Course of Action: Crossfire

by Lindsay McKenna;Merline Lovelace

  “Sergeant Winborne!” Al Said’s teeth gleamed white under his inky black mustache. “I would not have recognized you, my friend.”

  “I hardly recognize myself,” Pete admitted ruefully.

  The prince’s arrival brought the audience to their feet. As soon as the applause died down, the lights dimmed. Then the curtain parted and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra struck the opening notes.

  Riley Fairchild walked on stage a moment later to a thunderous ovation.

  Regal and as willowy as a reed in a gown of flowing red silk, she was even more stunning than Pete remembered. A gauzy scarf shielded her honey-colored hair, but her skin was luminous and the bright stage lights put stars in the brown eyes she turned toward the royal box. Her gaze swept over the prince’s entourage. Pete saw it flick past him. Stop. Kick back for a second before moving on.

  She’d recognized him, Pete thought with a wry inner grin, but couldn’t place him. No surprise there. He’d been wearing his dress uniform when they’d met back in Texas. And the glamorous Ms. Fairchild had barely glanced at him before letting him know she was not interested. He was still remembering the acid put-down when the prince stood and kissed his hand to her. She acknowledged the extravagant gesture with a smile and a bow before turning to the conductor.

  Ten seconds into her opening aria, Pete was thinking he’d never heard anything as pure as the liquid silver notes she poured into the air.

  Three minutes later, he decided opera might just rank up there with hot, mindless sex and juicy T-bones in his list of personal favorites.

  Five minutes after that, all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 2

  The first warning was a short, stuttering rattle.

  With two monster timpani drums booming out a dramatic crescendo, not everyone in the audience immediately picked up on it, but Pete recognized the sound of automatic gunfire instantly. So did the battle-trained prince. He and Pete sprang out of their seats at the same instant the doors at the rear of the auditorium burst open. Men in black ski masks charged down the aisles, shouting and spraying gunfire above the heads of the audience.

  Terrified patrons screamed, dove out of their seats and tried frantically to wedge between the rows. On stage, chairs and music stands crashed over. Abandoning their instruments, the musicians scrambled for cover. Their guest performer stood paralyzed with fright for a moment before dropping facedown on the stage and covering her head with both arms.

  The prince’s personal bodyguard grabbed his arms and rushed him toward the rear of the royal box. The other members of his party tumbled out of their chairs to the floor. All except Pete. Acting on pure instinct, he vaulted over the front rail, dropped the half story and leaped onto the stage. Bullets stitched a deadly arc just inches over his head as he kicked two overturned chairs together to form a fragile shield before covering Riley’s body with his own. She twisted under him, panting at the combined impact of his weight and her terror, until he snarled a warning.

  “Be still!”

  She went rigid with shock. Or maybe surprise at the terse command. The gunmen were still firing, still shouting in a dialect Pete didn’t understand. Despite the pandemonium, his training never deserted him. He recorded every sound, every sensation. The rat-a-tat of short-barreled AK-47s. The high-pitched, adrenaline-charged shout of a female among the attackers. The sobs of sheer terror as the firing subsided and a voice vibrating with nerves issued orders in Arabic, then French, then English.

  “Everyone! Get up! Get up! Now!”

  The audience rose slowly, cautiously, with a chorus of grunts and gasps and more sobs.

  “You people! On the stage! On your feet!”

  There was a clang of overturned music stands, the tinny sound of brass instruments banging together, a slow shuffle of hands and knees and feet. Pete levered himself into a crouch and wrapped a hand around the warm skin of Riley Fairchild’s arm.

  “Best to do what they say.”

  He helped her up. She’d lost the gauzy head scarf. Also the combs holding back her hair. The honey-blond mass tumbled in wild abandon, covering her face and the terror Pete knew filled her eyes.

  She had to be thinking the same thing he was. If this was a hostage situation, the attackers had their choice of any number of high-value targets. The most obvious was Prince Malik al Said, a member of the Omani ruling family. But the glittering audience probably included a good number of foreign dignitaries—ambassadors, consuls, chargés d’affaires. Then, of course, there was an international opera star who reportedly commanded upward of a hundred thousand dollars for every performance.

  If it wasn’t a hostage situation, chances were damned good it was a suicide mission. Pete couldn’t ignore that all-too-real possibility but kept the grim thought from his face as Riley shoved back her hair. Her head came up and recognition cut through the fear flooding her brown eyes.

  “I—I know you from somewhere.”

  “We met at—”

  “No talking!”

  The command was screamed at them from the AK-47–toting attacker, who’d leaped onto the stage. He jerked from side to side, gesturing with his weapon, shouting at the terrified orchestra members, herding them into a tight huddle. Pete hooked an arm around Riley’s waist and started toward the others.

  “Not you!” His eyes wild in the slits of his mask, the gunman stabbed the barrel at Riley. “You will go there!”

  He gestured toward the wings, where another figure had just emerged.

  “You,” he snarled at Pete. “Release her and join the others.”

  Pete shook his head. The attacker leveled his weapon.

  “Release her, I say!”

  The nervous gunman couldn’t fire without hitting Riley. He knew it. Pete knew it. They played a deadly game of chicken for three seconds. Five. Too hyped and nervous to let the game spin out any longer, the gunman grunted and jerked the barrel.

  “Go!”

  As Riley walked toward the other man waiting in the wings, she pressed against the wall of a hard, ridged rib cage. Not that she had a choice in the matter. The arm locked around her was like a steel belt, carving into her waist, cutting off her breath. Desperately, her frantic mind tried to sort through the terror and shouts and cries and sobs.

  What did these men want?

  Why are they separating her from the others?

  And who was this American defying them?

  She knew him. She knew she knew him, but she had no clue from where or when. She must have shaken a thousand hands on this sellout concert tour. The tour her mother had gone to court in a futile attempt to get canceled, she remembered on a short, strangled laugh.

  No! She wouldn’t give in to the hysteria almost choking her. If she’d learned nothing else during her turbulent childhood, she’d learned to hide her true feelings behind a cool, impenetrable mask. She’d refused to show her confusion and hurt and growing anger then. She was damned if she’d show her terror now.

  Lifting her chin, she pulled on her stoic mask and looked the second gunman square in the eyes. “What do you want with me?”

  His gun barrel made a short, choppy swipe to the left. “Come.”

  Not his gun barrel, she realized. Hers. Despite the fear still churning like acid in her stomach, that one muttered syllable was enough for her trained ear to pick up a break in the zona di passaggio, the point where the human voice has reached the end of a certain register and hasn’t made the necessary adjustment to the next.

  The woman was attempting to sound gruff and harsh but couldn’t pull off the lower end of the middle register. That told Riley she was not just female, but young. Very young. For some reason the possibility a teenager was aiming that vicious-looking gun at her midsection made the weapon seem even more frightening.

  “Come!” the girl commanded again, her eyes darting nervously from the stage to the auditorium and back again. The break in her voice was even more evident this time and gave Riley the impetus she needed to smooth the
fear-sharpened edges from her own voice.

  “All right,” she responded coolly, calmly. “We’ll come with you.”

  She didn’t realize she’d used the plural until the stranger shifted his bruising grip from her waist to her arm. As he matched his step to hers, she tried to think of a way to get him out of whatever was happening. The people obviously wanted her, not him.

  Or did they?

  She shot the man a desperate sideways glance. Who was he? Where had she met him? How could she have forgotten someone with those wide shoulders and penetrating blue eyes?

  “Dear Lord!” She almost tripped over the hem of her gown. “You’re that friend of Aly’s husband! The...what did they call you? The PJ. You’re the PJ who hit on me at the wedding!”

  Those lightning blue eyes cut to her. “Ixnay.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a civilian,” he said out of the side of his mouth, his lips not moving. “Like you.”

  “I, uh...”

  His fingers pressed brutally into her elbow. “Got that?”

  “Yes!”

  Her head whirling, Riley hiked up her gown and stumbled alongside him. She remembered him now. Like the other groomsmen at the wedding, he’d worn a fancy uniform decorated with more ribbons and medals and badges than she could count. She’d been impressed. Who wouldn’t be? She’d also been very tempted to respond to his wicked, come-hither grin. Right up until a sultry 44-D strolled into the reception and draped herself all over the man. A former Rush Springs High School cheerleader, someone whispered, and one-time Mrs. Winborne.

  Winborne! That was his name. Pete Winborne. Sergeant Pete Winborne. So what was he doing in Oman? At the Royal Opera House? Wearing white tie and tails?

  “In there!”

  Their gun-toting teenager herded them into one of the backstage dressing rooms. She sidled halfway in, keeping one eye on them and the other on the corridor.

  Riley skimmed a frantic glance around the dressing room, searching for a phone or iPad or any way to signal for help. The sergeant searched, too. A swift, narrow-eyed scan that swept from one side of the room to the other. Riley caught a flicker of frustration cross his face, then watched him lean casually against the dressing table and palm a comb with a needle-pointed hair pick for a handle.

  Good God! Surely he didn’t intend to use a comb to combat a machine gun! Or maybe he did. Riley had only managed a few private moments with Aly at the wedding. Just long enough for her childhood friend to go all starry-eyed and rhapsodize about her groom and his best pals from high school. According to the glowing bride, Josh and his five friends joined the military the day after graduation. What’s more, she’d proclaimed proudly, they’d all gone Special Ops.

  Riley had made vague approval noises, but Special Operations was pretty much a remote concept to her. The closest she’d come to any kind of covert military activity was watching the movie Zero Dark Thirty, where a CIA operative and a Navy SEAL team took down Osama bin Laden.

  The movie in mind, she shot another glance at Winborne. Okay, so maybe he could disable a teenaged terrorist with a comb. God help them, he looked as though he intended to. His gaze was locked on the girl. His white-knuckled fist gripped the comb.

  He took an infinitesimal step toward the door. Another. Riley couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Then a clatter of feet in the corridor almost brought her heart leaping out of her chest.

  Their guard went rigid and cried a question. The answer had her sagging against the doorjamb in obvious relief. Sergeant Winborne muttered a curse and without seeming to move a muscle, slid the comb into his cummerbund at the small of his back.

  Two seconds later Prince al Said was shoved into the dressing room. Two masked gunmen crowded in behind him. Blood ran in a wide rivulet from a cut on the prince’s cheek, staining his neck and robes.

  “Ms. Fairchild! Are you all right?”

  She mustered a shaky smile. “I’m not hurt, but hardly all right.”

  “And you, Pete?”

  “I’m good. As good as any civilian can be in this kind of a situation.”

  There it was again. That emphasis on the word civilian. It was so slight Riley might have missed it if Winborne hadn’t crunched her elbow a few moments earlier. The prince picked up the nuance, though, and gave a barely perceptible nod.

  The masked gunmen showed no sign they’d caught the signal. They exchanged some nervous, excited words and sent the female back to the main auditorium. Riley’s heart seemed to stop when she noticed Winborne taking advantage of their brief distraction. Angling away from them, he palmed the comb again. The prince’s glance dropped to the thin steel pick at its end. His nostrils quivered and his chin squared in a way that set every one of Riley’s nerves screaming. Then he tipped his chin slightly, so slightly, toward the gunman on the right. Winborne tipped his to the left.

  Both men eased away from her. A small sidestep, a seemingly innocent shuffle. The gun barrels followed, one tracking the prince, one aimed at Winborne’s midsection.

  Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God! They were clearing her from the line of fire! And they were going to jump the two men toting machine guns! Riley knew it as sure as she knew every trill, every glissando, in the famous aria from Bellini’s Norma. Critics had rhapsodized over Riley’s recording of the particular tune and raved about her ability to dazzle with the high notes.

  Those same critics would have winced at the squawk that issued from her throat the next instant. It came from deep in her chest, a primal cry made sharp and grating by real terror. She barely heard the graceless sound, didn’t stop to think as she lurched forward. All she knew, all that drove her, was the blind, instinctive need to draw the gunmen’s attention to her for two or three precious seconds.

  That was all Winborne and the prince needed. Al Said flew by in a blur of black robes and gold tassels and slammed into one attacker. The sergeant arrowed into the other.

  Riley dropped to the floor and curled into a fetal ball, knees to her chin, arms around her head. She expected shouts. Screams. Ear-shattering bursts of gunfire. All she heard was a crash as something hit the dressing table and a sort of low gurgle. Then silence. Heavy, terrifying silence broken a lifetime later by a hoarse rasp.

  “Christ!” Winborne wrapped a hand around her arm and dragged her up. “What the hell were you thinking, drawing their attention like that? You could have been killed!”

  “So could you! Both of you! I saw the look that...ooooh!”

  His wide-shouldered frame had blocked her view of the carnage until this moment. Now Riley could see a pair of feet. She followed them to a sprawled torso, then to the blood gushing from the comb shank imbedded in the left eyeball of one of the attackers. It was buried deep, up to the hilt, and must have dug right into the man’s brain.

  Swallowing hard, Riley glanced from the dead man to his companion. Make that former companion. The second gunman was also stretched out on the floor. His head, she noted with another gulp, was at a right angle to his neck.

  She swiped her tongue over dry lips, shot a disbelieving look from Winborne to the prince and back again.

  “We train for situations like this,” Winborne said in what she assumed he intended as a reassuring voice.

  “Situations like this?” Hysteria bubbled up. “Just how many times have you attended an opera and been attacked by armed gunmen?”

  He had no answer for that. Nor could Riley articulate exactly why she fell, shaking from head to toe, into his arms. She’d long ago mastered the art of shielding every thought, every emotion. Yet the moment Winborne’s arms closed around her, the mask she’d so painfully constructed over the years started to fall apart.

  She wanted to cling to him. Hang on and never let go. The urge was so strong, and so unfamiliar. Her father had died while she was just a baby and from earliest memory her mother had rigidly controlled every aspect of her life. Her clothes, her schools, her friends. Meredith Fairchild had never permitted her daughter to socialize with
boys her own age. Never allowed her to date until faced with an all-out rebellion and a threat to boycott all vocal training classes.

  Riley had found a measure of excitement in the arms of her few dates. Sexual satisfaction with the one man she’d foolishly thought she’d spend the rest of her life with. But she’d never experience such raw emotion. Such a desperate need to shelter in a man’s arms.

  Those arms shouldn’t have felt so strong. So absurdly comforting. Not with two dead bodies just feet away. They did, though. Without rhyme or reason or cognitive rationale, Sergeant Pete Winborne seemed to represent a safe haven in a world gone suddenly, inexplicably mad.

  “Come!” The prince cut through her chaotic thoughts and swooped to snatch the gun out of his dead attacker’s hands. “We must leave here.”

  The sergeant was already snatching up the other man’s weapon. Riley recovered her tattered courage and raced past him into the corridor.

  “Follow me. There’s an emergency exit behind the backdrop.”

  * * *

  For a heart-stopping two minutes, she actually thought they would make it. Throwing frightened glances over her shoulder, she darted through a maze of electrically operated acoustical curtains, hydraulic stage lifts and storage rooms. Shouts and the sound of hysterical weeping from the main auditorium pounded in her ears. A loud, tinny clatter, as though someone had kicked or stumbled over an instrument, made her jump. Then she ducked around the rear curtain and gave a sob of pure relief when she spotted the illuminated, bright red sign for the emergency exit. She shoved the crash bar and the alarm went off. The shrill scream of the Klaxon barely registered on Riley’s consciousness.

  When she slammed through the door, her relief turned to a strangled moan of dismay. The two black-robed figures guarding the back alley spun around and dropped into an instinctive crouch. Even in the deepening twilight, Riley could see their fingers tighten on the triggers of their automatic weapons.