Obviously Maggie reached the same conclusion at exactly the same moment. She thrust herself upward, leaving the shelter of the shallow depression her body had made in the snow.
“Cover me!”
“No! Get down! Dammit, Maggie—”
Since she was already plowing across the snow, Adam had no choice. Cursing viciously, he rose on one knee. His blue steel Heckler & Koch spit a stream of fire at a white-suited figure zigzagging through the trees on a gleaming blue snowmobile. The driver jerked, and a sudden blotch of red blossomed on his shoulder. The hit was too high, only a flesh wound, but the assailant fell back, out of range, before Adam could get another clear shot.
Cursing again, he swung around.
Radizwell had knocked the second figure sideways, out of his seat. The riderless vehicle had skidded forward for another fifty or so yards before running up a high drift at an angle and tilting over. Screaming and thrashing, the driver flailed his arms in an effort to protect his face from the dog’s savage assault. Adam didn’t dare risk a shot from where he knelt. The sheepdog’s massive body all but covered the downed man.
The third attacker circled through the Douglas firs, spraying automatic rifle fire in wild arcs as he tried to handle both his vehicle and his weapon. Adam couldn’t get a clear line of fire through the screen of trees. In frustration, he raised his arm and squeezed off a shot. An overhanging branch snapped, dumping a shower of white just as the figure passed under it. For a few precious seconds, the automatic went silent.
Those seconds were all Maggie needed. Plunging through the knee-high snow, she reached the overturned snowmobile. At that point, she had to choose between charging forward another fifty yards to retrieve the Uzi the driver had lost when Radizwell hit him and snatching at their only chance of escape. The sound of rifle fire behind her decided the matter. She couldn’t hope to reach the weapon before the other two attackers cut her—or Adam—down.
Grunting with effort, she heaved the sputtering snowmobile upright. Bullets stitched a line in the snowbank just above her head as she threw herself onto the seat and grappled frantically with the controls. The vehicle jerked forward, almost tumbling her backward. She grabbed at the handles for balance, then leaned low and gunned the engine.
The few moments it took her to reach Adam would repeat themselves in her nightmares for the rest of her life. He knelt on one knee, arm extended, pistol sited at a target darting through the trees. His black hair and blue ski jacket stood out against the dazzling whiteness of the snow and made him a perfect target. He was trying to draw the attackers’ fire, Maggie knew. Away from her.
At the sound of the snowmobile coming at him from an angle, Adam swung around. For a heart-stopping moment, his weapon was trained directly on Maggie. It jerked in his hand. A sharp crack split the air.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the figure struggling to escape Radizwell had made it to his knees. Adam’s shot sent him diving facedown in the snow for cover. The dog promptly landed on his back.
Maggie reached Adam half a heartbeat later. Throttling back on the controls, she slowed a fraction. As soon as she felt his weight hit the seat behind her, she rammed the machine into full power. His arm wrapped around her waist like an iron band, cutting off her air. She barely noticed. She hadn’t drawn a full breath since the first shot. Opening the throttle all the way, she aimed for the tree line.
The chase that followed could have come right out of a movie. A horror movie. Using every evasive tactic she’d been taught, and a few she invented along the way, Maggie dodged under low-hanging boughs, swerved around granite outcroppings and sailed over snowbanks. At one point, she took a turn too close. Prickly pine needles lashed her face, momentarily blinding her. The snowmobile swerved, tilted, righted itself.
“There!” Adam shouted in her ear, pointing over her shoulder.
She squinted through the involuntary tears caused by the sting of the needles. Following the line of his arm, she saw a wall of serrated granite slabs thrusting out of the snow to their left. To her blurred eyes, the gray-blue mass looked impenetrable.
“Take it hard and fast! Right through the notch!”
“What notch? I can’t see!”
He twisted on the seat behind her, shoving his weapon into his jacket. Then he reached forward, an arm on either side of her, and took the controls. Maggie felt a craven urge to close her streaming eyes completely as the sheet of granite loomed in front of their hurtling vehicle.
Just when it seemed they were about to hit the wall, Adam threw his weight to one side and took her with him. The vehicle tilted at an impossible angle. Its left ski lifted, scraped stone. The engine revved louder and louder as the right ski dug into the snow. The vehicle hung suspended for what seemed like two or three lifetimes, then shot through the narrow opening.
Maggie would have shouted in joyous relief, if her blurred vision hadn’t cleared just enough to see what lay on the other side of the wall. A ravine. A big ravine. About the size of the Grand Canyon. At its widest point.
Adam’s hands froze on the controls for half an instant, then twisted violently. The engine screamed into full power.
“Hang on!”
As if she had any choice!
Maggie didn’t hesitate at all this time. She scrunched her eyes shut and didn’t open them until a bone-jarring jolt told her they’d landed on the far side. When she saw the steep, tree-covered slope ahead, she was sorry she’d opened them at all.
Branches slashed at their faces, tore at their bodies, as they whipped down the incline in a series of snaking turns. Her heart jackhammered against her ribs with each zig. Her kidneys slammed sideways on every zag. All the while she strained to hear behind her, listening for sounds of pursuit over the scream of their engine and the roar of her blood in her ears.
At the bottom of the slope, Adam yanked on the controls and slewed the machine to a halt. He shoved himself off, backward, and immediately sank to his knees in the snow.
“You take it from here.”
“No way!”
“Get moving.”
“No!”
Above his whiskered chin and cold-reddened cheeks, Adam’s eyes flashed icy blue fire. “That’s an order, Chameleon. Move!”
“I’m the field agent on this mission. I’m not dividing my forces, or what little firepower I have!”
“Dammit—”
“I’m not leaving you. Get on the vehicle!”
Every second wasted in argument could be their last. She knew it. He knew it.
His jaw working, Adam threw a leg over the rear of the snowmobile.
They finally slowed to a stop at the crest of a wooded rise. Maggie kept the snowmobile idling, afraid to shut it off completely, in case they had to make a quick getaway. Eyes narrowed against the sun’s glare, bodies tense, they listened and searched the woods below for signs of pursuit. Maggie was the first to pick up the rise and fall of engines in the distance.
“There’s at least…two of them,” she panted. “Maybe three…if…Radizwell didn’t have the S.O.B. for lunch.”
Adam angled his head, listening intently. “They’re following the ravine. Looking for a place to cross.”
He shoved back his sleeve. The flat gold watch nestled among the dark hairs of his wrist glinted in the morning sun.
“Jaguar, this is Thunder. Do you read me?”
Their breath puffed out in white clouds, rapid and ragged, while they waited for a response.
“I read you. Go ahead, Thunder.”
“We’ve run into a little unfriendly fire. How close is the backup team?”
“Twenty minutes by helicopter,” Jake snapped instantly. “Give me your coordinates.”
Anticipating the need, Adam had already dug a small rectangular case out of his pocket. Not much bigger than a package of chewing gum, the digital compass received signals from the Navstar Global Positioning System. Navstar had proved its capabilities during the Gulf War by guiding tank command
ers across the vast, featureless Saudi deserts. Its current constellation of twenty-four orbiting satellites could pinpoint time to within one-millionth of a second, velocity to within a fraction of a mile per hour, and location to within a few feet.
“Latitude, three-nine degrees, six—”
He broke off as the distant sounds died. Maggie inched the throttles back as far as she dared to quiet the noise of their own engine and concentrated all her energies on listening.
“Six minutes,” Adam continued. “Longitude, one-two-oh degrees—”
A sudden burst of horsepower cut him off once more. He stiffened, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords as he swiveled in the direction of the sounds.
“They got across!”
Engines revved. Grew louder.
“They’re coming straight at us!” he snarled. “How the hell did they double back and find our tracks so quickly?”
Maggie turned a startled face to his, as stunned as he. Then her eyes dropped to the gold watch.
“Maybe they didn’t find our tracks! Maybe they’re homing in on the satellite signal!”
Adam didn’t waste time in further speculation. The satellite signals were supposed to be secure. Scrambled. They’d never been broken or intercepted before. But an individual who knew how to bypass the sophisticated electronic filters in the White House switchboard might well have broken into a supposedly secure satellite system.
“Six-one, Jaguar! Six-one!”
With that emergency signal telling Jake to stand by until further contact, Adam abruptly terminated the transmission.
They managed to shake their pursuers once again.
The sounds of the distant motors fell away as Maggie steered an erratic course, up one slope, down another. Dodging fallen trees and low-hanging branches, she headed for a line of low, ragged peaks to her right. From the angle of the sun, she calculated they were headed due east, away from the cabin. Given the topography, however, she couldn’t circle back. She had to follow where the mountains led.
Her face was stinging with cold and her numbed fingers were locked on the throttles when the machine under her began to sputter and miss. Maggie glanced down at the dash, trying to find the fuel gauge. She tore one gloved hand loose and rubbed it across the snow-covered indicator. Sure enough, the red bar danced at the bottom of the frost-encrusted gauge, almost out of sight.
Not two minutes later, the engine died. The snowmobile skidded a few feet farther up the slope, slowed to a crawl, stopped, then began a backward slide. Adam dug his boots in and brought them to a halt.
For a few seconds, neither of them moved. They remained silent. Listening. Searching the trees behind them.
Somewhere below them, their attackers were equally silent. Listening. Searching the trees above them.
“They’re waiting,” Adam said, his voice low. “For us to signal again.”
“Bastards.”
“They won’t have used as much fuel as we did riding double. They’ll catch us easily.”
“Who?” Maggie muttered angrily. Her mission had just exploded in her face, and she was furious with herself for not having anticipated it. “Who are ‘they’? How did we go from a narrow list of suspects to a whole damned strike team?”
“Whoever knew you were going to be at the lake this morning,” Adam tossed back.
From the rigid set to his jaw, Maggie saw that he was no happier about this unexpected turn of events than she.
“Everyone knew,” she snapped. “It was some kind of a ritual with Taylor.”
“And if they didn’t know, we told them,” Adam added, disgust lacing his voice. “Last night, in my bedroom.”
Maggie struggled to rein in her anger. “We’re no longer dealing with a lone assassin here. This individual has a whole organization behind him. Obviously we need to reassess our mission parameters.”
“Obviously.” Adam pushed himself off the snowmobile and drew in a steadying breath. “Right now, though, our first priority has to be cover. If they don’t pick us up soon, they’ll call in air support and continue the search from the air.”
“Denise and her people will have heard the shots and found their downed man by now. They’ll be searching, too—assuming one of them wasn’t behind the attack in the first place,” Maggie finished heavily.
“I don’t think we can assume anything at this point. I suggest we burrow in until dark. The chances of them picking us up at night after we signal Jaguar will be slimmer. Marginally slimmer, admittedly, but slimmer.”
Nodding, she clambered off the snowmobile and surveyed the now-useless vehicle.
“I guess we’d better see what we can salvage from this hummer.”
While Adam used the butt of his pistol to break off pieces of one of the small mirrors mounted on the handles, Maggie pried open the storage compartment. Inside, she found a pitiful cache of survival equipment—one metallic solar blanket, so thin it folded into a plastic pouch the size of a candy bar, a small tool kit, and a spare pair of goggles. Evidently their attackers hadn’t planned on a prolonged stay in the wilderness.
Adam knelt on one knee to bundle their small cache of equipment in a piece of fender he’d broken off. “You’d better take that off,” he said, nodding to indicate her bright pink jacket. “I’ll wrap it up with the rest of this gear.”
Maggie didn’t need to be told that the vivid color made too visible a target. Her shiver when she tugged off the thick layer of down wasn’t due to the chill air.
Adam removed his own jacket, as well, but didn’t offer it to her out of any misguided sense of male gallantry. He knew as well as she that the exertion of walking through the snow would work up a sweat, which had to be allowed to evaporate, or it would freeze their clothes to their bodies.
They left the vehicle buried under a nest of branches. As she trudged up the slope, trailing a screen of branches to cover their tracks, Maggie repeated to herself over and over the principle her instructors had drilled into her during survival training. Stay dry. In the jungle. In the Arctic. Stay dry. Foot rot from wet boots while slogging through swamps was as dangerous as frostbite from sweat-dampened undergarments in cold climates.
With that in mind, she tugged the hem of her turtleneck out of her waistband to let air circulate. Adam did the same with his plaid flannel shirt. Maggie saw that he wore the same style of high-tech long johns she did—under his shirt, at least. She didn’t see how anything would fit under those snug jeans.
As they neared the crest, the trees thinned, as did the snow. Bare, windswept slabs of granite made the going easier, but also made Maggie feel far too vulnerable. The skin between her shoulder blades just above the bulletproof corset itched as though a big round circle had been painted on it.
Once over the top of the ridge, they scouted for a spot that would protect them from both the elements and searching eyes while they decided on their game plan.
“There,” she panted, out of breath from the steep climb. “Under that tree.”
The conifer she pointed to was at least sixty feet tall and shaped much like a pointed stake. Its branches grew wide at the bottom to catch the sun and narrowed dramatically toward the top. Laden with snow, the lower limbs drooped to the ground. They’d provide both concealment and natural insulation.
Maggie and Adam scrambled down the slope, brushing away their tracks as best they could. Squatting, he peered under the sagging branches.
“Perfect. I’ll tunnel us in. You gather some branches.”
She smiled wryly at his ingrained habit of assuming command, but decided not to take issue with it. In this instance, it didn’t matter who dug and who gathered, as long as the tasks got done, and fast. Besides, she didn’t have enough breath right now to argue.
Using the fender from the snowmobile, Adam knelt on one knee and set to work scooping a shallow trench in the snow under the drooping limbs. He worked quickly, but took great care not to disturb the thick layer of white coating the branches.
His upper torso might have been sculpted by Michelangelo. Broad and well toned at the shoulders, narrow and lean at the waist, he was basic, elemental male. When he bent forward, his jeans rode low on narrow hips. A curl of dark hair at the small of his back drew Maggie’s fascinated gaze. With each scoop, his muscles rippled with a primitive, utterly beautiful poetry.
At the sight, something wrenched inside her, and she knew she’d never view Adam the same way again. The image of the cool aristocrat that she’d carried for so long in her mind and her heart shattered.
“Want me to dig the rest?” she asked, dumping the prickly pine branches beside the entrance.
“No, I’m all right. We’ll need more branches to line the interior walls, though.”
She nodded, stooping to check his progress. “Better not make the opening too narrow,” she advised him with a wry smile. “As Lillian is so fond of pointing out, I’m not quite a perfect size eight.”
Adam rested an arm on the bent fender and watched her retrace her footsteps in the snow. A tantalizing snatch of conversation he’d overheard between her and Lillian the night of the Kennedy Center benefit came back to him. Maggie had protested then that she wasn’t a perfect anything, and he’d silently agreed. He hadn’t changed his opinion. If anything, the past few days had reinforced it.
Fiercely independent didn’t begin to describe this woman. Her adamant refusal to follow his orders today came as close to insubordination as he’d ever allowed an OMEGA operative. Only her acid reminder that she was the field commander on this mission had stopped him from shredding her to pieces on the spot. That, and the fact that Maggie Sinclair wasn’t particularly shreddable.
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