Dangerous to Hold Read online

  Sarah ran forward and wrapped an arm around the older woman’s waist. Without a word to either man, she led Eleanora back to the storage hut. Jake watched them make their way across the clearing, then turned back to face the wiry, mustached little man.

  The rebel reached behind the crate and pulled out a half-full bottle. “So, gringo, sit down, sit down. Have some tequila.”

  The bottle’s contents sloshed as he gestured toward the automatic rifle lying in pieces on the poncho. “You must give me your expert opinion on this weapon of mine. It’s a Russian model, shipped to Cuba before the capitalists undermined the Soviet economy and they stopped producing altogether. It’s ancient, eh? Not fast and efficient, like the one you carry.”

  Jake stifled a sigh and hooked a boot around another crate to drag it forward. He suspected it was going to be a long afternoon.

  And an even longer night.

  Listening with half an ear as Eleanora’s “husband” began bartering for her, Jake knew that the cramped little hut was about to acquire another occupant. Sarah would no doubt bed the injured woman down next to her, leaving Jake to make room for himself somewhere else. A sharp disappointment lanced through him. He didn’t like the prospect of sleeping where he couldn’t see the outline of Sarah’s pale, high-cheekboned face in the dim light or hear the breathy little smacking noise she made when she settled into sleep or fold her soft body into his. After his one taste of her body’s honeyed sweetness, Jake found himself craving it, like a man given a thimbleful of water to slack a raging thirst.

  Frowning, Jake reached for the tequila bottle. He suddenly realized that he’d crossed some invisible line in the past few hours, a line he’d never allowed himself to step over before. Always before, he’d been able to resist any personal involvement while in the field. Not that it had been easy.

  During any operation, OMEGA’s agents lived on the edge. Every emotion was magnified, every reaction could lead to either success or quick death—if they were lucky. Jake knew from textbook studies and from long experience that danger was debilitating in some instances, a powerful aphrodisiac in others. People clung to each other in desperate situations, seeking to affirm life in the face of death. Sometimes that transitory need solidified into a stronger emotion.

  One of his fellow agents had almost compromised his mission and his life by falling hard for a laboratory researcher suspected of selling the latest information on genetic engineering to a well-armed and particularly vicious neo-Nazi group. As it turned out, the woman had stumbled onto her lab’s suspicious research accidentally, but the agent had gone through twenty stages of hell before he discovered that.

  As Jake had with Sarah. He’d desired her, and he’d been so disgusted with himself because of that desire that he tied himself into knots. When he found out she wasn’t really a nun, he’d allowed his tight control to slip. Slipped, hell. It had shredded completely. Which wasn’t exactly smart for a man who wanted not only to walk out of this jungle alive, but to make sure one woman and three children made it out, as well. Two women, he corrected with an inner grimace. Somehow he suspected Sarah wouldn’t leave the compound without Eleanora.

  Jake took another swig of the tequila as the little weasel across from him shook his head despairingly over the much-dented stock of his aged weapon. Jake grunted noncommittally, making a mental note to inform Maggie that she might have an additional neutral to extract when she led the team in.

  Thank God Sinclair was in the field! She wouldn’t blink an eye if she learned she had to extract the entire Cartozan World Cup soccer team from this little camp perched halfway up a mountain. Jake would have to find a few moments to slip away and contact Maggie tomorrow. He didn’t dare leave the women alone in camp, though. Maybe he’d take them back to the pool. Have another damn picnic!

  Despite his disgust at the way he’d lost control, Jake couldn’t prevent the sudden tightening in his groin as he thought of Sarah beside the pool. Her shining hair bright against the green ferns. Her small, delicate body open and welcoming. His hand clenched around the neck of the bottle.

  It was going to be a long afternoon.

  And an even longer night.

  For the first time, Jake began to think beyond this mission. Beyond the moment Maggie plucked Sarah and the children from this little compound.

  “You will be back before the evening meal, Sister?”

  Maggie smiled to herself. If the evening meal was anything like the noon one, she would certainly not be back. She needed more than a small bowl of rice and beans to sustain her high energy levels.

  “No, Sister,” she told the earnest young postulant who’d escorted her to the gate. “If I’m to travel into the interior tomorrow or the next day, I have many arrangements to make and people to see.”

  That much was true, anyway.

  “I’m surprised the mother house sent you to make these arrangements yourself. Usually such matters are taken care of before a new sister arrives to take over a mission.”

  “This is a rather special mission.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  A sudden boom made Maggie jump.

  The young sister didn’t even blink. “There’s the call to afternoon meditation. Go with God.”

  Maggie returned the benediction, shut the wooden gate behind her and set off down the dirt road. She sighed with relief as the echoes of the thundering bell died away. It still amazed her that a community of women didn’t choose a more melodious sound to mark their hours. A bell that chimed, perhaps, or tinkled, or pinged. Not one that shook the rafters with its booming clamor every thirty minutes. The realization that she had to endure the sound for two more days was enough to put a momentary dent in Maggie’s soaring spirits.

  As she plodded along, however, her hands tucked in her sleeve and her black skirts swishing, Maggie soon put all thoughts of the bell behind her. The excitement that had bubbled in her veins ever since Jake had made contact with her an hour ago brought a gleam to her coffee-brown eyes.

  The operation was still viable. Jaguar had confirmed that a new shipment of heat-seeking missiles would be delivered to an unspecified location on the twenty-seventh, two days from now. He would accompany the party that went to the drop site, while Maggie herself hit the camp. Jake had briefed her on the precise layout of all buildings and where he’d have the woman and the children positioned.

  The gleam in Maggie’s eyes deepened as she remembered Jake’s terse rundown of the situation in the camp. He’d confirmed that Sarah Chandler was safe, that she’d donned the dead nun’s robes as cover the night of the raid to protect herself and the three children. According to Jake, the disguise had kept her from being molested. So far. At that moment, however, he’d sounded as though he wanted to strangle the woman himself.

  He probably did. After five days in Sarah Chandler’s company, Jake no doubt couldn’t wait to see the last of the socialite. Maggie grinned, wondering just what the other woman made of the terse, hard-eyed mercenary. Jake wasn’t exactly sociable, even when he wasn’t in the field. In this undercover role, he must terrify the poor woman.

  Although… Maggie had to admit Sarah Chandler had shown real courage and ingenuity in carrying off her disguise this long. The media had painted her as weak-willed and shallow, but Maggie knew that no one was that one dimensional. Maybe, just maybe, there was more to Sarah Chandler than anyone realized. After all, she was Senator Chandler’s daughter.

  Maggie’s grin deepened as she pictured Adam Ridgeway facing down the big, bluff senator, who never appeared in public without an unlit cigar clamped in one corner of his mouth. That would be a confrontation worth seeing. Unleashed, unrestrained energy versus absolute control. Raw power colliding with unshakable authority. Maggie put her money on Adam, hands down.

  Still, she thought, if she had to choose between witnessing a spectacular demonstration of two civilized, sophisticated males locking horns like bull elks or walking down a dusty road in a colorful, sweltering tropical city, she
’d choose to be here. Cartoza’s capital—called confusingly enough, Cartoza City—teemed with life.

  City dwellers shouted as they alternately zoomed their vehicles for a few yards, then braked to a screeching halt a few inches from the pedestrians clogging the streets. People, taxis, buses, trucks, donkeys and one or two pigs streamed in or out of the city. Traffic was snarled hopelessly around the plaza that housed the colorful open-air market, Cartoza’s center of commerce.

  Concentrating on her role, Maggie settled her face into calm, quiet lines and shrank within herself. Someone with her height would stand out in a crowd unless she made herself inconspicuous. Head bowed, shoulders slightly slumped, hands folded over the .22 tucked into her sleeve, she entered the throng of people swarming through the market. She had a couple of days before the drop. She intended to use them.

  By the time she joined the women who invited her to share their evening meal at a rickety table set in a patch of shade cast by a market stall, Maggie had gathered a cache of informational nuggets. Cartoza was a small country, barely a hundred miles from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. Everyone was related to everyone else in some remote way. And everyone knew what happened in the interior, although few talked about it openly to outsiders.

  Of course, the sisters of Our Lady of Sorrows weren’t really outsiders. The nuns understood how difficult it was for a woman to stretch a little bit of milk among five children. Their work brought them into contact with the grinding poverty of the working people.

  “One does what one must, Sister,” a tired, once-pretty young woman said, scrupulously dividing her dish of paella to give Maggie half.

  Maggie ate slowly, listening while the women described the hardships since the guerrillas had begun battling government troops, with the peasants caught between.

  “The federales, they make it so hard on us,” another woman said with a sigh. “They set up roadblocks. They stop our trucks. They search everything for chemicals. We were four hours getting home from market last week.”

  The mention of chemicals set Maggie’s pulse tripping. She knew that cocaine-processing plants needed a steady supply of hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid and ether to leach the coca leaves and extract a paste that could be shaped into bricks for shipping to refineries. She also knew that a good percentage of the population in many Latin American countries had become economically dependent on coca production. There weren’t any programs like welfare or unemployment or food stamps in these countries. People starved to death every day. As a result, many peasants worked the coca fields or tried desperately to make a living by smuggling chemicals to the plants hidden deep in the interior. It wasn’t a matter of right or wrong. It was a matter of survival.

  Jake’s initial reports had confirmed the report that a drug lord had set up a processing plant in Cartoza’s interior. The same lord supplied the funds to arm the rebels, thus keeping the government too busy to mount a major search for his plant. Although this part of the operation was outside OMEGA’s area of responsibility, Maggie couldn’t let slip the chance to gather any useful information. Washing down the paella that had suddenly lodged in her throat with tepid orangeade, she turned a gentle, inquiring look on the woman who’d just spoken.

  “It took you four hours to get home, señora? You must have traveled far.”

  “No, Sister, it was those pesky federales, I tell you. They set up a checkpoint on the only road into the mountains. Traffic was backed up for two or three miles. They searched everyone, everything. Everyone had to get off the bus in front of us and open every bundle. Then the searchers found some gallon containers under a load of manure on the truck ahead of us.” She shook her head. “As soon as the police would unload a container, the husband would flap his arms and argue while the wife snatched it up, ran around to the other side and shoved it back on the truck.”

  The younger woman chuckled. “My sister-in-law’s cousin tried sitting on a container last month. The woman weighs well over two hundred pounds. The federales didn’t find that container.”

  She caught herself and threw an embarrassed glance at Maggie. “She does not do that often, Sister. But her baby was sick and needed medicines.”

  Maggie couldn’t condemn these women for their obvious acceptance of the illegal trade. They were caught in a system perpetuated by her own country’s insatiable appetite for a deadly, destructive drug. But neither could she condone their support. So she simply nodded and tried to steer the conversation toward the destination of these chemical containers.

  Two hours later, Maggie waited for the reverberations of the lights-out bell to stop bouncing off the walls of her small room at the convent, then punched the code for OMEGA control into her satellite transceiver. As soon as Cowboy came on-line, Maggie pressed the transmit button with her thumb.

  “Tell Thunder that I have something he might be interested in.”

  “He’s downstairs. Want to talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hang tight. I’ll call him.”

  Maggie propped one foot up on the chair beside the narrow bed, hunched a shoulder and pressed the transceiver to her ear. She’d guessed that Adam—code name Thunder—would still be at OMEGA headquarters. There was only two hours’ time difference between Cartoza’s capital and D.C. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock in the evening there. Adam was probably just getting ready to attend some diplomatic dinner or political fund-raiser—no doubt with that sleek, ultraelegant redhead who usually accompanied him to such functions. The one pictured hanging on Adam’s arm in a glossy magazine that had featured a story about Washington’s most eligible bachelors. The one in the yellow silk sheath that contained less than a yard of material, probably cost more than Maggie had taken home last month, and left no doubt in anyone’s mind that underwear was a quaint, if outmoded, custom of the middle classes.

  Maggie glanced down at her white, unadorned underwear and grinned.

  “Thunder here.” Adam’s low, steady voice came over the receiver. “What do you have?”

  Maggie summarized her conversation with the women. “It’s all coming together,” she concluded, trying hard to keep the excitement out of her voice. “Once we extract the neutrals and Jaguar springs the trap on the middleman, we should go for these druggies.”

  “No. Under no circumstances.”

  Maggie frowned at the denial. “I think I can pin down their location in the next day or so.”

  “I can’t authorize extending the operation.”

  Adam paused, and Maggie waited for the explanation she knew would follow. For all his cool authority, Adam wasn’t arbitrary. Most of the time.

  “Despite Senator Chandler’s cooperation, rumors are starting to circulate about the raid and the fact that his daughter was serving in the area. It’s only a matter of time until one of the wire services picks up the story and plasters her picture across the front page again. That flimsy disguise Jaguar told us about won’t last. Your mission is to get her out of there in one piece.”

  “I’ve got the extraction laid on,” Maggie reminded him. “A joint U.S. and Cartozan force, in unmarked helicopters, will be ready to move the moment Jaguar signals.”

  “Good. Concentrate on the extraction, not on the drug lords,” Adam reiterated in his precise way. He hesitated. “We’ll pass your information on to the appropriate narcotics agencies. Good work, Chameleon.”

  “Thanks,” Maggie responded dryly.

  She signed off a few moments later. Tucking the transceiver under her pillow, next to her .22, she stretched out on the narrow bed.

  Maggie was a professional. She understood the importance of focusing on the operation she was responsible for and letting others handle theirs. She knew that Adam would ensure the information she uncovered was passed to people who would use it.

  Still, she couldn’t rid herself of the conviction that a little more digging, a few more casual contacts, and she’d have the location and maybe the name of the man who was supplying Jake’s band of
guerillas.

  She nibbled on her lower lip, wide awake and staring up into the darkness.

  It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 11

  Sarah rolled over on her side and wiggled, trying to find a little padding in the thin bedroll to cushion her hips. She sighed, wondering if this long night would ever end.

  She’d spent what was left of the daylight hours caring for Eleanora. The woman had refused to speak, refused to even look at Sarah as she bathed her face and dabbed it with antiseptic.

  Jack had come back to the hut briefly. He’d stayed only long enough to kneel in front of Eleanora and press her cheekbones with a gentle finger. They weren’t broken, he’d informed Sarah. He wouldn’t be able to tell about the nose until the swelling went down, but then, there wasn’t much they could do about it even if it was broken. Then he’d grabbed his automatic rifle and left.

  When he returned a little while ago, minus the weapon, Sarah had already fed the children and Eleanora and had them bedded down. He’d frowned at Sarah across the hut, as if wanting to have that talk he’d promised, but a small moan from Eleanora had broken the shimmering tension between them.

  Now Sarah lay restless and on edge, her ear tuned to the labored breathing of the woman beside her, but every other sense achingly aware of the man who’d rigged a hammock in the far corner of the shack.

  She’d had so little time to think, so little time to let herself recall what had happened this afternoon beside the pool. Now she found that she couldn’t think about it without wanting to creep across the quiet hut and touch Jack lightly on the arm to awaken him. Everything in her wanted to lead him out into the dark privacy of the night. The realization that she desired him, that she ached for him with an intensity she’d never known, filled her with confusion and kept sleep at bay.