Wade Read online

  The patrol came closer. Wade reached to unsnap the shoulder holster nestled under his armpit and palm the weapon it held. The move was silent, practiced, natural. He could sense the familiar closing down of thought and emotion, of everything except animal-like nocturnal perception and steel-hard will. Even as the old readiness spread through him, he felt his gut tighten. Nobody had mentioned killing in order to get Chloe Madison out of Hazaristan, but the possibility had been understood. Wade could do the job if he had to, but he didn’t like it, hadn’t needed to worry about it for a long time.

  One of the policemen laughed in a low rumble of sound that marked him as all too human. He and his partner were talking, their voices gaining in volume as they neared the alley. They strolled past with their turbaned heads nodding in unison and the sticks they carried tapping the sidewalk now and then in random patterns. They didn’t even glance toward the alley.

  Wade sighed and replaced his weapon as the pair’s footfalls receded. He stretched his neck to relieve tense muscles while he waited to be certain the street was clear again. Emerging from the other end of the alley as a precaution, he made his way toward the hotel with all possible speed.

  It was good to shut the door of his room behind him and secure it for the night with his own hardware. The place was a dump, yes, but it was his dump for now, his little spot of America in this too-strange land.

  He glanced at his watch with a frown. The timing was wrong for a call to the far side of the globe. It would jerk his old buddy and former boss, head of Vantage International Security on the Virginia edge of the Beltway, from a sound sleep. Wade shrugged, then hauled out the satellite cell phone from his black leather duffel that sat at the foot of the bed. Activating the built-in scrambler, he punched in the numbers.

  It was picked up on the second ring. Nat Hedley’s voice was a little husky but disgustingly alert otherwise. Wade wasted little time on preliminaries, but gave a succinct rundown of the problem and the delay it was causing. Then he waited.

  “Christ, Wade, what happened to the famous Benedict charm? I thought that moonlight-and-honeysuckle drawl of yours was guaranteed to melt the pants off any female in ten seconds flat.”

  “This one doesn’t wear any pants to melt.”

  “Found that out already, did you?”

  “Drag that wad of fat cells that passes as your brain out of the toilet, my man. I only meant that underwear has never quite caught on over here as in the West. Besides, I don’t think the lady has much use for men.”

  “You mean she’s…”

  “Hell, nothing like that,” Wade said hastily. “She’s been taught by experts to avoid contact.”

  Nat grunted his understanding, though he didn’t sound particularly convinced. “So what’s the plan?”

  “I wait. That’s if you can confirm that our transport out of here will do the same?”

  “Done. But what if she won’t budge after this deadline? If the hawks in Washington get their way, they’ll be calling in air strikes on Kashi and Ajzukabad any day now.”

  “She’s coming home. It was a promise when I made it, and it’s still a promise.”

  “I heard that. But if she’s not too fond of guys now, how’s she going to feel after you bundle her off to the States when she doesn’t want to go.”

  “Grateful?”

  “Wouldn’t bet on it. In my experience, females show gratitude least when you expect it most. Ouch! Maggie, hey! Stop it, woman!”

  Wade grinned briefly as he listened to what sounded like Nat taking his lumps from a pillow being wielded by his wife and bedmate of some twelve or thirteen years. When he thought he might be heard again, he said, “Doesn’t much matter what Chloe Madison thinks. She’ll be safe, and that’s the important thing.”

  Nat apparently lost the battle among the sheets, because it was Maggie Hedley who spoke in Wade’s ear. “You be patient with that girl, you hear me, Wade Benedict. Enough people have pushed her around without you doing the same thing.”

  “I can’t just walk away from her.”

  “Now why? That precious Old South honor of yours? You gave your word, and that’s it?”

  “I promised John.”

  “So what? She didn’t ask you to make promises any more than she asked you to rescue her. And if she makes up her mind to stay, what’s that to you?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like over here. Women have no value, zilch, nada, none. A man can do anything to them and get away with it. Leaving her behind could be a death sentence. Or worse.”

  “Nothing is worse than death, my darling man. But let me get this straight. You’re worrying yourself to smithereens over what might happen to this woman you’ve barely met?”

  Wade had known Nat and his wife a long time. He was fond of them both, particularly Maggie who made a mean lemon icebox pie and had an unerring instinct for finding the soft underbelly of the tough guys who worked for her husband. Still, he’d learned the hard way to tread warily when she was on the warpath. “I guess you could say that.”

  “Attractive, is she?”

  “Wouldn’t know, though she was a cute kid from her photos.” He gave Nat’s wife the scoop on that part.

  “Lord, you’re worse off than I thought!”

  “Now, Maggie,” he began with exaggerated patience.

  “Forget it. Bring her home by force, if that’s what you have to do. But remember that you’re supposed to be a gentleman. You can at least act like one, even if being one is too much for you!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said in his most deferential tone. It was a relief to hear Maggie laugh before she handed the phone back to her husband.

  Wade clarified a few more details with Nat, then signed off and tossed the phone back into the top of his duffel. It bounced off a plastic carton of canned chicken with crackers, and he dug out that snack package. He hadn’t eaten before positioning himself to invade Chloe’s living space, and now his stomach thought his throat had been cut. It wasn’t the first meal he’d made out of a can by far. Food wasn’t too high on his list of priorities, and it was less trouble to eat in his room than hunt a restaurant meal. Besides, though he wasn’t overly squeamish, he did have his standards, and the starvation rate in this part of the world made him wonder just what kind of meat might be on the menu.

  Popping the top on the chicken, he fished out a chunk and balanced it on a cracker before wolfing it down. While he chewed, he unlaced his boots and kicked them off. By the time he had finished the sketchy meal and chugged a bottle of tepid water, he had undressed and was on his way to the shower.

  He wasn’t sleepy and there was no TV. He pulled out the dossier on Ahmad along with a sheaf of other reports, and spent an hour or so going over them. They weren’t exactly bedtime stories. The Taliban were a piece of work, like some hyperreligious motorcycle gang drunk on power and testosterone, getting off on their reign of terror. That they targeted women was typical of that kind of gang-bang mentality, Wade thought, but still enough to turn the stomach of a Southern good old boy brought up to revere the opposite sex. By the time he turned out the light, he had an even clearer understanding of the anger that drove Chloe Madison, since a savage need to punch out something or somebody thrummed in his own veins. If there had ever been a prayer in hell that he’d leave her behind to live out her life with these misogynistic psychopaths, there was one no longer.

  The dream began as if always did, with a dance.

  It was a lavish embassy function on a pleasantly cool night, as most nights were in Middle Eastern desert countries. A band played the kind of music that made a decent background for chitchat covering anything from casual flirtation and political arguments to megabuck business ventures and high-level diplomatic initiatives. The room smelled of flowers, American liquor and food, and though relatively few women were present other than embassy staff, the glittering jewelry rivaled the sparkle of the chandeliers overhead. Wade was officially off duty from his job of protecting the ambassador and
his family and other embassy personnel, but attending such formal events as backup was always encouraged. Fading into the woodwork, holding up the wall at strategic posts was his specialty, so it was a surprise when the trophy wife of one of the middle-aged Texas oilmen in town snagged his elbow and pulled him out onto the dance floor. She’d had a bit too much champagne, maybe to drown whatever pain it was that hovered behind her strained smile. When she locked her arms around his neck and draped herself over him like some drooping lily, Wade didn’t have the heart to push her away. A large part of that reluctance had been because he could feel the difficult breaths she took as she tried to control tears. Then, as he turned with her in the dance, he noticed that the husband was watching and he wasn’t happy.

  Abruptly he was transported to a mud hut on the edge of some small town. The place was an extremist stronghold where the vice consul was being held after being abducted from his car on a lonely road where he shouldn’t have been in the first place. The oilman’s wife, who definitely shouldn’t have been there, either, was also in the dark hut.

  Wade had just infiltrated the place, taking out the guard posted at the rear entrance and another one in the hallway. He could hear the rest of the terrorist cell in a front room chowing down, since it was Ramadan and they’d been fasting all day. He had exactly three minutes, an eternity of time, to get the kidnapped pair on their feet and out the back door. Then all hell was going to break loose as the Diplomatic Security Service, under command of security chief Nat Hedley, swept out the snake’s nest.

  Wade moved soundlessly into the windowless cubicle of a room where the vice consul and the woman were laid out back to back on the floor. The embassy second-in-command was his first responsibility. A Yale man with a lanky build and perpetually arrogant expression, he was smart enough to wait for instructions after he was freed. Then Wade turned to the oilman’s wife.

  Her face was a ghastly mask of ruined makeup overlaying pain and terror. She was tied up like a bulldogged steer, her body bent backward in a bow. No way was she going to be able to walk out on her own. He cut her loose with a few quick slices, stifling her moan with one hand as he helped her straighten her body. Pulling her upright, he clutched her against him with a firm grip while holding his weapon ready in his free hand. He motioned to the Yale man to follow, then started back the way he’d come.

  He heard the yelled order, first round of shots and slamming entry before his second step. Something was wrong; the operation was going down early. He put it in high gear as he half dragged the woman down the back hall.

  The exit ahead was blocked by a man’s figure. The compressed thump of silenced shots echoed off the walls. Wade felt the woman he carried jerk as the bullets hit her, felt the warm wet splatter of her blood. He raised his weapon, squeezed the trigger. Then a red and orange fireball lit the night and his world went to pieces.

  Wade came awake so fast that he wrenched to a sitting position on the mattress before his eyes snapped open. His breath rasped in his throat. His brain felt on fire. The purple blotch of scar tissue on his left side and groove hidden by the hair at his temple burned with phantom pain. Resting his elbows on his raised knees, he closed his eyes again and pressed the heels of his hands hard against the eyelids. Then he let his hands drop and shook himself like a dog.

  Where that nightmare had come from was no mystery. He’d lived it. He’d also relived it during debriefing, when he’d tried to explain that the death of one of the hostages was no DSS failure but a setup, and for months afterward. Why it had visited him again tonight, years after he’d conquered it, was easy to see. He’d failed once to remove a woman from danger and was half-afraid that the same thing would happen again.

  The two cases were nothing alike, and Wade knew it. There was no way in hell he could have guessed that the oilman wanted his wife dead for a lot of twisted reasons that had more to do with her habit of asking strange men to dance than it did Middle Eastern politics or government security. It made no difference. He was still forced to second-guess his decision and actions that night, and to wonder if he could make any similar situation come out right.

  Wade sometimes thought the problem was that the incident had never been resolved. Nat Hedley had raised ten kinds of stink over the foul-up, but it had done no good. There was considerable confusion, intentional or otherwise, about just who had triggered the op or been first through the hut’s rear entrance. Wade had been out of it for days, in no shape for filing official reports, and the vice consul had seen nothing once he’d hit the floor at the first sound of gunfire. Accusing a wealthy and influential citizen who was a frequent campaign contributor of having his wife murdered had not been a popular idea, and the body had been released for shipment back to the States followed by cremation. Then a week later, the oilman, in the grip of apparent senile dementia associated with Alzheimer’s, had shot himself. The incident was written off as an unfortunate accident during a hostage situation and no amount of requests for investigation could get it reopened.

  Wade had resigned from the DSS, returning to the oil fields that he’d abandoned when Nat Hedley recruited him. He’d settled back into a comfortable routine of months overseas followed by weeks at home. Nat had left the service a couple of years later to start Vantage International Security, specializing in the rescue of Americans kidnapped or otherwise detained in foreign countries. And that had been that, until Wade got the call from John Madison.

  In retrospect, Wade thought he’d gravitated toward John in those early oil-field days out of the need for something that he’d never gotten from his old man. Why John, almost twenty years older, had taken him on, Wade couldn’t imagine. He’d been a reckless kid and high-tempered, with more bravado than brains. It was a wonder he hadn’t gotten himself killed a dozen times over. John’s influence had steadied him, given him the grounding he’d needed to set himself straight.

  A sharp knock on the door snagged his attention just then. He eased from the bed and stepped into his pants. Picking up his handgun from the bedside table, he crossed to the room noiselessly on bare feet. There was no peephole. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out what was happening in the hall, however, since the doorknob turned under his fingers as he touched it.

  He pulled his hand back, then thumbed off the safety of his weapon. Carefully he reached down and set aside the stainless-steel bar he’d added to the hotel’s flimsy security. Then he stepped to one side and waited.

  The lock clicked and the door opened a crack. It widened. A man inserted his head and shoulders.

  Wade grabbed the intruder’s shirtfront and jerked him inside. Then he slammed him against the wall and shoved his handgun’s barrel under the man’s chin. “You have two seconds to tell me what you’re doing here,” he said in a low growl. “Start talking.”

  “Release me, infidel, or you will be shot.”

  “Be hard to give the order without the bottom half of your face.” Wade’s reply was in the Pashtu the man had used, since he’d picked up the rudiments in a two-week crash course, thanks in large part to past familiarity with Arabic. Catching a furtive sound from outside, he added, “Tell your buddy to step into the room where I can see him or this discussion is over.”

  The man he held stood rigid, resistance in every line of his body. The struggle between survival and defiance was almost palpable. Then he called out, “Enter, Zahir.”

  A slight figure slid around the doorjamb and stood waiting with his back pressed to the facing. A spate of Pashtu far too rapid for Wade to follow passed between the two men. As it ended, the smaller one looked at him and put his hands together and bowed in a gesture of respect. “Esteemed sir,” he said in passable English. “We mean you no harm but only wished to make your acquaintance and discover the purpose for your visit to Ajzukabad.”

  “You picked a mighty strange time for a social call,” Wade returned.

  “This may be so. It was necessary in order to find you in your room.”

  That s
ounded as if they might have attempted to contact him earlier. It didn’t mean they wouldn’t have slit his throat, given half a chance, but seemed to hint at semipeaceable intentions. He indicated the bedside lamp. “Let’s have a little light on the subject, shall we?”

  The lamp gave off less light than a couple of good birthday candles, but it was enough to confirm his suspicions. He’d never laid eyes on the younger man who had flicked it on, but the one who had come through the door first was Chloe’s stepbrother Ahmad. Wade released him and stepped back. Remembering just in time that the Hazari was supposed to be a virtual stranger to him, he said, “I saw you in Kashi, at the football stadium.”

  “And I you,” Ahmad replied, then continued with his companion dutifully translating after him. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  Wade gave his name, even as he wondered belatedly if he should have arranged for a false identity in case Chloe’s stepbrother was the culprit behind the missing letters. No recognition appeared in the guy’s face, however, which meant he either had no memory for names or was good at hiding reactions behind his beard.

  “Why do you linger in the bazaar? Why do you watch our women?”

  “Veils just plumb fascinate me,” Wade said with his best dumb-as-dirt-drawl. “Can’t for the life of me see how they breathe under them tablecloths, not to mention how they ever manage to cross a street without getting run over. Now I’d like to know why you’ve been following me.”

  “You must expect such things when you travel in a country that is at war.”

  Wade had expected them, as a matter of fact. That was why he’d gone a couple of miles out of his way to lose the tail before heading to the house where Chloe lived earlier. “The idea makes me nervous. I’m a textile importer, not a spy.”