Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(88)

“You asked if we were going to stay together.”

“Yeah.”

She came down the steps. I put my hand out to her, and she took it.

She said, “I think it’s kind of the same thing. If it’s in us, then we’ll do it. And if it’s not . . .”

“Let’s just forget if not.”





Acknowledgments




It’s Oscar time again. I’d like to thank everyone at Harper Voyager for their hard work and enthusiasm, and give a nod to the Art Department for their amazing cover mock-ups. I wish we could have used them all.

Writers need editors, and a very special “thank you” goes to Chloe Moffett for dedication above and beyond the call of duty, and to Nancy Fischer for exquisite copyediting. Final decisions were mine, however, so any errors herein are my responsibility.

Most importantly, I want to thank my wife, Charity Blackburn, for her continued love and support, and for helping scout the book’s locations with me. Research, especially for the Vegas scenes, was arduous in the extreme (so much so that we plan to do it all again as soon as possible).

Finally, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to everyone who’s read and enjoyed the Field Ops books. Without readers, writers are irrelevant. So thank you all.





An Excerpt from Devil in the Wires




If you enjoyed Steal the Lightning

keep reading for an excerpt from

another enthralling Field Ops novel:



Devil in the Wires

By Tim Lees

Available now wherever ebooks are sold!





Chapter 1

Interested?




“But it’s a war zone,” I told him.

“Not technically. Not anymore.”

“Oh, good.” I folded up the map and passed it back. “So if I’m killed there, what? I’m not technically dead or something? That how it works?”

“No, Chris. If you’re killed there—God forbid, but if you are—then you were never technically there at all. You follow me?” Dayling smiled, the gracious host. “Do try the bamia, by the way. It’s delicious here.”

“I’ve lost my appetite.”

A dozen lidded bowls lay on the tabletop between us. A ceiling fan whisked tepid air over our heads. In the adjoining room, the only other customers— both westerners—had just been served the pleasures of the sheesha, and a sweet drift of tobacco smoke began to mingle with the smell of sweat, and spice, and char-grilled lamb.

“Please, Chris. Just hear me out, will you? For old times’ sake?”

He raised his brows. His forehead wrinkled like a puppy’s.

“I need your help,” he said.

And in a life spent saying many, many stupid things, I said one of the stupidest.

I said, “OK.”



His name was Dayling, Andrew Dayling, and I’d last set eyes on him about ten years back, at a Registry get-together in Berlin or Berne or somewhere. It only stuck inside my mind because at one point he had taken me aside and told me he was leaving Field Ops. “I mean, you can’t do this forever, can you?” He’d asked me for advice. I’m not sure what I said and don’t imagine it was any help, but he’d seemed pleased, and for my own part, I’d felt flattered to be asked. (I found out later he’d approached a half a dozen others at the same event, each in the same hushed, confidential tones. But never mind.) He’d closed the conversation with a running joke, a little gag we used to do that always made him laugh.

He’d asked me: “Any tricky jobs lately?”

“Yeah,” I’d said, waited a beat, and he’d joined me in the punch line: “All of them.”

He’d grinned and clapped his hands together. “Later,” he’d said, and, as I’d assumed, walked straight out of my life.

Till now.

He hadn’t changed a lot. His face had filled out—too much bamia, perhaps—and his hair was touched with gray; there was a look of strain about the eyes, maybe, though no worse than I’d expect from living in a place like this. I’d recognized him instantly. In a profession that accepted, even fostered, certain shows of eccentricity, Dayling had been resolutely straight-edge. A shirt-and-tie man through and through. Today he wore a linen suit, stained under the arms, his tie held with a small pearl pin. He looked every bit the Englishman abroad, remnant of an empire long ago dissolved and vanished into memory. We had been friends once, or, more accurately, friendly. We’d worked jobs together, kicked back and relaxed when we were done. He was charming, attentive, usually good company. Yet when he’d left the field, I hadn’t kept in touch, and didn’t know anyone who had.

Nonetheless, it should have been an amiable reunion. It should have been a lot of things. Most of all, it should have been a different job.

“I was told this was a quick assignment. In and out. Not a bloody two hundred mile trek through warring desert tribesmen. Come on—”

“Hardly tribesmen. They’re pretty sophisticated these days.” He raised the lid on the bowl nearest him. “This isn’t Lawrence of Arabia, you know.”

“Shame. I know how that one ends.”

“The militias here are well-armed, and they’re ruthless. I won’t lie to you. But it’s a hundred to one that you’ll run into them. I’ll tell you: you’re in a lot more danger here and now than you could ever be, out there.” He spooned a reddish tomato-smelling stew into a bowl and handed it to me.