwards position on the seat. "You're the one that grabbed me, remember? I could have shot 'em again if you hadn't."
Her slender back was ramrod straight, the soles of her boots braced against the dash for balance. She readjusted her backwards black baseball cap more securely and hunched over her AK-47.
"Excellent!" Struben's voice came across the mic. "We finally found something she's good at." He made a disgustingly wet sound with his mouth. "After you get him off, babe, climb on back here and make yourself useful."
"Screw yourself, Struben," AJ shot back.
"Why should I when you're around? I hear you can suck the brass off a doorknob, babe—Jesus Christ, Escobar!" Richard Struben suddenly yelped into the m
ic. "Little prick just bit my ankle like a fucking dog!" he complained to the others.
AJ gave a choked laugh. "Thanks, Manny."
"Yo!" Kane said with deadly calm. "Shut the hell up, or every single sorry ass one of you will be on that flight back home." He gritted his teeth. Fuck it. He was going to send them all back home and do the job alone, like he'd wanted to in the first place. "Pay attention to your job. You can have your pissing contest after we're clear."
He glanced into what was left of the rearview mirror—Struben didn't look happy. Escobar had crawled up from his biting position on the floor and was exchanging meaningful I want-to-smash-your-face looks with his partner, and Cooper looked ready to spit nails. She opened her mouth to say something.
"Not," Kane cut her off, "another word. From any of you. Unless it's directly related to where we are, and why we're here. Got it?" He gave AJ, who looked ready to speak anyway, a hard personal glare, and added, "Just nod."
The two in back gave reluctant jerks of their heads. A quick glance at Cooper showed her gimlet-eyed and tight-lipped, but she bit her tongue and remained silent. Looking at her, it was hard to remember she was an operative.
She wasn't anything as tame as pretty, or attractive. She was jaw-droppingly beautiful, even with the layer of dirt she was wearing at the moment. Her skin was fine-grained and lightly tanned, her face a perfect oval. Her eyes ice-green. Her hair, a red-gold that even sweat-slicked and tightly bound shone like fire. She had a tall, long-legged, curvy body, and full, firm breasts.
AJ Cooper was a walking centerfold.
A woman that beautiful was used to fending off unwanted attention from men. And if she wasn't, she'd learn soon enough.
"Just a reminder, Cooper," he reminded himself, "when you're with me you're not a woman, you're an operative."
Struben snorted, forgetting, or not, that every word was transmitted on his mic. "The cold son of a bitch must be deaf, dumb, and blind."
Kane ignored Struben's comment. For now. The man had just punched the last hole in his ticket home. One more off-color remark and he'd be in the cargo bay on the transport Stateside with Escobar and Cooper.
AJ's mic clicked off. Kane glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Her mouth was moving.
Smart of her not to let him hear whatever she was saying. Hell and damn.
In the midst of the pissing contest being played out in the car, he'd been keeping an eye out for the vehicles that had been following them. The white car wasn't behind them anymore—not anywhere Kane could see it, anyway. But it was there. Somewhere.
Cars, trucks, horse-drawn carts, and livestock vied for position on the roads. It was early evening, and the streets were crowded. Fiats and Hondas hemmed in plodding wooden carts, tinted-windowed BMWs vied for space with flocks of sheep and boys driving camels.
The sidewalks were Disneyland-packed with crowds of people from rich to poor. Mingling, chatting, and drinking coffee in outdoor coffeehouses, they were a moving, shifting tapestry.
The air was thick with the smell of days-old produce, smoke, diesel fuel, and the pervasive, dank odor of the Nile. The river ran through the concrete jungle as a sewage system as well as the city's water-supply and laundry.
Kane took familiar, and unfamiliar, side arterials, swooped up onto a busy freeway, shot over another bridge, the one remaining chase vehicle tight on his ass.
He took a turn, cornering without slowing down. Skipped lanes to avoid a flock of sheep, made another right. The other maniacs on the road separated the chase car from them. But it was still there.
Most of the streetlights had been shot or burned out on these narrow side alleyways. Zebra-striped pockets of light and shadow slashed across his vision. One part of his brain concentrated on losing their tail. The other tossed the problem of AJ Cooper around like worry beads through nervous fingers.
If her reputation was accurate, she could do the job. Given the situation she'd been briefed on, she could do it. But was the last hour an indication of how she'd behave under pressure? Kane didn't know the woman well enough to make the call. And there was no room for another mistake.
Could she do her job given the right set of circumstances?
He had to be sure. Probably wasn't going to cut it. He had to be 100 percent convinced, without a moment's doubt, sure that when face-to-face with Raazaq, AJ would pull the trigger.
Because no matter what the hell he said, or how strongly he felt about sending her home, AJ Cooper was the only one available who could eliminate Raazaq. If there'd been any other choice, she wouldn't have been here in the first place. Like it or not, Kane was stuck with her. He might be a master of disguises, but even he couldn't duplicate a drop-dead-beautiful, five-foot-eight-inch, well-endowed, green-eyed, redheaded female.
There were many reasons he'd wanted to get Raazaq before the man started his trek into the desert. One of them being keeping AJ Cooper as far the hell away from the sick son of a bitch as was humanly possible. That opportunity was lost.
Now he was about to hand her to the terrorist on a silver platter, with an apple in her mouth.
AJ Cooper was Fazur Raazaq's designated assassin.
AJ felt sweat pool at the base of her throat and between her breasts. She almost wished they would shoot her and get it over with. Filled with dread, she was poised to jump out of the car the moment Kane told her to.
Clambering over rooftops was going to be a piece of cake compared to waiting for a bullet to hit her in the back of the head, smashing it like a dropped watermelon on a summer day. Ah, Jesus God…
Earlier in the day, they'd left town from the ritzy Hotel Ra, in a completely different direction as they'd circled into position above Raazaq's camp. AJ didn't recognize this area at all. Escobar and Struben had gone directly to the safe house in Imbaba and picked them up at their hotel downtown before they'd headed out.
They traveled a few more blocks before she recognized their location. Thanks to Kane, and his detailed debriefing reports from an assignment a few months ago. Like all his other reports, she'd pored over that one as well, studying his style, his modus operandi. Learning him. Absorbing his techniques.
The Khan al Khalili bazaar should be coming up soon on their left—Yes. There. The smell of roses, cinnamon, and dozens of other sweet and savory fragrances hung in the air. The stalls were crowded with late-night shoppers. If this were a movie, Wright would plow through the vendor stalls, fruit and veggies flying. A: It wasn't a movie. B: Kane Wright had more control than that. He'd circle and twist through the old suqs and capillary alleys until he lost the tail. Then he'd abandon the vehicle and make it on foot and take to the rooftops.
"Two seventy-five," AJ told him as the bad guys got close enough for her to count. "Six noses."
Wright spun the little car into a tight one-eighty, and slipped down a narrow side street. She hit her shoulder sharply on the empty window frame, but ignored the pain. There was another sharp jog about… now. Moonlight didn't reach into the constricted, dank canyon. The pungent stink of burnt rubber filled the air as the car skidded around the corner.
The chase car was too wide to follow them, but if the bad guys were smart, they'd block both exits.
"Struben, you and Escobar take the fire escape to the left. Cooper, with me. We'll go down a bit farther, then to the right. Cooper and I will take to the rooftops. She's too important to let them see her now."
"They already saw me," she pointed out, her voice flat and raspy with fear. Fear or not, she had a job to do, and damn it, she was going to do it. If she could just swallow this acidic lump in her throat and stop her heart from beating so damn fast.
Damn. Damn. Damn. How could she want to do this so badly and still be scared out of her mind? How did the others do it? None of them were sick to their stomachs. At least not so's anyone could tell.
"They saw what they expected to see. Four men in dark clothing. Get ready, you two. Cooper, stick to me like crazy glue. Got it?"
"Yes, s
ir." She turned and hooked the straps of the Dragunov andAK-47 over her chest, bandolier-style, and tucked the Sig into the front of her belt. "Ready," she repeated more firmly. Her stomach lurched up into her throat to join her erratic pulse.
Fear into anger, my ass. This was so not working.
Fear was fear was fear.
"Now!" Kane told the men in back.
The car jostled as the two men lunged for a fire escape on a brick warehouse. One of them grunted as he hit with the full force of his body. Manny's arm. AJ bit her lip, but didn't turn around.
There was barely enough room for the car as it hurtled down the narrow lane.
"Hand me that water bag behind you," Kane instructed.
AJ flipped her weapons against her back and out of the way, then twisted to reach down onto the floorboard. Her fingers closed around the bag. Getting a better grip, she hauled it up and handed over the heavy water bag they'd brought, but had never used.
"Three." Kane took it, and put the pedal to the metal. "Two…" He wedged the canvas sack against the accelerator pedal. Removed his foot, checked to see that it would hold at that speed. "Go!" He stood, crouched on his seat, one foot beside her hip. "Up! Up! Go! Go! Go!"
There wasn't room to open the doors in the alley, good thing there was no top to the car. AJ shot to her feet and lunged for a fire-escape ladder as they shot past it. Her weapon slammed hard against her back as she climbed the wonkie ladder like a monkey.
She felt a large hand on her butt, and appreciated the extra burst of speed with a little help from the man behind her. The ladder abruptly ended. She jumped up and caught the next one in both hands, then swung her body up and over and started climbing again. The two large guns were heavy on her back. The building was Mt. Everest. The ladders were rusted and barely adhered to the crumbling brick. Damn good thing she wasn't afraid of heights.
Climb. Hand over hand. Leg up. Jump, grip, climb. There was nothing else. Heat. Pounding heart. Climb. Climb. Climb. Faster, damn it.
She sensed rather than saw the presence behind her. Kane. Knowing he was with her made her feel better. More confident.