by Cindy Dees
Leaning in close to her and using his big body as a shield, he protected her from jostles and errant hands as they passed through a group of loudly singing young men wearing Irish national soccer team paraphernalia. One of them, carrying a brimming full pitcher of beer in each hand stumbled, and Avi spun in front of the woman, taking a hefty slosh of beer down his back for his trouble.
While the drunk mumbled a slurred apology, Avi merely rolled his eyes and ushered the woman onward. Cold, sticky wetness made his shirt cling to his back as the beer soaked through his suit.
“Thanks,” she muttered reluctantly.
“You’re welcome.”
There was a bit of a delay getting her scanned into the village since she hadn’t scanned out properly when she left, but the guard sorted it out quickly enough when Avi flashed his own senior security credentials.
“I have to make a phone call,” she announced, stopping just inside the fenced enclosure surrounding the large campus of dormitories, dining halls, workout facilities and delegation headquarters. Sighing in frustration at yet another delay, he nonetheless stopped and waited while she pulled out her cell phone.
He listened with interest as she said, “Tessa, it’s me. I need one of you to head over to the north village pool and take over babysitting the women’s softball team. I’ve got another situation to sort out right now.” A pause, then, “I’ll tell you about it when I get back to Ops. Speaking of which, could you call Major T. and have him meet me at the ops center ASAP?”
Avi heard an exclamation that sounded like surprise from the person on the other end of the call.
The woman snorted. Then, “He’s never off duty. He eats, sleeps and breathes the job. And I seriously have to speak with him. We have a potential situation.”
Spoken like a true security operator. Avi frowned. Who was this woman?
She was speaking again. “...join us after you fish the women’s softball team out of the pool and tuck them back in their rooms.” She added, “Oh, and their clothing is in a pile at the northwest corner of the pool. Yes. All of their clothing. It’s an orgy over there. Thanks. Bye.”
She pocketed her phone and glared up at him. “Let’s make this fast. I have someplace to be.”
He crossed his arms and smirked down at her. “All right. Let’s try this again. Who are you?”
“This is still far too public an environment for me to answer that. And I’m certainly not telling you anything without you showing me proper identification.”
“Fair enough. Come with me.” He turned and headed toward the Israeli security operations center. Returning the favor from earlier, he glanced back over his shoulder and asked wryly, “Are you coming, She-Woman?”
The woman lurched into motion, scowling. Smiling a little to himself, he led her to his delegation’s headquarters.
The atmosphere was all business inside the Israeli security operations center. Ever since Munich almost fifty years ago, the Israelis operated on the assumption that their athletes were active terror targets. And it was up to the men and women in this room to protect those athletes—the finest flowers of Israel’s youth.
He didn’t stop in the main area crammed with desks, video monitors, computers and mostly big, capable men. Spying an empty office, he stepped inside, turned on the light and waited for his prisoner to join him. Not that he would call her that to her face. His ribs and foot still ached from her initial assault. She might be tiny, but she had sharp elbows and knew how to use them.
In the bright light of the office, he got a good look at her face. She had smooth, soft-looking skin, regular features that grew more pretty the longer he looked at them, and those big, blue eyes of hers. They were her best feature, for sure. Her hair was a soft chocolate brown shot through with strands of gold, like she spent a fair bit of time outside. He already knew she was stronger than her small stature suggested.
She pulled out her credentials again and this time he did the same. Silently, they exchanged badges.
“Rebel McQueen,” he read aloud. “That’s an unusual name. Did your mother dislike you?”
“No. She was a fanatical Steve McQueen fan. He was an actor—”
“I know who he was. The Great Escape is one of my favorite movies.”
She mused, “Allied prisoners break out of Nazi prison camp. I could see why that movie would be popular in Israel.” The woman continued, “Anyway, McQueen’s nickname was ‘the American Rebel.’”
He commented sympathetically, “You must have to explain that a lot.”
“You have no idea.” She rolled her eyes, and they traded brief smiles of commiseration.
She glanced down at his identification. “Avi Bronson. Israeli Defense Forces? Mossad?”
“Sayerat Matkal,” he replied. Not that she would have any idea what that was. Which was the point. His team didn’t advertise their existence, let alone their presence at a venue as public as the Summer Olympics.
“Unit 269?” she blurted.
“You know who we are?” he blurted back, shocked that she’d heard of his special operations unit. It wasn’t the sort of thing most civilians knew about.
“Yes,” she replied impatiently. “You guys are the primary hostage rescue unit for the Israeli Defense Forces. I’d have thought most of you security types here would be Mista’arvim—counterterrorism units.”
He shrugged. “I did a stint with them a few years back. I also rolled with Shayetet 13 early in my career.”
“The Navy SEAL equivalent, huh? Well, aren’t you the overachiever?”
He frowned down at her “Okay, so you know more about Israeli Special Forces units than the average bear. How is that?”
“It’s my job?”
“Don’t be cute with me. What do you do as a member of the American delegation, Miss McQueen?”
“Lieutenant McQueen. US Navy. Roving security for the American delegation. Sometimes it’s handy to have female security guards. We can go places men can’t.”
He frowned. “Regular US military personnel aren’t assigned to Olympic security details.”
She shrugged, offering no further explanation of why she, a military member, was here on a distinctly civilian assignment.
His mental antennae wiggled wildly. She wasn’t telling him the truth. Or at least not the full truth.
“Why did you flee the village without scanning out properly?” he tried.
“I told you. I was following someone. I didn’t have time to mess with scanning my ID.”
“And who were you following?” he asked gently when she didn’t continue.
She huffed. “I thought I saw a guy named Mahmoud Akhtar.”
“Akhtar? Here?” Mahmoud Akhtar was the kind of guy who made men like Avi lose sleep at night. Akhtar was highly trained, highly intelligent and highly radicalized. He was a known agent of the Iranian government and believed to be a wet operator—meaning his skills and missions covered everything up to and including terror and assassination. It could not possibly be good news for the Israeli delegation if Akhtar was here in Sydney. “Are you sure?” Avi asked the woman curtly.
“No. I’m not sure.” She sounded exasperated. “I was trying to get close enough to make a positive identification when you decided to go all Neanderthal and tackle me.”
“I didn’t tackle you. I merely stopped you for questioning.” She opened her mouth, obviously to argue, and he took an aggressive step forward to loom over her. He had nearly twenty-five centimeters—ten inches—on her in height. “If I had tackled you, you would have been smashed flat on the ground. And I would have handcuffed you.” He added, “As it was, I probably should have tackled you. But I was exceptionally restrained.”
She snorted. “You should have been even more restrained. Mahmoud and his buddy, Yousef Kamali, got away, thanks to you.”
He frowned, reluc
tant to believe her claim that an international terrorist had been strolling around the grounds of the Olympic Village. But caution dictated that he take her seriously, of course.
She didn’t seem delusional.
And the fact that she even knew who Mahmoud Akhtar and his sidekick, Yousef Kamali, were, meant she had some sort of access to classified material—also indicative of a not delusional female.
Still. Akhtar here? It would be a huge risk for a terrorist of his notoriety.
She interrupted his skeptical train of thought, demanding, “You said you could get me video from that nightclub. I want to see it right away. I might be able to make a positive ID from that.”
“Come with me.” He led her into the main room and gestured for her to sit at his desk. Reaching past her shoulder, he typed into his keyboard quickly, calling up the Israeli link to the entire Sydney CCTV—closed-circuit television—system.
Clicking on the map of downtown Sydney that popped up, he selected the nightclub. It took a moment, but then his screen flashed up black-and-white imagery of the exterior of the disco where Rebel had finally stopped running.
“Do you have interior video feed?” she murmured up at him.
He glanced down at her and was close enough to see that her eyelashes were long and silky, a soft brown that matched her hair. And she smelled good. A gentle, sweet scent like vanilla, warm and inviting. A study in contrasts, she was turning out to be. Sharp words, sweet mouth. Hard elbows, soft skin. Tough attitude, gentle eyes.
“Interior video?” she repeated.
Oh. Right. He shook himself out of staring at her and typed again. Planting both hands on the desk, he leaned forward beside Rebel to study the crowd gyrating on-screen. He hit the pause button and froze the image. Face by face, he scanned all the people in the frame. He didn’t see anyone resembling the Iranian terrorist.
Rebel leaned back. “This is hopeless. The crowd is too thick to spot my guys without a full forensic analysis of this video. What if we run the video in real time and see if we can spot Mahmoud and Yousef entering the club?”
He estimated it had been fifteen minutes since he’d detained her, and he backed up the video twenty minutes to be safe. He hit Play.
He pulled up a rolling chair from the next desk over and sat down beside Rebel. Their shoulders rubbed together as they both leaned forward, staring intently at the moving images in front of them.
Both of them jolted at the same moment as two men wearing black tracksuits entered the frame. They bumped into each other, and Avi mumbled an apology at the same time Rebel did. Their gazes met, startled, and she looked away immediately, a blush staining her cheeks. Was she shy, or did she find him attractive, or both? Hmm. Interesting.
She stabbed at the video monitor. “Those are my guys.”
“Unfortunately, that’s only the back of their heads,” he commented. “Let me see if there’s another angle.” He advanced the video frame by frame in search of a good facial shot of the men.
Nothing.
He pulled up the second camera in the club, and damned if the men weren’t moving through the space with their heads turned to the side, avoiding being seen clearly on that camera, too.
Rebel leaned back in disgust. “They did that same trick when they were leaving the village. They turned their faces away from the surveillance cameras as if they knew exactly where they were.”
He pushed away from the desk and leaned back in his chair, linking his hands behind his head as he stared at her. “Let’s say you’re correct, and that’s Mahmoud Akhtar. How did he get into the Olympic Village?”
“Obviously, the Iranians gave him credentials.”
“Their entire delegation undergoes thorough background checks by the International Olympic Committee. And my people run our own background checks above and beyond the IOC’s. We would have spotted him.”
She threw him a “duh” look. “Obviously, the Iranians substituted him after the fact in place of someone who passed the background check.”
“Or he could have stolen the credentials. But either way, the next question is why?” he asked reasonably.
“Because the Iranians have something planned to disrupt the games.”
“Like what?” he asked, interested to see how she answered. The Israelis had spent the past four years running possible scenarios of their own and preparing to stop each one.
She shrugged. “He won’t be operating alone. Last time we had contact with him, he was the leader of a six-man cell. The man I saw with him tonight, Yousef Kamali, was one of those men. My guess is Mahmoud has reconstituted his team.”
Avi jumped all over her slip of the tongue. “We? We who? What group are you really a part of?”
She threw him a withering glare. “A group you don’t need to know about.”
He arched a skeptical eyebrow at her. “Did you not hear who I work for?”
She shrugged. “I stand by my statement.”
Huh. So she worked for some superclassified security team the Americans had put together—that included women. His Mossad buddies would find that interesting.
“You never answered my question,” he pressed. “What do you think Mahmoud and this hypothetical team of his are up to?”
“I have no idea. But I know a guy who might be able to make an educated guess.”
“I know several guys who’ve spent the past few years making educated guesses,” he snapped. “Give me more than that.”
“I don’t have more. But I can tell you one thing. If Mahmoud Akhtar is here, he’s up to no good.”
“On that, we are agreed.” He met her gaze grimly, and this time her big blue eyes were brimming over with worry. An urge to rock his chair forward onto all four legs, gather her into his arms and comfort her shocked him into stillness. This woman was the last person he would expect to accept comfort from him. Such a prickly little thing, she was.
“Would you like to come with me to my security team’s meeting?” she said all of a sudden, surprising him mightily.
“Do I have the proper clearance to attend it?” he asked, his voice as dry as the desert.
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t guarantee my boss will let you stay, but you Israelis are an obvious possible target. It makes sense to loop you into at least some of what we know about Mahmoud.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“In the spirit of Olympic cooperation, I’m offering you an olive branch,” she said with a huff. “Take it and be grateful, already.”
“Fair enough. Thank you.” He quoted quietly, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”
“Should I recognize that?” she asked.
“It’s your Bible. Psalms 133.”
She frowned. “I don’t get much time for religion in my work.”
“Hmm. My work is all about religion. Or freedom of religion, at any rate.”
“Right now, a threat to your peoples’ freedom is walking around out there, no doubt planning something dastardly. Although I’d put it at about equal odds between your country and mine as to which one is the primary target,” she replied.
He asked, “When was the last time your people had contact with Akhtar? What were his targets at that time?”
“Last fall. And his target was a schoolteacher. He planned to kidnap her and blackmail her husband into filing a false report on a nuclear facility in Iran. Instead, Mahmoud accidentally kidnapped one of my teammates. She escaped with the help of an undercover man on the team. We got to the teacher’s husband—a nuclear facilities inspector in Tehran—before Mahmoud did, and the husband filed a report showing that Iran was trying to import nuclear triggers from Russia by way of Turkey.”
“I heard about that!” Avi exclaimed. “Wasn’t there some sort of shoot-out in Tehran? Several major arms dealers killed and the deal scut
tled? Our...sources...report the Iranians were livid.”
She shrugged looking entirely unrepentant.
“You were involved with all of that?” he asked incredulously.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.” She was back to being defensive. And her hackles were standing up again. Maybe she was more like a baby badger than a hedgehog.
“C’mon, then,” she said briskly. “Bring your Olympic credentials and your fancy security clearance with you. You’ll need them both to hear what my team has to say.”
Chapter 2
Rebel jumped as Avi’s big, warm palm landed lightly in the small of her back. The power and gentleness of it sent crazy zinging sensations ricocheting in all directions through her body. She inhaled light and fast, her adrenaline levels ready for combat—or sex.
Oh, c’mon, Self. You’ve been around plenty of hot special operators in the past year. This one is no different.
Except the tingling didn’t go away. And her breathing didn’t settle down.
“This way,” he murmured, guiding her through the maze of Israeli security personnel at their desks. “There’s a rear exit where we won’t be seen.”
Now he was getting the idea. She liked—she needed—to operate under the radar and away from the prying eyes of the public as much as possible. They slipped out into the warm night and, by unspoken mutual agreement, wove around the edges of the Olympic Village, mostly avoiding the surveillance cameras whose feeds were shared with all of the security delegations.
She swiped a key card she pulled out of a zipped pocket inside her jacket and stood before a retinal scanner to gain entrance for herself and her big Israeli guest into the back entrance of the American operations center. It had its own building containing both offices and housing for the large contingent of security specialists in Sydney to protect American athletes.
Vividly aware of the big man following her and the curious glances being thrown his way, she led Bronson across a room much like the one at Israeli operations, crowded with desks and video monitors. This room, too, was half-filled with big, capable-looking men and a few serious, focused women. Ignoring them, Rebel led her guest to the conference room and ushered him inside.
