“Oh, no, Alex. I’m not leaving. And I haven’t got everything I came for. Not by a long shot.”
He stood a heartbeat away, his face tipped with shadows and his long body radiating a tension that matched hers.
“I didn’t realize when I rode onto the steppes that I was looking for you, Alexandra Danilova. I sure as hell didn’t know I’d find you. But I was, and I did. And now that I have, I’m not about to lose you.”
They rode back to camp at a fast, ground-eating gallop.
Her mind whirling, Alex tried to absorb everything she’d learned, everything she’d felt, in the past few hours. The thought of Americans coming to Karistan’s aid sent a rush of relief through her, tinged with the faintest touch of bitterness. Relief that her ragged band of warriors would have assistance in whatever occurred tonight. Bitterness that, once the crisis was over, the gunships would return to their base and Karistan would again face an uncertain future.
Alex didn’t pretend to be any kind of an expert in world affairs, but she knew that this tiny country couldn’t claim a superpower’s attention for very long. There were too many crises all over the world, too many trouble spots erupting into war. U.S. forces were spread thin as it was. She couldn’t expect them to stay in Karistan, not without an inducement.
The only inducement for keeping the West’s attention on Karistan, the only bargaining chip she’d had, was those missiles and the wild card of the decoder. She’d played that wild-card as long as she could, knowing someone might call her bluff at any moment.
Someone had.
She slanted a quick glance at the man beside her. His face was taut with concentration, his eyes were narrowed on the dark plains ahead. He absorbed the impact of Red’s pounding stride with an unconscious coordination.
Alex tried to whip up some of the anger and resentment she’d felt when she left the plateau outside the cave. The sense of betrayal. The conviction that Nate had used her to get to the decoder.
She made a moue of disgust at her own choice of terms. Nate was right. He hadn’t used her, any more than she had used him. They’d come together in a shattering explosion of need that had nothing to do with his mission to Karistan and everything to do with the attraction that arced between them. Had arced since the first moment they’d faced each other at either end of her rifle.
Alex had told herself she wanted to draw from his strength, if only for a few hours. Take comfort in his gentleness, if only for an afternoon. But now, with the world about to explode around them, she could admit that a few hours hadn’t been enough. Not anywhere near enough.
He’d promised that they’d finish what was between them when this was all over. Alex tucked that promise away in a corner of her heart, knowing that it would give her something to hold on to in the desperate hours ahead.
When they rode into camp, the horses lathered and blowing, she felt a sharp sense of disorientation. The muffled laughter and sounds of singing took her by surprise. It took her a moment to remember that when she left, Anya had been happily rolling out pastries and Ivana had gone to collect honeycombs. So much had happened in the past few hours that the bright, sunny morning filled with the promise of a reprieve seemed a lifetime ago.
“So, cousin,” Katerina called out, coming forward. “It is time you returned.”
Her dark eyes shifted to Nate and seemed to go flat and hard for a moment. Alex dragged the reins over the gray’s head, preparing to inform her cousin this was not the time for jealousies between them, but then the younger woman gave a small, defeated sigh.
“We have meat roasting, and fresh bread,” she said, her shoulders sagging. “Come, you must be hungry.”
“There’s no time to eat,” Alex responded. “We have news from the east, and it’s not good. Tell Dimitri I must speak with him, if you would, and spread word for the men to gather their weapons. I’ll meet with everyone in the square in ten minutes.”
She turned to pass the reins to one of the men who’d appeared at her side. For an instant, the enormity of what was about to happen washed over her. Her hand trembled, the leather leads shook.
A strong, steady hand took the reins from her grasp. Giving both Red and the gray into the care of the waiting man, Nate stood before her.
“Remember, you’re not alone in this.”
She flashed him a quick, uncertain look.
“You’ll never be alone again, Alex,” he told her quietly, then took her arm and turned her toward the camp. “Let’s go talk to Dimitri.”
The gray-bearded lieutenant listened without comment as Alex quickly outlined the situation.
“So,” she finished, “if the White Wolf leads a force of any size into Karistan, these Spectre gunships with their infrared scopes will detect them and give us warning. If only small bands come, from different directions, as they have done in the past, they’ll be more difficult to detect. Then we must rely, as we have before, on our sentries to signal the alert and our men to hold the camp until Nate calls in the air cover.”
“We can hold them off until the gunship arrives, ataman.” Although Dimitri spoke to Alex, his eyes were on the man standing at her shoulder.
With a wry smile, Alex translated his words for Nate. Since the moment the aged lieutenant had joined them, she’d felt the subtle shift of power from her to Nate. Not so much a lessening of her authority as a recognition that another shared it. Dimitri knew these gunships would come because of the man beside her. He understood that the Amerikanski could control and direct their firepower. Whether she wanted to or not, she now shared the burden that had been given her.
As the two men bent over the sketches Alex had drawn of the camp’s defenses, Katerina stepped out of the shadows.
“What if we do not fight with the men of Balminsk?”
“What are you saying?” Alex asked sharply.
“What if we give them that which they seek? What if we end this ceaseless feud?”
“You would have me just hand over our cattle? Our grazing lands?”
“We…the women…we don’t wish to see more bloodshed. We want none of this, ’Zandra.”
“It’s only this night, Katerina. Just this night. You’ll be safe. You’ll go to the ice caves, with the other women, until it’s over.”
She shook her head. “It is already over. We don’t wish to live like this anymore. We take the children and we leave in the morning for the lowlands.”
Alex felt Nate’s presence behind her.
“Do we have a problem?”
Slowly, her heart aching, Alex translated for him.
For Alex, the few hours were a blur of tension and terror, relief and regret.
Nate organized the men. Petr Borodín, who had won renown and a chestful of medals for his activities as a saboteur during World War II, took fiendish delight in helping Nate plant what he called perimeter defenses.
Dimitri sent men with flares and weapons to guard the cattle, while others saddled the horses and tied their reins in strings of six, as had the Cossacks of old, to make it easier to lead them through battle if necessary.
Mikhail and a heavily armed squad shepherded the women and children to the protection of the ice cave…all except Katerina, who refused to leave. She would stay, she insisted, because she was of Karistan. For this night, at least.
Alex herself oversaw the distribution of the pitiful supply of arms and ammunition. A few grenade launchers her grandfather had bartered with the Chinese for. A Pakistani shoulder-held rocket launcher, still in its protective Cosmoline coating. The miscellaneous collection of rifles.
She told herself that the gunships hovering somewhere far overhead would make the difference. That their firepower was swifter, surer, more devastating. The thought gave her little comfort.
When the first, distant whump-whump-whump came out of the sky, Alex thought the attack had come. Desperate determination and an icy calm overlaid the churning fear in her stomach. Following Nate’s terse order, she took a defensive position
on a low, rolling hill at the rear of the camp, just above the stream. Katerina crouched beside her, unspeaking, a pistol in her hand and a flat, unreadable expression on her face.
A dark-painted helicopter skimmed out of the darkness from the east. Its searchlights swept the camp like flashlights swung from a giant hand. They illuminated a lone figure standing in the middle of the square. His rifle to his shoulder, old Gregor squinted along the barrel at the hovering aircraft.
“No!” Nate raced out of the darkness, into the undulating circle of light. “No! It has UN markings!”
Although Gregor didn’t understand the words, Nate’s urgency communicated itself, and he lowered the rifle. They stood together while the hovering helicopter settled in the dusty square.
When Richard clambered out, his eyes wide and his body jackknifed to avoid the whirling rotor blades, Alex recognized him at once. But she didn’t recognize the long-legged brunette who jumped out behind him and was promptly swept against Nate’s side in a bone-crushing squeeze. The woman whipped off her glasses and waved them in the air as she and Nate ducked away from the rotor blades, talking urgently.
As she strode across the square, Alex caught snatches of the woman’s comments. “Blew the hatch…small explosion, nothing to worry about… Right behind us, about fifty strong. Heading right for the camp… This is no cattle raid, Cowboy. I’m going back up in the helo. Richard and I devised a few small surprises that might delay them a little.”
Nate whirled at Alex’s approach. “There’s no time for long introductions, sweetheart. Things are moving too fast. But you know Worthington.”
Alex sent the young scientist a quick smile. “Hello, Richard.”
“Hello, Sandra. Sorry it took me so long to get here. We had…uh, an unexpected delay.”
The tall, confident brunette in lumberjack’s clothing stepped forward. “I’m Nate’s partner. I’ve been hoping to meet you.” Her generous mouth quirked. “You wouldn’t know it to look at me right now, but I’m a great admirer of your work. Look, I’ve got to get back in the air, but maybe when this is all over, we can talk.”
As drawn by the woman’s vitality and confidence as she was unsettled by the easy camaraderie between her and Nate, Alex nodded. “When this is all over, we’ll definitely talk.”
The brunette flashed Nate a cheeky grin and a thumbs-up, then headed for the helicopter. “Come on, Richard. Let’s get this hummer up and see if those little canisters work as well from the air as they did from the bottom of a silo.”
The helo lifted off in a wash of swirling air and whining engines. Her stomach twisting, Alex turned to Nate.
“Tell me what we face.”
In brief, succinct phrases, Nate related the bald facts. Small, separate groups had slipped out of Balminsk, avoiding surveillance. They’d converged some twenty miles from the camp. Were heading this way. The gunships were in the air, closing fast.
“It’s going to be tight, but we should be able to keep the attackers occupied until the real firepower arrives.”
“Nate—”
Whatever she would have said was lost in the sudden, distant boom of an explosion.
Nate whipped around, his eyes searching the impenetrable darkness. When he turned back, his eyes held a wry smile.
“That was one of Petr’s booby traps. A satchel charge. It’ll cause more confusion than damage, but at this point, confusion will work for us as well as anything. Get Katerina, Alex, and take cover. This could be an interestin’ half hour.”
Ever afterward, Alex would remember the events of the next few moments as a blur of confusion, shouts, and sudden, gripping fear.
She was halfway across the square when another explosion sounded, then another. She whirled, watching Nate freeze beside Dimitri as they strained to peer through the darkness beyond the barricades. And Petr, his bald head shining in the moonlight as he held a rifle tucked in his armpit.
Oh, God, she would remember thinking. Has it come down to this? Have all her grandfather’s hopes for Karistan, all her own plans, come down to this last, desperate hour?
Another explosion. And then the sound of drumming hooves.
Alex raced across the square to Katerina, her stomach twisting at the blank emptiness on the girl’s face as she calmly, mechanically, loaded a magazine clip into an automatic rifle. No fear. No terror. She’d done this before. Many times. She was so young, yet she’d seen so much death. And was about to see more.
As she closed the distance to her cousin, Alex thought of her father. Of the way Daniel Jordan had stood by his principles in the face of the hawk-eyed chieftain’s vitriolic scorn. He’d insisted guns weren’t the answer for Karistan, but he’d had no other.
Once again, the forces that had pulled at Alex for so many years ripped at her soul. Who was right? What was right?
Pulling Katerina behind the shelter of an overturned van, Alex slid a hand in her pocket and gripped the silver bridle bit in a tight, hard fist. Her knuckles nudged the small black box.
When Katerina turned her head and met her cousin’s eyes, Alex’s disparate worlds seemed to rush toward each other like two comets hurtling through the heavens.
When Nate shouted a warning and Alex slewed around to see him standing tall and commanding, in charge of a battle he had no stake in, no responsibility for, her separate worlds collided.
And when a lone rider hurtled out of the darkness and soared over the barricades a few heart-stopping moments later, she knew what she had to do.
“Hold your fire!”
Her command rang through the camp, echoing Nate’s.
For a few moments, no one moved. They were all caught up in the drama of watching the rider yank his mount’s head around and bring it to a dancing, skidding, shuddering stop.
When the uniformed man dismounted, the scar on his face stood out in the moonlight, as did the cold expression on his face. He searched the shadows, then fastened his gaze on Nate.
“I am Cherkoff. I have ordered the men of Balminsk to hold outside the mine field you have planted while I come to speak with you.”
Nate walked out into the center of the square. Slowly, deliberately, he measured the stiff figure.
“No,” Nate replied, “you come to speak with the ataman.”
Alex heard the soft response as she came up behind Nate, Katerina at her side. The splinter of private joy his words gave her helped shatter the tight knot of pain at what she was about to do.
“The ataman is here,” she replied.
Cherkoff turned to face her, his dark eyes piercing, his shoulders rigid in his brown uniform with red tabs at the shoulder denoting his rank.
“You have something my father wishes to possess.”
“No, I have not.”
A muscle twitched at the side of his jaw. “You don’t understand the depths of my father’s hatred.”
Alex swallowed. She understood it. Her grandfather had passed her the same hatred.
“Why have you come?” she asked him. “And wearing that uniform?”
“I wear it,” the major said slowly, as though each word were dragged from his heart, “because it is a symbol of what was before.”
His hand lifted to the leather strap that crossed one shoulder, holding his service holster and pistol. His fingers brushed a gleaming buckle.
As Alex watched, her breath suspended, he lifted the strap’s end, undid the buckle and removed the holster. Opening his fist, he let the weapon fall to the ground.
“It’s time to put this past behind us. I would speak with you about the future, and about this device you hold that so incites my father’s fury.”
Katerina stepped forward. “I have the device which you seek. You will speak with me.”
Chapter 15
“All right, let’s get down to some serious negotiations here.”
Maggie pushed the black glasses up the bridge of her nose and shrugged off the weariness of a long night and frantic morning. Folding her arms on the s
carred surface of the table, she waited while the two officials who’d been standing by in Germany ever since the crisis over the decoder first surfaced took their seats. They’d arrived just moments ago, aboard the transport that would take Maggie and Nate back to the States. Before that plane lifted off, the parties gathered in the dim, shadowy tent needed to reach agreement.
The State Department representative, a big, burly man in a crumpled navy suit and white shirt, looked Maggie up and down.
“Just who are you?” he asked coolly. “And what authority do you have to participate in these negotiations?”
“She’s Dr. Megan St. Clare,” Alex supplied from her seat next to Maggie’s, her tone several degrees colder than the official’s. “She’s here at my request, and that of my cousin, Katerina Terenshkova. As is our technical advisor, Dr. Richard Worthington.”
A thin, well-dressed woman in her mid-forties seated beside the State Department official peered across the table. “Richard Worthington? From MIT?”
“Well, I, uh, consult with several institutes.”
The woman, a midlevel bureaucrat with the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, frowned. “This is highly irregular, you know. Negotiations like this are quite sensitive. We don’t generally allow outsiders to participate.”
“You are in Karistan,” Alex reminded her with a lift of one brow. “You’re the outsider here. My cousin and I will decide who does and does not participate.”
The woman blinked, then sat back. “Yes. Of course.”
The burly State Department rep, who looked as though he’d be more at home roaming the back streets of D.C. than the corridors of the granite federal building in Foggy Bottom, frowned.
“Before we begin, I understand you have a certain device which we’ll take possession of.”
Alex turned to Katerina, who dug into the pockets of her skirts. She pulled out the decoder and dropped it on the table with a loud clatter.
The officials winced.
“Here, take it,” Maggie urged, pushing the thing across the table with a cautious finger. Since her hours in that dark silo with Richard, she didn’t want anything associated with nuclear matters within her sight. Ever again.
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