Strangers When We Meet

by Merline Lovelace

“I hear you.”

  “How about Elena Dimitri? Anything on her yet?”

  “Our contact in Moscow is still working on that. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something.”

  “Thanks. By the way, you might want to advise Lightning that I crossed a line with Major Petrovna last night. One I can’t…correction, one I don’t want to back away from.”

  Blade gave a long, low whistle but didn’t ask for details. They both knew the risks and penalties that particular line-crossing could entail.

  “I’ll tell him.”

  With that laconic promise, Dodge disconnected and got ready for the day’s inspection. His air-force flight suit fit like an old friend. So did the sidearm he decided to strap on.

  His weapon of choice on other OMEGA ops was a Smith & Wesson .45 with a laser sight and enough wallop to bring down a charging moose. Since he was at F. E. Warren in the alter ego of a USAF chopper pilot, he’d opted for the standard military-issue .9-mm Beretta for this mission.

  With a snap of the slide, Dodge checked the chamber to make sure it was empty before tucking the Beretta into its holster. The spare magazine clip he slipped into the leg pocket of his flight suit. The weapon’s weight rested reassuringly against his hip as he exited the VOQ.

  The predawn air was sharp and clean but the temperature had dropped a good forty degrees over night. Dodge’s breath clouded as he crossed the parking lot. Security forces were still guarding Lara’s building. A sentry Dodge didn’t recognize stopped him, eyed his holstered Beretta and asked to see some ID. He matched Dodge’s face to the photo on his military ID and consulted an access list.

  “You’re cleared in, sir.”

  Nodding, Dodge took back his ID and returned the guard’s salute. A slightly breathless Lara answered his knock a few moments later.

  “Come in. I have only to put up my hair and I am ready.”

  She displayed no morning-after awkwardness, no shyness or hesitancy. Yet the hours they’d spent tangled in the sheets showed in the slightly bemused smile she gave him. As if she couldn’t quite believe he’d gotten past her prickly defenses. Or that she’d let him.

  While she twisted the white-gold mass of her hair and anchored it with a plastic clip, Dodge’s gaze roamed her slender figure. The memory of how perfectly she’d fit against him put a husky edge to his voice.

  “You’d better take your cold-weather gear.”

  She snatched up the field jacket and headed across the room. The sight of his holster stopped her in midstride. Frowning, she lifted her gaze to his.

  “It is necessary, this weapon?”

  “Just a precaution.”

  “They will let you take it into a missile site?”

  She clucked her tongue, as if to say such a thing would never happen in Russia, and started toward him again. Dodge’s bulk blocked her way.

  “Did you tell Bugarin about last night?”

  “It was too late when I returned. I will tell him today, after the inspection.”

  “It’s going to cost you,” Dodge said quietly. “You could be putting your career on the line.”

  “I know this.” She cocked her head. “And you? Have you reported our…our transgression to your superiors?”

  “I have.”

  “What did they say?”

  “It was pretty much a one-sided conversation,” he admitted with a grin. “I expect I’ll get more feedback later.”

  “Your career, too, may suffer.”

  “I’m not worried about it.” His grin softened. “You’re worth whatever comes, Larissa.”

  He took her breath away. The smile in his eyes. The caress in his voice. His gentleness unnerved Lara almost as much as the hunger that rose in her for his touch.

  “We…we must go,” she said gruffly.

  They followed the scripted routine. Breakfast with the other team members and their escorts. Rendezvous at the staging area. Convoy out to the site.

  This time the designated launch facility was Charlie-3, located just the other side of Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, more than two hours away from the base. And this time, two choppers flew convoy support instead of the usual one. Each bird carried a full compliment of heavily armed security forces. Although there was nothing to link the listening device Bugarin had discovered to possible terrorist activity, the 90th Missile Wing commander wasn’t taking any chances.

  Every time a shadow swooped over the bus, Dodge’s palms itched. He would much rather be up there at the controls with an eagle’s view of the surrounding terrain and any potential threats, instead of bouncing along inside an overheated bus. Particularly since the vehicle rolled through mile after mile of undulating plains broken only by the occasional rock formation that jutted out of the ground like a silent sentinel.

  The two-hour trip seemed to take forever. Even his chopper pilot’s bladder was feeling the strain by the time the convoy halted for the chief of the security team to coordinate with their arrival at the site with the Missile Alert Facility. After an extended security check, the MAF cleared them into the fenced site. As on previous inspections, the drivers swung their vehicles around and parked them pointing toward the gate for quick egress if necessary.

  The Beretta’s weight slapped reassuringly against Dodge’s hip as the Russians and their escorts all made a quick trip to the camper’s latrine facilities. Returning to the bus, they waited while the maintenance and security forces positioned the payload transporter over the silo and went through the prolonged procedures for accessing the missile itself.

  While the maintainers worked, a real screamer howled down from the north. The vicious wind flattened the prairie grasses and reddened the faces of the personnel working topside. The inspection team climbed out of the bus to verify the coordinates of the site, then climbed right back in.

  Dodge felt restless and more than a little useless sitting in the stuffy warmth of the bus. Those feelings piled up like the clouds building on the horizon. Finally, the Minuteman III nestled inside the payload transporter. With the wind beating them, the inspection team crossed the enclosure and climbed into the PT. Bugarin entered and left the frigid, boxcar structure quickly, as did Captain Tsychenko. Lara stayed inside almost the entire time. Hands tucked under her arms for warmth, she stood only inches from the missile and watched the crew do their scheduled maintenance with the intensity of a hawk.

  When the convoy prepared for the return trip to Warren some hours later, the Missile Alert Facility notified them of a weather alert. State police had closed the primary route due to icing on the overpasses. They needed at least another hour to verify that the bridges and overpasses on the alternate route had been salted and sanded. The convoy couldn’t leave the site. The crews who’d finished their work could, however, make a dash into Scotts Bluff for a badly needed hot meal. All nonessential personnel piled onto the bus for the short drive.

  The red rock formation that gave the city its name rose some eight hundred feet above the North Platte River. A familiar landmark to emigrants traveling the Oregon, California and Mormon trails, the towering promontory cut like a ship’s prow through the angry sky.

  By mutual consent, the occupants of the bus voted to bypass the downtown area and stop at the airport restaurant for hot coffee, a solid meal and, most important, one of the eatery’s homemade sticky buns. Fat, fried and dripping with gooey icing, the doughy confections were a favorite with missile and aircrews alike.

  “You have to try one,” Dodge told Lara once they were inside.

  “I am so hungry, perhaps I shall eat two. But first I must find the restroom.”

  She wove a zigzag path through tables crowded with personnel wearing airport employee IDs. Scattered among them were passengers waiting out the weather delay and several hunters in orange caps and camouflage overalls.

  The women’s restroom was small and tucked away at the end of a long hall. Once inside, Lara grimaced at the tumbled strands that had blown free of their plastic clip and now hung over her jacke
t collar. She fought the clip free and dragged a comb through the tangles. Wincing, she tugged at the wind-whipped snarls. She had considered hacking off the heavy mass often over the years, but Yuri…

  Her comb stilled.

  Yuri had loved it long. He would comb his fingers through it when they were alone, sometimes absently, sometimes as a prelude to love play.

  The memory stirred a touch of panic in Lara’s chest. Why could she not see her husband’s face? Why could she not recall the exact hue of his eyes? Six years had passed, only six years.

  She knew the reason, had raged against the unfair ness of it many times. The simple fact was that she had nothing to remind her of Yuri’s face, no memento to remember him by. The fire had destroyed everything. Their clothes. Their furnishings. Even their past.

  No photographs had been found in the ashes, not the studio portrait of both of them in uniform the day they married, nor the snapshots at the Black Sea resort where they vacationed the summer before she became pregnant. Nothing had survived of their life together.

  Nothing except Katya, and there was so little of Yuri in her. Every month, every year, Lara had to search harder for the father’s traits in the daughter. And now…

  Now she had to search even harder for memories of her husband. She’d let her career consume her. And this mission. And a certain American cowboy who’d suddenly, unexpectedly, crowded his way into her life.

  Shaking her head, Lara jammed the comb into her jacket pocket and yanked on the door handle. She strode out, only to crash into a man making his way down the hall to the restroom. Stumbling back, she would have tripped over her own feet if he hadn’t caught her by her sleeve.

  “Forgive me,” she said, annoyed by her own clumsiness.

  He frowned at her from under the brim of his red ball cap, his eyes shadowed and oddly intent. Belatedly, she realized she’d spoken in Russian.

  “I am sorry,” she repeated in English.

  He tipped the brim of his cap to her and stepped aside.

  “I waited to go through the line with you,” Dodge told her when she reached the table.

  Digging the black change purse that held her meager supply of dollars out of her pocket, Lara unzipped the heavy jacket and tossed it over the back of her chair.

  “Let us go.”

  The meal passed in silence. Still shaken by the realization that Dodge Hamilton’s face had supplanted that of her husband’s in her mind, Lara crumbled a bread roll into her bowl of vegetable soup but could spoon down only half the hearty portion. She finished long before Aleksei Bugarin, who stuffed salad, chopped sirloin steak, mashed potatoes, corn, white bread and three sweet buns into his bulging jowls. When Lara refused one of the sticky confections, Dodge threw her a quick glance.

  “You sure? This is a fresh batch, just out of the oven. Why don’t you try one? My treat.”

  “If I wished one, I would purchase it.”

  The sharp response hiked his brows and brought Bugarin’s head up. His glance went from her to Dodge and back again. The sudden suspicion in his dark eyes made Lara bite the inside of her cheek. She didn’t look forward to confessing the truth to him when they were alone.

  “If you have finished…?” she asked with frigid politeness.

  “Yes, yes.”

  He crammed in the last bite and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. Lara, Captain Tyschenko and their escorts did the same.

  Dusk had fallen during their brief respite and the cold cut like a sword. Lara huddled in her seat on the bus, hands tucked into her armpits for warmth, until the vehicle’s heater chased the chill from the air and her jacket raised a sweat. Shrugging out of the heavy garment once again, she stared through the window at the gathering darkness.

  The icy roads made the return trip to Cheyenne an agonizing crawl. By the time the convoy pulled into the staging area a little past 9:00 p.m., she ached with weariness and the strain of nerves stretched thin. Her limbs heavy, she gathered her gear and transferred to Dodge’s vehicle for the ride back to her quarters.

  “I need to make some calls,” he told her as he pulled up at the door to her building. “I’ll come over as soon as I’m done.”

  “No.” Wearily, she scrubbed the heel of her hand across her brow. “I must speak to Bugarin. It will not be a pleasant encounter.”

  He searched her face and saw the weariness she didn’t even try to disguise.

  “Okay, we’ll do this your way. Tonight.”

  He waited with the engine running while the guard on duty screened Lara and permitted her to pass. At the entrance to the building she slipped a hand in her jacket pocket.

  Instead of her room key, her fingers encountered what felt like paper. Surprised, she withdrew a folded sheet. She didn’t remember stuffing anything in the pocket except her comb, her change purse and her key. Frowning, she unfolded the sheet and tipped it toward the light.

  Her heart contracted, swift and hard. The lights beside the entrance dimmed and went black for a moment. When her vision cleared, Lara stared with her heart slamming against her sternum at the faxed photo of her daughter.

  The pigtailed Katya walking into the schoolyard with her best friend, Leoninya. They had their satchels slung over their shoulders. Identical grins spread across their scrubbed faces.

  The photo cut into Lara like a knife to the heart, but it was the scrawled message at the bottom of the page that started the blood roaring in her ears.

  A taxi will pick you up at midnight. Say nothing—to anyone—or your daughter dies.

  “Major?”

  The guard’s voice barely penetrated the terror hazing Lara’s mind.

  “Major Petrovna?”

  A car door slammed. Footsteps rang on the sidewalk. Dodge called to her.

  “Lara? Something wrong?”

  Say nothing to anyone or your daughter dies.

  Crumpling the fax into a tight wad, Lara buried her fist in her pocket. “Nyet. I…I but look for my key. It is here, in my pocket.”

  She would never know how she forced the words. She was frozen, inside and out. A thick coat of ice encased her every organ. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see anything except the image of Katya, pinned in the crosshairs of a camera lens.

  “You all right?” Dodge asked on a note of sharp concern.

  Say nothing to anyone.

  “I am merely tired.”

  “You look more than just tired. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Ghosts. They surrounded her. Yuri. Elena Dimitri. Her friends and neighbors who’d died in the fire. The man whose voice she’d heard that awful night six years ago. She wanted to scream at them, to beg them all to leave her in peace. To leave her daughter in peace!

  Instead, she pushed through the outer entrance and walked blindly down the hall. Dodge followed, still concerned. Outside her door, she forced herself to release the crumpled fax and retrieve her key from her pocket.

  She managed to insert it into the lock after only one fumbling attempt. Stepping inside on legs that felt as though they would collapse at any instant, she flipped the light switch and turned.

  “Good night, Dodge.”

  Stepping back, she shut the door again. The moment the lock clicked into place, Lara threw the key aside and reached frantically for the wadded paper.

  Katya. Her baby.

  Hands shaking, she smoothed the wrinkles. Her daughter’s bright smile stabbed into her chest. Katya wore her school uniform. Carried her satchel of books. And…

  Those earphones draped around her neck! They went with the iPod Lara had purchased and mailed just after she’d arrived. Katya could only have received it a day or two ago. Which meant the photo had to have been taken yesterday…or today!

  Frantic, Lara raced for the phone on the desk. Her fingers stabbed the international number she used so sparingly during her travels. Finally—finally!—the school administrator answered. Lara all but shouted into the phone.

  “T
his is Larissa Petrovna.”

  “Hello, Major. Are you back from your trip? I thought you were not to return until…”

  “My daughter! I must know! She is there?”

  “Katya? Yes, she’s here. I saw her in the hallway just a half hour ago.”

  “Get her! Please, I must speak with her.”

  She waited the longest minutes of her life with the phone jammed to her ear and long-forgotten prayers tumbling from her lips.

  “Mama?”

  She couldn’t push a single word through the thick relief that clogged her throat.

  “Mama? Is that you? Are you calling from America?”

  Forcing down panic, joy, terror, Lara clutched the phone. “Yes, baby. I just wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

  “Oh, Mama! Thank you for the iPod! It came yesterday.” The girl’s bubbly enthusiasm spilled across the miles. “All my friends want to listen to…”

  She broke off, wheezing the way she always did when she got too excited.

  “Slowly, Katya. You must speak slowly.”

  The admonition came automatically, without thinking. From the mother, not the woman so filled with fear for her child she couldn’t draw in a whole breath herself.

  “Listen to me, baby. Call Natalia. Have her come to the school to pick you up. Tell her to take you…”

  Where? Where would her child be safe?

  Not in the Moscow apartment, Lara realized with choking helplessness. Nor at her babysitter’s. Whoever had arranged for that photo to be taken knew where she went to school, where she lived.

  Say nothing to anyone or your daughter dies.

  “Katya, listen to me. I’m going to call Colonel Zacharov. You remember him, don’t you?”

  “He’s your boss, Mama. I remember him.”

  Zacharov was more than her boss. He was her mentor, her friend. He’d once been Yuri’s commander. He now directed Russia’s military-intelligence community. Lara trusted him as she could trust no one else. If anyone could keep Katya safe it was Zacharov.

  “He’ll come for you, Katya. Go with him, all right? And…and…” Her throat burned. “Be good, baby.”