Dangerous to Hold

by Merline Lovelace

  So far.

  Dragging the woman with them, the rebels had melted back into the jungle. The children, clinging to her like frightened monkeys, had stumbled along, as well. Within moments, an impenetrable wall of darkness had swallowed them. Not even the rugged all-terrain vehicles the federales used could navigate through the dense tropical rain forest.

  And now he was stuck with them, Jake thought in disgust. Three orphans, according to the woman’s frantic pleas to spare them. And a nun! An American nun, if her mangled, broken Spanish was any indication. As if he didn’t have enough on his hands with this botched mission.

  “Don’t touch him!”

  At the sharp, sudden cry, Jake dropped into an instinctive crouch and spun around. Through the thin lenses of the goggles—stolen from a U.S. military base, along with a shipment of high-tech arms—he saw the spectral shape of one of the rebels tugging at a child’s arm.

  “No! No, let her go!”

  The man spit out a response, but obviously the sister didn’t understand the guttural patois the rebels used. She snatched at his shirt, demanding that he release the child.

  Jake straightened, his stomach clenching. The woman’s black robe and medical expertise wouldn’t protect her much longer if she riled these men. Or if they got to drinking. Or if—

  A muted snarl from the man holding the child’s arm told Jake things were fast getting out of hand. Cursing once more, he stalked back along the narrow, overgrown trail. He shoved up the goggles, which tended to blur items at close range, curled a hard hand around the woman’s arm and jerked her away. The child, a girl of about five or six, cried out.

  “Let me go!” The woman yanked against his tight hold, intent on the child.

  Jake’s grip tightened. “You may not realize how close you are to getting a knife in your ribs, Sister.”

  She swung toward him, her face a pale blur in the murky gloom. “You’re an American?” she gasped in disbelief.

  “More or less,” he snapped.

  “Wh-what are you doing with them?” She gestured to the group that now surrounded them, dim shadows against the darker blackness of the night, then repeated helplessly, “You’re an American.”

  Jesus! Jake’s fingers dug into her arm. “This is no time to be discussing nationalities. In case you aren’t aware of it, my associates don’t like norteamericanos much more than they do their own people who resist their cause. Come on.”

  She dug in her heels. “Tell that…that murderer…to get his hands off Teresa.”

  The wiry rebel understood English a whole lot better than the sister understood Spanish. He spit out a phrase Jake was glad the woman didn’t grasp. The situation, he decided, was rapidly going from dangerous to nasty.

  “The children are slowing us up. He’s only going to put the girl on the packhorse, for God’s sake.”

  She panted with a combination of fear and desperate determination. “For his sake, that’s all he’d better do.”

  Jake released her arm, wondering what the hell she thought she could do if any of these men did try to harm the children. Bludgeon them with her rosary beads?

  “Look, Sister,” he warned, his voice low, “you’d better understand that you’re in a pretty precarious situation here.”

  She drew in a ragged breath. “No kidding.”

  Jake sliced her a quick look, surprised at the terse response. Either convent life was an even tougher boot camp than he’d realized, or this was one gutsy lady. Unfortunately, he’d found over the years that gutsy tended to get people killed. If he was going to keep this woman alive long enough to figure out what to do with her, he’d better make damn sure she understood what was ahead.

  “Don’t think that veil you’re wearing will protect you if you get their hackles up,” he stated with brutal candor. “The only thing that saved you back there in the village is the fact that one of their pals died last week from a nasty case of gangrene. They’ve decided that it might be nice to have a médica around the camp to prevent such little unpleasantries in the future.”

  She gave a small gasp and put a shaking hand up to her throat. Even in the darkness, Jake could see the way her eyes went round with fear. Good, he thought savagely. She needed to be scared. He sure as hell was.

  “I’d advise you not to push them too far,” he added softly.

  Muttering under his breath, the rebel beside them stooped and swung the girl onto the horse. Jake slung his weapon over his shoulder and lifted the littlest, a boy of about three or four, up behind her. The third child, a thin, wide-eyed boy of about eight, would have to hoof it.

  The men drifted into the darkness to take up their positions in line. Jake tucked his weapon under his arm once more and waited for the signal to move on. The woman beside him glanced at the automatic rifle, and a look of revulsion crossed her white face, visible even in the darkness.

  “How…how many of the villagers did you kill?”

  Jake bit off an oath. He couldn’t tell her that he’d tried to prevent the rampage. Hell, he didn’t dare tell her anything. Talking to her at all was risky, given the group’s simmering frustration over the missed drop. Although Jake had managed to convince these men that he’d sell his country or his soul or both for the right price, he was still a gringo, an outsider they didn’t quite trust. With the least provocation, they’d turn on him like jackals after raw meat.

  “How many?”

  His hand tightened over the gun barrel. “As many as got in the way.”

  She put a hand over her mouth. “God will have to forgive you for what you’ve done,” she whispered. “I can’t. Those people were my friends.”

  Jake refused to allow any hint of sympathy or remorse to creep into his reply. “Yeah, well, I just might be the closest thing to a friend you’ve got left right now. And I’m telling you that if you want to survive the next twenty-four hours, you’d better keep moving and keep your mouth shut.”

  She swallowed and clutched the boy’s hand.

  “Stay in front of me from here on, where I can keep an eye on you,” he ordered. “Don’t step off the path, and keep a tight hold on the kid. There are a few surprises along the trail for anyone unwise enough to try to follow us. Now move it, lady…Sister.”

  Gripping her skirt with one tight fist and the child with the other, she turned and fell into line.

  As the small group traveled in heavy silence, the night sounds of the jungle they’d disturbed slowly resumed. Leaves rustled in the tall trees. Whistles and chirps seemed to come from every direction. Bats whirred through the branches high above, while whining mosquitoes circled Jake’s ears. The crunching, tearing sounds of small animals and insects feeding drifted to him through the darkness. Once, far off in the distance, a jaguar screamed.

  Jake managed a grim smile.

  As the echo of the animal’s cry died away, he mentally reviewed his options. There weren’t many at this point.

  He could abandon his mission right now and try to take out the dozen men with him on this botched operation. He calculated the risks to the woman and the children and abandoned the idea. It wasn’t any more feasible now than it had been back in the village.

  That left trying to brazen it out. When this little band got back to camp, Jake would have to convince the desiccated fanatic who led them that the aborted airdrop and the proximity of government troops were both just coincidence. That Jake himself had nothing to do with either—which he didn’t.

  At the same time, he’d have to find a way to protect this nun and her charges without blowing his cover. That might be a bit tricky, given the fact that he was supposed to be a conscienceless mercenary.

  Still, he had no choice. There were already two other women in camp, one hard and pitiless and as dedicated to the revolution as the intense leader she slept with. The other was the vacant-eyed wife of one of the men, who didn’t mind sharing her, for a price. Jake’s gut wrenched at the thought of the games the men played with the uncomprehending, unresisti
ng woman. His fingers clenched around the gun barrel at the thought of what they could do to the woman stumbling along ahead of him.

  At that moment, he heard her call a strained reassurance to the little girl atop the plodding packhorse. Despite her own fears, and what she must know was a very uncertain future, she managed to soothe the whimpering child. A reluctant admiration for the woman’s ragged courage tugged at him.

  Maybe, just maybe, they could pull it off, Jake thought. More than just their lives was at stake here, he reminded himself. An entire country teetered on the brink of civil war, and all the horror that came with it. Cartoza was a small nation, but one of the United States’ staunchest allies in Central America. Its government was dedicated to wiping out the drug traffickers whose insidious products were destroying the social fabric of all the Americas.

  The U.S. President himself had activated an OMEGA response based on the information that the drug lords were financing shipments of stolen U.S. arms to the insurgents. The shipments had to be stopped before the friendly government toppled.

  There was still a chance, a slim chance, of accomplishing that mission. If his controller at OMEGA didn’t jump the gun and send in an extraction team, Jake might yet take down the middleman who was supplying the arms.

  His lips twisted in a small, grim smile at the thought of his controller. By now, Maggie Sinclair would be pacing the floor, those long legs of hers eating up the cramped space in the communications center. Her brown eyes would be narrowed in intense concentration, her dark cloud of hair would be tangled from her unconscious habit of raking a hand through it whenever she was deep in thought. For all her worry, however, Jake knew, Maggie wouldn’t panic.

  The tight, coiled knot of tension between his shoulder blades loosened imperceptibly. Maggie wouldn’t terminate the operation. Nor would she send in an extraction team. Not until she heard from him or figured out for herself what had happened. Jake had worked with most of the agents assigned to OMEGA, and Sinclair was one of the best.

  Chapter 2

  One more hour, Maggie thought. Two at the most. That was all she could allow herself. And Jake.

  She took another sip of coffee, unmindful now of its cold, sludgelike consistency. Holding the cup at her lip, she began tracing a second ring of circular indentations around the rim. Suddenly a light flashed on the upper left portion of her console.

  The front legs of Samuels’s chair thwacked down on the tiles. “It’s Big Bird!”

  Maggie’s heart pounded in sudden excitement. Big Bird! She should have known the surveillance craft orbiting high above the Caribbean would be the first to break the wall of silence surrounding Jake. The huge air force jet, with its Frisbee-like rotating radar dish, was officially termed the USAF Airborne Warning and Control System, but everyone had a different tag for it, some affectionate, some irreverent. No one, however, made fun of the vital information processed via its banks of on-board computers.

  With the speed and skill of a magician performing sleight of hand, Samuels flipped a series of switches. The clear, calm voice of an air surveillance officer came over the speaker. Maggie hunched forward in her chair, listening intently.

  An aircraft meeting the specifications Jaguar had called in earlier had taken off from a deserted airstrip in Alabama, Big Bird confirmed. Two F-15s had scrambled from a base in Florida to make a visual ID, then shadowed the slower-moving plane across the Gulf of Mexico. At the last minute, the aircraft under surveillance had aborted its landing in Cartoza, for reasons unknown at present. The report went on to provide a wealth of technical detail on the suspect’s flight pattern, air characteristics and radar signature.

  Maggie acknowledged receipt of the transmission and sat back, thinking furiously.

  “So the drop didn’t take place?” Samuels asked.

  She met the communications specialist’s steady gaze and shook her head. She wasn’t surprised by his question. Everyone in the OMEGA control center during an operation was briefed on every detail. They worked as a team, together, twenty-four hours a day, throughout the duration of the mission. Everyone involved had a personal stake in the outcome.

  “Get me a voice link to those F-15s,” Maggie said. “I want to talk to the pilots and find out what—”

  Another flashing light interrupted her.

  Samuels verified the caller’s credentials, then sent Maggie a wide grin. “It’s the on-duty rep at the State Department crisis center. He has a report of some action in your sector of operations.”

  Maggie picked up the handset, adrenaline pumping through her veins. Although she far preferred fieldwork to acting as a control agent, she had to admit that being stuck at headquarters had its moments. Like now, when the reports started to flow in from a dozen different sources. From CIA, from Treasury, from any and all agencies whose intelligence networks OMEGA tapped into. She’d need a cool head, and the insight gained only through years in the field, to piece together the fragmentary and often conflicting bits of information that would soon pour in.

  “State Department, this is Chameleon,” she rapped out, identifying herself with the code-name she’d earned by her ability to melt into whatever locale she was sent to. “What do you have?”

  Forehead furrowed in concentration, Maggie listened as the on-duty operations officer relayed information about a rebel raid on a small village in the interior of Cartoza.

  “How many casualties?” she asked when he paused to consult his notes.

  “Four. Three villagers and one suspected insurgent.”

  “Any positive ID on the insurgent?”

  “No, the locals are still running their checks. I’ve got some vitals, though, if you want them.”

  Maggie gripped the handset. “Let me have them.”

  “Five feet seven. Black hair. Brown eyes. With an old, jagged scar on the left thigh, possibly from a knife. That’s all I have right now.”

  Maggie slumped in relief. Jake certainly sported a shaggy head of black hair, and he’d acquired more than his share of scars over the years. But his eyes were a flinty shade of gray, not brown, and he stood a good five inches taller than the dead man.

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “What’s that, State?”

  “The villagers led the government forces to a newly dug, shallow grave containing the remains of a woman…an American woman, according to the garbled reports we got. With all the confusion of the raid, we haven’t been able to confirm who it is. Was.”

  Maggie frowned at the console. “Who did you have down there?”

  “We’re not sure. The personnel folks are screening our data files now. Assuming she’s not some tourist who took a wrong turn at Cancún and ended up in the middle of a revolution, we should know something within the next hour or so.”

  “Keep me posted, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  Maggie replaced the handset, her eyes thoughtful. At this point there was no reason to assume a connection between the dead woman and Jake’s operation. But she sensed instinctively that there was one, just as she knew that Jake wouldn’t want her to terminate the mission until she was convinced it was necessary.

  Twenty minutes later, she still wasn’t convinced.

  Although she hadn’t yet heard from Jake, she’d sifted through enough fragmentary information to form a picture of what must have happened. The presence of the government forces in the area was a coincidence, an unscheduled military exercise. But their presence would have been enough to scare off the drop aircraft. Maggie guessed that the rebels had raided the village as a target of opportunity when the drop was aborted. There was a chance, a slim chance, that Jake’s cover hadn’t been compromised yet.

  “Call me immediately if anything else comes in,” she instructed Samuels. “I’m going to update the chief with this latest information.”

  She strode across the communications center and waited impatiently for the palm-and voice-print scanners to verify her identity. When the heavy door slid op
en, she took the stairs two at a time. She was in the the special envoy’s reception area within seconds. Another synthesizer activated the door that led to his office. Maggie passed through a short corridor that contained every lethal protective device the enthusiastic security folks could devise.

  The inner door stood open, but the sight of Adam on the special phone that recognized the distinctive voice patterns of only two men in the world stopped Maggie on the threshold. He waved her inside, listening intently, one hip hitched on the edge of the half acre of polished mahogany that served as his desk. Although he’d taken off his formal coat and white tie, he couldn’t have shed his well-bred, aristocratic air even if he wanted to, Maggie thought. When she stepped inside his office, she caught the gleam of diamond studs winking amid the starched pleats of his shirt.

  She also noted the slight narrowing of his vivid blue eyes. That was as close as Adam Ridgeway ever came to frowning. Not for the first time in the past two years, Maggie wondered just what it would take to shatter Adam’s iron control. She herself had managed to strain it severely on more than one occasion, she acknowledged with an inner grin.

  “The reports are just beginning to flow,” he said calmly. “We still don’t have a clear picture of what happened.”

  Maggie suppressed a smile at Adam’s Kennedyesque pronunciation of clear. A gifted linguist, she delighted in the idiosyncrasies of American dialects as much as in the foreign languages that were her specialty.

  The only child of an Oklahoma-bred “tool-pusher” whose job as superintendent of an oil-rig drilling crew took him all over the world, Maggie had spent her childhood in a series of exotic locales. By the time she won a scholarship to Stanford at seventeen, she’d been fluent in five languages and conversant in three more. Until two years ago, she’d chaired the foreign language department at a small Midwestern college. Then a broken engagement and the sense of adventure she’d inherited from her parents had left her restless and ready for change.