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  She waited in silence, staring at the room in general and carefully not looking at Frank’s hurt expression. That he’d gotten the highest score from observers by a factor of two was beside the point, and one she wouldn’t be mentioning. She’d also be keeping silent about Frank being the only trainee to take her down, even briefly.

  She didn’t invite questions, that wasn’t the point. She wanted to drive, to “beat” the point home. Damn him. That nickname had already begun to run through the other trainers. It was better than her childhood nickname of Beebee, for Beatrice Belfour, but not much. She’d had to pound that one into the ground throughout grade school, but the more she attempted to bury “Beat” the more often it cropped up. She had a nasty feeling this one was going to run through the agency.

  “Dismissed. Get clean and get some sleep.” After three months of FLETC they knew that they wouldn’t have time to catch up on sleep. Drills at odd hours, functioning on high alert for days in crisis situations, learning to fight through the time when hallucinations from lack of sleep set in.

  She waited until they were all gone, then shut down the projector and the lights.

  He was waiting for her in the midnight shadows, leaning back against one of the trees of the low forest cultured for use in these scenarios.

  Of course, he was. As she’d known he’d be.

  She stood under the small yellow porch light of the double-wide, four steel steps to the ground.

  He didn’t move, leaving the choice to her.

  Her boyfriend in college had not understood her sophomore-year turn from art, originally chosen to piss off her parents, to criminology, chosen to please herself.

  Once she’d signed up for agent training, she only seemed to attract the men who were interested in proving they could out-wrestle a Secret Service agent. None of their egos had taken kindly to her definitive proof that none of them could.

  Frank Adams was the first man in a long time who hadn’t seen her as a target, something to conquer. Instead he waited and watched as her blood burned in the hot Georgia night and her pulse raced.

  She was barely conscious of the steps she descended or the rough ground she crossed until they stood just inches apart under the trees. The night air scented by the tiny white flowers of the glorybower tree, punch strong but with a sweetness as soft as a truly fine gelato on a hot summer night. The blooms looked like stars lost from the sky and scattered over the dark green leaves, the only light in the darkness.

  “Last time you socked me in the gut,” his voice was a gentle rumble in the shadows.

  She had.

  “Good punch by the way.” He slid his hands around her waist.

  “Thanks,” she wrapped her own around his neck.

  He nuzzled her hair, “Even hot and sweaty you smell amazing.”

  She let herself lean her cheek against his chest and breathe him in. “So do you.”

  He scooped her up into his arms as if she were a feather. “Now’s the time to say it if you’re going to.”

  She kept her mouth shut, her arms around his neck, and her cheek on his chest.

  He waited three heartbeats that she could feel and hear in his chest, then he strode into the woods until she wondered how he navigated at all. Even the tiny five-petal flowers faded away, though not their glorious scent that wrapped about them like a protective shawl.

  He didn’t set her down to kiss her, but simply kept her cradled against him. His mouth impossibly soft, his arms incredibly strong.

  Beatrice had fought against everything in her life: her nicknames, her parents, the system, even the training rules. In Frank’s arms, there was no need to fight at all. His kiss was everything she hadn’t expected from the man she’d swept off the street three months ago. It was soft, playful, and included a smile when they finally moaned in unison.

  He set her on her feet and leaned her back against a tree. He pinned her there with his lips, with the gentle brushstrokes of those big hands. He knelt before her and feasted on her body, and all she could do was hold on. When at last he had her naked against the tree, she guided him over her. A willing lover, one who made her feel things she hadn’t felt before.

  Not just the amazing rocketing sensations firing through her body in unprecedented waves of heat and pleasure. Not simply desired either. He made her feel needed. Important. As if being here with her was the only thing he cared about in the world.

  When he had shed his own clothes and leaned naked upon her, skin-to-skin, she didn’t go wild as she’d thought she’d might, ravenous for his touch and smell. Instead a peace settled over her as she traced her hands over his beautiful chest, invisible in the darkness, but still beautiful.

  “Been thinking about this, haven’t you?” she whispered when he reached down to his pants and pulled out some protection with a soft crackle of foil.

  “Since the moment you pulled that damn gun on me.”

  “A gun turns you on?” She teased his pecs with her tongue.

  “No.” His groan rippled against her lips. “A gun makes my balls shrivel in fear.”

  She laughed and rested her forehead against his sternum as he stroked his hands up and down her back.

  “But the woman who was wielding it turned me on since before I even heard her name.”

  “Damn you,” her soft curse was lost against his lips as he lifted her by cupping his strong hands into a seat as she wrapped her legs about his hips.

  He leaned her back against the tree and took her, one of the most incredible experiences of her twenty-three years.

  “You feel even better than my car.”

  His chuckle was deep and rippled along her chest.

  “Damn high praise that.”

  Chapter 12

  Frank: Now

  She’s the best.”

  Frank knew better than to feel offended. First, the President was trying to make him feel better in a potentially ugly situation. Second, he was absolutely right. Even he wasn’t as good as Agent Beatrice Belfour.

  He needed to remember that.

  If anyone could get out of this alive, it was Beat.

  “So, what’s the situation?”

  Hank had radioed Frank that they were ready to brief the President on the G-B situation. Frank had informed the President as he came out of a quick meeting with the European Central Bank representative to the U.N., checking in on the latest banking crisis to hit the European Union. All of the aftershocks of the American recession were still having brutal ripple effects around the world. The recovery ripples just now crossing America were still a year or more in the future for Europe and Asia.

  When Frank told the President about the problem in Guinea-Bissau, he’d immediately rescheduled a coffee chat with India and they’d taken the elevator down to the Secret Service’s security office in the basement.

  “I don’t know the situation yet, Mr. President.” Frank stuck his head out of the elevator and looked carefully both ways despite being inside the U.N. security perimeter. Two of his agents at either end of the hall signaled clear.

  Frank led the President across the hall and down two doors. “I just know that she and the ambassador have been missing for thirty-one hours now. I’m hoping we’ve found out more than that.” And if they hadn’t, he just might steal a plane and fly over there himself to see what he could find out.

  He went through the first door and inspected the small outer room. Six feet square, it had an American flag, a steel door, and a camera.

  Once the outer door had latched behind them, two sharp buzzes filled the room. The first, driving bolts into the door behind them. The second, releasing the bolts on the door ahead. They moved into the war room.

  A line of agents sat at terminals along the right-hand wall. They were responsible for the security of the room, coordinating all U.S. agent activities within the U.N. comple
x, and controlling outside security. Along the left wall a series of stations faced inward, about a third of these were staffed. They were responsible for communications, research, and anything needed by the active teams on site, including the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., presently in London.

  In the center, a table that could seat ten faced a trio of large flat screens on the far wall.

  The room wasn’t as secure and flexible as the White House Situation Room, but it was close. Close enough to observe and address world crises. Frank glared at the G-B map presently filling the central screen. Especially in unstable little ratholes like Guinea-Bissau.

  The President joined Hank at the table, Frank stood behind a swivel chair and held on until his fingers ached where they dug into the leather. But he couldn’t let go.

  It was Hank’s briefing. Frank had retasked him to prepare this briefing because, despite his constant joking and deep joy in hazing rookies, he was a top agent. No military commander could get to New York, cleared into the U.N.’s extraterritorial zone, and be sufficiently briefed in time, so Frank had loaned Hank to them as a liaison. If the situation escalated, they could call the Joint Chiefs into the Situation Room and link down to them.

  At least with Hank on the case, Frank could stay focused on the President’s security.

  Mostly.

  “We’ve been able to confirm that the ambassador’s plane landed in Bissau at Osvaldo Vieira International. Thankfully we had the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman in the vicinity. They flew a Raptor drone overhead twenty minutes ago and were able to identify the plane.”

  A slide came up of the one-strip airport. A white circle around a tiny white cross on gray tarmac. The next slide a close-up so good he could almost count the rivets of the embassy’s Beech King Air.

  There was a dark blotch on the tarmac at the foot of the steps. A blotch that didn’t look like spilled oil. Hank didn’t comment on it, so neither did Frank. They’d both seen the spray and bleed-out pattern of a single headshot before. It wasn’t important to the tactical situation, other than to confirm it sucked. They already knew that, without the confirmation. No body in evidence, no way to tell anything about who it had been.

  The President’s skin, gone abruptly gray, told that he’d reached the same conclusion.

  Hank put up the next slide. It showed a small building, or rather the remains of one.

  The walls had been blown out sideways, the roof was gone. Inside were the remains of a pair of SUVs. A close-up revealed a leg and an arm, the first stuck out from beneath a section of the roof, the other wasn’t attached to anything.

  The silence in the room was so thick that it pressed in on Frank from every side. Everyone was waiting for his reaction and he wasn’t ready to have one yet.

  “Do we have a higher resolution image?”

  Hank said something to one of the left-wall techs and the image jumped inward until the two body parts were nearly life-size projected against the wall. So close you could smell the red dust, the black char from the fire, and the deep-in-the-throat bite of copper that was spilled blood.

  The arm wore a golden bracelet, not something Beat would ever wear in the field.

  The leg had a men’s shoe.

  He swallowed hard and managed to keep his voice steady.

  “What else do we know?”

  # # #

  “What we know,” Beat turned to face Ambassador Green. “Is that we need to remain calm and quiet.”

  “But…”

  She held up a hand to silence him.

  Okay, she hadn’t killed the man, yet. Though she was certainly going to reserve that option. He still survived mostly because it was bad form to kill the man you were sworn to protect. And a little bit because he was such a fish out of water that she had to pity him. He’d been a political appointee by the prior administration rather than a career diplomat. And that he’d been assigned to the Senegalese embassy only said how low he was on the totem pole. He should have contributed more to the last President’s campaign, or to a different party and stayed in Kansas or wherever he hailed from.

  Three years he’d been in Senegal and he had the common sense of a hamster. For one thing, after seeing what he’d signed up for, he’d stayed. Bad choice right out of the gate. This would be a hard posting even for a career Foreign Service diplomat. At least he appeared to be trying to do the right thing, but he really needed to learn to listen to direction.

  Of course his chief attaché was currently lying in little pieces along with the remains of the embassy’s two SUVs and airport garage. Up until the explosion, those vehicles and a small liaison office downtown had been the sole assets of the U.S. government in Guinea-Bissau. Now only the office remained.

  When the explosion occurred, she and the ambassador had been waiting halfway to the garage while his assistant trotted back to the plane on her mid-heel pumps for his forgotten briefcase. The chief attaché and the chargé d’affaires hadn’t been so fortunate. They’d gone ahead to the garage, a fancy word for a concrete block with two metal roll-up doors she could have unlocked in less than a minute without keys or explosives.

  After much hiding, and three miles of sneaking through the suburbs of a city at war, the airport now lay thirty hours behind them. In their weaving track, they’d covered perhaps a quarter of that distance from the airport as the crow flies.

  They huddled now in a hut of cracked, sun-baked brick walls and a rotting tin roof. The red dirt floor bore little in the way of debris or belongings, indicating that it was, perhaps, if their luck was changing even a little please, vacant. She’d erased their footprints for a hundred paces back, but they had to stay quiet and out of sight.

  The ambassador and Charlotte his personal secretary, clearly with side benefits, huddled hip to hip against the back wall. Whatever they did on the side wasn’t her business, neither wore a ring anyway. They were swathed as she was, in clothing snagged from clotheslines.

  Sam Green’s black pants with a simple white dashiki hanging to mid-calf over them worked well. She had him scuff up his black dress shoes. If anything had driven home the reality of their situation for him, even more than witnessing the explosion that had killed his two top-ranked staffers, it was when she’d grabbed the shoe from his hands as he gently patted it with red dirt. Beatrice had scrubbed it against some broken concrete until it was deeply scarred, then shoved it into the soil and handed it back to him.

  Charlotte actually looked quite fetching in the traditional golden yellow-and-brown print buba and wrap-around sarong skirt. Beatrice had snagged a traditional head wrap for her, but Charlotte couldn’t keep it on her long, smooth hair. Even the head scarf kept slipping down around her shoulders.

  Beatrice herself had found a bright blue pagne blouse and matching skirt. It would have been garish or at least stand-out in any environ other than West Africa, but here it blended in.

  Charlotte’s feet weren’t up to running barefoot, so she’d retained the bright blue pumps that didn’t fit in at all. Of course, neither did her or Green’s blond hair, blue eyes, and New England-fair skin. They’d be a beautiful couple in a Boston townhouse, but they sure didn’t belong on the streets of an African country on the verge of collapse.

  And neither of them knew how to move. She’d tried to show them the lazy, ambling walk of sub-Saharan equatorial Africa. That had been a fiasco. It was as if they’d traveled direct from prep school to an alien planet and learned nothing during their time in Africa. Charlotte was doing better than the ambassador, but not much. No matter how nice they might be as people or how good they might be at diplomacy, they were lost causes when it came to hiding out and blending in.

  The three of them had been barely a dozen yards from the garage when it went up. She’d seen the fizzle of a failed explosive device and thrown the ambassador and Charlotte behind the next garage over just as the backup device
blew the world to shit.

  She’d turned to sprint them back to the plane, hoping she could find some way to fly it out of there before someone shot it down. Then she’d spotted the army jeep roaring up beside it just in time to duck back out of sight. A ragtag trio climbed aboard the Beech King Air, their Soviet-era Kalashnikov machine guns leading the way. They hauled the Senegalese pilot out of the plane. Only Beat’s hand over Charlotte’s mouth had stopped the scream when they’d executed him on the tarmac beside the embassy plane.

  Beatrice had dragged them to their feet and actually hit and slapped them until they started running.

  Now, thirty hours later, they huddled in the midday heat. Her throat aching with the dry dust and blazing equatorial heat.

  Their assets included her handgun, four spare magazines, one briefcase full of paperwork and a few pens that the ambassador had refused to abandon, but she’d gotten him to stuff it into a stolen burlap sack he’d then carried over his shoulder, and a pair of blue pumps. No cell phone signals, and the neighborhoods they’d passed through had no overhead lines, so no electricity or landline phones.

  The shocking number of tacticals, white Toyota pickups with .50 caliber machine guns turreted in their beds, did not point to finding much help in the city.

  Still, she’d listened initially to Ambassador Green’s insistence on reaching the American Liaison Office or the Presidential Palace in the heart of the city. But the black smoke now rising from that direction indicated that this time, if it was again a coup, it had not gone as smoothly as the prior executions of a few key leaders. Thirty hours of hard work and they’d covered less than two of the six kilometers to the city center. And the chances of survival decreased with every meter in that direction.

  After dark, she’d see if the people around here had any food to steal.

  And maybe someone had a pair of sandals for Charlotte.