September 19, 8:00 a.m.
Washington, D.C.
Vanessa walked into the nondescript office building at Andrews Air Force Base. An airman gave her directions to the room number printed on her classified orders. She still felt wobbly from the flight up from Pope Air Force Base. They’d sent a turboprop King Air, called a C-12 in the air force, to pick her up. Her stomach had not appreciated being vibrated half to death inside a flying lawnmower.
The other five women were already waiting in the room. Everyone looked up sharply as she entered. Apparently they were as wired as she was. And fitter than the last time she’d seen them all. Good. They’d need it. That thirty-six-minute run time had been a bitch to hit, but by God, she’d done it.
Aleesha Gautier, the doctor, commented, “Looking a little green about the gills there, Major.”
She grimaced. “Airplanes and I don’t get along too well.” A door opened behind her and she spun to face the intruder. Jack Scatalone. Oh, Lord.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said briskly. “I’ll be your primary trainer and evaluator over the next few weeks. Grab your bags and come with me.”
Oh. My. God. Trainer and evaluator? Could it get any worse than that? The bottom of her stomach dropped out, free-falling to somewhere in the vicinity of her ankles. She picked up her olive-drab duffel bag resolutely. It wasn’t inordinately heavy, but its wide nylon strap dug into her shoulder.
The equipment list that had come with her orders was minimal. Several sets of camo fatigues, jump boots in addition to her regular combat boots, and some basic field supplies—canteen, compass, pocketknife and first-aid kit. She’d thrown in a few more basic survival items like water purification pills, camo paint, a fishing kit inside a film canister and a handheld mirror.
The women stowed their bags in the back of a dark blue van and then piled in the rows of bench seats. Jack drove. He retraced the route Vanessa had just taken across base back toward the airfield. Somebody please tell her she didn’t have to get right back on another airplane.
Jack flashed his ID and drove onto the tarmac to the rear ramp of a four-propeller C-130 cargo plane. Just peachy. From a lawnmower to a giant eggbeater. Her stomach gave a warning rumble, and she wasn’t even on the damn plane yet. The other women threw her sympathetic looks as they got out and climbed up the shiny metal ramp into the plane’s no-frills interior. They edged past a row of wooden crates chained to the floor. About midplane, there was an empty pallet position. A row of aluminum and nylon webbing seats had been installed along the right-side wall. A loadmaster took their duffels, stacked them and threw a cargo net over them. He cranked down a pair of crossing cargo straps to hold them in place and gave the group a disinterested safety briefing involving how to buckle a seat belt and not jumping out of the plane without permission before leaving them to settle in.
Karen Turner, the tall marine, stepped up close to Scatalone and not so subtly crowded him toward the rear end of the seats. Katrina and Isabella rolled in on either side of him, sitting down and immediately launching into an animated conversation across him, forcing him to lean back to stay out of the way of the discussion of the latest Paris fashions. Through a wave of nausea, Vanessa noticed Misty slipping off toward the cockpit, while Aleesha put a firm hand on her elbow and guided her to the other end of the row of seats. Misty was back in a minute with four white tablets that she pressed into Vanessa’s hand.
“Take those,” Misty murmured as she slipped into her seat and strapped in.
“What are they?” Vanessa choked out as she swallowed the bitter tablets dry. One stuck in her throat, and she gulped hard, forcing it down. The aftertaste was like battery acid.
Misty replied under the noise of the engines starting, “Double dose of Dramamine. Kills motion sickness. Got it from the crew’s med kit.”
Dang. The women had pulled off that maneuver like a well-oiled machine. It boded well for the team that they were already willing to set aside individual egos. The plane rolled forward. A quick lurch as the brakes were tested, and then the plane eased forward again. Oh, God. Her tongue felt thick, and her gut gurgled and roiled. But within a minute or two, her eyelids felt heavy and her limbs went weak. Gotta love good drugs.
September 19, 7:00 p.m.
near the Al-Khibri oil field
Defoe slid back down behind the ridgeline. “Walsh,” he murmured low. “Didn’t you pull some duty guarding oil rigs when we invaded Iraq?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Would you be able to tell a big oil well from a little one?” Defoe asked.
“I guess so. Why?” Walsh replied.
“I thought Bhoukar didn’t have major oil fields. Just little strikes here and there. Enough to keep their economy afloat, but that’s about it.”
He’d caught the interest of the other guys. Ginelli piped up, “That’s right. There haven’t been any big finds in the Middle East for decades. All the jumbo strikes were made by about 1970.”
Defoe nodded. That’s what he thought. “Walsh, take a look at the new rig they’re putting up down there. Is it just me, or is that a big damn wellhead they’re building?”
Defoe followed the sniper and slithered back up to the top of the ridge. Night was coming and they had to be careful. The Army of Holy War had thugs watching the oil field, and they came out thick after dark. They’d been as riled up as killer bees ever since Delta Three had slipped out of their grasp. It’d been a hell of a close call to get the captain down to the fence past all those Army of Holy War types, set off his ELT—emergency locator transmitter—and get out of there before the Bhoukari government soldiers came pouring out of their barracks to investigate. The good news was the surge of Bhoukari troops had pushed most of the Army of Holy War back into the hills. Gave his team time to slip away into the night undetected.
It was a stretch to say the mission was back on track, but at least they were back under cover doing the recon they’d been sent to do, and so far, they were undetected. Hopefully the captain had lived. Defoe prayed nightly that Captain Worthington wouldn’t give away their mission under interrogation. It had been a huge risk to turn the captain over to the Bhoukaris for that very reason. But he knew Scott better than his own brother. The guy would never, ever, betray his team. Defoe would bet his life on it. Had bet his life on it.
“Yeah,” Walsh murmured. “That’s a big mother.”
Defoe’s attention jerked back to the oil rig in front of him.
“See how close it is to the well beside it, too?” Walsh asked. “That means there’s a honking deposit of oil down there. No need for two wells so close unless there’s a butt-load of crude in one spot.”
That’s what he’d thought. Okay, so Bhoukar had made a major oil find. Why were Army of Holy War terrorists sniffing around it? Hoping to destroy it, maybe? Out of character for them though. They were still a small, emerging terrorist group and couldn’t afford to piss off their Arab backers. They attacked Western targets. Non-Muslim targets. Mostly outside the Middle East. Surely they wouldn’t destroy a big oil find in a poor Muslim country that desperately needed the revenue to feed its faithful. Sure, the Bhoukari government didn’t exactly have a warm relationship with terrorists, but they weren’t openly at war with each other either.
Walsh froze. Murmured under his breath, “Movement at two o’clock. Army of Holy War patrol coming in on foot.”
September 19, 1:00 p.m.
the belly of a C-130
One minute she was out cold, and the next Vanessa startled awake as the plane bumped onto the ground in a landing flare. She blinked, disoriented. What time was it? She checked her watch. They’d been flying a little more than four hours. Where were they? From the windowless belly of the cargo plane, there was no way to know.
They didn’t taxi for long. And then, a different loadmaster walked past them and manipulated the buttons beside the back exit, lowering the combination metal ramp and door to the ground. Her stomach felt fine. Dang, those pills were good even if they did knock her on her butt. Anything not to puke her guts out in front of Jack Scatalone.
Speaking of the devil, he ordered briskly, “Let’s go, ladies.”
Curious, Vanessa picked up her bag and followed him outside. She inhaled a long pull of dry, thin air indicative of high altitude. And then she got a look at the range of snowcapped peaks to the west. Pike’s Peak. They were in Colorado Springs. Of course. The air force academy was here, with its extensive and private training facilities. Smart choice. The whole base was fenced and patrolled. Not to mention the school year had started and the cadets would be ensconced in the main campus, attending classes.
“Let’s go, Blake,” Jack barked.
She started and realized the others were already mostly loaded into another navy blue van with small yellow print on its door to indicate it was property of the United States Air Force. Jack drove again. A security cop waved them through the main gates at the academy and Jack wound away from the cadet area toward the dry mountains north of the seventeen soaring aluminum spires of the cadet chapel.
He pulled to a stop in a wide, flat area that could house an entire tent city. What little grass there was lay flattened and brown in the dust. A single square tent, maybe ten feet by ten feet, stood by itself in the middle of the expanse. Beside the tent sat a roughly four-foot-square wooden crate and a toolbox.
Vanessa caught a hint of dismay from her colleagues. She grinned broadly. “Hell’s bells, Colonel. The air force didn’t have to go to all this trouble to create such an elaborate training facility just for us. I’m overwhelmed.”
A chuckle passed through the van. Jack glanced at the rearview mirror, and, disconcertingly, met her grin with one of his own. Except his had a distinct edge. He stopped the van and climbed out.
“Welcome to Jack’s Valley, ladies. Although I’d enjoy taking credit for it being named after me, it was called that before I got here.” He gestured at the lone, standing tent. “That is my hooch.” He pointed at the wooden box. “And that is yours. If you want a roof over your heads tonight, get that thing up in the next couple hours. I’ll be back in a while.”
And with that, he climbed in the van and drove away. Vanessa stared at the retreating trail of dust. Everyone turned to look at her. She shrugged and said dryly, “The man definitely needs work on his social skills. Let’s see what we’ve got in the box.”
Karen grabbed a crowbar out of the toolbox and pried the lid off the crate. All the women crowded around to look inside. Folds of musty-smelling, dark green canvas filled it. Another tent. Except it took all six of them to lift the darned thing out. A tangle of ropes followed the wad of canvas out of the box, while rows of wooden stakes lined the bottom of the crate. And there was no sign of instructions.
“Anybody ever put up one of these things?” Vanessa asked.
Karen replied, “I’ve seen it done. Not too hard. Just heavy work. We need to smooth out a flat stretch of ground, spread the tent out, drive in stakes, then hoist the interior poles and stake the exterior ropes.”
Sounded easy enough. But as they sweated through horsing a quarter ton of canvas into the shape of a tent, she revised her estimate. Thankfully, everyone kept her cool and offered helpful suggestions as needed.
Finally she stood back from lashing the last rope in place. “Do you suppose Scatalone expects to come back here and find us sitting on the box bitching at each other?”
The women laughed knowingly. They’d all been solitary females in oceans of prejudiced men long enough to appreciate the comment.
Misty asked, “Anybody got something to eat? Or drink? I’m parched.”
Vanessa smiled grimly. “I believe that would be lesson one from our erstwhile instructor. We’re supposed to think about that before we get out in the field. Any ideas on procuring some water and chow?”
Karen grinned. “Let’s raid his tent. I bet he’s got some snacks stashed in there.”
They headed as one for the smaller tent, but paused when they got to the front flap. Apparently breaking and entering to rob a superior officer’s quarters fell under the job description of the team leader.
Vanessa pushed aside the heavy canvas and stepped inside the dim space. It was painfully neat. A camp cot with a sleeping bag and pillow lying on it. A folding table, closed and leaned up against the back wall at the moment along with a pair of folding chairs. Three wooden crates turned on their sides and stacked to make an impromptu set of shelves. A lantern, a couple MREs—Meals Ready to Eat—in their brown plastic pouches, a canteen and a utility vest sat on the shelves. She picked up the MREs, stuffed them in her shirt and headed for the footlocker in the corner. She opened the lid.
And jumped as something snapped, almost like a mousetrap. Lesson number two. If it looked too easy, it probably was. The bastard had trapped his footlocker. He’d figured they’d come in here looking for food. Now what was she supposed to do? When he saw his trap sprung, he’d know for sure they’d poked around in here. Did she go ahead and grab whatever food she could find, or did she back out now and take nothing at all?
She stared into the trunk full of ammunition, trip wire, knives and electronic gadgets, only about half of which she could identify. And at the bottom, four more MREs. She stared at the lure of the food. The setup was too perfect. Six MREs for the six of them. In general, the mission of the Special Forces was to work undetected. If they were going to rob their instructor, they’d better do it only when they could get away with it.
She left the four MREs buried in the bottom of the foot-locker and put the other two MREs back on the shelves, in as close to the same spot as she could remember. She called out to the women outside, “Let me know if you see anyone coming.”
They acknowledged her as she returned to the trunk. The trap had gone off when she lifted the lid, so it had to be attached to that in some way. She ran her fingers gently around the rim of the lid. Aha. A thin filament, so fine she barely felt it, in the back near a hinge. She grasped the thread and traced its course carefully down into the contents of the trunk. It led her to a mercury switch, a tiny, banana-shaped glass tube with a bubble of mercury floating inside it. She found the noise-maker attached to the switch. It was an easy matter to reset the snap-pop gadget, but it was another matter entirely to reattach the delicate filament and rebalance the mercury switch in place. Her fingers felt big and clumsy. Note to self: the team’s surgeon got to be the trap expert. How in the world had Jack ever set this thing up with his big, blunt fingers?
She closed the trunk lid carefully and stepped back. Just when had she noticed his hands, anyway? The thought disturbed her. She slipped out of the tent carefully, using her baseball cap to brush away the dusty footprints from her boots.
“Find anything?” Misty asked.
“Yeah. Traps. There’s food in there, all right, but he booby-trapped the trunk most of it’s stored in.”
The women absorbed that in silence. Jack had just defined the rules of engagement for them. No holds barred. The six of them squarely against him. Vanessa palpably felt the women coalescing into a team. And then another thought struck her.
“What are the odds he left us out here completely by ourselves to settle in? What do you want to bet he’s been watching us all along? Don’t look,” she added under her breath sharply as everyone’s gazes immediately swung toward the hills around them. “Anyone got any ideas?” she murmured low.
“Wanna try to find him?” Aleesha suggested.
She’d been hoping someone would say that. Vanessa replied, “If nothing else, let’s set up a perimeter surveillance to keep the bastard from sneaking up on us and surprising us. I bet he’d just love to make us scream like hysterical teenagers.”
Misty tilted her head quizzically. “Why don’t you like this guy?”
That was a no-brainer. “Because he wants to see us fail.”
They decided to fan out around the two tents in a loose wagon-wheel formation. But first they went into their own large, bare tent to get ready. Vanessa pulled out her camo face paint kit from her paintball days and passed it around. Darkness fell fast as the sun dipped behind the wall of mountains to the west, and as the night deepened, the six of them liberally sprinkled themselves with twigs, leaves, grass and dust they brought inside for that purpose. One by one, they eased out the back of their tent, keeping low to the ground.
About two hundred feet out, Vanessa lay flat beneath a clump of desert sage. She’d give her right arm for a pair of night-vision goggles right about now. Not to mention a slice of pizza. She hadn’t eaten since 4:00 a.m. when she’d gulped down a bagel and a cup of coffee in her kitchen in North Carolina. Amazing how, in one day, that place could seem so far away.
Her eyes adapted to the deepening blackness of the night. She lay completely still, searching in a slow, sweeping pattern for movement of any kind. If Jack Scatalone was, in fact, Delta Force, the odds of her untrained team spotting him were nil. But it was a good morale booster to give it a try anyway. It also announced to him that they were going to take this training by the horns and give it their best shot. All in all, she was pleased with how their first day had gone.
As if a switch had been thrown, the creatures of the night abruptly set up a loud chorus. So much for hearing the jerk coming. She laid there for a long time. Eventually, she eased her wristwatch into view. Almost 1:00 a.m. Maybe she should call this game quits and send her team to bed. Lord knew, they’d need the sleep over the days to come. Except something in her gut said it was important to make this statement to their evaluator. She remembered his rebuke that very first day in the Pentagon concerning her patience. She’d sit this one out a little longer. But lesson number three had been learned. Next time, she’d set up a sleep-watch rotation so her team could get some rest.
Three hours later, her eyelids felt like concrete and she struggled to string coherent thoughts together. The night’s chorus of insects and frogs was finally petering out. She knew every twig of every tree in front of her and had all but counted the blades of grass within her line of sight. Nothing was moving out there.
Then the back of her neck tingled. It wasn’t anything she heard or saw. More like intuition. She rolled over fast, onto her back. Just in time for something impossibly heavy to land on top of her, crushing her from head to foot. Her breath whooshed out of her as a big hand slapped over her mouth. She was pinned in place, flattened like a bug under the weight of Jack Scatalone.
He stared down at her, his gaze boring into hers. Was that anger in his intense expression? Amusement? Insanity?
He murmured, “Do you always do things the hard way?”
“That’s the way I like it,” she retorted under her breath.
Definitely a scowl on his face now. Speaking of hard, the word could describe his entire body. There was no melting together of male and female flesh, no molding and fitting, no easy slide of body on body. Tension zinged through every inch of him, alert and wary, as he pinned her down. Ah. He thought she was going to fight him. And so she relaxed beneath him. She let every muscle go soft, let her thighs fall open to cradle his hips closer against hers. Her belly and breasts softened against the hard planes of his body, welcoming him nearer.
He lurched up and away from her as if she’d electrocuted him, popped to his feet and took a quick step back. “Game’s over, ladies,” he called out irascibly.
The other five women rose out of the dirt and scrub nearby. Vanessa was proud of them. They’d hidden themselves remarkably well and shown excellent patience through the night. She felt bad that they’d had no supper or sleep, and that might come back to bite them in the butt, but next time, she’d do better when planning for them.
The women gathered around.
Jack growled, “Since you saved me the trouble of waking you up and you’re already dressed, let’s get going. We’ve got a lot to do today. Form up for a run.”
Vanessa sized up the group. She’d normally put the shortest women in front to set the pace. But Katrina, the smallest of the bunch, was a frigging marathon runner. Isabella was the most unknown physically. She’d set the pace today.
Vanessa said briskly, “Isabella and Aleesha to the front. Katrina and Misty, you bring up the rear.” That way, the marathon runner and the triathlete in the back could help anyone who got into trouble. Because she had faith Jack was about to run them into the ever-loving ground.
And he did. The altitude was a bitch. None of them had had any time to adjust to it, and Vanessa’s lungs shouted in protest by the third mile. By the fifth mile, her whole body screamed for oxygen. Jack ran along easily beside them, giving them a lecture about the best way to establish a defensive perimeter and a sleep-watch rotation. She struggled to comprehend his lesson and keep moving her feet forward at the same time.
She needn’t have worried about Isabella. The intel analyst set a steady pace and had a determined glint in her eye. Anything she might lack in physical prowess she more than made up for in grit.
Vanessa was profoundly relieved when Jack finally called a halt beside a water buffalo—a wheeled iron platform with a bladder of water mounted on top. This one looked to hold a couple hundred gallons. Everybody’d made it. Nobody’d complained or dropped out of the run. They all had to be hurting as bad as she was, but they’d gamely pressed on. She made eye contact with each one of them and nodded briefly in silent praise. She didn’t have breath to do more.
Jack gestured to the water tank. “This is ours. You’ll need to pull it back to camp.”
Ouch. Hadn’t seen that sucker punch coming. They’d just finished a grueling six-mile run, and now they had to repeat it, towing a good thousand pounds of water and a couple hundred pounds of steel water tank? She eyed the buffalo. It had a long tongue for hitching it to the back of a truck. The thing was going to be awkward as hell to grab on to and wrestle back to camp.
She announced, “First thing we’re gonna do is empty a little of its weight into our systems. Everyone drink your fill.”
Aleesha spoke up. “Take several small drinks instead of one big one. That way you won’t puke. Wouldn’t want to mess up the pristine beauty of the colonel’s dirt, after all.”
While Vanessa waited for her third turn at the water spigot, she considered how best to move the unwieldy wagon. It made sense to rig up some sort of dogsled-type hitch where they’d use their legs to pull the weight and their arms would be free to swing naturally as they moved. Man, what she’d give for a length of rope right about now. Yet another lesson. Go ahead and carry a bit of extra equipment, even on a simple run. You never knew what contingencies might crop up. She looked around for something to serve as a harness and spied a coil of rope around one of the back support posts of the buffalo. And she’d bet the wagon had a spare tire stowed on it somewhere.
Thankfully, several team members had pocketknives. They hacked up the rope and the spare tire, fashioning rubber padded straps to sling across their hips. These were connected to the wagon tongue with lengths of rope. It was an easy matter now to lean into the crude harnesses and move the water buffalo.
Vanessa remembered something about pairing up oxen with others of similar strength. She took the lead with Karen this time. Then came the two runners, with Aleesha and Isabella bringing up the rear.
The trip back took considerably longer. Jack demanded that they run, but it was really more of a slow jog. Thankfully, he called a stop to rest partway back and let them drink more water. The buffalo might not have been appreciably lighter after their drinks, but psychologically, it felt like it.
It was full morning before they finally lumbered into their little camp. Lord, she was tired. And she feared the day was just beginning. Somebody’d dropped off more gear in their absence. A pile of boxes and canvas bags stood in front of the big tent.
“Unpack your stuff,” Jack ordered before he disappeared into his tent.
The women rolled up the sides of their big tent to let in the dusty breeze. Vanessa picked up the first box on the pile and carried it inside. It took them an hour to set up the cots and footlockers and sort the gear evenly among their trunks. They gulped down dry, C-ration oatmeal bars, and then they all collapsed on their cots. They’d been down about ten minutes when Jack’s voice boomed at them, “Up and at it!”
Vanessa knew pain, but Jack Scatalone showed her heretofore unimagined heights of misery in the next twelve hours. He put them through endless push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, leg lifts, squat thrusts, interval sprints and anything else he thought of that might cause pain. The really annoying part was he did every last bit of it right along with them. And he talked casually all the while, instructing them on pushing beyond their limits, on the importance of performing physical feats the enemy thought were impossible. Talk about the razor’s edge of survival. Being stronger, faster and fitter than the other guy often tipped the scales. Vanessa fell into a semi-trance of agony where little but Jack’s words penetrated her brain.
Of all people, Misty, the flippant, California beach-girl blonde, was the team’s mental salvation through that first endless day that too slowly faded into night. As a triathlete, she had a better sense of how far the human body could be pushed than the other women. Countless times, when Vanessa or one of the others was sure they’d hit the wall, Misty would be there, quietly encouraging them. Telling them she’d done worse and survived. Telling them to pace themselves and focus on their breathing. All Vanessa could add was to gasp that she was proud to be suffering alongside them.
And somehow, they all made it. Vanessa was too damn exhausted to bother looking at her watch as she fell into bed sometime after midnight. Her last conscious thought was that Jack Scatalone could go to hell.
In his tent, Jack sprawled in a camp chair, his feet propped up on his cot. Christ, those women had worked him out good. He’d figured they’d be in good shape for women, but he hadn’t counted on just how much pain they could take. He knew damn good and well he’d pushed them far beyond their limits, but they’d hunkered down and sucked up the pain with a stoicism he’d rarely seen in his male trainees.
He picked up his cell phone and dialed the Pentagon. “Scat here.”
The duty controller answered quickly, “General Wittenauer’s waiting for your call. He wants to know how it went. Said to patch you through to his house no matter what time you called. Stand by, sir.”
Jack waited while the call was put through to his boss’s home. And then the familiar growl came on the line. “How’d it go?”
“They toughed it out, sir.”
“Damn. I was sure they wouldn’t make twenty-four hours. You didn’t go easy on them, did you? I’m counting on you to give them the real deal’s worth. Push them harder.”
Jack frowned. He couldn’t push much harder himself. “Never fear, sir. They’ve been here one day. They’re already running on twenty-four hours without sleep. Give me a week and we’ll see how they’re doing.”
“Senator McClure’s due out of the hospital in a week. This whole Medusa fiasco better be finished by then or there’ll be hell to pay.”
“I can’t guarantee they’ll quit by then, sir. These dames are pretty tough.”
“I only gave this thing the go-ahead to get it off the table once and for all. You know what you have to do, son. Now go do it.”
Jack clenched his jaw. Twenty-four hours ago he’d have agreed readily that it was a good plan to give the girls what they wanted and shut them up once and for all. But sometime today a tiny doubt had begun to niggle at the back of his mind. He wasn’t entirely sure he could force these women to quit, no matter what he threw at them.
“Any news on my team, sir?”
“Delta Three’s still in place. They’re reporting in on schedule. Due for another call in a couple hours, in fact. Nothing new on Worthington though. The Bhoukaris still have him. And they’re still refusing to give any updates on his condition beyond the fact that he’s alive.”
Jack closed his eyes. He’d trained Scott Worthington from a raw recruit into a damn fine team leader. At least the kid wasn’t vulture bait. But what in the hell was happening to him? And what was he saying to his captors? Jack could only hope Scott wasn’t being tortured. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that Scott would hold out until death, but, Christ, what a lousy way to go.
And now he was supposed to train six women to perform the grueling, and sometimes Herculean, feats of a Special Forces team? Who in the hell were these women trying to kid? They couldn’t hack it in a real crisis. And it was his job to show them that.