“When is the right time to get angry?” she asked hotly. “If you want me to do it when it’s convenient for you, then maybe you should stop being such a jerk.”
He laughed as he took the stairs up two at a time. “God save me from estrogen-induced insanity.”
She followed him up the stairs. The entire team was up there. Trying their damnedest not to listen—or maybe trying to listen, she didn’t care either way.
“Who’s not here yet?” Stan asked.
“Cosmo and Lopez,” someone volunteered. “They’re coming.”
“That was a really assholeish thing to say,” Teri lit into Stan, catching his arm and scrambling so that she was in front of him, blocking him. “God save me from testosterone-induced assholeishness! I love you, god damn it!” With all the words she’d stumbled over while chasing him in the stairwell, that’s what she should have said. “I want you and I’m coming after you. I’m not going to let you get away from me. You better get some furniture for that house of yours, because I’m coming over!”
Oh, God. Everyone was looking at her. Sam Starrett. Mike Muldoon. WildCard and Jenk. “That okay with you?” she asked Jenk.
He nodded quickly. “Yes, ma’am.”
Teri nodded, too. “Good. Well.” She glanced at Muldoon. “Sorry.”
He shrugged. “I think I pretty much knew.”
She looked at Stan again, but he was looking away. Over toward the helo, as if he wished he were on board and flying away from her forever. Oh, God, what had she just done?
And there, in front of her, was helo pilot Walt Green. “Walt, I don’t suppose I can talk you into switching—”
“Not a chance, Teri.”
“Right. So. My day’s going particularly well.” She looked at Stan again, and this time he was at least looking back at her. But for the life of her, she couldn’t read the expression on his face. God, she loved his face. “Good luck.”
She turned and would have walked away with dignity, her head held high—at least until she made it back to her room.
“Lieutenant.”
She stopped walking and turned around, resigned to facing the formality in his voice.
“I apologize for being an asshole,” Stan said.
It was one of the last things she’d expected him to say. “I apologize, too,” she whispered. “For embarrassing you like this.”
“Do I look embarrassed?” He laughed. “A little overwhelmed maybe, but I’m sorry, the most beautiful, smartest, sweetest woman that I’ve ever met announces that she wants me? You’ve just cemented my reputation for being able to do anything. If you want to embarrass me, Lieutenant, you’re going to have to do better than that.”
She nodded, relief surging through her. “I’ll try harder next time.”
He smiled. “Good.”
Lopez and Cosmo came bounding up the stairs, and Stan turned away, busy then being the senior chief, loading the team on board the helo. He was the last man on, and as he turned to look at her, she hugged herself, arms across her chest, determined not to stand there and wave good-bye while he went to save the world.
He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. “Keep your flack jacket on.”
And it occurred to her in a flash of realization that when he said that, maybe it wasn’t because he wanted to boss her around, to keep the distancing effects of age and experience prominent in their relationship. When he said that, maybe it was his way of telling her just how desperately he cared.
Teri waved.
Twenty-two
A body had been kicked down the stairs of the hijacked plane.
Stan went into the terminal building to find the negotiator’s room grimly silent.
Lieutenant Paoletti turned to meet him, gesturing with a twist of his head for the two of them to step out in the hall.
“Shots were fired about fifteen minutes ago, and again about ten minutes ago,” the lieutenant informed Stan. “The tangos opened the door just now, dumped this body.”
“Is it the girl?”
“We don’t know yet,” L.T. told him. “Scooter and Knox are out there on surveillance, but even with high-powered glasses, they can’t give a definite ID. The tangos wrapped some sort of blanket around the girl’s body—that’s assuming it is the girl. Bhagat is trying to raise them on the radio, trying to negotiate getting a vehicle out there to pick up the body. Meanwhile audio and visual are still out in the cockpit.”
“Does Max want to wait till nightfall to send us in?” Stan asked.
“No,” L.T. said. “He’s got seven different people advising him to wait, but he wants to go now anyway. He knows damn well that that body is a ‘come get us’message.”
“So let’s go and get ’em, sir,” Stan said. “Let’s be done with it. I want to go home.”
The lieutenant sent him a sidelong glance. “To pick out furniture for the house?”
Oh, Christ. “News spreads ridiculously fast around here.”
Paoletti held out his hand. “Congratulations, Senior Chief.”
“Hold up, Lieutenant. There’s a long road between getting laid and getting married.”
Paoletti was visibly taken aback. And Stan instantly understood. “No,” he said. “Tom—don’t get me wrong. That’s not what I’m . . . that’s what she’s doing. I mean, she thinks she loves me. . . .” The memory of her standing there, telling him so in front of the entire team, still shook him to the core. “Jesus, what’s she thinking? Where’s it gonna go? At the risk of sounding as if I’m boasting, because you know me—I’m not—I think she’s blown away by the, uh, shall we say, the physical nature of the relationship. She’s not real experienced, and trust me, in a week or two, she’s gonna be—”
“Blowing you away,” Paoletti finished for him. “Because if she means what she says, she’ll prove it. The sex is a great part of the package, believe me, I know, I’ve been there, but it’s just a part of it. It’s her face, her smile, her knowing something’s wrong and talking to you in bed at night until you cough up the problem, even when she’s exhausted. It’s her eyes. You look in her eyes and she’s not afraid to let you see that you’re her world. It’s her taking care of you and needing you to take care of her, too.” He laughed. “Stan, trust me, your life is never going to be the same.”
“I hope so,” Stan said quietly. “I’m not convinced she’s thought it through and that’s really what she wants, but Christ, Tom, I hope so.”
“Alyssa!”
Alyssa turned around with a defensive set to her shoulders and a coolness in her voice and face that made his heart sink. “Lieutenant Starrett.”
Damn. He’d thought they’d gotten beyond frosty and formal the last time they talked. Unless her response to his declaration of undying love was this cool get lost.
But this wasn’t about them. This was about getting his team ready to go.
And the gods, in a last-ditch attempt at ultimate irony, had aligned the planets and put O’Leary into the path of a bullet, thus making the impossible happen. Alyssa Locke had become a member—temporary, yes, but still a member—of his, Sam Starrett’s, SEAL team.
And maybe there were some devils at work, too, because—and what were the odds of this ever happening—Sam was actually glad to have her.
The woman could shoot.
He and his men were going to kick their way onto a plane in which five men were in possession of deadly weapons. And he knew that because Alyssa was one of his two snipers, there were at least two fewer tangos that he and his team were going to have to tango with.
It wasn’t as if she was going to be in any danger. It wasn’t as if Lieutenant Paoletti had assigned her to muscle her way onto the plane alongside of Sam. If he had, Sam would’ve fought him, kicking and screaming. That he would’ve flat out refused.
But using Alyssa as a sniper—that was something he could agree with.
No, it wasn’t easy to shoot another human being—to shoot to kill. There were people who argued t
hat women weren’t up to that task. They claimed a woman would choke in a sniper situation.
But Sam had no doubt that Alyssa would do her job, that she had her own way of coping with the elimination of a human target. Of course, maybe she was like him, and she just threw up afterward and then went out and got drunk.
But probably not.
Right now part of his job as CO was to make sure the other members of the team had as much faith in their snipers as he did. So he spoke loudly and made sure he was overhead. “L.T. told me you volunteered—”
“If you have any problem with it, you need to talk to—”
“I don’t.” Jesus, would she just relax? “I just wanted to tell you I’m glad you’re here and to thank you.”
She nervously moistened her lips, clearly surprised. Jenk and Cosmo were surprised, too. In the past, Sam had laughed at Alyssa’s desire to be in the action, at the front lines, every chance he could get. “You’re welcome,” she said.
Sam nodded. Lopez and Muldoon were watching, too. “So you want the welcome to the team handshake or the welcome to the team kiss? I figure since I’ve never really had the opportunity to give the welcome kiss before I should take advantage of—”
“I’ll take the handshake,” she said. Her face was straight, but she was fighting a smile. He saw it lurking at the edges of her mouth.
He took her hand and shook it. He wanted to hold on to it inappropriately long, to kiss her palm or even suck one of her fingers into his mouth, but he didn’t because the team was watching.
There was a time when he would have done it because the team was watching.
And she knew it.
“I won’t let you down, sir,” she said.
“I know.” He nodded at her. Turned away.
“Sam.”
He turned back, surprised she’d used his name.
“Stay safe. Take head shots.”
He smiled, touched that she cared. “I will.”
She stepped closer. Lowered her voice. But it still wasn’t low enough to keep Jenk and Cosmo from overhearing if they really wanted to. “After we’re done here . . . Well, I was thinking, um, that, well, that you’re someone I’d really like to get to know better. And I was wondering if maybe you’d like to have dinner with me.”
Sam glanced at Jenk, who was pointedly not looking at him. He looked back at Alyssa, into the warm swirl of hope in her eyes, and he was afraid to open his mouth because he didn’t think he could form any coherent words. He was afraid that a mindless howl of joy would escape, embarrassing her to death.
“In a restaurant,” she added, as if he wasn’t already aware that she’d fucking invited him to dinner in public.
So he just breathed for several long moments and nodded his head, hoping that she could see the party going on inside of him by looking into his eyes. And when he finally could speak, he uttered the understatement of the fucking millennium. “I’d like that.”
“Good.” She smiled and headed for the roof.
He did his best to walk away, too, without doing a dance.
And then he stopped dancing, even in his mind, because his radio squawked. It was Lieutenant Paoletti.
“We’re done waiting,” L.T. said. “There’ve been more shots fired on the plane. It’s time to go in.”
Des was more than half expecting Helga to be surprised to see him. But she opened the door quickly at his knock and let him in without a murmur of protest.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The place was covered with sticky notes. Reminders, comments, lists of names.
“Man,” he said.
She nodded. “It’s a mess.”
He pulled her close for a hug. “How bad is it? Do you remember talking to me on the phone?”
“Of course.”
“Really?”
She pulled away from him, showed him the page of her notepad.
“Des is coming here. You told him you’re losing your marbles. He has something important to tell you,” was written on it.
“I figure since I wrote this, I must’ve spoken to you on the phone,” she said. “How else would I have told you?”
“What year is it?” he asked.
She pulled a note from the headboard of her bed. “It’s 2001. Most of the answers are here. Of course, if I spend all my time reading them, over and over, I manage never to leave this room.”
“I bet it’ll be better at home,” he said.
Helga nodded. “It makes sense that it would be.”
“We’ll go to the doctor,” Des said past the lump in his throat. “Maybe there’s some new medicine.”
She nodded. “That’s not what you came here to discuss.”
“No.” He sat down on her bed, rubbed his forehead. God, where to start. “Do you know who I work for?”
There was a gleam in her eye. “You mean, besides me? You’re with intelligence, no?”
“Not exactly. I’m part of an organization even more covert than Mossad or . . . But that’s not important. What’s important is that my immediate superior is a man with political aspirations that have seriously clouded his judgment. And no, I’m not going to tell you his name.”
She sat there, watching him, and he had to wonder how much of this she was going to remember. Maybe it didn’t matter if he used his superior’s name. “Over the past few days, I’ve discovered some information about our hijackers that raises the stakes.” He took her notepad and a pen from the bedside table. “I’m going to write some of this down for you, because I need you to remember. How many hijackers are on that 747?”
Helga looked at her Post-it notes. “Five.”
“No,” Des said. “There are six. In addition to the five men that we all know about, there’s also a woman. She’s rigged with explosives under her coat—a suicide bomb.”
“Oh, my God,” Helga breathed.
The approach to the plane went down exactly as they’d rehearsed.
The SEALs moved in from the rear, from the aircraft’s blind spot.
Stan was with Muldoon, leading the way—a relatively easy task despite the fact that it was broad daylight. He knew exactly where the blind spot was, where the tangos could and could not see them. There was no need even to crawl—extra Marines had been brought in during the past twelve hours, and they were guarding the perimeter of the airport, making certain that no one unauthorized could see the movement on the runway.
Yeah, the last thing they needed was the hijackers getting a warning signal via mirrors from someone watching from the brush, tipping them off to the fact there were SEALs crawling around on the outside of the aircraft.
Big Mac and his two-man team were already out there under the plane, having taken advantage of the freedom of movement allowed by those extra Marine guards. They were attempting to get audio and video back up and running.
Once under the aircraft, the take-down team would begin the far more dangerous and painstaking task of gaining access to the front and rear emergency doors.
From here on in, they’d communicate via hand signals only.
Stan looked at Lieutenant Starrett and nodded.
Starrett nodded back, a glitter in his eye, clearly as glad as Stan was finally to be doing instead of waiting.
“They’re all members of an extremist group,” Des told Helga. “Their goal is simple—to die. They don’t expect Osman Razeen or anyone to be freed by hijacking this plane. They only want to bring as much attention to their cause as they can. And the best way they know to do that is to take as many American lives with them as possible.
“I’ve found out that their plan is to wait until the rescue team is on the plane, and then blow it and everyone on board to hell,” Des told her grimly. “Apparently the bomb has a fail-safe in the event that the woman wearing it is killed in the takedown. There’s a sensor that reads the woman’s pulse. If it doesn’t pick up that pulse after thirty seconds, it goes into a three-minute countdown. Which isn’t even close to the amount of tim
e we’d need to evacuate all those people from that plane. They don’t just want this thing to blow up—they want us to know it’s going to blow and be unable to stop it.”
“How did you find out this kind of detail?”
“I had a little conversation with the designer of the bomb.”
“Do . . .” Helga took her notepad back from him and flipped through the pages. “Do Max Bhagat and Tom Paoletti know about this?”
“No.”
It was blazing hot on the roof of Terminal A.
A fly buzzed around Alyssa’s face, but she ignored it. She watched her target through her scope and breathed, listening to Max Bhagat’s voice through her radio headset, hearing what her target could hear in the cockpit of that 747.
Persuasive and smooth, like an FM radio announcer, Bhagat was keeping both her and fellow sniper Wayne Jefferson’s targets up by that radio.
Bhagat was talking to them as if they were friends. Fellow caring human beings.
Alyssa wouldn’t have been able to do that. Not knowing they were murderers. Rapists.
She’d heard a rumor that Sam had been in the negotiators’room when the girl, Gina, had been attacked. Rumor had it that he’d thrown up. Tossed his cookies right in the wastepaper basket.
Alyssa believed the rumor.
Poor Sam. He pretended to be so tough, but she’d seen him get sick like that before.
She tried to imagine what it must’ve been like to be Sam and have to stand there and listen to that girl getting beaten. Raped.
And then she thought long and hard about what it must’ve been like to be the girl.
She kept her crosshairs aimed in the middle of her target’s forehead, waiting for the clicks over her headset that signaled the SEALs were in place, waiting for the word from Tom Paoletti: Go.
“No one knows but me and now you.” Des rubbed his face. “I’ve been ordered to sit on this information. My superior believes that the destruction of the plane and the death of so many Americans—including a team of Navy SEALs—will make the U.S. and Israel even more strongly united against terrorism. If I come forward with this, my career is over.”
Over the Edge Page 38