Prologue
February: Over the Persian Gulf
"We've been hit!"
The aircraft commander's words popped like bullets through Senior Master Sergeant J.T. "Tag" Price's headset. Ricocheted around in his brain. Settled with molten-lead heat as J.T. sat in his solitary loadmaster perch beneath the cockpit in the cargo plane.
Not that he even needed the aircraft commander's announcement. The teeth-jarring thump still shuddered through the C-17. Yet up to that last second, he hadn't given up hope of a minor malfunction.
Minor? The wash of warning lights blazing across his control panel told him otherwise. "Details," he quizzed, quick. Brief. Never one to waste words even on a good day.
This sure as hell wasn't a good day.
Aerodynamics went to crap. The craft already rattled, strained.
"Missile hit," the aircraft commander, Captain Carson "Scorch" Hunt, answered from the cockpit above. "Probably a man-portable, fired from a boat, I think."
The plane bucked. Shuddered. His checklist vibrated off the console. "Are we gonna have to put down somewhere bad or can we make it to Europe?"
"We're not going to make it to Europe."
Silence echoed for two seconds, cut only by the rumble of engines taking on a progressive tenor of pain.
Crap.
J.T. pivoted toward the cavernous cargo hold containing a pallet full of top-secret surveillance equipment. The technology could not fall into another government's hands. Beyond that, the stored intelligence from monitoring terrorist cell-phone traffic would give away field agent identities. "Plan of action?"
"We'll have to circle back and haul ass toward the coast to land in Rubistan."
Definitely bad. But not as bad as it could be. Relations with the country were strained, yet not outright hostile. Still, the equipment on that pallet made for a serious time bomb if they didn't offload it before reaching land. "How much longer 'til feet dry?"
"Ten minutes until we make the coastline."
Tight, but workable. Scooping his small black binder off the floor, he flipped through to the destruction checklists. "All right, then. Stretch it if you can while I destroy as much of this crap back here as possible before ditching it in the ocean."
Then pray like hell they didn't end up ditching the plane, too.
"Make it quick, Tag. I can buy you one, maybe two extra minutes over the water, but hydraulics and electrical are going all to hell."
"Roger, Scorch." J.T. unstrapped from his seat. "Beginning destruction checklists. Get the back ramp open."
He pivoted toward the man strapped into a seat two steps away. Spike—Max Keagan—also an OSI agent undercover as a second loadmaster on the flight, another potential land mine if the Rubistanians discovered the man's real job. "Stay out of the way 'til I'm through, then get ready to start pushing."
Spike flashed him a thumbs-up while keeping clear, laser-sharp eyes processing from his agent's perspective. He raked his hand over his head, normally spiked hair now in a buzz cut for his undercover military role.
Feet steady on the swaying deck thanks to twenty-four years in the Air Force and five thousand flying hours, J.T. charged toward the pallet. He flipped red guard switches, started hard drives erasing data about terrorists financing operations by trafficking opium out of Rubistan. And somewhere on their own base in Charleston was a leak. Thus the involvement of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigation.
As he destroyed data, J.T. tried not to think about all the government time and money wasted on the trafficking investigation. He hooked his fingers in the metal rings, pulled while also pushing a small plunger. Foam filled the motherboards, seeping out.
The load ramp yawned open. Wind and light swept the metal tunnel. The coughing drone of wounded engines swelled.
Now to finish the last of the destruction the old-fashioned way. He yanked the crash ax off the wall. Hefted back. Swung.
Hack.
What a helluva way to miss an appointment with his wife at the divorce attorney's office. Sorry I can't make it, babe, but I'm a guest of a foreign government right now.
Or worse.
He jerked the ax free of the cracked metal, swung again. God, he'd worried more times than he could count about leaving Rena a war widow, knew she had prepared herself for it, as well. But how the hell did anyone prep for a peacetime front-door visit from the commander, nurse and chaplain?
He'd already caused her enough grief over the years, and now to end it this way. Damn it. She deserved better.
But then she'd always deserved better than him.
J.T. hefted, arced the ax over, repeated, again, endlessly. Sweat sheeted down him, plastered his flight suit to his back. Air roared and swirled through the open hatch. Still, perspiration stung his pores, his eyes:
The aircraft's tail end swayed more by the second. His muscles flexed, released, burned until the surveillance computer equipment lay scattered, split into a pile of metal and wires.
"Destruction checklist complete," he reported, then nodded to Spike. "You ready?"
"Roger." The undercover agent charged forward to push, no help forthcoming from the screwed electrical system.
They tucked side by side behind the pallet. Air and ocean waited to swallow the equipment.
J.T. shoved, grunted. Rammed harder. Toward the gaping open hatch yawning out over the gulf. Boots planted. Muscles knotted, strained, until…
The pallet gave way, hooked, caught, lumbered down the tracks lining the belly of the plane, rattling, rolling, tipping.
Gone.
Swiping a sleeve over his forehead, J.T. backed from the closing ramp, avoiding the friction-hot rollers along the tracks. "Quickest you'll ever throw away a billion dollars. Now get your ass strapped in upstairs."
"Roger that." Spike clapped him on the back on his way toward the front.
J.T. jogged past his loadmaster perch, up the steep stairwell to the cockpit. For a crash landing, the higher up, the better. Two seats waited behind the pilot and copilot. J.T. darted right, Spike left, and buckled into the five-point harness.
The clear windscreen displayed coastline and desert meeting, sunrise cresting. He plugged in his headset again, reconnecting to the voices of the two men in front of him. Their hands flew over the throttle, stick, instrument panel as they battled the hulking craft.
Scorch, their aircraft commander, filled the left seat, a fair-headed guy who looked more like some mythological Greek god from the book in J.T.'s flight-suit pocket, a book he'd packed in anticipation of the quiet time out over the Atlantic. Hell. Scorch would need to tap into some godlike powers to get them out of this one.
Bo, the copilot, sat directly in front of J.T. The dark-haired kid must be all of maybe twenty-five or -six. Not much older than his two kids, for God's sake. Nikki was just finishing up her junior year at UNC. Chris was still in high school.
Regret seared. Damn but he wanted to see his daughter graduate, the first member of his family to get a college education. Of course, he'd attended Rena's graduation a couple of years ago, been proud as hell of her honors grades and quick landing of a job as a civilian counselor employed by the Charleston Air Force Base hospital.
But educational successes were expected for her since all her siblings had already sported a few diplomas triple matted on the wall when he'd met her. Hers had been delayed because of marrying him so young.
His head thunked back against the seat. Images of Rena scrolled through his mind on high speed as if to jam forty years more living into the next four minutes in case he never saw her again.
Never made love to her again.
Hell, right now he'd even settle for fighting with her, something they did as well and frequently as making love, which was mighty damn often. I'm sorry, Rena. For so many things.
Scorch thumbed the interphone button. "We're not going to make it to an airstrip. We'll have to put her down in the desert. Strap in tight. This one's going to smack so hard your children will be born dizzy."
J.T. braced his boots. And if they survived the landing? The Rubistanian government would detain them. Question them. It wouldn't be pleasant by a long shot, but they would make it home.
As long as the tribal warlords didn't get them first.
Chapter 1
May: North Charleston, S.C.
The doorbell echoed through the house.
Rena Price resisted the urge to duck and run upstairs to keep from answering. Instead, she kept her feet planted to the floor for a steadying second while she tipped the watering can into a potted begonia by the sofa.
Yeah, that sure would make a dignified image, a forty-year-old woman cowering under her bedroom quilt. And all because she was scared spitless she wouldn't be able to resist jumping the man standing on the other side of her oak door. But then her emotions had never been easy to contain. Especially around J.T.
Water gushed Niagara Falls style over the sides of the porcelain pot.
"Damn it." Rena dropped the watering can and scooped up a burgundy throw pillow from the sofa to blot the water off the floor. She'd just wash the pillow later.
Sheesh. She wasn't the same eighteen-year-old at an air show all gaga-eyed and drooling over a hot airman in his flight suit. She was a mature woman.
The bell pealed again.
A mature woman who needed to answer her door so her soon-to-be ex-husband could start his weekend visitation with their teenage son.
She Frisbee-tossed the soggy pillow across the room and out of sight into the hall. Flipped her long hair over her shoulder. Whew. Composed? Ha. Not inside. But enough to pass muster outwardly for at least five minutes.
Rena tucked around and past the ficus tree beside the overstuffed armchair. "Hold on. I'm coming. Just, uh—" her eyes fell on the telephone "—finishing up a call."
Liar. Liar. Her heels chanted with each click along hard-wood floors, then muffled on a braid rug as she made her way toward the broad-shouldered shadow darkening the stained-glass inset.
Regret pinched, not for the first time. How sad that she'd come to a point in her life where her husband had to ring the bell at his own house. He deserved so much better than this.
Better from her.
They'd sure as hell tried for years until she'd booted him out six months ago. Taken him back once he returned from Rubistan and whatever horrors he'd endured after being captured. Only to have him walk out on her a few days later.
She slowed in front of the door, pressed her hand to the glass magnolia pattern, her cluster of silver bracelets jingling and settling up toward her elbow. He wouldn't think anything of the gesture if he saw her on the other side since she was unbolting the lock with her free hand. But she let her fingers linger on the colored window for a second longer over the place where his body shadowed the pane.
After twenty-two years of sleeping with this man, her body instinctively hungered for the comfort and pleasure she could find in his arms. Her mind, however, reminded her of the heartache.
Her hand fell away from the glass.
She opened the door. "Hi, J.T."
Whew. She got that much out without stuttering or panting over his hard-muscled body in a flight suit. Still, she couldn't stop herself from soaking up the image of him to reassure herself that yes, he had survived the ordeal overseas. New threads of silver flecked his dark hair beneath his hat, adding to his appeal, shouting maturity. Experience.
Stress.
"Hello, Rena," rumbled her husband of few words.
She sidled outside with the company of passing cars, safer than inside alone, and commandeered a spot by a potted topiary reaching shoulder high. "Chris should be home any minute now. His shift ended an hour ago and he knows he has an algebra test tomorrow. He's looking forward to your weekend together."
"Me, too. We'll be camping, but I'll have my cell phone on me if you need to call."