Some day he would no longer know the difference between valley and pass, warmth and ice. Or he wouldn’t care. He had seen men like that. Cinder cases.
Burned out.
Like other men, Cord had always sworn it would never happen to him. Like other men, he had assumed he would die before he burned out.
Like other men, he had been wrong.
Now it was time to assess the damage, to see if there was anything left to save. Anything worth saving.
The beeper at Cord’s belt pulsed rhythmically. As though it was coming down a long, long tunnel, he heard the summons. Years of reflexes took over. He stopped thinking about himself and punched in the required code.
Then he walked quickly toward the huge motor home that was parked just inside the stable fence. He didn’t really see the containers of flowers lining the paths between stables and yards. He didn’t see the golden cataracts of sunlight pouring around him or feel the breeze or hear the vibrant murmur of bees settling delicately between fragrant petals. He saw nothing but bleak mountain peaks, felt nothing but ice, knew nothing but the battle that had yet to be fought.
The dust-colored motor home was connected to Santa Anita’s power supply by several wires. Only one of them carried electricity. The others were secure phone lines disguised by the presence of more ordinary lines. Except for an unusual number of antennae, there was nothing noteworthy about the motor home. Many people associated with the Olympics found it easier to bring their sleeping quarters with them than to commute through the tangled traffic of the Los Angeles Basin.
A man whose name was temporarily Thorne waited in a lawn chair out in front of the motor home. He was man who apparently had nothing better to do than sit and dream in the sun. For all his outward relaxation, however, his glance was shrewd and alert.
“Morning, Mr. Elliot,” Thorne said, his soft southern drawl as misleading as his lazy sprawl.
“Morning, Thorne,” Cord said, automatically using Kentucky’s latest identity, just as Kentucky used his. “Any visitors?”
“No suh. Not even any rubberneckers.”
“Good.”
Cord unlocked the combination key-and-pressure lock on the motor home’s side door and went inside his mobile command station.
An air conditioner hummed discreetly. The decor was a tawny mixture of gold and buff and chestnut with refreshing jade-green highlights. A couch that made into a queen-size bed occupied the wall opposite the door, facing a game table large enough to seat four. Television, stereo, a few books and maps, nothing at all odd to a casual glance.
It would take an unusually perceptive or suspicious person to notice that the walls were too thick and the storage compartments and cupboards were constructed to keep out all but the most skillful thieves.
The interior door to the back of the motor home was open. On either side of the narrow hallway lay a bathroom, a kitchen, and a bedroom. All were done in shades of buff and jade. The last third of the motor home could be entered only through another interior door. It was locked in ways both subtle and obvious, electrical and mechanical.
Cord was the only person on the West Coast who knew the combinations. He unlocked the door, opened it, and relocked it behind him.
The room was surprisingly large. Part of the furnishings were utterly commonplace, consisting of a bed, a bedside table, and a reading lamp. The other walls looked more like the cockpit of an fighter plane or a modern recording studio than the master bedroom suite of a luxury motor home. Electronic equipment bristled from every available nook and cranny. A separate air conditioner worked tirelessly, keeping the room at the ideal temperature for the most sensitive of the equipment.
A computer terminal waited in the corner, screen blank. Cord pulled a swivel chair away from the radio and sat down in front of the keyboard. He entered a long, intricate code sequence and waited. Within seconds the screen lit up.
BLUE MOON CONTACT BLUE HERRING
Adrenaline flicked over his nerves. For this operation, Bonner was Blue Herring. And Bonner was hunting Barracuda.
Cord punched in the acknowledgment, swiveled to a radio telephone that was fitted with a scrambler, punched out another series of code numbers, hung up, and waited.
After a few minutes, the phone rang.
He picked up the receiver. Even though the conversation would be scrambled, he and Bonner would stick to code. You never knew who might have slipped a bug in somewhere along the line.
“How’s the fishing?” Cord asked.
“They’re rising, buddy.” The voice floated up from the speaker on a soft wave of static that lapped at the silence of the room.
Cord smiled grimly at the excitement he sensed beneath the radio-flattened voice of “Blue Herring.” Bonner was a man who still lived solely for the next range of mountains, the next freezing pass, the next battle.
“That so?” Cord asked. “What kind of fish are biting today?”
“Barracuda.”
He went utterly still. “You’re sure?”
“Eighty-six percent certain. Department of Fish and Game confirmed sighting on basis of file photo taken at extreme range. I know how you feel about photos, buddy, but I thought I’d pass on the nibble.”
“Where did he surface.” Cord’s voice was flat. It was a demand, not a request.
“LAX. Last night.”
He thought quickly. The assassin known only as Barracuda had been spotted at Los Angeles International Airport by immigration officials. Or, to be precise, a man who resembled the only known photograph of Barracuda had been spotted. If the match was correct, it would be a giant step toward catching the terrorist. Permanently.
Cord was one of the few people who had seen Barracuda close up and lived to tell about it. But Cord wasn’t comfortable with photo IDs, particularly when it came to Barracuda. The one photo they had of him was taken from very long range. Worse, it was a profile shot. It didn’t show the terrorist’s most outstanding feature—a narrowness between the eyes that had made Cord dub the man Barracuda.
“Who ID’d him?” Cord asked.
“Good old Eagle Eye.”
Absently Cord traced the line of his chin with one knuckle while he digested the information and played with possibilities. His eyes were narrow, intent, focused on a different world, a place that was darker, colder, a place where dusty sunshine and warm breezes never came.
If Mitchell—Eagle Eye—was the one to ID Barracuda, Cord couldn’t afford to ignore the sighting. Mitchell had an uncanny knack for matching grainy two-dimensional photos to moving three-dimensional faces. That was why Mitchell had been assigned to Customs and Immigration at LAX for the duration of the Olympics, when foreign nationals of all kinds would pour into L.A.
Including terrorists.
“Probable target,” Cord said curtly.
Bonner’s laugh was as thin as a razor. “You, if he sees you.”
“Of course.” His voice was impatient. Barracuda had wanted to kill him for a long time. An assassin’s success depended on anonymity as much as skill or nerve. “But does he know I’m here?” There was a soft, static-filled pause. “Doubtful. The boys upstairs figure that Old Blue is the target. Backup target is Baby Blue.”
Cord’s breath came in with a harsh sound. Raine. Raine was an assassin’s target.
He swore viciously beneath his breath. It was well known how proud Chandler-Smith was of his youngest daughter. At least, everyone but the daughter in question seemed to know. Blue had vowed he would see his daughter ride in the Olympic three-day event if it was the last thing he did.
It just might be.
Anything that made Chandler-Smith’s actions predictable to an assassin was dangerous. A father’s desire to see his daughter perform in the Olympics was as predictable as sunrise. That was why Cord had been yanked out of his normal position as a covert anti-terrorist operative and assigned as liaison to Olympic security.
Blue’s boss had wanted the best available protection for Chandler-S
mith, and as President of the United States, Blue’s boss was in a position to demand it.
“You’re sure about the primary and secondary target,” Cord said in a clipped voice.
“There’s no substitute for good bait when you’re going fishing. We’ve got a nice, juicy night crawler on the hook.”
“So a worm finally turned.” Cord wondered which member of Barracuda’s terrorist group had gotten scared and run for cover in the enemy’s arms.
“Believe it, buddy. He’s wriggling and oozing all over the place. Ugly little bastard, but he’s our ugly little bastard now. Blue’s going to have someone’s butt when he finds out that Baby Blue is on the menu.”
“Blue will have to get in line.”
Cord’s voice was bleak, colorless. Memories turned in him like knives, the softness and grace and surprising fire that was Raine Chandler-Smith. He had spent his life protecting people he didn’t know.
He knew Raine.
She had made it clear that he couldn’t have her. Before Bonner’s call he had been ready to argue the point. But not now. Now there was only the old, familiar shadow world closing around him in icy embrace.
He couldn’t have Raine, but he could make certain that she survived to look for her safe and gentle dream.
“Tell Blue there’s only one way Barracuda will get to Baby,” he said. “That’s through Cord Elliot.”
“But Blue doesn’t know anyone called Cord Elliot,” Bonner said, laughing.
“Neither do you. Just pass the message along.”
“It’s on its way.” Then, quietly, almost casually, Bonner asked, “Still play chess, buddy?”
“As often as you do, compadre.”
Soft laughter faded into static, then silence.
Cord replaced the receiver. For a long time he was motionless, looking at nothing, feeling nothing, thinking about too many things. So many deadly possibilities. So many grainy photos and sullen lives. So many angles of attack. So many weapons. So many ways to die.
So few ways to live.
When he focused once more on the here and now, he discovered that he had taken a worn gold coin from his pocket. While he thought about assassins and Raine, the high price of life and the terrible cost of death, castle and fire, mountain and ice, he had rubbed the smooth, warm gold between his fingers like a talisman.
“So it’s that bad, is it?” he asked softly. He flipped the good luck piece over. A woman’s face looked at him through slanting eyes. “Are you listening, Lady Luck, Lady Death? Or am I the one who should be listening to you?”
The woman said nothing, merely watched him through a lattice of ideographs. Behind her rose an alien city where roofs turned up to the sky in silent prayers to unknown gods. Different culture, different reality, different lives.
Same world.
It was all part of the huge, interlocking puzzle of languages and cultures, people and desires that was humanity. A haunting, ever-changing mixture of experience and memories and dreams . . . the smell of piòon and campfires, the eight-limbed elegance of a dancing god, flooded rice paddies the color of tears, muffled gunfire, a woman’s sidelong glance through a shadowed window, the terrible green silence of a jungle when guerrillas were on the prowl.
And a gold piece given to Cord by a man he had carried on his back out of the jungle. But not in time.
Green silence and death.
He looked at the alien coin and wondered who would be next to fall. The golden face had no answer for him except the one he already knew.
He would die before he let Barracuda get to Raine.
For the rest of the day, Raine avoided any possibility of seeing Cord. Her dreams weren’t as kind to her—he haunted them. She slept very little, just enough to slide into vague nightmares that were a mixture of yearning and fear, of running from and running to, of having a destination and never getting there because something—everything—got in the way before she reached her goal, whatever that goal might have been.
That was the worst part of the nightmare. Not knowing where she was going, but knowing that she wasn’t getting there.
Seeing a car in her rearview mirror all the way from the motel to the racetrack didn’t settle her nerves a bit. At first she thought it was Cord, but when both cars stopped at a traffic light, she saw that it was a woman.
Raine’s relief at not having to confront Cord lasted as long as it took her to park her car near the stables. She was so early that there were few other people stirring. Yet no sooner had she gotten out and shut the car door than she was aware of being watched. An instant later the door to a big nearby motor home opened and Cord stepped into the cool, dusty pre-dawn of Santa Anita.
Even as she told herself that she was wrong, there wasn’t enough light to identify a man she had seen only twice, she knew it was Cord. Nobody else moved with that combination of strength and male grace. With rising anger she waited for him to walk up to her.
He didn’t even look her way.
Relieved, disappointed, and thoroughly irritated, she stalked to Dev’s stall. She didn’t understand the warring impulses in herself. Her mind was certain that Cord was the wrong man for her. Her instincts were just as certain that he was the right one.
The day went downhill from the instant she spotted Cord. Dev was on a hair trigger and stubborn as a concrete slab. More than once she felt like screaming at the big stallion. She didn’t. She simply settled deeper into the slim little English saddle and rode him for all she was worth.
It didn’t help that Cord was never more than a hundred feet away. Whether she was alone or with another member of the team, listening to instructions from Captain Jon or leading Dev lazily through the linked yards, Cord was nearby. Always. If she went to one of the practice rings, he was already there. Watching her. If she went to the stables, so did he. If she went to the restroom, he did everything but hand her toilet paper.
But not once did he talk to her. He simply circulated through the area like a rumor, always present and impossible to pin down.
By late afternoon her nerves were frayed and she was furious. One moment she was leading a freshly groomed Dev down the stable row. The next instant she vaulted on and rode the stallion bareback right up to Cord. He didn’t turn around at the sound of hoofbeats. It was as though he hadn’t even noticed her.
“Who do you think you’re kidding?” she began hotly. “You’ve been following . . .”
Her voice died when he turned and looked at her. That was all. Just a look. His eyes were pale, impersonal.
“May I help you, Miss Chandler-Smith?”
She tried to speak. Nothing came out, not even a dry rasp. Cord couldn’t have been more distant from her if he had been on the far side of winter.
And that was how he looked. Cold.
After a moment he nodded politely and went back to watching the activity around the stable yard. His assessing eyes missed nothing, not even the smallest shift of wind-ruffled pepper trees.
He didn’t look toward Raine again. There wasn’t any point. No matter how long he had stared at the alien coin that morning, he hadn’t found a way to follow both his desire and his duty. After Barracuda was caught, it would be different. Then Cord would be free. If he survived. Until then, Raine was the queen and he was the soldier hired to protect her.
Period.
Motionless, Raine sat on Dev, unable to believe that Cord had looked at her with such utter lack of feeling, then turned away as though she didn’t exist at all. She should do the same. Turn away. Now.
But she couldn’t.
When he had spoken his brief, polite greeting to her, she saw the flash of white teeth and the sensual gleam of tongue. Suddenly it was the night before, when he gave her a guided tour of the universe and offered her the dazzling lure of real passion. The clean, masculine lines of his mouth brought back memories of being kissed until there was nothing in her universe but him.
She felt again the sensual vise of his teeth holding her lower lip
while his tongue teased and soothed, incited and pleasured. Then came searing memories of being held by the man who was so close to her now, the man who was ignoring her as though his hands had never explored her naked breasts, as though he had never dragged her over his aroused flesh, making her moan with sheer desire.
When Cord shifted position to watch a different part of the yard, the flex and play of muscles beneath his faded work shirt drew her eyes. She wanted to bend down and bury her fingers in his thick black hair, to touch him again, to run her hands over his hard body until she was so close to him that she could feel him groan with pleasure and hunger. Then she wanted to peel away his shirt, his jeans, her own clothes, everything that stood between her and the feel of Cord’s silk and steel body.
Heat and a heady kind of weakness coursed through her. Suddenly she understood why people gave in to competition madness. Anything would be better than the violent, twisting need inside her when she looked at him.
She took a slow breath and tried to bring herself under control. Coming this close to him again had been a mistake. A big one. She wasn’t sophisticated enough to play the kiss-and-forget game. Being dismissed by him the morning after a simple necking session made her feel young and stupid, hot and cold, furious and sad enough to wail.
How much worse it would be if they had been lovers.
The breeze stirred, dust glittered, bees rocketed from flower to flower. And Raine watched Cord helplessly, caught in the coils of a kind of passion she hadn’t even known was possible.
Without warning he turned back to her. His pupils dilated when he saw the hunger in her wide, haunted eyes and soft mouth. Sexual heat poured through him, hardening him in a single savage instant. His uncontrollable response made him furious.
“I’m still wearing a gun.”
His words were a whip of ice cutting across Raine’s hot, unguarded emotions. She wheeled Dev and set off with a speed that sent dirt spattering over Cord’s feet.
Remember Summer Page 13
