* * *
Tom Hancock, their second CIA briefer, was all nervous energy. He paced back and forth constantly while he talked, shooting information at Anna and Carmichael like bullets.
“Here’s the deal. You two got to know each other while working together in Colorado. Fell in love. Got married on the spur of the moment. Decided to spend your honeymoon...”
“Wait a minute!” Anna shot upright in her chair. “You’re kidding about the married part, right?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Hancock stabbed a finger at the bags under his reddened eyes. “Neither Johnson nor I have slept since the Ukrainians alerted us to Varno’s possible presence in their country. We have to get you two in, and fast. We also have to make sure you can communicate privately, day or night, without raising suspicion.”
Her jaw set. “We can communicate without posing as a married couple.”
“Not as well or as securely. Christ, Solkov, we’ve weighed every option. This is the best, and the safest for you.”
“Safest?”
“You’re not trained in field ops. Carmichael is.”
Bristling with impatience, Hancock slapped a baggie containing two gold wedding bands on the table in front of her.
“Are you in or out?”
Anna stared at the rings, her throat constricting. He couldn’t know... None of these people could know how the mere idea of sliding one of those bands on her finger ripped a hole in her heart.
It was three years since Jeremy had taken her to dinner at their favorite Washington bistro and suggested in his quiet, unassuming way that they get married. Three years since a drunk diver had almost decapitated him. Three years since Anna had buried her heart.
Her breath stuttered. Her chest ached. Slowly, she nodded.
“I’m in.”
She forced herself to look at Carmichael, sure she’d find him grinning like some damned tomcat. The grin was there, but it came with a glint of laughter in his blue eyes that invited her to share in the joke.
Stone-faced, she turned away and dragged the baggie toward her. One quick yank had it unzipped. When she reached inside and extracted the smaller of the two rings, Carmichael stirred.
Anna couldn’t bear the thought that he might make a big production out of sliding a wedding ring on her finger. Aching inside, she jammed the gold band over her knuckle.
Chapter 3
Thirty-eight hours and nine time zones later, Anna peered through the side hatch of a HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter at the granite peaks of Europe’s second longest mountain range.
The sight of the Carpathians’ pine-and birch-covered slopes kicked her jet-lagged mind into gear. She was just moments now from entering the operational phase of this mission. The prep work was behind her: the intense briefings in Florida; the long flight across the Atlantic; the brief stop at RAF Mildenhall to be outfitted and equipped; the hop from England to a classified forward operating location; this jump over the mountains. The cumulative effect of those activities had taxed both her nerves and her strength.
So had the effort required to adjust to her new identity. Even now, just moments away from touching down, she had to repeat a stern mantra. She was a new bride. Spending her honeymoon driving through Europe. Eager to share some of her heritage with her groom.
She dragged her gaze from the mountains below to the narrow band circling her ring finger. The glinting gold was a cruel reminder of what might have been. Tears stung her tired eyes, but she blinked them back with fierce determination and slanted a glance at the man sprawled in the adjoining web seat.
Her...
She gritted her teeth. Forced her protesting mind to shape the word.
Her husband appeared oblivious to the deafening whap-whap-whap of rotor blades. His head lolled back against the bulkhead. His long legs were outstretched and crossed at the ankle. In keeping with their cover of having meandered across eastern Europe, he hadn’t shaved since leaving Florida. Golden bristles shadowed his cheeks. His red down vest showed several grass stains. Beneath the vest he wore a long-sleeved, zip-neck microfiber T-shirt, jeans and well-worn boots. The ultrathin T-shirt and snug jeans molded his long, muscled body.
Before she could block them, Anna’s thoughts zinged back to that brief, punishing session at the Hurlburt base gym. She’d had a glimpse then of the brutal self-discipline Carmichael employed to keep those muscles honed. Seen, too, how he pushed himself to the limit. Would he push her as hard during their mission?
The panic she’d struggled to suppress at various times across all those time zones rose up again. She was an analyst, for God’s sake! A data cruncher. She was well aware that the thousands of bits of intelligence she collected and analyzed and disseminated impacted military operations. This was the first time she’d directly participated in one of those ops, however.
And she was going after one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists! Nikolai Varno ranked near the top of the United Nations’ list of most wanted. In his fanatical determination to wrest Chechnya’s independence from Russia, Varno had resorted to horrific violence. Now he could be targeting the pipeline that ran through the country Anna’s grandparents had emigrated from so many decades ago.
The thought of those grandparents steadied her. She’d spent so many summers with her poppa and babushka, had grown up on stories of these mountains, had visited them once as a child. Even now she could recite from memory many of the Ukrainian folk tales her grandmother had embellished with dramatic pauses and extravagant gestures.
Anna knew the area. She spoke the language. She could do this mission. She had to do it. Still, she wasn’t surprised that her pulse skipped several beats when the chopper banked and began a steep descent.
The maneuver woke Carmichael...Duke... Dammit, she had to remember to call him Duke.
He transitioned from semisnoring to full awareness in a single blink. After a quick glance at the granite peaks filling the helo’s side hatch window he turned those electric blue eyes on Anna. He must have read the nervousness turning her insides to mush. A teasing grin sketched across his face.
“Ready to start the honeymoon, sweet thang?”
The exaggerated drawl and hokey endearment grated like fingernails on a chalkboard. Irritated, Anna almost forgot for a moment they were here to hunt down a stone-cold killer. The fact that Carmichael—Duke!—had intended exactly that didn’t lessen the grate.
Batting her lashes like flyswatters, she poured a gallon of pure syrup into her reply. “Ah’m ready, honeypot.”
His grin morphed into a wince. “Honeypot?”
“Would yah prefer sweetikins?”
“Oh, come on. I don’t really shovel it on that thick, do I?”
“As a matter of fact, you do.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll lay the shovel aside.”
He surrendered with good-natured grace. In the next moment, he turned dead serious.
“But that’s all I’ll lay aside. We’re in this together, Anna. I’m going to rely on your skills, and you have to rely on mine. If I say down, you eat dirt. Instantly. No questions, no arguments. Agreed?”
She’d already accepted that they each brought separate and distinct skills to the op and saw no need to pound it into the ground. Since he didn’t look ready to let go of the matter, however, she gave a curt nod.
“Agreed.”
“So what do you want me to call you?” he asked, circling back to the start of this discussion. “We’re married, sweetheart. I need to use something more familiar than ‘hey, you.’”
“Okay, fine. Use that.”
“Sweetheart?”
“Yes.”
The response was curt and showed her annoyance but satisfied Duke. He counted it as a small victory in his ongoing battle to loosen up this woman. She’d been torqued tighter than a lug nut since briefings in Florida. Not that she’d been particularly loose before that.
A movement from the front of the chopper caught his attention. He turned to
see the flight engineer weaving his way through the equipment strapped down in the Pave Hawk’s cargo bay. Christ! The kid looked like he just started shaving last week.
“Five minutes to TD,” he shouted over the roar of the engines.
“Roger.”
Duke had coordinated the insertion site with the Pave Hawk’s pilot. The narrow valley was a good fifty miles from their target destination but shielded by near vertical slopes that would allow the Pave Hawk to swoop in and out again with minimal chance of detection.
* * *
The flight engineer might look like a high-schooler, but he knew his stuff. The moment the chopper’s skids touched down on the floor of the steep-sided valley, he slid back the side hatch. Duke jumped out, keeping his head down, and helped Anna dismount. When they were clear of the whirling rotors, the younger engineer activated the lift arm to swing out their pallet of equipment.
The pallet thudded down, and Duke ducked under the still-turning blades to help him remove the cargo webbing. Working with smooth coordination, they had the pallet and webbing stashed back aboard in mere minutes. The engineer jumped back into the cargo bay and radioed the all clear to his pilot. Hanging from a safety harness, he shouted through the whine of the revving engines.
“Good luck!”
Duke nodded his thanks and hunched his shoulders against the downdraft when the Pave Hawk lifted off. The powerful wash beat the tall, tough native grasses to the ground. A quick tilt of the rotors angled the chopper’s nose and sent it arrowing down the valley. The thick stands of pine and birch blanketing the slopes acted like sponges to absorb the sound of its blades slicing the air.
When the Pave Hawk rounded a jutting crag and disappeared, Duke extracted his cell phone from a zippered pocket in his down vest. The instrument looked like an ordinary cell but CIA wizards had ramped it up with the latest in ultrasophisticated technology. The damned thing could bounce a signal off Mars if necessary.
He didn’t need to bounce a signal off Mars. Just off the military satellite communications network. From there it would travel via secure downlink to their control at the 352nd special ops group.
“Condor Base, this is Condor One.”
The phone felt small and insignificant compared to the handheld military radios Duke was used to, but Mildenhall’s reply came back lightning fast and without the usual tinny crackle.
“This is Condor Base. Go ahead, Condor One.”
“Be advised we have boots on the ground.”
“Acknowledged.”
“We’re preparing to proceed to the objective.”
“Roger that, Condor One. We’ll send a sitrep up-channel. Good hunting.”
“Thanks. Condor One out.”
In the sudden stillness that followed the brief transmission, Duke did a quick three-sixty. He saw no signs of life other than a faint curl of smoke from the farmhouse at the distant entrance to the valley. He and Anna might have been alone in this cradle of pine-covered slopes slashed with the brilliant gold of birches.
Anna made a slower circuit. Her gaze lingered on the stands of birches blazing their way up the steep slopes. “I’d forgotten how beautiful these mountains are,” she murmured.
“No surprise there. You were, what? Six or seven when your grandparents brought you for a visit?”
“Seven.”
She drew in the sharp, clean mountain air, her gaze still on the spectacular views. Duke had to admit he preferred the scenery a little closer in. The wind whistling through the valley put spots of color high in her cheeks and teased the ends of the ponytail she’d tugged through the back opening of her ball cap.
The folks at the 352nd had suited her out with a rainproof windbreaker in easy-to-spot yellow, a warm thermal turtleneck and lightweight hiking boots. The jeans were hers, though. Stone-washed and snug, they curved over hip and thigh and calf. The sight of those long legs shot Duke back to the study he’d given them that evening at Pete’s Place, just moments before they’d been tagged for this mission.
She’d iced him good that evening. Now, just three nights later, they’d be snuggling up like honeymooners. Three nights was nowhere close to Duke’s record for sweet-talking a female into bed, of course. Still, it was pretty damned good considering Anna’s less than enthusiastic response to his initial overtures.
He knew the other Sidewinders wouldn’t let him take credit for this one, though. Not when the snuggling-up part came with serious restrictions. He was on a mission. His buddies would know he couldn’t risk the distraction of a tumble between the sheets. If Duke and Anna had to cuddle—and he sincerely hoped they would—they’d do it just to maintain their cover. Or in the words of that hyperactive CIA type, to facilitate private communication.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the delectable Ms. Solkov’s company, however. And continue his campaign to loosen her up a few notches whenever the opportunity presented itself.
“We better get loaded and move out.”
Nodding, she tore her gaze from the swaths of brilliant gold and moved to their mound of equipment. The largest item was a mud-spattered Arturo, the European version of a Jeep Wrangler. It came equipped with four-wheel drive, reinforced suspension, a roll bar and removable side doors. Tough and reliable, the jeep could ford fast-flowing steams and climb near vertical inclines with the sure-footedness of a mountain goat.
The papers in the dash indicated it had been rented at the Budapest airport three days ago by David S. Carmichael. The stamps in his and Anna’s passports showed they had subsequently made a leisurely journey through Hungary and Romania before crossing into the Ukraine earlier this morning. Anna’s passport was still in her own name, the rationale being that a newlywed wouldn’t have had time to submit a name change.
To reinforce the impression of a couple enjoying a rustic honeymoon, they’d stuffed their spare clothing into a single, commercial-style duffel to give it the rumpled look of three days of travel. Their backpacks contained only the bare necessities: personal hygiene products, extra socks, maps, water bottles, energy bars, binoculars and their seemingly ordinary cell phones.
Duke had gone into more than one tight situation without the luxury of personal hygiene products. He wouldn’t go in without weapons, however. Normally he clipped the KA-BAR with its lethal, drop-point blade to his utility belt. For this mission, he folded the blade into its handle and tucked it in the inside pocket of his vest. The Heckler and Koch .45 concealed in a false bottom of his backpack was a favorite of USAF special ops. The grip was molded to Duke’s hand, and a single shot from its ten-round clip could take down one of the Ukraine’s notoriously fierce brown bears.
Hoping to hell he’d get a shot at Nikolai Varno instead of a bear, Duke loaded their gear into the vehicle. He twisted wrong when he hefted the duffel and felt the pull on his still-healing hip muscles. The ache went deep, but brought nowhere near the stabbing pain it had a few weeks ago.
Ignoring the ache, Duke nodded approval as Anna filled the cup holders and side pockets with enough miscellaneous items to make it look as though they’d lived out of the vehicle for several days.
When they were ready to roll, he automatically started for the driver’s side. A raised brow stopped him.
“Sorry,” he said with a shrug. “I’m used to taking charge. You want to drive?”
Anna conducted a swift, silent debate. In theory they were equal partners in this endeavor. Just moments ago Duke himself had stressed how they’d have to rely on each other’s skills. But it would be stupid to take the wheel just to score a win in a minor power struggle.
“The maps and road signs are all in Ukrainian. I’ll navigate.”
The plan was to drive up to the village her grandmother had come from and use that as a base of operations to scout out the neighboring villages. Although Anna wouldn’t admit it, she was more than happy to let Duke tackle the narrow, unpaved road leading out of the valley. Ditto the dizzying series of switchbacks they started up some miles late
r.
The hairpin turns sent her heart into her throat. The unprotected drop-offs mere inches from the passenger-side wheels had her gripping her seat. Even the shimmering beauty of the birches lost its allure. Their slender white trunks crowded the narrow road on one side. On the other, their pointed tips speared up from below like sharpened stakes.
“I don’t remember the road being this bad,” Anna muttered during a short, straight stretch. “I... Look out!”
Her shriek flushed a covey of red-crested blackbirds from the birches. It also startled the horse plodding around the curve in their direction.
The shaggy beast skittered and pushed back against the straps harnessing him between the shafts of a wooden logging cart. The cart’s rear wheel scraped the crumbly road edge. Its heavy load of logs tilted dangerously. Swearing profusely, the driver fought to keep the cart from taking him and his horse over the side.
Anna was out and running before Duke slammed the vehicle into Park. She got a grip on the horse’s harness, adding her pull to the driver’s grim efforts to urge it forward. For a few frantic seconds she thought they would lose the tug-of-war. Then the cart’s rear wheel caught. Inch by inch, it regained solid ground.
Once his swaying load had settled, the driver glared at Anna. Wisps of sparse white hair poked from under his flat-brimmed felt cap and framed a face mottled with anger.
“Why did you screech like that?”
She identified his dialect immediately. It was the same mix of Polish, Romanian and Ukrainian her babushka had spoken as a child.
“I’m sorry. We didn’t see you until it was almost too late.”
The swift, idiomatic reply added curiosity to the anger still simmering in his eyes. “How do you speak Hutsul? And why do you come up this road? It leads nowhere.”
Anna stroked the horse’s shaggy mane. The animal stood no higher than her shoulder. It was from the tough, stocky breed that had originated here in the Carpathians, developed over the centuries for hacking and pulling timber. It was still a primary means of transport for logs harvested on the more inaccessible slopes.
Course of Action: Out of Harm's WayAny Time, Any Place Page 13
