by Rachel Lee
Waves of pulsing music hit her with hurricane force. She stopped on the threshold, wincing, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the flashing lights that cut through an otherwise murky darkness. She saw with disgust that the woman she’d been subtly pumping had left the club.
“It’s all yours,” she shouted to the figure lounging beside the door. She started to step forward, but found her way blocked by an arm planted across the door jamb.
Maggie glanced down at the white-sleeved arm. Arching one brow, she followed its line to a solid, broad-shouldered body. The shoulders strained against a tailored sports coat. Maggie noted the gold medallion gleaming at the open neck of the shirt. A square, faintly shadowed chin. A luxuriant black mustache. Gleaming brown eyes.
It was only after the tall, dark-haired figure stepped out of the shadows that Maggie saw how the collection of individual features all added up to the most handsome man she’d ever seen. No, not handsome. This guy was drop-dead gorgeous. She managed to keep her mouth from sagging—barely.
He was also, she discovered, smiling at her in a way that raised the hairs on her arms.
“You want something, my friend?” she asked coolly
The dark mustache lifted, showing white, even teeth. “Perhaps.”
His deliberate move forward crowded Maggie’s space too much for her liking. She took a quick couple of steps backward, deciding that she needed some distance between her and this hunk.
He stepped into the dingy rest room and closed the door, cutting the noise down from mind-bending to merely earsplitting. Leaning his shoulders back against the door, he folded his arms over his chest. Maggie saw the flash of a gold Rolex on his wrist.
She didn’t make the mistake of thinking this was some wealthy aristocrat out cruising Cartoza’s only night spot. Until he showed his hand, however, she would play her role. She gave him a slow half smile. “So, my friend, what is it you want?”
His dark eyes lingered on her mouth for a moment, then traced a slow, casual path down her body. Maggie willed herself not to stiffen, not to react in any way. In his own good time, he brought his gaze back to her face.
“Maybe I wish a few moments of your company.”
She flicked a quick glance around the dingy bathroom. The small disparaging smile on her face said she didn’t think much of his choice of a trysting place. Maggie used the few seconds to catalog possible escape routes. There weren’t any. The rest room had no window. No other door. No crack in the graffiti-covered plaster walls.
“Or maybe I just want to know why you ask so many questions,” he said lazily. He jerked his chin toward the outer room. “Our little friend out there says you have an interest in the interior.”
Maggie shrugged. “I was just making small talk.”
“A particular interest.”
She took her lower lip between her teeth, hesitating. “All right, I admit I am interested. I’m new here, you understand. Just down from Mexico. I have need of funds.”
When he didn’t answer, she pouted and turned to survey herself in the piece of mirror. Running one finger along the line of her darkened brow, Maggie watched him in the cracked glass.
“I understand there is money to be made,” she said to his reflection. “Much money. You will tell your patrón I am interested, yes?”
He smiled and levered his shoulders off the door.
“Perhaps you can tell him yourself. You will come with me, I think.”
At that moment, Maggie would’ve given everything she possessed to be primary agent on this mission. If it was her operation, she could’ve followed this promising lead and walked out of the Café El Caribe with this man she suspected was one of the patrón’s lieutenants. But she was Jaguar’s backup. She was here, as Adam had so succinctly pointed out, to work Sarah Chandler’s extraction.
She sighed with real regret. “No, I think not.”
He had quick reflexes, Maggie had to give him that. He blocked her first blow with an upflung arm. That gave her just the opening she needed for a swift, sharp jab to the solar plexus. He bent over in an involuntary reaction, his breath rushing out in a startled grunt. Maggie finished him with a chop to the back of the neck. He crumpled to the cement floor without a sound.
She stared down at his sprawled figure, regretting the waste of such magnificent malehood. Too bad the men she met in this job were either first class weirdoes or all-around scumbags. She dropped to one knee and quickly, expertly searched him.
The lethal little Benelli she found in a holster tucked under his arm didn’t surprise her, but the small leather case she extracted from a hidden pocket did. When she flipped it open, Maggie’s eyes narrowed.
He came awake with a little jerk of one leg. Maggie leaned her shoulders comfortably against the wall and watched with interest as his muscular thigh bunched, then drew up, until his knee was bent and an expensive alligator boot was planted firmly on the floor. He propped himself up on one elbow and shook his head. He must have caught sight of her spiked heels out of one corner of his eye. His head tilted, studying the shoe for a moment. Then he rose to his feet with an athletic grace and dusted off the seat of his slacks.
Maggie had had plenty of opportunity to study him while he lay sprawled on the less-than-clean cement floor. She discovered, however, that a handsome, unconscious man, and one whose eyes held a reluctant gleam of admiration for a worthy adversary, were two different creatures altogether. She held the Benelli easily in her left hand, hoping she wouldn’t have to use it, and flipped open the leather case with the other.
“So, Colonel, do you care to tell me why the chief of security for Cartoza was going to take me to the one called the patrón?”
His mustache lifted. “I wasn’t. I was going to…shall we say, convince you to take me to him.”
“What makes you think I know his location?”
“My men listened via a remote device the whole time the little songbird poured her heart out to you. Unfortunately, the noise levels drowned out all but a few words. Those were enough, however, for me to pay a little visit to my favorite night spot to check out the latest arrival.”
“You come here often? The chief of security?”
“Often enough.” He saw the skepticism in her eyes and shrugged. “This is a small country. Everyone knows who I am. I don’t hide from the men who seek to destroy our government. It is better to let them see me, and know that they are watched.”
He was either incredibly brave or had reasons not to worry about the political assassinations that regularly rocked this part of the world. Maggie’s face remained bland, but the Benelli never wavered.
“You’re Chameleon, I take it.” His eyes flickered down her miniskirted length once more. “I understood you were good, but I didn’t realize how good. Or how attractive.”
He wasn’t exactly dog food himself, Maggie thought with an inner smile.
“You’re wise not to trust me,” he continued smoothly. “Check with your headquarters. They will verify what I say, who I am.”
“I know who you are,” she admitted at last. “Luis Barbedo Esteban. Educated here and at Oxford. Colonel, Cartozan army. Former instructor in counterterrorist tactics at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington. Appointed by the president as chief of security two years ago.”
“You don’t seem particularly impressed,” he commented, his white teeth gleaming.
“Oh, I am. I’m also impressed by your off-duty uniform. You appear to have expensive tastes, Colonel. Or was that watch you’re wearing a gift from a grateful citizen?”
“Actually, it was a gift from the president. Yours, not mine.”
Maggie notched a brow.
“For a slight service I rendered him some years ago,” Esteban said with a shrug. “He was a private citizen at the time.”
“That was you? You’re the one who swam two miles out to the boat where he was being held hostage? You took the terrorists out, single-handed?”
The incident had oc
curred long before Maggie was recruited by OMEGA, but a few of the older heads still cited it as a textbook example of surprise and brains triumphing over armed brawn.
The colonel grinned. “Your president managed to assist quite ably with one or two.”
Well, hell! Adam had stated in no uncertain terms during the mission prebrief that Colonel Esteban was to be trusted, but he’d left out a couple of rather pertinent details about the man. Maggie’s mouth twisted at the thought of what her boss would say when he learned that she’d dropped the colonel and held him at gun point in a sleazy little nightclub.
She lowered the Benelli, thumbing the safety before she handed it to him. “I hope the men who’ll be with me on the extraction team tomorrow night will have the same skill as you and my president.”
“Perhaps I will find it necessary to accompany the team myself,” Esteban murmured, holstering his weapon.
“Perhaps you should.”
He buttoned his coat and lifted his broad shoulders once or twice to settle the jacket smoothly over the holster. With the simple action, he seemed to assumed a different persona. Harder, more precise, more authoritarian.
“Tell me what you learned from the woman you were speaking with.”
Maggie arched a brow.
He caught her look and moderated both his voice and his stance. “I know my country’s interior. I was raised in the mountains. Perhaps I can recognize some hint of where she went to visit this friend of hers, identify some feature.”
Knowing that someone could pound on the rest room door at any moment, Maggie ran through every detail quickly, precisely.
“Are you sure she said this patrón’s hacienda was only fifteen minutes by helicopter?”
“I’m sure. Does that help?”
“It would help more if I knew the exact airspeed and wind direction at the time of the flight,” he answered with a grin, “but it narrows the search area considerably.”
“Perhaps we can narrow it even more. There are three major roads leading out of Cartoza City into the interior. My source—Juana’s sister-in-law’s cousin, you understand—says the road heading north is the shortest way to get chemicals such as hydrochloric acid and ether to their destination.”
Surprise etched his aristocratic features. “You have been busy, haven’t you?”
“It’s my job.”
“You do it well, Chameleon.”
“Thanks,” Maggie said, tipping two fingers to her brow. “Glad to be of service, Colonel. Now, if there’s nothing else, we’d better free up this room before someone wonders just exactly what’s going on in here.”
He gave a leer that was only half feigned. “They won’t wonder.”
Maggie tossed a smile over her shoulder and opened the door. She winced as fresh waves of music assaulted her ears. She hadn’t taken two steps before the colonel grabbed her arm and hauled her back. Maggie found herself wedged between the hard concrete wall and a body that was every bit as unyielding.
“Do not fight me,” he ordered swiftly, then covered her mouth with his.
In the curious way the human brain has, Maggie’s processed a half-dozen sensory perceptions all at once. She felt his belt buckle press against her stomach. She tasted the golden hint of rum on his breath. She saw his dark head slant to take her mouth more fully. And she heard the faint thud of footsteps passing.
“Who was that?” Maggie whispered against his mouth when she could breathe again. Barely.
“I don’t know,” he murmured, brushing his lips across hers.
“But…why…this?”
“Because…I’ve been wanting…‘this’…since the first moment I saw you.”
He muffled her indignant little huff with another kiss, feather-light this time, but just as devastating as the first. From the tensile strength of the body pressed against hers, Maggie knew that she wouldn’t take him down as easily as she had before. Assuming she wanted to. She was still debating the issue when he raised his head and smiled down at her.
“Until tomorrow.”
“Until tomorrow.”
Breathless, she watched him make his leisurely way through the crowd in the club. Several of the patrons sent curious looks at Maggie, still lounging against the door jamb. She sighed. She wouldn’t get much out of them now, not after they’d seen her in the arms of Cartoza’s chief of security.
She sauntered toward the end of the crowded bar, waiting for the right moment to melt into the shadows and slip out the door. She flicked a quick glance up at the clock embedded in neon palm trees above the bar. Not even eight o’clock. She thought of the convent bell and shuddered. This could turn out to be another long night.
In fact, it turned out to be far shorter than Maggie anticipated. She was only halfway back to the convent house when a discreet ping signaled an incoming transmission. She ducked into a nearby alley and whipped the transceiver out of her side pocket.
“Hold on, Chameleon. Jaguar’s on the line.”
Maggie’s fingers curled around the tiny instrument.
“I’ve only got a few seconds.” Jake’s disembodied whisper vibrated with tension. “We’ve been on the march most of the day. Che hasn’t let me out of his sight until now. He won’t say where we’re going, only that the drop has been moved up to tonight. Sarah and the children are with us, and a woman named Eleanora, who will be extracted, as well.”
Great, Maggie thought. Just great. Two women. Three kids. Unknown location. Unspecified time. Uncertain size of opposition. She reassessed the size of her team and of the strike team that Jake would call in at the drop site. If he made it to the drop site.
“I’ve got the GPS unit on,” Jake continued, low and fast, referring to the GPS built into his digital watch. The GPS would allow Maggie to track Jake’s exact location, and try to anticipate where he was heading.
“Be ready to come in on my call. I’ll give you more detail when I can. Out.”
Five minutes later, Maggie gave a heartfelt prayer of thanks and shed her scratchy habit for the last time. Pulling a pair of dark slacks and a black cotton turtleneck from the small cardboard suitcase she’d carried into the country, she dressed hurriedly and slipped out the convent gates for the last time. She climbed into the Jeep she’d had Cowboy summon via his channels and sped through the night to the army’s heavily guarded airfield outside town.
Despite the black-and-green camouflage paint on his face and the stark, utilitarian fatigues that had replaced his suit, Maggie recognized the tall man who strode forward to meet her immediately.
“You look much different,” he said, eyeing her scrubbed face and tumbled hair.
“So do you, big guy. Have you got the gear I requested?”
“It’s all here.”
“Then let’s go.”
Chapter 14
“Are you all right?”
Jake pointed the powerful beam of the flashlight at the ground, but enough peripheral light filtered upward to illuminate Sarah’s pale, strained face.
“I’m all right,” she answered stiffly, leaning her shoulders against the withers of the patient packhorse that carried the two smaller children. Eduard stood beside her, silent and watchful. Eleanora’s solid figure loomed in the darkness just behind them.
Jake bit back a curse, wishing he could offer the little group some words of encouragement, but Che and the woman he shared the revolution and his bed with weren’t three yards away. One or the other of them had been at Sarah’s side throughout the long, exhausting day. The woman had even gone with Sarah and Eleanora into the bushes the few times the rebel leader allowed a stop so that they could rest and attend to personal needs.
Jake himself had been under close watch, as well. He’d managed to take a few unguarded moments to send his hurried transmission to Maggie an hour ago, but not much else.
The children, however, were not watched quite as closely. Eduard had varied his pace, sometimes walking silently beside Jake, sometimes falling back to lay a reassur
ing hand on the bewildered Ricci’s stubby leg. Occasionally he’d marched beside Sarah. Using the boy as an intermediary, Jake had made what plans he could with her. This would be their last stop, he guessed. It was time to implement those plans.
Under the watchful eyes of the leader, Jake studied Sarah’s face. “You don’t look all right. You look like something the jungle scavengers would pass by.”
Her chin lifted. “Thanks. That’s just what I needed to hear right now.”
He gave an exasperated grunt. “Look, I’ve put my neck on the line for you about as long as I intend to. I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with a fainting female. You’ve got to keep up.”
“I’ll keep up.”
Jake flashed the powerful beam into her face, causing Sarah to flinch back against the horse and throw up an arm to shield her eyes. He swung the beam down again, shaking his head in disgust.
“Drink some water, dammit. From the look of your face, you’re half a step away from dehydration.”
“I don’t have any. I gave it all to the children.”
“Christ!”
He unhooked the canteen that hung from his web belt and shoved it at her. Jake heard Teresa’s little sob of fright at the roughness in his voice and hardened his heart.
“Here,” he snarled. “Take it.”
Sarah’s fingers trembled as she took the canteen and fumbled with the cap.
“You just unscrew it,” Jake said caustically. “Two turns to the left. Think you can manage that?”
She flashed him a look of scorn that was visible even in the dim light. “I can manage it.”
Deliberately she wiped the mouth of the canteen with a corner of her sleeve. The folds of the dark habit fell over her fingers and covered the small, flat box that Jake had passed her with the canteen.
As he watched Sarah tilt her head and drink greedily, Jake felt a sharp, lancing pride in her courage. He’d shared some desperate moments with a wide spectrum of people in his lifetime. Some of them had crumpled under the stress of fear and imminent death, but many had found resources within themselves they didn’t know they possessed to challenge it with. Sarah definitely fell into the latter category. He wanted, he needed to tell her so.
