Dangerous to Hold (27 page)

“That looks like an ignimbrite formation. I'm going to go take a look.”

“I'll come with you. Those rocks could be dangerous. You might trip.”

Right.
She
might trip. “No, thanks, I don't need an escort.”

“You could twist your ankle or fall.” Richard assumed an air of authority. “I'm responsible for the team's well-being. I'd better come….”

“Richard, I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Oh.” He blinked several times. “Yes, of course.”

Plucking her backpack out of the truck bed, Maggie trudged off toward the low-lying formation.

She really did have to go to the bathroom.

That basic need attended to, she examined the chronometer on her left wrist. With its black band, chrome face and series of buttons for setting the date, the time and the stopwatch function, it looked exactly like a runner's watch. It also contained a state-of-the-art miniaturized communications device that produced and received crystal-clear, instantaneous satellite transmissions. Scrambled incoming signals so that they couldn't be intercepted. Was shockproof. Radar-proof. Urine-proof.

Maggie chuckled, remembering the lab director's stunned reaction when she'd relayed the information that several orphans had piddled in Jaguar's boot during a mission in Central America and put the highly sophisticated unit concealed there out of commission. This new, improved version, he had solemnly assured her and Cowboy a few days ago, would not fail. She punched in a quick series of numbers on the calculator buttons.

A few nerve-racking minutes later, a flashing signal indicated that her transmission was being returned. Eagerly Maggie pressed the receive button.

“Chameleon here, Cowboy. Do you read me?”

“Loud and clear. Are you in place?”

“Well, almost.” She gave him a succinct but descriptive rundown of the adventures attendant upon traveling with Dr. Worthington. “How's it going at your end? Have you located the boom box yet?”

“No.”

The clipped response was so unlike Nate's usual style that Maggie instinctively tensed.

“There's been a slight change in the mission parameters,” he supplied, confirming her suspicion that something was wrong.

“What kind of change?”

For several long moments, he didn't reply. When he did, it was in a low, acerbic tone.

“Alexandra Jordan has decided to accept the president's gift of a stud, but not the four-legged variety.”

“Come again, Cowboy? I didn't quite catch that last transmission.”

“She's suggesting that I stand in for Three Bars Red.”

Frowning, Maggie shook her wrist. Despite the lab chief's assurances, the transmitter had to be malfunctioning. Either that, or Nate was using some kind of code. Maybe he was under observation, Maggie thought, her pulse tripping. Maybe he was under duress.

“I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to tell me,” she replied, listening intently for a hidden message in his words.

“Dammit, I'm trying to tell you that she expects me to single-handedly repopulate Karistan. Or at least a good portion of it.”

Nate was definitely under duress, Maggie decided. But not the kind that would cause her to open the crate marked Geological Survey Equipment and roll out the specially armed helicopter to rush to his assistance.

“I'm sorry I'm a bit slow on the uptake,” she said, still not quite believing what she was hearing. “Are you saying that she expects—? That you're supposed to—?”

“Yes, she does, and yes, I am.” Nate gave an exasperated
snort. “At first I thought it was a joke, but apparently the entire unmarried female portion of the camp voted on the idea.”

“They…they did?”

He caught the unsteady waver in her voice. “You won't think it's so funny when I tell you that I haven't had two seconds to myself in the last few hours. I can't even take a leak without some interested party showing up to inspect the plumbing. You wouldn't believe what I had to go through to slip away for this contact.”

“Try me,” she suggested, her lips quivering.

“Chameleon,” he warned, “this is not— Oh, hell, here comes Ivana. Let Control know what's happened. I'll contact you later.”

The transmission terminated abruptly.

For several seconds, Maggie could only stare at the watch. Then a huge, delighted grin split her face.

Cowboy was about to give the term
deep cover
a whole new meaning!

This was priceless. When the small, select fraternity of OMEGA agents heard about this, they'd never let him live it down.

Poor Nate, she thought with a hiccup of laughter. The woman who'd snagged his attention and masculine interest during the mission prebrief had just offered him up as the jackpot in the Karistani version of lotto. No wonder he didn't view the situation with his characteristic easygoing sense of humor.

Still grinning, Maggie forced herself to consider the implications to their mission of what she'd just heard. She didn't believe for a moment that Nate would let this bizarre development impact his ability to accomplish his task. He was too good in the field, too experienced, to be distracted, even by a camp full of women who wanted to…to inspect his plumbing. If Alexandra Jordan or any of the other Karistanis had possession of the decoder, Nate would find it. But he'd sure have his hands full while he was looking for it.

Her eyes sparkling with delight, Maggie punched in another code and waited for her OMEGA controller to acknowledge her call. This contingency was definitely outside the range of possible parameters David Jensen had defined in such detail during their mission-planning session. She could visualize the pained expression his handsome, square-jawed face assumed whenever something occurred that he hadn't envisioned or planned for. That didn't happen very often, which was why Doc ranked as one of OMEGA's best agents.

What she couldn't visualize, however, was Adam Ridgeway's reaction when David relayed her report. That just might be one of those rare moments when even Adam's rigid control would slip. With all her heart, Maggie wished she could be there to see it.

Still chuckling, she made her way out of the rocks a little while later.

“Are you ready to go?” she called, rounding the end of the truck.

“Not…quite.”

Richard's reply sounded indistinct and muffled. Which wasn't surprising, seeing as he was lying spread-eagled in the dirt, with a rifle barrel held to his head.

M
aggie peered over the tops of her dust-smeared glasses at the murderous-looking brigand holding the rifle to Richard's head.

“Who are you?”

“He…he is the son of the Wolf,” Vasili gasped from his prone position a few yards away, then grunted when another bandit prodded him viciously in the back.

Maggie folded her arms across her chest. “No kidding?”

Her phrasing translated as something along the lines of “You do not speak the joke to me?”—but it was close enough. Either the words or the nonchalance with which she spoke them seemed to impress the dark-haired, menacing stranger. Without relieving the rifle's pressure on Richard's skull, he smiled.

It wasn't much of a smile, Maggie noted. More a twist of lips already pulled to one side by the raw, angry scar cutting across his left cheek. Now that, she thought, comparing the scar to her own semitattooed chin, was definitely an attention getter.

“No, he does not make the joke,” the brigand responded. “Who are you?”

Under her folded arm, Maggie's fingers deftly extracted the small, pencil-thin canister sewn into her jacket's side seam.

“I'm Dr. St. Clare,” she stated calmly. “I'm with the UN nuclear facilities site inspection team, as are my companions. We're traveling under international passports, with guarantees of safe passage through Balminsk.”

She didn't really expect these men to be impressed with the thick sheaf of papers signed by a battery of clerks and stamped with seals in a dozen different languages. Assuming, of course, that Richard could produce them again. Still, the longer she delayed using deadly force, the better her chances were of getting Richard and Vasili out of harm's way.

“Forgive me, Dr. St. Clare.”

Maggie's eyes widened at the smooth, lightly accented English. To her considerable surprise and Richard's audible relief, the man stepped back. A nod from him sent Vasili's guard back a step as well.

“We were told the UN team would be in convoy. When we saw this lone vehicle stopped along the road, naturally we came to check it out.”

Maggie sent Vasili an evil glare, which he ignored as he scrambled to his feet.

“Is this how you check things out?” she asked the leader.

The faint smile edged farther to one side. “Not as a rule. But when your companion attacked, we responded in kind.”

Maggie's incredulous gaze swung to the attacker in question.

“They, uh, came up so quietly,” Richard explained, dusting off his jacket front. “When I turned around and saw them behind me, I sort of freaked out.”

With great effort of will, Maggie managed not to freak out, as well.

The leader gazed at the young scientist with something that might have been amusement. With that scar, it was hard to tell.

“The way things are in this part of the world, we take no chances, you understand.”

“I'm beginning to,” Richard admitted, a touch of belligerence in his voice.

The stranger's black eyes went flat, and his face hard under its livid scar. “The least spark will ignite a conflagration between Balminsk and Karistan. Surely you were told of this before you ventured into this remote area?”

“Yes, we were,” Richard replied. “But we weren't told exactly where you fit into all this, Mr…. Wolf.”

“My father is known as the White Wolf of Balminsk. I am Nikolas Cherkoff. Major Nikolas Cherkoff, formerly of the Soviet transcontinental command.”

Cherkoff! The pieces fell into place instantly for Maggie. So this was the son of the wild-eyed radical, Boris Cherkoff, who ruled Balminsk. The man whose blood feud with Karistan had kept this corner of the world in turmoil for decades. She'd been briefed that Cherkoff's son was in the military, but intelligence reports had last placed him at the head of an elite, highly mobile combat unit, the Soviet version of the Rangers. She wondered what he was doing here, then decided that the rawness of the jagged wound on his cheek probably had something to do with the fact that he now wore civilian clothes instead of a uniform.

“Formerly?” Richard asked innocently, echoing her thoughts.

“There is no longer any Soviet Union,” he replied, his tone dispassionate. “Nor am I any longer on active duty. I will escort you to my father.”

Maggie slipped the tiny lethal canister back into the slit in her jacket sleeve. The special weapons folks had assured her that the biochemical agent it contained was extremely potent, but localized and temporary. She was just as happy not to have had to use it on this hard-eyed major. She had a feeling he would've been twice as tough to handle once he'd recovered from a “temporary” disabling.

Cherkoff, Jr., relegated Richard to the truck bed and took
his place beside Maggie in the cab. Squeezed between his hard, unyielding body and Vasili's brawny one, she contemplated the interesting turn her mission had taken in the past few minutes. Now she had not only Dr. Richard Worthington and the unpredictable, warlike leader of Balminsk to deal with, she also had to factor his son into the equation.

She'd have to let Nate know about this new development as soon as possible—assuming he could manage to slip away from his bevy of potential brides to answer her call, Maggie thought with an inner grin.

 

Stifling a groan, Nate held up a hand. “No, thanks, Anya. No more.”

The dainty, sloe-eyed woman smiled and pushed another plate piled high with steaming, dough-wrapped meat pastries across the folding table. Blushing, she said something in a soft, sweet voice that under any other circumstances would have completely delighted him.

“Anya speaks of an old…old…saying among the women here,” Katerina translated, her forehead wrinkled with the effort to find the right words. “Keep the cooking pot full, and…and…even the stupidest of men will find his way home in the dark.”

Despite himself, Nate laughed. “Sounds about right. I'd find my way through a blinding blizzard if I knew something like these dumplings were waiting at the other end. But I can't eat any more, Anya, I swear.”

When Katerina relayed his words, the young widow cocked her head and looked him up and down. Her soft comment brought a burst of laughter from the group around Nate. He decided not to stick around for the translation this time. Ignoring a flutter of feminine protest, he eased through the circle.

“I'm riding out this afternoon, remember? I'd better go before I'm too heavy for Ole Red to carry.”

As Nate made his way through the camp, the mingled irritation and embarrassment that had dogged him ever since
Alex dropped her little bombshell earlier this morning returned full-force. He felt like a fat, grain-fed steer ambling down the chute toward the meat-processing plant. The men grinned as he passed, nudging each other in the ribs. The women chuckled and looked him over as though they were measuring him for the cooking pot Anya had mentioned.

It didn't help his mood any to see Alex waiting for him across the square, wearing her long, figure-flattering coat over her bright red shirt, an amused expression on her face. And to think he'd wanted to keep a smile on the woman's face, he thought in derision.

Nate knew his present disgruntled feeling had a lot to do with the fact that she'd been discussing his merits as a possible breeder with all the other unmarried women in camp while he was weaving fantasies about her and her alone. Fantasies he had no business weaving. At least until this mission was over. But once it was…

Controlling with sheer willpower the sudden tightening in his loins at the thought of proving to Alexandra Jordan just how good a breeder he might be, Nate strolled across the dusty square.

“Been waiting long?”

“Only a few moments. I could see you were busy.”

“Just finishing dinner.” Nate kept his tone light and easy. He wasn't about to let on how disconcerting it was for a man to chew his food with half a dozen women watching every bite and swallow.

“Good,” she responded. “You'll need your strength this afternoon to keep up with us.”

Nate eyed the others who were drifting up beside her. Having learned from Wily Willie early on to measure a man by the size of his heart and not the length of his shadow, he didn't make the mistake of underestimating Dimitri or Petr or the big, beefy-faced man with jowls to match his sagging belly. Still, he had to have thirty, maybe forty, fewer years under his belt than any one of the Karistani men. He figured he'd keep up.

When they were all mounted, Alex swung her gray gelding around. “Are you ready to ride?”

Although her question was polite enough, there was no mistaking the challenge in her amber eyes. Or the amusement. Obviously she thought Nate's only alternative to this little excursion was to stay in camp and be force-fed more of Anya's dumplings.

She couldn't know that he wasn't about to let her out of his sight.

“Yes, ma'am, I surely am.”

 

They rode at a steady jog across the high plains, dodging the ravines that scarred the steppes' surface at intermittent intervals. The morning sunshine faded slowly as clouds piled up, and a decided chill entered the air.

When Alex called a halt at a stream lined with feathery, silver-leafed Russian olive trees, Nate tipped his ball cap back and surveyed their small band. If any of the men slumped untidily in their saddles felt any strain from the long ride, they sure didn't show it. Nor did their shaggy, unshod mounts.

Sitting easy while Red watered, Nate eyed the Karistani's horses with new respect. Descendants of the tough little steppe ponies, that could gallop for an hour without stopping, last two days without food or water and remain impervious to the extremes of temperature that ravaged the steppes, the small, shaggy Dons weren't even blowing hard.

The beefy, red-faced rider caught Nate's appraising look and said something to Alex.

“Mikhail sees that you eye his mount,” she translated. “He says it may be small compared to the red, but very agile.”

“That so?”

“That is so. He wonders if you'd like to see what the Don can do. A small race, perhaps?”

Nate realized he was being given the first opportunity to “prove” himself.

“Mikhail much admires your hat,” Alex added. “If you care to wager it, he'll wager his own in return.”

That alone would have been enough to make Nate turn down the bet. He didn't particularly fancy the greasy black sheepskin hat the big, raw-boned man wore at a rakish angle. Nor was he in any particular hurry to play Alex's game. But he'd never been one to pass up a good race—or the challenge in a pair of gleaming golden eyes.

“Fine by me,” he replied easily.

They used the stand of trees as a course for what turned out to be the Karistani version of a barrel race.

Weaving through the thicket with hooves pounding, Red stayed well out in front for the first few turns. A true cutting horse, he could wheel on a dime and give back nine cents change. He couldn't, however, duck under low-hanging branches and just about skin the bark from the tree trunks with every turn, as the smaller, nimble Don could. By the sixth turn, Red had lost the advantage of his size and speed. By the tenth, the Don held the lead.

Nate didn't begrudge Alex and Mikhail their grins when he crossed the finish line well behind the Karistani.

“That was some fine riding,” he conceded.

Tugging off the ball cap, he tossed it to the victor. Mikhail stuffed his sheepskin hat in his pocket and donned his trophy.

Alex translated his laughing reply. “He says that all he knows of riding he learned from Petr Borodín.”

Her casual tone didn't fool Nate for a moment. Sure enough, the balding, bag-eyed hero of the steppes was the next to suggest a little contest. It sounded simple enough. The first one to fill a pouch with the water trickling along the muddy bed and then return to the starting point would be the winner.

“Let me make sure I understand this. He wants to race to that little creek, fill one of these skins, and race back?”

Alex nodded. “That's it.”

Nate glanced at the one-armed warrior, who winked and upped the stakes.

“He has a bottle of his best vodka in his bag,” Alex commented. “He'll wager that against your watch.”

“Make it my belt buckle, and he's on,” Nate countered.

Red made it to the shallow ravine several lengths ahead of Petr's mouse-colored Don. Nate was out of the saddle and down on one knee in the muddy water before Red had come to a full stop. Glancing up at the sound of approaching hooves, he almost dropped the leather pouch.

While his mount galloped at full speed, Petr Borodín hung upside down from the saddle. Using only the strength of his thighs to hold him in place, he gripped the reins in his one hand and the strings of the pouch in his teeth. The leather sack trailed the water for a few seconds before Petr dragged himself upright. By the time Nate and Red had clambered up the shallow bank, their opponents were already back beside Alex.

Cowboy drew up beside them, shaking his head in genuine admiration. “I doubt if there are many two-armed rodeo trick riders who could do that.”

“It's called the
djigitovka,
” Alex explained, her eyes sparkling. “It's one of the many circus tricks the Cossacks of old used to perform to impress the Russians and other outsiders.”

“Well, it sure impressed the hell out of me.”

Grinning, Nate unhooked his belt and passed the silver buckle, with its brass stenciling, to Petr. The gap-toothed warrior promptly hung it from one of the frayed medals decorating his chest. Reining his mount around, he went over to display his trophy to the others.

“At this rate, I'll ride back into camp buck-naked.”

Alex arched a brow. “Katerina and the others would certainly appreciate that.”

“Think so, do you?”

A delicate wash of color painted her cheeks at his sardonic reply, but she let her glance roam over his body in a slow, deliberate appraisal.