The bus the terrorists had demanded was just pulling up in front of the Olympic village apartment building. The casual observer wouldn’t see the dozen German army snipers lying in wait around the street, but Isabella Torres was no casual observer. A trained spotter for military snipers, she ranged her gaze across the scene, picking out the vital details.
An Olympic flag hung limp behind a policeman on the roof. No wind—good conditions for the shooters. A shadow moved on the floor inside the front door of the building. One of the terrorists—no doubt moving there in preparation for the transfer of the surviving Israeli hostages to the bus. The bus driver’s bulging muscles and lack of visible fear marked him as German Special Forces.
A lull developed in the scene below. Nobody moved. They hardly breathed. These terrorists were scared, nearly paralyzed with fear. No need to hurry them. It was probably smart of the Germans to let the fear ripen into stupidity. Isabella released a long, slow breath of her own.
This whole scenario was making her acutely uncomfortable. Her last name might be Torres, compliments of her Mexican father, but her mother was a Middle Easterner. Iranian born and bred. Half of Isabella’s heritage tied her to those masked terrorists. They might be Palestinians, but in the Middle East, there were only two kinds of people in a crisis like this. Israelis and everyone else.
Of course, she’d never thought of herself as Middle Eastern, even if she did speak Arabic and Farsi, had visited her relatives in Tehran on multiple occasions, and had even worn the heavy black robes and veils of a Muslim woman while she was there. Even when she followed Muslim customs out of respect for her family, she considered herself Americano.
A flurry of radio chatter in German announced that the eight Palestinians were approaching the exit with their hostages. Finally. After twenty-three hours of stalemate. Since there were more prisoners than guards, the terrorists would no doubt move the hostages as a group, surrounded by captors. And that meant there’d be an excellent opportunity for the snipers to get clear shots and end this thing here and now.
Each sniper had been assigned a single terrorist target. They’d been watching this nightmare unfold through their telescopic gun sights, long enough for the snipers to easily differentiate between the terrorists, even though the Palestinians dressed in identical track suits and wore black ski masks over their faces. It wasn’t hard, really. Individual posture, movement and gesture were easy to pick out for a trained sharpshooter.
These would be very short-range shots. No more than a couple hundred meters. Kid’s stuff for snipers. They could put a bullet through Lincoln’s eye on a penny at that range.
A command was barked across the sniper radio net. The order to prepare to take their respective shots. Abrupt tension permeated the scene. This was it. This crisis would be resolved in the next few seconds.
Two men in black ski masks appeared in the building’s doorway. She registered myriad details about them in the blink of an eye. Lean. Tense. Safeties off their AK-47s, fingers on the triggers. Weapons pointed outward at the police. Dumb. The guns ought to be pointed inward at the hostages, so that even if the terrorists were shot, their reflexive grasps on the weapons would fire the guns into the tight cluster of Israeli athletes. The German authorities might not call the kill if the Palestinian guns were pointed at the hostages. But arrayed like this—the op was a go.
The rest of the terrorists and all the Israelis shuffled forward in a tight phalanx. For their part, the athletes looked equal parts terrified and defiant. The Palestinians were smart enough to make at least some effort to use the hostages as human shields. But it was no good. The shooters surrounding that bus had their shots. There. The entire group of terrorists was exposed. Every one of them was in position for the snipers to take clear shots.
“Fire!” The command rang sharply across the sniper net.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened!
“Fire, goddammit!” the German shouted into the radio.
Still nothing. Not a single one of the shooters took his shot.
Jack Scatalone, the Delta force colonel responsible for the Medusas’ training, held up a remote control and hit the pause button. He stepped in front of the frozen video image of the Israelis being herded into that bus. It shone obscenely across his crisp uniform, which was encrusted with row after row of ribbons for heroism. For successfully resolving this very sort of crisis without the complete breakdown of response they’d just witnessed.
Isabella—considered to be the top real-time, visual intelligence analyst in the U.S. Air Force—stared, her eyes opened wide in shock. She glanced at her teammates, the other five women who comprised the Medusas, the highly classified, and first, all-female Special Forces team in the U.S. military. They gaped as well.
Isabella looked back at Jack and demanded, “You mean to tell me the Germans had the shots, were greenlighted to take them—hell, were ordered to take them—and they didn’t?”
Jack’s jaw rippled. “Kat? Care to explain?”
The Medusas’ sniper, Katrina Kim, a petite woman of Asian descent, leaned forward. In a voice so calm it had to be masking fury at what they’d just witnessed, Kat said, “It’s called the Munich Massacre Syndrome. The snipers spent so long watching the terrorists that they started to see them as human beings. As people. As scared young men. Not as targets. By the time they were ordered to shoot the terrorists, not a single one of the snipers could bring himself to pull the trigger.”
Outrage still vibrated through Isabella’s gut. “In all the news coverage I’ve seen of the ’72 Olympics, nobody ever mentioned that the Germans had a chance to take out the terrorists and save those Israeli athletes.”
Jack shrugged. “You probably never saw news coverage of Yasir Arafat’s order for the assault, either, but he admitted to it freely by the mid-1990s.”
Good point. The press was by no means the purveyor of the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She glanced at the picture sprawled across Jack’s gut. “Jeez, that was more than a chance to stop it. That was a slam-dunk. The Palestinians handed themselves to the Germans on a silver platter.”
“Conclusions?” Jack asked her.
The words, as dry as sawdust in her throat, wanted to stick there, but she forced them out. “The Munich Massacre never should have happened.”
Jack nodded grimly. “That’s correct. And out of this incident came counterterrorism as a formalized training specialty within the armed forces of most of the world’s major armies. It completely changed how snipers were trained and deployed, and the psychological selection criteria for snipers were heavily revised.”
Isabella still reeled. It could have been prevented. A tragic and vicious attack on a group of athletes who’d gone to Munich to celebrate the unity of mankind in a demonstration of the best of the human spirit. Instead, eleven young men had been murdered in cold blood, plus five terrorists and one policeman had died. Worse, they could’ve been saved. It had been the ultimate corruption of everything the Olympics stood for.
“Why was this covered up?” she demanded.
Jack shrugged. “I can’t speak for the politicians. It would’ve been pretty ugly for Germany to admit that Jews were slaughtered on their watch again and they could’ve prevented it—again. The whole idea behind taking the Olympics to Munich in the first place was to demonstrate that World War II was in the past.”
Isabella stared at the frozen images looming on the screen over Jack’s shoulder like vengeful ghosts. A cold finger of dread rippled down her spine. “And why did you choose today to teach us about this syndrome?”
Jack nodded tersely at her. “Very perceptive, Adder.”
Adder was her field handle. All the Medusas had nicknames that matched the names of dangerous snakes.
Jack continued. “I have a job for you ladies.” He clicked the remote and the silver screen went blank. “It’s at the Winter Olympics next week. And it involves a girl. Her name is Anya Khalid.”
It was a soft, gray day. Desultory snow drifted down toward the tarmac, and Isabella huddled in her white, down-filled parka against the chill blowing across the runway. Her ears aching from the scream of its engines, she watched a jet pull up to a gate at the newly renovated Lake Placid, New York International Airport.
Of course, everything about Lake Placid was newly renovated these days. The sleepy little Adirondack town had spent the past five years and close to a billion dollars revamping its historic Olympic facilities for its third Winter Games, which would begin in a few days. The Games were also why a town of three thousand year-round residents boasted this high-tech terminal and jet-length runway.
With a last look around the ramp for possible threats, she nodded at the marshaller with his orange wands and headed for the steel door to the terminal. The ramp supervisor opened it when she knocked and she hurried upstairs into the main arrival area.
A cluster of Olympic officials waited in the baggage claim area to collect incoming athletes, while several loudly dressed resort employees waited to collect tourists coming to watch the games. A group of camera-toting reporters stood off to one side. Oddly, most of them were olive-skinned. Must be a big delegation of athletes coming in on this flight from some warm-climate country.
She had special permission to be in the relatively deserted, ticketed passenger-only area to meet Anya and her coach. The passengers on this flight had already cleared customs in New York City, and they began to exit directly off the plane and stream toward the baggage claim area. Standing by the gate, Isabella scanned each face as it emerged, looking for her new charge.
Anya Khalid.
Until a few months ago, not a soul outside of a local ice skating rink in Brisbane, Australia had ever heard of her. But now, she was undoubtedly the most well-known—and controversial—member of the international figure skating community. Born in the emirate of Bhoukar, a small principality smack-dab in the center of the Arab world, she’d had the un-mitigated gall to flaunt her country’s conservative Muslim culture and become a figure skater. Global debate raged over whether or not that constituted freedom of expression or a capital crime punishable by death. Either way, she was a young lady in need of protection from the numerous threats that had come her way and would continue to escalate if she dared to skate at the Olympics.
The emir of Bhoukar, an Oxford-educated religious moderate, supported her and had authorized her to represent Bhoukar. Although she’d been living in Australia for a decade while her father worked there as a petroleum engineer, her citizenship was still Bhoukari. With the exception of a men’s downhill skier nearly thirty years ago, she was the only athlete ever to represent the tiny country in a Winter Olympics.
But instead of embracing her, her fellow countrymen, mostly religious conservatives, had reviled her. They accused her of being immodest and anti-Muslim for showing too much flesh and performing such outrageous maneuvers as raising her leg in the air and exposing the bottoms of her feet.
When she’d burst onto the Olympic scene six weeks ago by finishing in the top ten at the last of the qualifying events and earning a spot in the Winter Games, the rhetoric had started flying. And some of it had taken on a dark enough tone that the IOC—the International Olympic Committee—had requested the Olympic Security Group provide extra protection for the nineteen-year-old upon her arrival in Lake Placid. The Medusas had been called in to do the job in the interest of not further offending the Muslim world by putting male bodyguards on the young woman.
Isabella was chosen as the front woman for the team because she spoke fluent Arabic, Anya’s native tongue. Of course, the girl probably spoke excellent English, having practically grown up in Australia. Isabella had only seen a handful of photos of Anya. She was a beautiful, slender girl with black hair, doelike brown eyes, and a dancer’s carriage. Whether she would arrive today in the full black robe and veil Bhoukari women traditionally wore in public or merely a hijab, the head scarf preferred by more moderate Muslims was anybody’s guess.
The Medusas’ reports were sketchy, but intelligence indicated the girl came from a fairly conservative family who’d lived a low-key lifestyle in Australia. The girl had more freedom there than she would have had in Bhoukar—enough to take up figure skating—but probably not anywhere near as much freedom as a typical Australian girl. Thankfully, Isabella knew a whole lot more about life in conservative Muslim households than any of her temporary bosses in the Olympic Security Group.
She shouldn’t have worried about spotting Anya. As soon as the girl appeared in the jet bridge, a swarm of reporters rushed forward to the glass window behind Isabella and flash-bulbs went off like strobes. The girl recoiled beneath her red silk head scarf. Her coach, a petite, blond Australian named Liz Cartwright, looked alarmed as well.
Isabella stepped forward. “Welcome to Lake Placid, Ms. Khalid, Mrs. Cartwright. My name is Isabella Torres, and I’m here to escort you to the Olympic village.”
The Australian stuck out her hand and Isabella shook it briefly. Normally, she wouldn’t tie up her hands in such a manner while on the job, but this wasn’t a high-threat situation, and she had no authorization to use force anyway. She’d been specifically ordered to lay low and stay out of sight.
Technically, Isabella wasn’t Anya’s bodyguard. She was merely under orders to keep an eye on the girl and steer her away from serious threats. How had the IOC security chairman, Manfred Schmidt of Germany, put it? “We do not wish for the United States to act like a police state, for that would be contrary to the spirit of these games.”
“The exit’s this way.” Isabella turned and led them to a revolving door. She stepped through first and nobody paid her any heed. But when Anya and her coach passed through the turning glass, the mob of Middle Eastern-looking journalists descended on them.
Isabella’s first impulse was to jump in front of the pair. The two women had stopped, recoiling from the cameras and microphones being shoved in their faces. Orders, schmorders. Those two needed help. She wasn’t about to stand here and let the paparazzi harass her charge.
There were only a dozen photographers, but the mood among them was nasty. Their tones of voice as they shouted over each other to ask questions were distinctly rude. Isabella’s internal alarm system sent a low-level warning humming through her gut. That guy snarling in Farsi sounded Iraqi. His rant about Anya outrageously flaunting her religion was worrisome.
She eased forward to inject herself between the guy and Anya. When the Iraqi refused to get out of her way, Isabella put a casual nerve pinch on the guy’s arm that made him howl. As he bent over in pain, she sidestepped him and moved forward until she stood right in front of the girl.
She made eye contact with Anya. “How about we get out of here?”
The girl nodded quickly. Somebody shoved Isabella from behind, almost knocking her into Anya. Eyes narrowed threateningly, she turned and said firmly, “Let us through, please.”
Nada. If anything, the journalists surged closer. As a lone woman without a proper chaperone, they weren’t about to give her the time of day, let alone a shred of respect. Enough was enough. She snapped, “C’mon guys. Make a hole.”
A few of them stepped back, but immediately, journalists from the rear of the group stepped into the gap. Fine. She could play their game. She planted a strategic heel on the top of the nearest reporter’s foot. He squawked and hopped out of the way. She gave the same treatment to the guy beside him. Will you look at that? A hole magically opened up.
Grabbing the coach’s arm with her left hand and Anya’s with her right, Isabella said under her breath, “Stick to me like glue.” And then she proceeded to glare her way through the remaining journalists.
In a few seconds, she and her charges burst outside. A half-frozen crowd of media types milled around on the sidewalk, trying to keep their equipment dry in the falling snow, and although every camera swung toward the photogenic skater, nobody made a move to rush them. Hallelujah.
She guided the women to a waiting white minivan with blacked out windows and official Olympic license plates. She ushered them into the back seats and climbed in the front passenger seat. “Let’s go, Python.”
The vehicle, driven by Karen Turner, the Medusas’ six-foot tall Marine officer, pulled away from the curb smoothly.
“What about our bags?” the Australian coach asked in alarm.
Isabella answered, “We have some people inside the terminal now who will get them and bring them to your rooms.” And go over them with a fine-toothed comb to make sure everything is as it should be inside them. Anya stared at her in shock.
“What?” Isabella asked.
“You laid a hand on those men!”
Isabella shrugged. “Technically, I used my foot. And they wouldn’t get out of the way. They were being rude.” She grinned crookedly and added, “Welcome to the United States. Where women take charge and kick butt.”
A slow smile spread across Anya’s face. “I think I’m going to like it here.”
Anya and her coach were duly installed in their side-by-side rooms in the Olympic village, in the same wing of the giant, hotel-like facility as the delegations from Belgium, Brazil and Canada, among other A to C countries. The athletes, all three thousand of them plus the coaches, doctors and trainers who made up the delegations, were housed alphabetically in the brand-new building, which was crafted of rustic stone and wood and would be turned into a high-end resort when the Games were over. The village perched on a mountainside overlooking the hamlet of Lake Placid, which was nestled beside Mirror Lake and the frozen tip of Lake Placid.
Security in and around the village was extensive. The small black domes of security cameras perched on every street corner, and in the public access areas of every building. They were manned around the clock by the best counterterrorism specialists America had to offer. Practically every Special Forces operator in the U.S. Armed Forces who wasn’t deployed overseas had been pulled in to work the Games. No Munich Massacre repeats for America, thank you very much.
If there was a juicier terrorist target than an Olympic games on American soil with television coverage going out to billions of people all over the planet, Isabella surely couldn’t think of it.
She stepped into the charged quiet of the OSG—Olympic Security Group—headquarters in the large administrative building next door to the village. The OSG was the detachment of U.S. military types working alongside the IOC security committee. The OSG ops center looked like mission control at a NASA rocket launch facility. Bank after bank of video monitors lined the walls. Rows of security men sat in front of them, studying them intently, moving the joy sticks on their consoles to swivel the cameras. Computer screens scrolled a steady stream of information to the soldiers manning them. Everyone wore headsets and received constant audio updates. She didn’t even want to think about what all this must have cost. Plus, the civilian IOC security team next door had its own control room on an even grander scale.
Behind her a voice barked, “Torres! In here.”
She turned to identify the speaker. And scowled. Major Dexter G. Thorpe IV, commander of the OSG. And possibly the biggest jerk in the Western Hemisphere. He’d been ordering the Medusas around and sticking them with menial “girl” jobs ever since they’d arrived in Lake Placid. He’d made it crystal clear that he thought the whole idea of women in the Special Forces was a bad joke. But, he was her boss. For now. She gritted her teeth and marched toward the large conference room where this afternoon’s overview briefing was to start in about one minute.
“And bring me a cup of black coffee while you’re at it,” he called across the Ops Center.
That remark stopped the general buzz cold. Making and serving coffee was a traditional insult to women in uniform, and one that female soldiers had rebelled against en masse decades ago. Every gaze in the room turned on her to see how the newbie Spec Ops chick would react. Was this a test, or just another demonstration of Thorpe’s contempt for the idea of women as special operators?
Eyes narrowed, she strolled over to the coffeepot and poured a big, steaming mug of the brew. Close to a hundred men and the five women of the Medusas crowded in the conference room. Thorpe stood by the podium up front, glaring at her expectantly. Gonna make her deliver his coffee in front of everyone, was he?
One foot in front of the other, she walked through the thick silence. Everyone stared at that mug. She set it down gently on the corner of the podium and joined her teammates, who were lounging against the wall near the front.
Thorpe picked up the coffee and took a long, conspicuous sip.
What an asshole. Isabella spoke up loudly enough to be heard across the quiet room. “So, Viper. Wanna guess which one it was?”
The Medusas’ commanding officer, Air Force Major Vanessa Blake, replied, “Which one what?”
Isabella paused until Thorpe lifted the mug to his mouth again. “Remember prisoner-of-war school? Whenever the aggressors made us get coffee for them, we either spat in it or picked our noses and stirred snot into it? Wanna guess which one I did?”
Thorpe spewed hot coffee across his notes as the roomful of special operators burst into loud guffaws. Laughter drifted in from the ops center outside as well, where the audio feed of this briefing was being piped to everyone’s headsets. Thorpe threw a look in her direction that promised revenge. She gazed back at him blandly.
Red-faced, Thorpe began the briefing. He ran through several dozen security issues, assigning operators to each. “A press conference will be given this afternoon by the Bhoukari figure skater, Anya Khalid. She’s expected to announce her intention to compete in the Olympics.”
Somebody snorted from the back. “Wow. Big news. Athlete comes to Lake Placid and says she’ll compete.”
Isabella rolled her eyes. The guy didn’t know the half of it. She’d spent the last few days reading Middle Eastern newspapers and surfing Internet chat rooms that were discussing this unprecedented event. Opinion was sharply divided. As sharply divided as the conservative fundamentalists and the more liberal moderates within the Islamic faith itself. Women’s rights were among the thorniest issues facing the Muslim world today. Centuries-old tradition held that an unmarried young woman figure skating in skimpy clothes with suggestive poses—and furthermore, doing it in front of men—was nothing short of blasphemy. As in punishable by flogging or even death. Anya declaring that she intended to skate, particularly after she’d been specifically ordered by Bhoukari mullahs—Muslim clerics—not to, was a direct challenge to the leaders of her country’s faith. This press conference was a huge deal.
“Torres, if you can keep your fingers out of your nose, I want you to cover the Khalid girl at her press conference,” Thorpe barked.
“Define cover,” she retorted. “Am I her bodyguard or simply her minder?”
“Stay out of the cameras and keep her alive.”
An ambiguous answer. It gave her plenty of wiggle room to operate, but no clear authority to do a darned thing. A politically correct answer. And damned annoying. But then, everything about Major Dexter Thorpe was annoying.
The press briefing room was surprisingly full. Isabella glanced around and spotted her five teammates spaced unobtrusively around the edges of the crowd. Several faces from the unpleasant encounter at the airport were here, too.
She looked over her shoulder at Anya, who was sporting a dark suit and a black scarf over her head, its ends thrown back over her shoulders. The girl was stunning in the stark outfit. “Ready?” Isabella murmured.
The girl nodded resolutely.
They stepped into the room, and camera lights burst on in a blinding glare. Anya lurched. Steady, girl. Isabella stepped onto the dais and backed into a corner as Anya moved to the podium clutching a sheet of paper.
A man shouted, “Tell us, Anya, are you going to skate in the Olympics?”
The girl took a shaky breath. “I have a short statement to read.” She cleared her throat and began, “I would like to thank His Most Serene Highness, the emir of Bhoukar, for allowing me to represent my homeland in these Olympic Games. It is an honor I shall do my utmost to live up to. To that end, I do intend to skate and compete in the ladies’ figure skating competition, and I shall do my best—”
The rest of what she had to say was drowned out by the sudden uproar of male voices shouting in outrage. Apparently, not all the people here were reporters. A gray-bearded man sporting an embroidered skull cap stood up near the back of the room and began to shout in Arabic. His bellowed words reverberated throughout the space.
Isabella listened in burgeoning horror while the roars of his supporters grew louder and louder. Finally, the mullah ended his diatribe on a howl of rage and his avid audience turned, surging toward the stage.
Holy shit. With one look at the frenzied mob advancing on her charge, Isabella took a running leap at Anya, knocking the girl clean off her feet and slamming the skater to the floor.
“Help!” she shouted into her microphone.
Please God, let the Medusas get up here in time.