Dangerous to Hold Read online

  Three months after a call from her godfather—a strange little man her father had once helped smuggle out of a Middle Eastern sheikdom—she’d been recruited as an agent for OMEGA. Only later had Maggie learned that she was the first operative drawn from outside the ranks of the government. And that her godfather, now retired, was one of OMEGA’s most intrepid agents.

  Adam’s conversation soon drew to a close. “I understand the urgency, Mr. President. I’ll get back to you as soon as we know what happened in Cartoza.”

  Replacing the receiver, he folded his arms across a wide expanse of crisp white shirtfront. “All right, Sinclair, tell me what we have so far.”

  Briefly, succinctly, Maggie recapped the information she’d synthesized. When she mentioned the shallow grave and its occupant, Adam stiffened.

  “We should know within an hour who she is,” Maggie added. “State’s running through their data base of all known citizens in the area. They’ve requested checks from Canada and the European nations, as well.” She paused, chewing on her lower lip for a moment. “I don’t know that there’s any connection between the woman and our operation, but I have this…”

  A small smile curved Adam’s lips. “Tingling feeling in your bones?”

  “More like a prickly sensation at the base of my spine,” Maggie replied solemnly.

  The smile disappeared. “Well, whatever it is, this is one time I hope your instincts are wrong.”

  “Oh-oh. Sounds like the call from the president added a new piece to the puzzle.”

  “Several pieces. Tell State to check the status of a medical sister who was working in Cartoza. From the Order of Our Lady of Sorrows.”

  “Madre Dolorosa? I read up on those sisters as part of my prebrief for this operation. It’s a large order, headquartered in Mexico City, with branches throughout Latin America, the United States and Europe. Although the order is still very conservative in matters of dress and convent life, the sisters have been active in Central America. I’m not surprised one of their people was in Jake’s area.”

  “Apparently the sister wasn’t the only American woman in the area. Tell State to also check the status of a Peace Corps volunteer by the name of Sarah Chandler.”

  “Sarah Chandler?” Maggie wrinkled her brow. “Why do I know that name?”

  “She’s only been in the Peace Corps a short time. She arrived in Cartoza less than two weeks ago, in fact. Before that she was a rather prominent political hostess here in Washington.”

  “Oh, Lord! Not that Sarah Chandler!”

  “Yes, that Sarah Chandler. The senator’s daughter.”

  As she made her way back to the third-floor control center, Maggie’s mind was racing. No wonder the president wanted to know what had happened in Cartoza. Senator Orwin Chandler of North Carolina was one of the most influential and powerful men on the Hill. According to Adam, the senator had already heard through his own intelligence sources about the rebel raid and had pieced together enough to know that the U.S. had some involvement or interest in the action. He didn’t want any damn details, Chandler had informed the president. He only wanted assurances that his daughter was safe.

  There wasn’t any way the president could give Senator Chandler those assurances, Maggie thought grimly.

  Not yet.

  Tucking the sweep of her hair behind her left ear, she reclaimed her seat at the command console. “Okay, Joe, let’s get back to work.”

  Despite his years in the jungle, Jake had never become accustomed to its lightninglike transitions from light to dark. In the evening, there was no dusk. Just a sudden graying of the air, then a blackness so swift and intense he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

  Dawn sliced through the canopy of fig and mahogany trees with the same startling speed. One minute he was stumbling along the narrow trail, straining to see the faint moving shadows of the men in front of him with the aid of the low-light goggles. The next minute those shadows had taken on context and contrast and the goggles instantly became superfluous.

  Or at least that was the way it usually worked.

  This morning, however, the figure directly in front of him refused to take shape. Jake shook his head, unable to appreciate the dedication that would lead someone to don a heavy, shapeless black robe in the oppressive heat of the jungle. His own khaki shirt already clung to him like a second skin, and the sun had only been up a few minutes. His jaw tight, he watched the woman lift her arm to wipe her face with a corner of a voluminous sleeve. She had small hands, he noted. Small and fine-boned, with short, blunt nails and work-roughened skin.

  Frowning, he moved up alongside her. “That habit may have saved your life last night, but it’s the worst possible getup for this climate. Your superiors ought to have more sense than to send you sisters into the interior wearing something like that.”

  She looked up at him then, and Jake saw her face for the first time in daylight. Framed by the limp white wimple and black veil, it was a composite of high cheekbones, an aristocratic little nose and a firm, pointed chin. Dirt streaked her forehead. Sweat and the pallor of exhaustion filmed her skin. But nothing could dull the impact of the most stunning eyes Jake had ever seen. Wide and luminous and a clear, translucent aquamarine in color, they shimmered like jewels in the morning light. They also, Jake noted, raked him with undisguised scorn.

  “I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand matters of the cloth, Mr…. Mr….”

  “You’d better just call me ‘gringo,”’ Jake replied, recovering slowly.

  She turned away, declining to call him anything at all.

  He fell back into line behind her. Jake swore under his breath, slowly, savagely. The beads of sweat clinging to his cheeks suddenly felt clammy. All hell was going to break loose when the men with him got a good look at the woman they’d taken.

  It was too late now to even think about taking out the patrol strung out ahead of and behind them. They were within a mile of the camp. The intrusion-detection devices that ringed the hideaway had signaled their arrival for the past half hour. If gunfire broke out now, the rest of the rebels would be on the scene before he had the exhausted woman and her charges halfway back down the winding mountain trail they’d spent the past five hours trudging up.

  His mouth grim, Jake reviewed his options.

  He had only one, he decided as the narrow trail suddenly emerged from the tall, heavy forest into a debris-strewn clearing. He’d have to bluff it out.

  The rebel camp sat high in the foothills of the Teleran Mountains, a line of jagged peaks extending from the Canadian Rockies all the way down through Central America. Dry and barren on the Pacific side, the mountains were greened by the trade winds on the Atlantic side. The moisture-laden winds dumped up to three hundred inches of rainfall a year on the steep slopes. The lush rain forest that resulted made for harsh living conditions and difficult travel, but, as Jake well knew, it provided excellent cover.

  In classic guerrilla style, the band he’d infiltrated made maximum use of existing land features. They traveled under the screen of the thick forest canopy and carried with them only what they needed to fight with. For their base camp, they’d appropriated a cluster of tumbledown shacks that had once been an outpost of a vast coffee plantation. Abandoned by workers seeking more lucrative employment in cocaine-processing factories, the outpost had long since been reclaimed by the jungle. Only a few of the tin-roofed huts still stood, their wooden shutters gaping. The rebels used the most secure one to store their supplies. Their leader had claimed another for his personal use.

  A narrow, sluggish stream cut across the far edge of the clearing, providing the only source of water for sanitation and drinking. Thin, barrel-ribbed packhorses, still the primary means of transportation this deep in the interior, cropped beside the stream. Overhead, camouflage netting stretched across the entire camp, shielding it from observation.

  As the small group straggled into the clearing, Jake moved alongside the woman. “K
eep quiet,” he murmured. “And keep your head down.”

  She immediately flashed him a wide, startled look.

  Christ! Those eyes were going to get them both killed. “Keep your head down,” he all but snarled.

  Stepping in front of her, Jake skimmed the gathering crowd for the thin, hawk-eyed leader who’d taken the name of the revolutionary hero he revered. He didn’t have to search long. The only one in camp who adhered to any standards of discipline in his dress or personal hygiene, Che stood out among his scruffy band. The woman with him stood out even more. Her lush figure strained the fatigues she wore, but Jake knew better than to equate her rounded curves with stereotypical concepts of feminity. He’d seen her use the automatic rifle slung over her shoulder to deadly effect.

  Stiff and unbending in his camouflage uniform, the leader stopped a few paces away and listened while the man nominally in charge of last night’s fiasco stumbled through a muddled explanation in his thick mountain dialect. They’d already radioed in a brief report, but Jake could see that Che was tight-lipped with anger over the loss of the shipment of shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles he’d been expecting.

  When the man’s muttered excuses ran out, Che turned cold eyes on Jake. “So, gringo, why do you think the government troops were near the drop zone last night?”

  “Beats the crap out of me,” Jake drawled, “but you’d sure better find out. I’m not risking my ass with these trigger-happy bastards of yours again unless you get some reliable intelligence that the area’s clean.”

  Che’s lip curled. “Or unless we up your fee, eh?”

  “My fee doubled last night. I don’t like working with amateurs.”

  A wash of color rose in the man’s olive cheeks. “Watch yourself, gringo.”

  “You want me to show you how to arm these little toys you’re collecting,” Jake replied steadily, “you pay for it. The price goes up with every botched drop.”

  A muscle twitched on one side of Che’s jaw. Jake held his look with a cold one of his own. After a long, tense moment, the rebel’s gaze slid to the silent, black-clad figure. “Why did you bring her?”

  Jake’s voice deepened with disgust. “Because these fools you call soldiers of the revolution almost left her lying in the dirt in the village.”

  The leader sneered. “And that offended some long-lost religious sensibility of yours?”

  “That offended my sense of self-preservation,” Jake shot back. “The public outcry over a religiosa’s death would’ve caused a massive government manhunt for her killers. I didn’t think you’d appreciate that, at least not until we get our hands on those missiles you want and even the odds a bit.”

  “You could’ve left her body in the jungle, where no one would find it.”

  “And the children’s, too?” Jake shrugged. “You aren’t paying me to murder nuns and children. If you don’t want them here, you get rid of them.”

  Che’s eyes went flat and black. For a heart-stopping moment, Jake feared he might have overplayed his hand.

  “We might have need of a médica’s skills sometime in the near future,” he offered casually.

  Che made no effort to hide his suspicion as he glanced from Jake to the woman, then back again.

  “You brought her, gringo,” he said at last. “You’re responsible for her. If she escapes or puts a knife through one of my men, you die.”

  Jake bared his teeth in a slow, twisting, menacing smile. “Then tell your men to keep away from her. Or they die.”

  Jake turned without another word and gripped the nun by the arm. The quick, questioning look she slanted him from beneath lowered lids told him she had understood little of the exchange. Just as well, he decided grimly.

  The milling men parted as they walked to where the eldest boy stood protectively beside the packhorse. Jake reached up and lifted the little girl down first. She ran to the sister, burying her face in the black skirts. He scooped the toddler up, tucked him under one arm and jerked his chin toward the hut that served as a storage dump for the camp’s supplies and the few personal belongings the men had with them. “Over there.”

  When he shoved open the door, trapped moist heat hit Jake in the face and sucked the air out of his lungs. He stepped inside and gestured to the others to follow. Setting the boy down, he nudged him toward the now-wilting sister, then tossed the bundles of gear belonging to the others out the door. That done, he knelt beside a military-style backpack propped against a crate stenciled with U.S. markings. As he dug through the knapsack, Jake rapped out a series of low, hurried orders.

  “Listen, and listen well. I’m going to go get some water and round up some food. Don’t show your face outside this hut, and for God’s sake don’t try anything stupid, like slipping into the jungle while I’m gone. This camp is ringed with more booby traps and explosive devices than a nuclear storage site.”

  He straightened, canteens dangling from one fist, and eyed her for a moment. “I don’t suppose you know how to use an AK-47—or, better yet, an APG?”

  She ran her tongue over dry lips. “What’s an APG?”

  “Never mind.”

  A ripple of comprehension crossed her pale, strained face. She glanced at the crates, then back at Jake. “It’s some kind of weapon, I gather. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You sell guns to these men.”

  “No. I sell myself, or rather my expertise. These goons don’t know how to operate half the weapons they’re supplied by the drug lords who keep them in business. I show them.”

  A look of scorn settled in her eyes, deepening them to a shimmering blue-green that reminded Jake of a lake he’d once fished in upstate New York. It held cold, crystal-clear water, with a deceptive, unplumbed depth. The kind that invited a man to strip off and plunge in. The kind that invigorated and enticed and—

  Jake pulled himself up short. Jaws tight, he whirled and slammed the door of the hut behind him. As he strode toward the sluggish stream, he couldn’t decide what irritated him more. The fact that she hadn’t made any effort to disguise her contempt, or the fact that such incredible, expressive and downright seductive eyes were wasted on a woman who’d taken a vow of celibacy.

  Pushing the sister’s image out of his head, Jake dropped to one knee beside the stream. He dragged the canteen in the slow, rippling water with one hand. The other he hooked in the web belt he wore low on his hips. His fingers drummed an impatient tatoo on the buckle.

  Only Jake knew that the metal gusset next to the belt buckle doubled as an encrypting device, and that the pattern he tapped out formed a digitized code. The transmitter sewn into his belt was too small for anything other than a short emergency signal. But that signal would be picked up by the U.S. Navy ships cruising offshore and relayed to the OMEGA control center within minutes.

  Chapter 3

  “Yes!”

  Joe Samuels’s shout brought Maggie running from the crew room, where she’d gone to splash cold water on her face.

  “It’s Jaguar,” he told her, his eyes snapping with excitement.

  Maggie expelled a whoosh of pent-up breath. Jake MacKenzie had survived the disaster of the night before. She headed for the command console. “Is he on the satellite receiver?”

  “No. All I got was an emergency signal, relayed by the navy. Here it is.”

  Maggie’s pulse leaped when she saw the three numbers Samuels had scrawled. Although she knew the emergency signals she and Jake had devised by heart, she went immediately to her black operations notebook and verified the individual digits.

  Agent in place.

  Stand by for further word.

  “Way to go, Jaguar,” Maggie murmured, grinning broadly. Her finger slid down to the clear-text explanation of the third digit.

  Neutral on board.

  Thoughtfully, Maggie tapped the notebook with her forefinger. Well, at least now she knew the location of the missing American woman. State had verified just moments ago the sketchy information the president had passed
to Adam. There had been two American women in the village at the time of the raid—one a medical sister from the Order of Our Lady of Sorrows, the other a Peace Corps volunteer by the name of Sarah Chandler.

  But which one had been buried in the shallow grave, and which one was now smack in the middle of Jake’s operation? Until she gathered that rather vital bit of information, Maggie decided she’d better find out all she could about both of them.

  Twenty minutes and as many contacts with various agencies later, she sat back in her chair and frowned at her two pages of scribbled notes. Scanning the profiles she’d pieced together, Maggie decided she didn’t much like either one.

  Sister Maria Augustine, age thirty-four. Formerly Helen Peters. Born in Pattersonville, Ohio. Joined the Order of Our Lady of Sorrows a year after graduation from nursing school. A highly skilled nurse practitioner who’d spent nearly half her life in Central America. As well known for her clashes with the bureaucratic government officials who regulated her medical station as for her outspoken criticism of the rebels who preyed on the people she served.

  And Sarah Chandler, twenty-nine, daughter of Senator Orwin Chandler. Graduate of Sweet Briar College, with a degree in education she’d never put to use. A wealthy, pampered socialite whose affair with a married diplomat had caused a feeding frenzy among the Washington press corps when it was uncovered six months ago. And whose drunk-driving conviction a few weeks later had led to her disappearance from the Washington scene.

  According to Maggie’s sources, Senator Chandler had used his influence to convince the judge to give his daughter community service instead of a jail sentence. Again because of her father’s influence, Sarah Chandler had been allowed to perform that service as a volunteer with the Peace Corps.

  Maggie groaned and shoved a hand through her hair. Great, just great! Jake was stuck down there in the jungle with either a scandal-ridden socialite or a social activist of a nun on his hands. At this point, she wasn’t sure which one she hoped it was.