by Cindy Dees
While Vanessa provided physical cover between her and the rest of the room, Isabella ducked down under the table as if she’d dropped something. After a moment, she slid all the way under, still as if she were searching for something she’d dropped.
Vanessa murmured over her earpiece, “All clear. No one’s looking at you.”
Isabella flattened herself on the floor. Aww, jeez! And she thought the bathroom floor had been bad. This linoleum hadn’t seen the business end of a mop in months. It was greasy, sticky and littered with peanut halves, pretzel crumbs, and a brown film of gunk she didn’t want to know the chemical composition of.
The seats in the booths had about a twelve-inch gap between their bottoms and the floor. Moving carefully, she was able to angle her right shoulder under the seat. Her head was next. Oh, God. It felt like any second Vanessa would shift her weight and crush Isabella’s skull. Breathe, girlfriend.
Her torso squeezed under next, but it was a really tight fit. And then her head was under the next chair. A jumble of feet, male and female were in front of her at eye level. And in the middle, the lone, metal pole that supported the table above.
“Crap. Incoming,” Vanessa muttered.
Isabella froze. Now what?
Kat murmured, “I’ve got it covered.” Off mike, Isabella heard her teammate coo at someone in a really convincing Japanese accent, “Ooh, you American boys so big and strong! Come buy me drink and tell me about yourselves. I just love American men!”
“Clear,” Vanessa breathed.
Karen commented, “I didn’t know Kat had it in her. She’s never been one to go for guys much.”
“Touchy subject with her,” Vanessa replied. “Bad history with men.”
Meanwhile, Isabella eased her right arm forward, the mop handle clutched in her fist and the radio taped to the other end. She extended it toward the underside of the table, near where the pole met the tabletop. She was maybe two inches from touching the exposed sticky side of the tape to the table when somebody shifted. And bumped her arm hard, knocking the broom handle into someone else’s knee.
Oh, crap. Busted.
Chapter 9
She jabbed the pole up fast and hard, and then jerked her arm back. A foot landed on the mop handle. Trapped it in place. Not good!
A male figure above maneuvered to the side, leaning down to have a look under the table. She shoved backward with her hands against the floor, pushing her head under the seat. A hand—felt like Vanessa—grabbed her waistband from behind and gave a good tug that was the little bit that saved her. Inches from her nose, a stubby-fingered hand with dirty fingernails grabbed the mop handle. Please God, let the radio not still be attached to it! She couldn’t see from this angle. No time to stick around and find out. She wiggled backward as fast as she could with Karen’s help, shimmying out from under the seats and onto her knees beneath the Medusas’ table.
“Can I come out?”
“Wait a sec,” Vanessa muttered.
Isabella closed her eyes. Her heart was in danger of pounding right out of her chest. Damn, that had been close! She heard an outburst of Russian from Lazlo’s booth. It sounded annoyed, but not furious. Maybe the radio had come off the end of the mop handle after all.
“Come on up,” Vanessa said.
Awkwardly, Isabella slid back up into the seat. Her clothes were knocked askew and she was filthy. She set herself to rights as best she could. “Any audio feed, Python?”
Karen had left to turn on the van’s receiver and move the vehicle closer to ensure reception. “I’ll check it in a minute. I’m parallel parking right now. God, I hate driving mom-mobiles. These minivans are too big for me.”
Never mind that the Marine could zip all over the combat training range in an armored personnel carrier and think nothing of it! Isabella snorted. “Get married and have a couple kids. You’ll be a pro at it in no time.”
Karen laughed. “Kids I can handle. A man—I don’t know.”
Isabella waited in an agony of suspense for the next minute. At least no one from the next table confronted them about any microphones under the table.
“Coming through loud and clear,” Karen reported. “At least I think so. Whatever language they’re speaking sounds like grizzly bears gargling to me.”
Thank God.
Vanessa asked, “Wanna stick around and watch some more or depart the fix?”
After one insanely dangerous stunt tonight, Isabella was all about discretion over valor. “My fight-or-flight reflex is telling me to run like hell, so you’d better make the call. My knees are still banging together.”
Vanessa smiled knowingly. They’d all experienced after-the-fright adrenaline surges. “Lemme know when you’ve got your legs back, Adder.”
Isabella nodded. After a few minutes, her pulse returned to a semblance of normal and her brain began to function at full speed again. Which turned out to be fortuitous, because Lazlo and company paid their bill and got up to leave. Vanessa, Kat and Aleesha followed suit and waited just inside the door while Karen reported from the van, “They’re getting into a pair of vehicles. You’re clear to come on out.”
The three women moved outside quickly and got into the van.
Karen looked at Isabella who was riding shotgun. “Which car do we follow?”
Isabella studied the two cars through a pair of binoculars she pulled out of the center console storage compartment. “The second car.”
Vanessa asked from the back, “Why?”
“The first car, with Lazlo in it, will probably go back to the Olympic village and then on to its final destination. The second car has the women and the gray-haired man in it. I’m interested to see where they go.”
Aleesha announced from the far back near the recording equipment, “I’ve burned a CD of the conversation we caught on tape in the bar. It sounds great. Misty shouldn’t have any trouble translating it.”
Karen spoke up. “I’m gonna have to back off, here. They’re turning onto a pretty isolated road.”
Isabella watched as they passed the street the sedan had just turned onto. It looked like little more than a country lane. Karen turned around in a driveway. She turned off the headlights and headed up the marginally plowed side street their quarry had turned onto. They eased forward slowly in the dark, looking out both sides of the van for any sign of the car.
Open curtains gave them glimpses into cozy homes. Large-screen TVs glowed, and average Americans lived their lives behind the windows. Isabella frowned. What in the world were she and her teammates doing, sneaking around in the midst of such normalcy? It offended her sense of order in the universe. Third-world countries embroiled in political upheaval and drug wars were their hunting ground. Not here. Not home.
A few minutes later, Isabella called out, “There it is. Parked in front of a house up that hill. The house is a couple hundred feet from the road.”
Vanessa said, “Let’s park up the street and come back on foot. I want to have a look around and see what we can learn about this bunch.”
They parked in a cul-de-sac as if they might be visiting one of the three houses facing it. They grabbed their backpacks of surveillance gear and headed out, cutting through a vacant lot, and wading through thigh-deep snow. They climbed a ridge that ran behind the neighborhood, and it was a miracle none of them broke their necks on the icy rocks. From there, they headed toward their target, relatively unimpeded.
A few minutes later, they lay on their stomachs, looking down at the house. Lights were on in the kitchen, and the older woman could be seen moving around. Looked like she was cooking supper for a large crowd.
“Let’s put some eyes and ears on them and see what we get,” Vanessa murmured.
Isabella pulled out a portable parabolic microphone and unfolded its sensitive dish. She put the clamshell headphones over her ears and pointed the mike at the house. “I’ve got two female voices. Did you leave the recorder running in the van, Python?”
“Affirm
ative,” Karen replied.
Isabella pushed the button to start transmitting the signal to the van’s receiver while Aleesha pulled out a paparazzi-sized telephoto lens and screwed it onto a camera.
Vanessa murmured, “That got the high res film in it?”
“Yeah, mon,” Aleesha answered. “Me baby heah’ see de fleas on de dog.”
The team chuckled. Vanessa replied dryly, “All I need are their faces.”
Aleesha pointed the camera down the hill and muttered from behind the nearly two-foot long lens, “You’ll be able to see their whiskers with this puppy.”
Vanessa nodded. “Just get the shots.”
“Roger, girly-o.”
Aleesha’s Rasta rap meant she was either under severe stress or having a ball. Must be the latter. As for Isabella, she was getting cold. Even in arctic gear, a person could only lie on the frozen ground for so long before the cold made a Popsicle of her.
Something cracked behind them, and she whipped her head around to look for the source of the noise. No heat signatures leaped out at her in bright relief through her night-vision goggles.
“Movement on the road,” Karen murmured.
Isabella looked back at the driveway. Bingo. The second car. The three burly men from the earlier meeting piled out. She gaped as two of them peeled off and proceeded to head out into the woods around the house! For all the world, it looked like they were walking a perimeter security patrol. Who were these guys?
Vanessa signaled sharply for everyone to get down. Isabella plastered herself against the rocks and peered down at the twin blobs of bright white as they made their way through the woods. One of them turned, and she caught a momentary glimpse of a tubular black void in one of the man’s hands. Weapon.
She signaled that at least one of the men was armed. Her teammates nodded grimly. No doubt wondering the same thing she was. Why were armed men patrolling this quiet little corner of nowhere?
Vanessa gave the signal for the Medusas to spread out. Very slowly, moving by inches, the four women eased apart, sliding across the summit. Vanessa signaled Isabella and Karen to move down into the woods behind the two men, far enough back not to risk engaging them. The men separated. Python would follow the man closest to her, while Isabella tracked the other guy.
The snow was deep and heavy. Hard to move in quietly. Step by careful step, Isabella waded forward. Her legs burned from the effort of keeping her balance and moving in such exaggerated slow motion. But she dared not let the discomfort distract her. The guy in front of her looked like the sort who’d shoot first and ask questions later.
It took the men about fifteen minutes to complete a circuit of the woods. One of them started up the rocky slope toward Vanessa’s last position.
“Incoming,” Isabella breathed in warning.
“We’re on it,” Vanessa murmured.
Meanwhile, Isabella’s guy turned abruptly, veering into a crevasse between two huge boulders. There wasn’t squat for cover over there. She crouched in some dead scrub and waited to see if the guy would come back out this way or if there was an exit from the other end.
Karen whispered, “I’ve got visual on your guy, Adder. Just exited the crevasse.”
Isabella eased forward on her belly, eating a faceful of snow as she low-crawled forward on her elbows. God, that hurt. She never had built up quite enough upper body strength for this maneuver. At least the snow wasn’t deep in here. Only a foot or so of it. She stopped short as a wire appeared in front of her nose. That was a trip wire!
Isabella traced it carefully with her fingertips to a small pile of sharp stones off to one side of the passage. She grasped the end of the wire between her fingertips to make sure she didn’t move it, and with the other hand, one by one lifted away the stones.
They’d hidden a small explosive charge. It was just enough to send the pile of rocks flying at whoever tripped the wire. There was no doubt the trap was aimed at humans, as opposed to the local bunnies, because the wire was set about fifteen inches off the ground—too high to catch any rodents moving through here.
She whispered into her mike, “Trip wire.”
Doubly cautious now, she crawled to the end of the crevasse, crouching low to peer around the end of it. Her target was moving back toward the house. Karen’s guy was converging on the back door as well. Must be suppertime. The two men went inside. She and Karen made their way back up the slope, watching for more wires or other joyful surprises.
Finally, panting hard, she plopped down on her stomach beside Aleesha. “See anything good in the house?”
“Well, subjugation of women is alive and well in Chechnya. The men are sitting at the table eating and the women are serving them.” Aleesha lapsed into her island accent. “Any mon ask my grandmama do dat for dem, she put a voodoo curse on dem, make-a de pee-pee fall off, mmm hmm, bye-bye wonker.”
Isabella suppressed a laugh. Unfortunately, she remembered well watching women wait on men hand and foot in her mother’s family. She’d been told that not everyone in Iran lived that way, but it had always left a sour taste in her mouth.
They waited in the dark and cold for another hour while the men finished eating, and the women ate a hasty meal then cleaned up the kitchen. Gradually, the lights in the house went out. There were no more forays by the thug types out into the winter night.
Vanessa called a halt to the surveillance a little after 11:00 p.m., which was just as well. Karen and Isabella were due to relieve Misty at midnight. They drove back to town, and Isabella went straight to the ops center. For once, Dex wasn’t there when she walked in. Beau Breckenridge was, though.
“Hey, Hobo. Thanks for the help earlier.”
He grinned. “Always a pleasure to help out a pretty lady.”
Darned if she didn’t feel herself blushing a little. It wasn’t like she was attracted to the guy, but it was weird to have such a hunk making nice with her. For the last year plus, she’d spent her life covered in mud and running around in combat boots. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to have someone look at her like she might be a moderately attractive woman.
She allowed herself to smile back at Beau. “I’ve got some high-res film I need developed ASAP, and then we’ll need IDs on everyone in the pictures. We know one of the subjects. The young, lean kid is a Chechnyan figure skater named Lazlo Petrovich.”
Beau reached out for the film, but another tanned, hard hand reached around from behind her to grab it. Isabella didn’t even have to look over her shoulder to know who it was. Dex.
“I’ll take care of it,” he growled.
What was he so grouchy about?
She turned around, frowning, and stopped cold, staring straight at his chest. His naked, sweaty chest. His naked, sweaty chest covered in slabs of muscle and just enough dark, curly hair to make her palms itch to feel it. Hel-lo.
“I, uh, have a, um, CD, too. We recorded it,” she added stupidly.
“What’s on it?” Dex asked, still irritable.
Oh, God. His pecs just flexed. Do that again!
“Uh,” she mumbled, “we recorded a conversation in, um, a bar. It’s probably in Russian and, um, Misty speaks that. We’ll translate it.”
“Aren’t you supposed to go on guard duty about now?” he snapped.
She mentally shook herself. “Yeah.”
“I’m headed over that way,” he said.
Okay. And? She turned to walk out and realized his comment had been intended to explain that he was going to walk with her to the village via the underground tunnel connecting the two facilities. The tunnel was well lit, but on the cool side for a guy without a shirt who was covered with a fine sheen of sweat. Although why she should notice it was a fine sheen, she had no idea. Couldn’t be good.
“Where are you headed?” she managed to ask in a semblance of a normal voice.
“Back to the gym to finish my workout.”
“You work out at this time of night?” she asked.
“
Only time I’ve got off.”
She sighed. “I ought to do the same.” Her shoulders were suspiciously achy after all that low crawling earlier.
“Meet me at the gym tomorrow at eleven. I’ll work out with you.”
Her gaze snapped to his in surprise. She stammered, “I wouldn’t even want to try to keep up with you. I’ve seen you guys work out.”
He laughed. “Some of the kids in this gym are putting me in my place.”
She’d bet it wasn’t many of them even if they were Olympic athletes. He peeled off as they passed by the health club. She managed not to stare at him as he went over to the nearest weight machine, knelt and began pulling down a crazy number of slabs of iron. She wasn’t watching him, dammit!
Thankfully, her feet kept moving of their own volition and carried her out of visual range of all that lovely brawn. She’d caught her breath by the time she reached Anya’s room, but it was most of the night before the image finally faded enough for her to breathe normally again.
Morning came at about the same time her eyes began to feel like sand had been poured into them. God. Two nights in a row of practically no sleep. She’d played sleep deprivation games in training and knew she could, in fact, go quite a bit longer without rest if she had to, but that didn’t make it feel any better.
Anya boinged out of bed early, tense, almost feverishly so. Game day jitters. Today was her qualifying skate. All of the female figure skaters would perform their long programs, and only thirty with the highest scores would progress to the next round of competition. For the top skaters in the world, today was a formality. But for an unknown like Anya, it was a critical do-or-die moment.
