Way of the Warrior (Troubleshooters #17.5)(125)
The boat rocked under her feet from a rogue wave. At least she thought it was a wave.
“Uh, no, I’m good. Thanks. You should get dressed. We need to haul butt out of here.” And his current state of undress definitely didn’t qualify as “low profile.”
“I meant, do you need help with the cut on your temple?” He gestured to the left side of her face, almost touching. “You brought along two PJs for a reason, ma’am.”
Her skin hummed with a sting that her brain must have pushed aside earlier for survival’s sake. She tapped the side of her forehead gingerly.
“Ouch!” Her fingertips were stained with blood as murky red as her hair.
“A bullet must have grazed you,” he said with a flat Midwestern accent. A no-accent really, just pure masculine rumble. “Could have been much worse. This was your lucky day, ma’am.”
“Stella.” For right now she could be more than Miss Lucky Smith.
“They call me Cuervo.”
Call him.
Call signs.
No real name from him for now. Understandable and a reality check to get her professional groove back on. “Do I need stitches?”
He tugged a small kit from his gear, a waterproof pack of some sort. “Antiseptic and butterfly bandages should hold you until we can get someplace where I’ll have time to treat you more fully.”
We.
Her brain hitched on the word, the answer to who she would be partnering with as they escaped into the crowd. She wasn’t saying good-bye to him—to Cuervo—at the dock. Irrational relief flooded her, followed by a bolt of excitement.
“Thanks, Cuervo. Blood dripping down my face would definitely draw undue attention at an inopportune time.” She forced a smile.
Still, his face, those eyes, they held her, and while she wasn’t a mystical person, she couldn’t miss the connection. Attraction? Sure, but she understood how to compartmentalize on the job. This was something that felt elemental. Before she could stop the thought, the words soul mate flashed through her head.
And God, that was crazy and irrational when she was always, always logical. Her brothers called her a female version of Spock from Star Trek.
Still, as those fingers cleaned her wound, smoothed ointment over her temple, and stretched butterfly bandages along her skin, she couldn’t stop thinking about spending the rest of the day with him as they melded into the port city and made their way back to the embassy.
Damn it, she could not waste the time or emotional energy on romance or even a fling. Right now, she could only focus on working with the Mr. Smiths and Mr. Browns of her profession. She needed to make peace with her past, then move on with her life. Then, and only then, she would find Mr. Right and shift from the field to a desk job so she could settle down into that real family dream she’d missed out on.
Yet those brown eyes drew her into a molten heat and she had the inescapable sense that Mr. Right had arrived ahead of schedule.
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Bring On the Dusk
M.L. BUCHMAN
There were few times that Colonel Michael Gibson of Delta Force appreciated the near-psychotic level of commitment displayed by terrorists, but this was one of those times. If they hadn’t been so rigid in even their attire, his disguise would have been much more difficult.
The al-Qaeda terrorist training camp deep in the Yemeni desert required that all of their hundred new trainees dress in white with black headdresses that left only the eyes exposed. The thirty-four trainers were dressed similarly but wholly in black, making them easy to distinguish. They were also the only ones armed, which was a definite advantage.
The camp’s dress code made for a perfect cover. The four men of his team wore loose-fitting black robes like the trainers. Lieutenant Bill Bruce used dark contacts to hide his blue eyes, and they all had rubbed a dye onto their hands and wrists, the only other uncovered portion of their bodies.
Michael and his team had parachuted into the deep desert the night before and traveled a quick ten kilometers on foot before burying themselves in the sand along the edges of the main training grounds. Only their faces were exposed, each carefully hidden by a thorn bush.
The midday temperatures had easily blown through 110 degrees. It felt twice that inside the heavy clothing and lying under a foot of hot sand, but uncomfortable was a way of life in “The Unit,” as Delta Force called itself, so this was of little concern. They’d dug deep enough so that they weren’t simply roasted alive, even if it felt that way by the end of the motionless day.
It was three minutes to sunset, three minutes until the start of Maghrib, the fourth scheduled prayer of the five that were performed daily.
At the instant of sunset, the muezzin began chanting adhan, the call to prayer.
Thinking themselves secure in the deep desert of the Abyan province of southern Yemen, every one of the trainees and the trainers knelt and faced northwest toward Mecca.