Course of Action: Crossfire (13 page)

The room couldn't have been more than ten or twelve feet across. The floor was dirt, the walls crumbling adobe over mud brick. There were no windows and only one wooden door. The room was dim but not completely dark, which Riley didn't understand until she tipped her head and peered up at the tall, narrow tunnel almost directly above her. The shaft was roofed but open openings on all four sides near the top let in a bright glow of moonlight...and a surprisingly cool breeze.

“It's a wind-catcher,” Pete said as she craned her neck for a better look, “designed to trap the prevailing desert winds and funnel them downward.”

“This one certainly works.”

“Wind-catchers were a vital feature in old outposts like this one. I'm told they could keep rooms cool enough to store water at near freezing temperatures even during the hottest months.”

She dropped her gaze, dragged her tongue across dry lips and glanced around the room again. “Speaking of water...”

“Our friends didn't leave any. Or any food. There's a relief bucket in the corner, though, if you need to use it.”

Riley glanced at it with a moue of distaste. Although this twelve-nation tour to benefit Africa's starving children had taken her primarily to major cities with modern facilities, she'd visited a few less developed areas. At some of those spots she'd used primitive restrooms with squat toilets consisting of cement trenches or jagged holes cut in the floor. This would be her first bucket, however.

“I'm good,” she replied, wondering how long she could hold it. “But if you have to...”

“I did while you were still out.”

“Oh.” She gestured helplessly at the wooden door. “I assume you also tried that.”

“You assume right. No lock, but it's barred on the outside.”

Of course it was. What was she thinking? Winborne had no doubt checked every corner and chink in the wall. Probably wedged his body partway up the narrow wind tower to see if they could use that as an avenue of escape.

Fighting a rush of desperation, she raised a hand to push back her tumbled hair and winced at the burning ache in her shoulders. “Did I miss anything else? I mean, did you talk to any of the guys who brought us here? Did they say what they want? And where's Prince al Said?”

“I couldn't get anything out of them. Then again,” he added with a wry grimace, “it wasn't a real friendly discussion. As for the prince, I though I heard his voice and some...sounds a while ago.”

The brief hesitation made Riley's insides squeeze. “What kind of sounds? Shouts? Screams? Gunshots?”

“More like grunts. And moans,” he added with obvious reluctance.

Okay, now she really needed to hit that bucket.

“Then I guess there's nothing else we can do now except wait.”

“Actually,” Winborne commented as he wrestled his way out of his torn jacket, “I can think of several interesting ways to pass the time, but we'll save them until you aren't hurting all over.”

And there it was. The cocky, come-hither grin he'd sent her way at Aly's wedding. This time she couldn't help responding. “Don't get your hopes up, Cowboy.”

“A man can only pray. Here, put this on.”

He held the jacket up for her to slide over her arms. It hung from her shoulders like a blanket and provided surprisingly welcome warmth. The wind-catcher was doing its job.

His low-cut white vest was as grimy as his shirt. He removed the vest, then unfastened his cuff links and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Riley gasped at the vicious bruising and lacerations caused by the plastic ties. Her wrists no doubt sported a matching set of raw, red bracelets under their makeshift bandages.

She was still examining his awful bruises when he hefted the cuff links in a palm. Testing their size and weight and, she realized with a lurch, their potential as a weapon. The face of each link was a small square of burnished silver. A metal stem connected the face to a movable tab. She couldn't imagine what Winborne could do with them until he planted both squares against a palm and closed his fist. The stems protruded through his fingers like small silver spikes.

She looked from his fist to his face in disbelief. “You're not really planning to go on the attack with cuff links, are you?”

“Not unless I have to.” He glanced up, saw the dismay in her expression and hooked a brow. “What, you've never heard of brass knuckles?”

“Yes, but...”

She broke off, suddenly remembering the lethal damage he'd inflicted with the pointy end of a comb.

Her shoulders sagged as a feeling of complete unreality gripped her. She couldn't believe she was locked in a dim storeroom in some crumbling fort in the middle of the desert, at the mercy of armed men. All the stress of her career, all the years of strife and turmoil with her mother, faded into insignificance. This was real, this was now and this was scary as hell.

More scary for her, apparently, than for Pete Winborne. He eased down the wall and stretched out. Crossing his ankles, he wadded up the discarded vest and stuffed it under his head as a pillow. “First rule of any op,” he said in response to her incredulous expression. “Rest when you can and conserve your energy. No saying when you'll need it.”

Riley just stared at him.

‘Here...” He patted the dirt beside him. “You might as well get comfortable.”

“Don't we need to...to...?” She circled a hand in the air. “I don't know. Figure out an escape plan?”

“As I see it, we have two possible options. One, we shimmy up the wind tunnel, cross the roof, drop down, overcome any guard posted outside and take off across the desert.”

She glanced at the narrow shaft and shook her head incredulously. “You seriously think you can get up that?”

“Only if necessary.”

“What's option two?”

“The door opens. One or more men come in. Or they order us out. I assess the situation and take appropriate action.”

“
Appropriate action?
That's it? That's your Plan B?”

“Can you think of something better?”

He wasn't being sarcastic. He looked genuinely interested in her response. Riley opened her mouth. Sucked dusty air for several seconds. Let it out on a slow whoosh.

“No.”

“If you do, let me know. In the meantime—” he patted the dirt beside him again “—we should sleep.”

She hesitated long moments, then gathered the tattered shreds of her dignity. “Turn your face to the other wall. I need to take care of business first.”

 

Chapter 4

W
ith Riley curled into his side, Pete knew he wouldn't get much rest. No way he could force his spring-tight body to relax with her breasts flattened against his ribs. Or release his coiled tension when she burrowed closer and her breath painted a warm, moist patch on his neck.

He lay unmoving for most of what remained of the night so as not to disturb her restless sleep and reviewed the intel he'd gathered so far.

Despite Riley's look of near shock when he'd said his main escape plan at this point consisted of assessing the situation and taking appropriate action, he'd been dead serious. Gathering and assessing intel formed the first and probably most critical phase of any operations plan. No Special Forces team would launch without assimilating as much information about the target area as possible. The more data points a team put together, the better its chances of success.

“Uhnnn.”

The little moan slipped through Riley's lips as she stirred and snuggled closer. Pete gritted his teeth and forced himself to focus on what he knew so far.

One, their kidnappers weren't wild-eyed fanatics looking for a path to glory by blowing up themselves and as many innocents as possible. They'd come in heavily armed and conducted a well-orchestrated raid.

Two, they'd zeroed right in on Riley and the prince—arguably the two highest value targets in the theater. Their appearance had been well publicized. Hell, it had made the front page of the papers. Although there'd been a good number of diplomats and wealthy patrons at the theater as well, Pete doubted the attackers could have ID'd them in advance. They certainly hadn't tried to sort them out on-scene. That told him they'd come in with the specific intent of taking Riley and al Said, with Riley's pesky “husband” tossed into the bag at the last minute.

Three, they'd chosen their base camp, if this was it, well. There had to be thousands of these old forts strung along the old trade routes crisscrossing the desert or guarding against attack by sea. Oman itself boasted more than five hundred ancient fortifications along its thousand-mile coastline. Some, like the mighty crusader-era Nizwa Fort, were huge castles bristling with watchtowers and ramparts and cannon. Others, like this one, were small strongholds, unrestored but still intact enough that their thick walls would prevent penetration by satellites or drones searching for infrared heat signatures.

Pete's final piece of intel left him distinctly uneasy. The attackers were disciplined. Prince Malik had tried to engage the men in the truck in a dialogue several times during the grueling drive across the desert. They'd responded only with grunts and, once, with an obvious threat to shut him up with another rifle butt to the temple.

The fact that they
were
so disciplined added considerably to the pucker factor, Pete thought grimly as he stared up at the thin moonlight filtering down the wind-catcher's shaft. It made them less likely to get all jumpy and trigger-happy. But it also meant they were
more
prepared to follow orders...including, if it came to that, torturing or killing their hostages. Pete guessed the chances of getting close to one of them, playing on his or her sympathy, were slim at best. Still, he intended to try.

* * *

He made the first attempt several hours later when the sound of wood scraping against wood broke the dusty stillness.

“Riley. Wake up.”

“Huh?” Groggy and disoriented, she started to push upright, jerked to a stop, grimaced and put up a hand to rub shoulders that obviously still ached like hell. “Wh—”

That was all she got out before the door to their windowless room swung open. Pete rolled swiftly to his feet, recording details with the speed of a Nikon camera. The door opened onto another room, bigger and swept with the soft light of a desert dawn. He didn't see any sign of the prince but did note the bare essentials—a low table with cushions stacked around it, an oil lamp hung on a chain, a frayed prayer rug—before the two figures silhouetted in the doorway blocked his view.

They were too savvy to come into the small room, where Pete might have been able to jump them. One was thin and wiry, in his late twenties and carrying a bulging cloth sack. The other was taller, heavier and sported a scar that cut across his left cheek and pulled his upper lip into what looked like a permanent sneer. Since neither seemed inclined to speak, Pete broke the ice.

“As-salám aláykum.”

The traditional “peace be with you” sure as hell didn't fit the circumstances, but it was the best he could do given his limited Arabic. He wasn't surprised when neither of the two men returned a response.

“Teh ki ingleezi?”

“Yes,” Scarface sneered. “I speak English. You and the woman, move back. Against the far wall.”

“My wife's wrists are raw and bleeding,” Pete said, reaching a hand down to help Riley up. “We need—”

“Save your lies! We know she is not your wife.”

His black eyes shifted from Pete to Riley. Disdain filled them as they made a slow sweep from her tangled hair to her bare shoulders and back again.

“We have studied you.” His deformed lip curled even higher. “Google is a most useful tool, yes? We know all there is to know about you. Your singing debut at the age of nine, your dislike of chocolate, your schedule, how much you earned last year. But nowhere in all this information was there mention of a husband.”

Pete scrambled for an answer, but Riley beat him to it. Her chin lifting, she oozed a frigid confidence he knew was sheer bravado. “What you read on Google is exactly what I allow my publicists to put out. I don't share my personal life.”

“You are much in the spotlight,” Scarface argued. “There would be mention of a marriage.”

“Not if it took place at a private estate in Switzerland,” she countered icily, “with only two witnesses.”

“And no paparazzi,” Pete added, hooking a protective arm around Riley's shoulders. “The bastards have hounded my wife since her first performance at the Met. They still nip at her heels like jackals, but we refuse to let them into our bedroom. As far as the world knows, I'm her business manager.”

“Her business manager? Then perhaps it was meant for us to take you, too. You will not waste our time with useless hostage negotiations.”

“Is that what this is about? You're holding us for ransom?”

“Ransom? No.”

The twisted smile fell off their captor's face, and the malevolence that flooded his black eyes raised the hairs on the back of Pete's neck.

“This is blood money we speak of. Which you will see is paid with all speed or you will watch your
wife
fed to the vultures, piece by piece.”

He barked a curt command to his pal, who tossed the cloth sack onto the dirt floor. Both men then backed up and the younger reached for the door.

“Wait! What about Prince Malik? Is he...?”

The door slammed on Pete's questions. He heard the scrape of wood on wood, then the thud of a heavy bar dropping into place.

Riley broke the stark silence that followed with a small, hoarse laugh. “That went well.”

“Yeah, it did.” He dredged up a shrug. No way he was going to let her see how hard Scarface's last threat had hit. “At least we know they're after money, not on some extremist jihad. C'mon, let's check out our goodie bag.”

There was water, thank God. Two quart-size plastic bottles. A half-dozen rounds of doughy flatbread. A wedge of cheese so ripe Pete's nose wrinkled when he unwrapped it. Goat, he figured, or camel. Plus a small sack of dates, the main source of protein for desert dwellers.

The clothing stuffed in the bottom of the sack spoke to their captors' cultural bias. Muttering thanks for male chauvinists around the world, Riley snatched up the slippers, baggy trousers and loose tunic. Its colors were too faded to provide a clue to the original owner's tribe. Not that the information would have helped, necessarily, but Pete was still digging for every scrap of intel.

“Face the wall,” Riley ordered briskly.

Marveling at her resilience, he watched her march to the darkest corner of the room to shed his tuxedo jacket and her tattered gown. Then—reluctantly, manfully—he turned his face to the adobe-pocked wall.

She gave him the all clear a few moments later. He turned back and saw the pointed toes of the slippers peeking out from under the baggy trousers, which billowed around her slender thighs. She'd used a strip of red silk torn from her gown to belt the faded tunic. Covered now from neck to toes, she folded her legs and sank gracefully to the dirt floor.

Her first order of business was to guzzle half a bottle of water. Her second, to pin Pete with a puzzled frown. “What did he mean, ‘blood money?'”

He'd asked himself the same thing. Several times. And didn't have an answer. “I don't know.”

“Well, what do you think? Have we landed in the middle of some kind of tribal feud?”

“I don't know, Slim.”

Riley mulled that over while she tore off a piece of flatbread and wrapped it around a chunk of cheese. Her eyes were thoughtful, her expression distant as she took a bite and chewed slowly.

* * *

Pete guessed their captors wouldn't let too much time pass before they returned with a specific demand and some means of communicating it to the outside world. So he used the interval to prep Riley as best he could.

“They'll probably use a cell phone or digital camera to take a photo or record a video. If they go with a video, they'll have a script prepared. I'll try to convince them to let me deliver it. They don't know my real identity—yet—but you can bet my Special Forces unit at Thumrait has been notified that I went missing during the raid on the opera house. All I need is a few seconds of screen time to communicate a few essentials to them.”

“Like what?”

“The approximate number of hostiles, their type of weaponry, our location, although they'll get that quick enough if these guys aren't smart enough to strip the metadata from any photo or video they transmit.”

“You can communicate all that in a few seconds?”

“We establish codes before every op. Also hand and eye signals to pass information silently when necessary.”

He hated to douse the hope that sprang into her face but needed to level with her.

“Odds are they won't put me on display, though. You're the star, the internationally renowned celebrity. Plus you're a woman, weak and helpless and terrified. In their eyes,” he added quickly. “And the fact that you're so damned gorgeous only adds to the sympathy factor.”

“Thank you. I think.”

Pete ignored the touch of sarcasm and stuck to his brief. “If they go with a video, it's okay to play the frightened hostage. In fact, the more nervous you act, the better. Stammer. Fidget. Tug on your hair, touch your neck. Lose your place in the script.” His eyes held hers. “Then swat the air in front of your face, whine a little and complain that this place is swarming with a dozen bugs. Got that? A dozen...”

“Bugs. Got it. I assume that's a Special Ops code word?”

“Stands for
big ugly guys
. One of our more polite terms for hostiles,” he confirmed. “I think we borrowed it from some movie or video game. If you can, work the word
saw
into the same or a second sentence with
bugs
.”

“And
saw
stands for?”

“Squad automatic weapon. It'll tell our guys what kind of return fire to expect. You could throw out something like ‘Ick, I just saw another bug!'”

She gave him a pained look. “I'm sure I can do better than
ick
.”

“Yeah, I'll bet you can. Just don't overplay it,” he cautioned. “You don't want Scarface and friends to pick up on your signals.”

Another pained look, this one accompanied by a distinct huff. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, Sergeant, but opera isn't all lung power. I studied piano and the cello to better appreciate orchestration. I had to learn French, German and Italian, with a smattering of Russian and Czech thrown in for good measure. I also spent almost a year with a coach from the Actors Studio in New York, so I could not just sing my character, but
become
her.”

“Whoa.” Pete held up his hands in mock surrender. “Didn't mean to step on your professional toes. Sorry.”

“You should be,” his honey-haired diva sniffed. “An audience has to feel my character's passion, her genuineness, her pain.”

“I understand. But this isn't the Met or the Royal Opera House, and I doubt you've ever given a performance while staring into the barrel of a gun. A real gun,” he amended when she arched a brow. “Loaded with real bullets.”

“True.” She conceded the point with a regal nod. “I'll just have to ignore both.”

* * *

Easier said than done, Riley discovered as the hours dragged by. She had nothing to do but worry while Pete tried to work out her remaining kinks. In the process, she got a little better acquainted with her self-appointed husband.

He told her about his family, about growing up in Texas, about the other Sidewinders, most of whom she'd met at Aly's wedding. All the while his strong hands and clever, clever fingers massaged her shoulders, her arms, her lower back.

“What about you?” he asked when he had her almost melting with pleasure. “I talked to your mother briefly at the wedding. Got the impression relations between you two are a bit choppy right now.”

“That's one way to describe them, although downright hostile might be a more accurate assessment.”

“What about your father? Isn't he in the picture?”

“He died when I was a baby. So it's always been just...”

“Shhh!”

His hands went still, his body rigid. The next moment he was on his belly, his ear pressed to the crack at the bottom of the door.