Dangerous to Hold (2 page)

Jake released her arm, wondering what the hell she thought she could do if any of these men did try to harm the children. Bludgeon them with her rosary beads?

“Look, Sister,” he warned, his voice low, “you'd better understand that you're in a pretty precarious situation here.”

She drew in a ragged breath. “No kidding.”

Jake sliced her a quick look, surprised at the terse response. Either convent life was an even tougher boot camp than he'd realized, or this was one gutsy lady. Unfortunately, he'd found over the years that gutsy tended to get people killed. If he was going to keep this woman alive long enough to figure out
what to do with her, he'd better make damn sure she understood what was ahead.

“Don't think that veil you're wearing will protect you if you get their hackles up,” he stated with brutal candor. “The only thing that saved you back there in the village is the fact that one of their pals died last week from a nasty case of gangrene. They've decided that it might be nice to have a
médica
around the camp to prevent such little unpleasantries in the future.”

She gave a small gasp and put a shaking hand up to her throat. Even in the darkness, Jake could see the way her eyes went round with fear. Good, he thought savagely. She needed to be scared. He sure as hell was.

“I'd advise you not to push them too far,” he added softly.

Muttering under his breath, the rebel beside them stooped and swung the girl onto the horse. Jake slung his weapon over his shoulder and lifted the littlest, a boy of about three or four, up behind her. The third child, a thin, wide-eyed boy of about eight, would have to hoof it.

The men drifted into the darkness to take up their positions in line. Jake tucked his weapon under his arm once more and waited for the signal to move on. The woman beside him glanced at the automatic rifle, and a look of revulsion crossed her white face, visible even in the darkness.

“How…how many of the villagers did you kill?”

Jake bit off an oath. He couldn't tell her that he'd tried to prevent the rampage. Hell, he didn't dare tell her anything. Talking to her at all was risky, given the group's simmering frustration over the missed drop. Although Jake had managed to convince these men that he'd sell his country or his soul or both for the right price, he was still a gringo, an outsider they didn't quite trust. With the least provocation, they'd turn on him like jackals after raw meat.

“How many?”

His hand tightened over the gun barrel. “As many as got in the way.”

She put a hand over her mouth. “God will have to forgive
you for what you've done,” she whispered. “I can't. Those people were my friends.”

Jake refused to allow any hint of sympathy or remorse to creep into his reply. “Yeah, well, I just might be the closest thing to a friend you've got left right now. And I'm telling you that if you want to survive the next twenty-four hours, you'd better keep moving and keep your mouth shut.”

She swallowed and clutched the boy's hand.

“Stay in front of me from here on, where I can keep an eye on you,” he ordered. “Don't step off the path, and keep a tight hold on the kid. There are a few surprises along the trail for anyone unwise enough to try to follow us. Now move it, lady…Sister.”

Gripping her skirt with one tight fist and the child with the other, she turned and fell into line.

As the small group traveled in heavy silence, the night sounds of the jungle they'd disturbed slowly resumed. Leaves rustled in the tall trees. Whistles and chirps seemed to come from every direction. Bats whirred through the branches high above, while whining mosquitoes circled Jake's ears. The crunching, tearing sounds of small animals and insects feeding drifted to him through the darkness. Once, far off in the distance, a jaguar screamed.

Jake managed a grim smile.

As the echo of the animal's cry died away, he mentally reviewed his options. There weren't many at this point.

He could abandon his mission right now and try to take out the dozen men with him on this botched operation. He calculated the risks to the woman and the children and abandoned the idea. It wasn't any more feasible now than it had been back in the village.

That left trying to brazen it out. When this little band got back to camp, Jake would have to convince the desiccated fanatic who led them that the aborted airdrop and the proximity of government troops were both just coincidence. That Jake himself had nothing to do with either—which he didn't.

At the same time, he'd have to find a way to protect this
nun and her charges without blowing his cover. That might be a bit tricky, given the fact that he was supposed to be a conscienceless mercenary.

Still, he had no choice. There were already two other women in camp, one hard and pitiless and as dedicated to the revolution as the intense leader she slept with. The other was the vacant-eyed wife of one of the men, who didn't mind sharing her, for a price. Jake's gut wrenched at the thought of the games the men played with the uncomprehending, unresisting woman. His fingers clenched around the gun barrel at the thought of what they could do to the woman stumbling along ahead of him.

At that moment, he heard her call a strained reassurance to the little girl atop the plodding packhorse. Despite her own fears, and what she must know was a very uncertain future, she managed to soothe the whimpering child. A reluctant admiration for the woman's ragged courage tugged at him.

Maybe, just maybe, they could pull it off, Jake thought. More than just their lives was at stake here, he reminded himself. An entire country teetered on the brink of civil war, and all the horror that came with it. Cartoza was a small nation, but one of the United States' staunchest allies in Central America. Its government was dedicated to wiping out the drug traffickers whose insidious products were destroying the social fabric of all the Americas.

The U.S. President himself had activated an OMEGA response based on the information that the drug lords were financing shipments of stolen U.S. arms to the insurgents. The shipments had to be stopped before the friendly government toppled.

There was still a chance, a slim chance, of accomplishing that mission. If his controller at OMEGA didn't jump the gun and send in an extraction team, Jake might yet take down the middleman who was supplying the arms.

His lips twisted in a small, grim smile at the thought of his controller. By now, Maggie Sinclair would be pacing the floor, those long legs of hers eating up the cramped space in
the communications center. Her brown eyes would be narrowed in intense concentration, her dark cloud of hair would be tangled from her unconscious habit of raking a hand through it whenever she was deep in thought. For all her worry, however, Jake knew, Maggie wouldn't panic.

The tight, coiled knot of tension between his shoulder blades loosened imperceptibly. Maggie wouldn't terminate the operation. Nor would she send in an extraction team. Not until she heard from him or figured out for herself what had happened. Jake had worked with most of the agents assigned to OMEGA, and Sinclair was one of the best.

O
ne more hour, Maggie thought. Two at the most. That was all she could allow herself. And Jake.

She took another sip of coffee, unmindful now of its cold, sludgelike consistency. Holding the cup at her lip, she began tracing a second ring of circular indentations around the rim. Suddenly a light flashed on the upper left portion of her console.

The front legs of Samuels's chair thwacked down on the tiles. “It's Big Bird!”

Maggie's heart pounded in sudden excitement. Big Bird! She should have known the surveillance craft orbiting high above the Caribbean would be the first to break the wall of silence surrounding Jake. The huge air force jet, with its Frisbee-like rotating radar dish, was officially termed the USAF Airborne Warning and Control System, but everyone had a different tag for it, some affectionate, some irreverent. No one, however, made fun of the vital information processed via its banks of on-board computers.

With the speed and skill of a magician performing sleight
of hand, Samuels flipped a series of switches. The clear, calm voice of an air surveillance officer came over the speaker. Maggie hunched forward in her chair, listening intently.

An aircraft meeting the specifications Jaguar had called in earlier had taken off from a deserted airstrip in Alabama, Big Bird confirmed. Two F-15s had scrambled from a base in Florida to make a visual ID, then shadowed the slower-moving plane across the Gulf of Mexico. At the last minute, the aircraft under surveillance had aborted its landing in Cartoza, for reasons unknown at present. The report went on to provide a wealth of technical detail on the suspect's flight pattern, air characteristics and radar signature.

Maggie acknowledged receipt of the transmission and sat back, thinking furiously.

“So the drop didn't take place?” Samuels asked.

She met the communications specialist's steady gaze and shook her head. She wasn't surprised by his question. Everyone in the OMEGA control center during an operation was briefed on every detail. They worked as a team, together, twenty-four hours a day, throughout the duration of the mission. Everyone involved had a personal stake in the outcome.

“Get me a voice link to those F-15s,” Maggie said. “I want to talk to the pilots and find out what—”

Another flashing light interrupted her.

Samuels verified the caller's credentials, then sent Maggie a wide grin. “It's the on-duty rep at the State Department crisis center. He has a report of some action in your sector of operations.”

Maggie picked up the handset, adrenaline pumping through her veins. Although she far preferred fieldwork to acting as a control agent, she had to admit that being stuck at headquarters had its moments. Like now, when the reports started to flow in from a dozen different sources. From CIA, from Treasury, from any and all agencies whose intelligence networks OMEGA tapped into. She'd need a cool head, and the insight gained only through years in the field, to piece together
the fragmentary and often conflicting bits of information that would soon pour in.

“State Department, this is Chameleon,” she rapped out, identifying herself with the code-name she'd earned by her ability to melt into whatever locale she was sent to. “What do you have?”

Forehead furrowed in concentration, Maggie listened as the on-duty operations officer relayed information about a rebel raid on a small village in the interior of Cartoza.

“How many casualties?” she asked when he paused to consult his notes.

“Four. Three villagers and one suspected insurgent.”

“Any positive ID on the insurgent?”

“No, the locals are still running their checks. I've got some vitals, though, if you want them.”

Maggie gripped the handset. “Let me have them.”

“Five feet seven. Black hair. Brown eyes. With an old, jagged scar on the left thigh, possibly from a knife. That's all I have right now.”

Maggie slumped in relief. Jake certainly sported a shaggy head of black hair, and he'd acquired more than his share of scars over the years. But his eyes were a flinty shade of gray, not brown, and he stood a good five inches taller than the dead man.

“There's one more thing.”

“What's that, State?”

“The villagers led the government forces to a newly dug, shallow grave containing the remains of a woman…an American woman, according to the garbled reports we got. With all the confusion of the raid, we haven't been able to confirm who it is. Was.”

Maggie frowned at the console. “Who did you have down there?”

“We're not sure. The personnel folks are screening our data files now. Assuming she's not some tourist who took a wrong turn at Cancún and ended up in the middle of a revolution, we should know something within the next hour or so.”

“Keep me posted, okay?”

“You got it.”

Maggie replaced the handset, her eyes thoughtful. At this point there was no reason to assume a connection between the dead woman and Jake's operation. But she sensed instinctively that there was one, just as she knew that Jake wouldn't want her to terminate the mission until she was convinced it was necessary.

Twenty minutes later, she still wasn't convinced.

Although she hadn't yet heard from Jake, she'd sifted through enough fragmentary information to form a picture of what must have happened. The presence of the government forces in the area was a coincidence, an unscheduled military exercise. But their presence would have been enough to scare off the drop aircraft. Maggie guessed that the rebels had raided the village as a target of opportunity when the drop was aborted. There was a chance, a slim chance, that Jake's cover hadn't been compromised yet.

“Call me immediately if anything else comes in,” she instructed Samuels. “I'm going to update the chief with this latest information.”

She strode across the communications center and waited impatiently for the palm-and voice-print scanners to verify her identity. When the heavy door slid open, she took the stairs two at a time. She was in the the special envoy's reception area within seconds. Another synthesizer activated the door that led to his office. Maggie passed through a short corridor that contained every lethal protective device the enthusiastic security folks could devise.

The inner door stood open, but the sight of Adam on the special phone that recognized the distinctive voice patterns of only two men in the world stopped Maggie on the threshold. He waved her inside, listening intently, one hip hitched on the edge of the half acre of polished mahogany that served as his desk. Although he'd taken off his formal coat and white tie, he couldn't have shed his well-bred, aristocratic air even if he wanted to, Maggie thought. When she stepped inside his
office, she caught the gleam of diamond studs winking amid the starched pleats of his shirt.

She also noted the slight narrowing of his vivid blue eyes. That was as close as Adam Ridgeway ever came to frowning. Not for the first time in the past two years, Maggie wondered just what it would take to shatter Adam's iron control. She herself had managed to strain it severely on more than one occasion, she acknowledged with an inner grin.

“The reports are just beginning to flow,” he said calmly. “We still don't have a clear picture of what happened.”

Maggie suppressed a smile at Adam's Kennedyesque pronunciation of
clear.
A gifted linguist, she delighted in the idiosyncrasies of American dialects as much as in the foreign languages that were her specialty.

The only child of an Oklahoma-bred “tool-pusher” whose job as superintendent of an oil-rig drilling crew took him all over the world, Maggie had spent her childhood in a series of exotic locales. By the time she won a scholarship to Stanford at seventeen, she'd been fluent in five languages and conversant in three more. Until two years ago, she'd chaired the foreign language department at a small Midwestern college. Then a broken engagement and the sense of adventure she'd inherited from her parents had left her restless and ready for change.

Three months after a call from her godfather—a strange little man her father had once helped smuggle out of a Middle Eastern sheikdom—she'd been recruited as an agent for OMEGA. Only later had Maggie learned that she was the first operative drawn from outside the ranks of the government. And that her godfather, now retired, was one of OMEGA's most intrepid agents.

Adam's conversation soon drew to a close. “I understand the urgency, Mr. President. I'll get back to you as soon as we know what happened in Cartoza.”

Replacing the receiver, he folded his arms across a wide expanse of crisp white shirtfront. “All right, Sinclair, tell me what we have so far.”

Briefly, succinctly, Maggie recapped the information she'd synthesized. When she mentioned the shallow grave and its occupant, Adam stiffened.

“We should know within an hour who she is,” Maggie added. “State's running through their data base of all known citizens in the area. They've requested checks from Canada and the European nations, as well.” She paused, chewing on her lower lip for a moment. “I don't know that there's any connection between the woman and our operation, but I have this…”

A small smile curved Adam's lips. “Tingling feeling in your bones?”

“More like a prickly sensation at the base of my spine,” Maggie replied solemnly.

The smile disappeared. “Well, whatever it is, this is one time I hope your instincts are wrong.”

“Oh-oh. Sounds like the call from the president added a new piece to the puzzle.”

“Several pieces. Tell State to check the status of a medical sister who was working in Cartoza. From the Order of Our Lady of Sorrows.”

“
Madre Dolorosa?
I read up on those sisters as part of my prebrief for this operation. It's a large order, headquartered in Mexico City, with branches throughout Latin America, the United States and Europe. Although the order is still very conservative in matters of dress and convent life, the sisters have been active in Central America. I'm not surprised one of their people was in Jake's area.”

“Apparently the sister wasn't the only American woman in the area. Tell State to also check the status of a Peace Corps volunteer by the name of Sarah Chandler.”

“Sarah Chandler?” Maggie wrinkled her brow. “Why do I know that name?”

“She's only been in the Peace Corps a short time. She arrived in Cartoza less than two weeks ago, in fact. Before that she was a rather prominent political hostess here in Washington.”

“Oh, Lord! Not that Sarah Chandler!”

“Yes, that Sarah Chandler. The senator's daughter.”

 

As she made her way back to the third-floor control center, Maggie's mind was racing. No wonder the president wanted to know what had happened in Cartoza. Senator Orwin Chandler of North Carolina was one of the most influential and powerful men on the Hill. According to Adam, the senator had already heard through his own intelligence sources about the rebel raid and had pieced together enough to know that the U.S. had some involvement or interest in the action. He didn't want any damn details, Chandler had informed the president. He only wanted assurances that his daughter was safe.

There wasn't any way the president could give Senator Chandler those assurances, Maggie thought grimly.

Not yet.

Tucking the sweep of her hair behind her left ear, she reclaimed her seat at the command console. “Okay, Joe, let's get back to work.”

 

Despite his years in the jungle, Jake had never become accustomed to its lightninglike transitions from light to dark. In the evening, there was no dusk. Just a sudden graying of the air, then a blackness so swift and intense he couldn't see his hand in front of his face.

Dawn sliced through the canopy of fig and mahogany trees with the same startling speed. One minute he was stumbling along the narrow trail, straining to see the faint moving shadows of the men in front of him with the aid of the low-light goggles. The next minute those shadows had taken on context and contrast and the goggles instantly became superfluous.

Or at least that was the way it usually worked.

This morning, however, the figure directly in front of him refused to take shape. Jake shook his head, unable to appreciate the dedication that would lead someone to don a heavy,
shapeless black robe in the oppressive heat of the jungle. His own khaki shirt already clung to him like a second skin, and the sun had only been up a few minutes. His jaw tight, he watched the woman lift her arm to wipe her face with a corner of a voluminous sleeve. She had small hands, he noted. Small and fine-boned, with short, blunt nails and work-roughened skin.

Frowning, he moved up alongside her. “That habit may have saved your life last night, but it's the worst possible getup for this climate. Your superiors ought to have more sense than to send you sisters into the interior wearing something like that.”

She looked up at him then, and Jake saw her face for the first time in daylight. Framed by the limp white wimple and black veil, it was a composite of high cheekbones, an aristocratic little nose and a firm, pointed chin. Dirt streaked her forehead. Sweat and the pallor of exhaustion filmed her skin. But nothing could dull the impact of the most stunning eyes Jake had ever seen. Wide and luminous and a clear, translucent aquamarine in color, they shimmered like jewels in the morning light. They also, Jake noted, raked him with undisguised scorn.

“I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand matters of the cloth, Mr…. Mr….”

“You'd better just call me ‘gringo,”' Jake replied, recovering slowly.

She turned away, declining to call him anything at all.

He fell back into line behind her. Jake swore under his breath, slowly, savagely. The beads of sweat clinging to his cheeks suddenly felt clammy. All hell was going to break loose when the men with him got a good look at the woman they'd taken.