“Go, go, go!” Brock screamed.

The pilot took the chopper airborne and as they raced up over the canopy of trees below, Anna caught a glimpse of the second helicopter coming up behind them.

Brock sat down beside Anna.

“I’ve had bad dates before, Quick,” Brock yelled over the roar of ammunition firing, “but this is ridiculous.”

“Sorry about that,” she yelled back. “I’ll try for dinner and a movie next time.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

“I hope you do.”

Suddenly, there was an intense shudder in one of the engines, followed by violent shaking. It didn’t stop. Brock’s eyes widened.

Anna could hear the pilot shouting into the radio before he turned to them and hollered, “We’re going down. Hang on. It’s gonna be a rough—”

Dear Reader,

I’m surrounded by Bombshells so it was easy for me to write about one. Between my wife, daughter and daughter-in-law, I had plenty of material to draw upon to create Anna Quick. She’s a combination of all three of these dynamic women, with a touch of mama-bear-defending-her-cubs just for fun.

I hope you enjoy reading about Anna and her adventure as much as I enjoyed writing about her.

Best,

Terry Watkins

The Big Burn
Terry Watkins

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TERRY WATKINS

as a high school student spent time tracking and camping in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Later he would do just about everything, from serving his country in the military to earning an MFA in writing from the American Film Institute. He’s credentialed in industrial firefighting and has carried a top secret clearance for work as a security officer. Settled now in San Diego with his wife, author Mary Leo, Terry is busy putting his love of action-adventure into novels.

For Aaron: beloved son, friend and teacher.

1970–2005

Contents

Prologue

Part One: The Smoke Jumper

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Part Two: Warrior

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part Three: The Strait of Malacca

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part Four: Operation Fierce Snake

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Part Five: Operation Blowback

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Prologue

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Jason Quick pulled the laptop from the bloody hand of the dead Malaysian, then rifled through the man’s pockets until he found the keys. They were in the right-hand pocket of his jacket. The key ring held the JumpDrive memory stick Jason was hoping for. A backup for the laptop. He quickly yanked it off the ring and started down the alley where a car waited.

The nervous-looking Malaysian standing beside the car yelled at him in Malay, urging him to hurry. Another man, sitting behind the wheel, also insisted that he hurry.

Jason was about ten yards away from the car when he heard shouts behind him. He turned just as a man came after him, firing his weapon.

Jason felt the searing pain of the bullet as it went through the inside of his left thigh.

He spun, dropped to one knee and fired three rounds.

His pursuer went down—only to be replaced at the mouth of the alley by two more men trying to stop him.

More gunfire erupted.

The Malaysian waiting for him at the car returned the gunfire, while Jason rose and limped toward him. Bullets screamed both ways, pieces of stucco flew from the walls, men yelled obscenities in Manglish, the Malay’s version of English, and a perfect description of the mangled combination.

The passenger car door opened and Jason dived inside.

His Malaysian partner, now hunkered down on the ground beside the passenger door, was hit twice. As Jason tried to get him inside, the car lurched forward and the man slipped from his grip.

He had no choice but to leave him.

“Get the hell out of here! Go! Go! Move it!” Jason yelled while turning to look behind them as their car blasted out of the alley and then swerved through the clogged streets of Kuala Lumpur. He could see the great towers behind him, tallest buildings in the world. And he could see a black car, a Mercedes, battling traffic to catch up.

He had to get to the dock. The speedboat was waiting. There was no chance of making contact now, of delivering the laptop to the right people. He’d have to get to the island and wait there until someone could manage to extract him.

Every terrorist in Jemaah Islamiyah would be after him. And every pirate looking to cash in. And the vast, well-organized crime syndicates working the Strait of Malacca, with its seventeen thousand islands in the waters of this, the most important oil and goods shipping route on earth, would be looking for him.

He held the coveted laptop against his chest with the protectiveness of a man who thought he was holding the living heart of Western civilization.

“We need to find my daughter,” Jason said as the driver swerved to avoid crashing into an oncoming car, then straightened out and raced down the street.

Part One

Chapter 1

Southern California

Anna Quick felt a rude jolt when turbulence from an eighty-mile-per-hour gust of superheated air slammed violently into the jump plane. Her breathing was shallow from the tight constraint of the chest strap on the jump harness as she stared out the open door, the plane orbiting drunkenly over the raging inferno below.

A voice behind her said, “They’re somewhere in that gorge, but there’s no way out. Fires are moving in on both ends. It’s going to blow up.”

“How many people?”

“Four. College students on a backpacking trip. Two girls, two guys.”

Anna nodded. They would be scared out of their minds, desperately searching for a way out. Then they’d face the realization they weren’t getting out. Four college kids unequipped, unprepared. They would die the most horrible of deaths, screaming, choking, burning…

In the distance, two massive smoke columns broke through the inversion layer and shot hundreds of feet into the air. Tongues of fire snapped across the ridges and raced into the heavy brush and trees on the southern edge of the canyon.

The jump plane bucked again, with increased violence. The plane lurched sideways as updrafts of the ferocious, high-octane Santa Ana winds knocked them around as if they were a toy boat on a raging sea.

Anna’s face and nostrils and eyes were dry and tight. The roar of the wind blasting from the gorges grew thunderous as the gusts hurled smoke and flames across the horizon. She studied the orange tidal wave as it swept up the slope of the mountain to the south, ten miles from the mountain community of Big Bear. She noted the axiom that every twenty degrees in hill slope doubled the rate of speed the fire spread. The vicious whirlwinds and updrafts were being created by the fire itself.

Anna processed the variables that produced this disaster: fuel loading, clear-cutting, weather, topography. In a decade of firefighting she’d never seen anything to match this. Her boss said it was becoming another Yellowstone disaster.

“Not going to happen, Anna. Back away from the door. This is a no-go,” Carter yelled over the roar. “You can’t risk it. I won’t let you. There’s no way out of that canyon now.”

There’s always a way out, Anna thought. The fire would burn over this canyon very quickly and the worst of it would stay up on the ridges.

“I’m going in,” Anna insisted as she tightened her leg straps.

“The hell you are.”

Another huge fire swept down from the north, threatening to marry with the one below, forging a giant tsunami of flame. Smaller fires snaked aggressively along the ridges, and out as far as she could see more flare-ups triggered by flying embers burst across the hills.

Anna Quick’s team had been jumping small outback fires for twelve days. She was exhausted from slogging equipment up and down hills, digging, cutting, torching backfires. Behind her on the jump plane’s nylon seats sat her seven teammates, tired, dirty and in a stupor only firefighters know. All they wanted to do was go back to base camp and collapse.

Anna, a lifelong mountain climber and college soccer star, had formidable reserves that gave her, at the most competitive level, more endurance than any other male or female on the strike team, but this time even she’d overdrawn her account. She was functioning on nothing now but sheer willpower.

“Dammit, Anna,” Carter persisted, leaning in close over the roar of the engine, both of them holding on to the door frame for support against the slipstream and turbulence. “It’s a no-go.”

She ignored him as she pulled on her helmet, snapped the chin strap, dropped the heavy wire-mesh mask over her face and pulled on her Nomex gloves.

Carter grabbed her shoulder. “Abort now! That’s an order!”

She stepped closer to the door, dropping into a sitting position with her legs out. She was going in light. She’d dumped all but the necessities into her PG bag and snapped it under the reserve chute on her belly. She had extra lightweight fire shields jammed into the nylon webbing of her Kevlar fire suit.

In the distance a superscooper dumped “mud” on the southern wall of fire. A futile gesture. Above the scooper she spotted a hovering chopper. Probably getting news footage, though it didn’t have the coloring of one of the news birds. It looked military.

Her eyes focused on the horizon, searching for markers. The backpackers, communicating by cell phone, were last reported to be in the narrow gorge below, hiding in a dry creek bed. The fire would overtake them in a half hour or less. The heat and smoke would kill them sooner.

“Anna!”

She broke free of Carter’s grip, pulled her legs up, got her feet under her and launched herself before he could stop her. She rolled out into the dark, choking sky, hearing nothing now but her own jump count:

Jump-thousand.

…now feeling the adrenal rush of the tumble into space, feet up, body twisting as she plunged.

Look-thousand.

…seeing now the earth and sky somersaulting over one another, the plane slipping past like a quick hawk, then seeing the fire.

Reach-thousand.

She grabbed the green rip cord. Windblown embers exploded against her mask.

Pull-thousand.

Her hand ripped across her chest.

The quick drop, then the tug of the blossoming round of orange and white canopy was always a beautiful sight to a jumper. There were no tension knots at the corners, and the steering toggles were okay.

She pulled directly into the wind as tongues of fire leaped up at her. Her gut tightened, her nerves stretched taut. The full fury of the firestorm mocked her descent toward the dragon’s fiery mouth. It was starved for fuel, waiting to be fed.

At three hundred feet, she set up the brakes with the toggles halfway down, easing to her right, then left, reefing down on the toggles, maneuvering, deeper into the brakes, then full brakes as she zeroed in on her landing zone, a flat piece of ground.

Then, without notice, a sneaky backwind shooting up the canyon grabbed her.

She was in trouble.

Two thousand feet above the wildly gyrating smoke jumper, in an unmarked, Sikorsky SH-60 B Seahawk naval antiship chopper, John Brock held on to the frame of the open door with one hand. With the other he held binoculars, tracking the jumper’s descent through the smoke as he held on against the violent rocking and rolling.

He watched in dismay as the winds grabbed Anna Quick’s chute and drove her horizontally at great speed toward the slope and a stand of trees.

Behind Brock, a marine lieutenant was yelling on his satellite phone at some assistant to the director of Emergency Services at the California Emergency Control Center.

Through his headset Brock heard his chopper pilot declare, “That’s suicide.”

Brock had traveled twelve thousand miles to recruit Anna Quick. Wasted miles. He watched her vanish into the smoke. She was supposed to be on her way back to her base camp. Instead she was jumping into an inferno.

“She have any chance at all?” he asked.

The pilot said, “That’s up to Big Ernie.”

“Who the hell’s Big Ernie?”

“He’s the smoke jumper’s god of fire. You gotta play the cards he deals. And he’s a jokester.”

Brock wasn’t amused.

The marine lieutenant finished his conversation and moved over in the doorway next to Brock. Brock pulled back his headgear so he could hear the lieutenant.

“Sir, the strike-team boss ordered an abort. She disobeyed a direct order and went ahead and jumped.”

Brock nodded. That was consistent with the file they had on her. He swore softly to himself and continued to try to see something on the ground.

He said to the pilot, “Can you get this thing down there?”

“I can get it down. Getting it back out is the problem. Those Santa Ana winds are running sixty miles an hour down there. With low visibility and high winds the chances won’t be good.”

“I need that damn woman alive.”

“Sorry, sir,” the pilot said. “What you need is a miracle. The best I can do is to keep circling until the winds die down.”

Brock stared in frustration at the gathering firestorm. He knew the pilot was right, that they’d have virtually no chance of getting to her and then getting out again.

The marine lieutenant said, “That’s got to be the worst way to die.”

Angry as he was at the woman’s defiant jump, Brock couldn’t help but admire her courage. As an operator with Delta Force, Brock had gone into his share of extreme-risk situations and he knew the kind of mind-set that it took. She had to know something about the conditions, something no one else was taking into account. Either that or she was suicidal. He hoped for the former. He hadn’t come all this way for a charred corpse.

All attempts by Anna to keep her direction, to lock in the topography, had been blown away, and now she was in the hands of the wind. A vicious gust spun her around and she had to fight the near collapse of her chute.

It was now a desperate battle to get it under control. She was using every bit of her upper-body strength to keep the chute oriented.

When Anna found a break in the smoke, she saw the fantastic spectacle of fire crowning the treetops at unbelievable speeds.

The superheated winds buffeted her. She was engulfed in smoke, and for the moment, completely lost sight of the ground.

When the smoke cleared enough for her to see, it was too late. She sailed into a hundred-foot-high tree snag, her feet smashing through the top branches. Anna stopped with a violent jerk. The pads and Kevlar were all that saved her from being impaled. She still wore deep scars on her body from one such landing and was happy to have the new, stronger protective gear.

Anna looked up. Her chute was caught precariously. She looked down. It was an eighty-foot drop. Just great. She pulled out her drop-rope and hooked it up, released herself from the harness and began to rappel, trying desperately to get down before the chute gave way and dropped her like a stone.

She was about twenty feet above ground when the chute broke free. She plunged. Instinctively Anna pulled her legs together and angled them to the side in the standard parachute landing fall.

She hit hard.

Dazed, she rolled over and pushed herself up. The great fear of such falls was to have a sprained ankle or something broken. Anna made a quick survey of her body parts.

Everything seemed intact—until she rose to her feet. Her left ankle was weak. She skipped on it a couple times and decided it wasn’t a disaster as she headed down into the deepest gut of the ravine. She picked up her walkie-talkie to let Carter know she was down. “Do you still have communication with the hikers? Over.”

“Roger that. They saw you. They should be just up the ravine a few hundred yards.”

“Ten-four. I’m on my way.”

“Anna, I can’t believe you just did that! The fire’s coming over the ridge. Moving fast. You can’t outrun it.”

“I know, but I couldn’t leave them down here.”

Anna reached into one of the inner pockets of her jumpsuit and took out a small pair of binoculars. She tracked along the ridgeline, acknowledging the treacherous beauty of the snaking line of fire, then she tracked down the hills into the gorge. How a fire feeds depended on where the fuel load was the heaviest, plus how the winds were directed by the lay of the mountains, and where inversion would multiply velocity.

What she was looking for was an area where the fuel load would be the least, the topography the easiest for the fire to quickly burn over.

When she turned and looked up the canyon, she saw the students running toward her. Stumbling, falling, getting up. Panic-stricken.

John Brock watched the rolling fires converge and explode down the gorge in a swirling avalanche of flame.

He had the marine pilot circle for nearly an hour before the wall of flame had moved on and the winds relaxed enough for them to hazard a landing. The firestorm had left behind smoldering brush, burning trees and blackened ground.

“Nobody’s surviving that for long,” the pilot said as they made their descent.

Brock held out no hope, but he had to confirm the deaths.

The pilot found a flat, burned-over area where he set the helicopter down, the rotors blasting up a cloud of blackened soot and dust.

Brock and the marine lieutenant exited the chopper, ducked under the orbiting blades and jogged away from the ash and dust.

He stared at the surroundings. It looked like a giant blowtorch had scorched everything. Embers still hissed and snapped like exploding firecrackers at the tail end of a Fourth of July celebration. Hundreds of smoke tendrils drifted skyward.

Brock tracked back and forth along the canyon and the arroyo as the acrid smoke wreaked havoc with his sinuses and eyes. “The bodies have to be around here somewhere,” he said somberly, then sneezed.

They began the melancholy search. Brock was moving along a dry, shallow creek bed, when he stopped. Dirt under an overhang just ahead of him moved. It occurred to him that he might be looking at the covered den of a mountain lion.

When the dirt and ash moved again he started to ease his hand toward the 9 mm Glock in the shoulder holster under his left arm.

He stared drop-jawed at what he saw next. They came out one at a time, dirt and ash falling off their protective shields. All of them. All five.

The college students appeared to be in total shock. They stared silently, amazed to be alive.

The one in the fire gear barked orders like a drill sergeant at her rescued lambs, telling them to pack the heat shields and whatever else was on the ground that wasn’t burnt up. She had to be Anna Quick.

She was a tall, striking woman, even when covered in ash. She wore her golden-brown hair short and had a confident swagger as she walked toward him. She was prettier than the picture they had on file.

“You are, I believe, Anna Quick?” Brock asked.

“I am. And I appreciate whoever you are for getting here so fast.”

She turned and started to direct the college kids to the chopper.

“We’re not the rescue team,” Brock interrupted, then radioed the chopper pilot who told him a rescue bird was on its way. Brock then relayed that information to Anna.

They ducked away from gust of ash the wind had kicked up.

“If you aren’t here to help, who are you? And what are you doing here in the middle of this mess?”

“My name is John Brock. I came here especially for you.” He showed her a Military Intelligence ID.

She studied it for a moment, then handed it back. “What could Military Intelligence possibly want with me that’s so important they’d come looking for me in the middle of a fire?”

“We need your help. Or, more specifically, your father needs your help.”

So much for the intelligence part. These guys were wrong. “My father’s presumed dead. Has been for the past eight years or hasn’t anyone bothered to pass that information on to you?” It came out harsher than she’d meant it to, but she was exhausted. She turned to walk away.

“Well, actually he’s not dead. At least not yet.”

Chapter 2

Anna tried to absorb what this guy was telling her. There wasn’t any chance that it was some kind of bad joke. He didn’t look like the joke type. Plus, he had a chopper, a marine officer accompanying him and the official ID. No, he was on the level.

Her father was alive? Given what she’d just gone through with the fire, dealing with this news was almost more than she could get herself around. She needed a moment for it to settle in.

“Let me take care of my business here—” Anna gestured to the students “—before I deal with this, if you don’t mind.”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you think you can spare some water?”

“No problem,” Brock said, and asked the marine to see what was on their chopper.

For the next fifteen minutes Anna stood with her group while each of them tried to make cell-phone calls to desperately worried parents and friends. The conversations touched on how great their rescuer was.

Their attitudes, now that they were assured of certain survival, became jovial. They had a great story to tell and they were already getting into it.

Meanwhile, the marine lieutenant, square jawed and rather gaunt-looking, fetched some much-needed water bottles and passed them around. Anna quickly guzzled one and went for a second.

John Brock was off pacing and talking on his cell phone. Occasionally he’d glance over at her as he talked, nod, as if she was the topic of conversation. He was well over six feet, had a beach tan and had gone a day or two without a shave. He sported square sunglasses, a loose-hanging blue shirt and khaki pants with side pockets.

When the rescue chopper appeared and landed on the valley floor, the hikers headed for it like refugees from a dying planet. While the students boarded, Anna finally turned and walked over to Brock. He had that look of someone who’d seen and done things that you would never hear about in the light of day.

She took a deep breath and said, “Okay, you’re telling me my father is alive, which I don’t believe. Was he a prisoner somewhere? Is that why he’s been missing all this time?”

“No. Not exactly. But that’s a story for another time. Right now he’s in trouble and we need to get to him as soon as possible.”

“Where is he?”

“Malaysia.”

“My father’s alive in Malaysia, and he’s in trouble? You came all the way out here to tell me that? I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

She brushed ash from her face and ran her tongue over her now extremely chapped lips as she struggled to get a grasp on what this man was telling her.

“When?”

“We’re here to take you to Miramar Air Base. You’ll be briefed there.”

She didn’t like the sound of this. “I usually get briefed when I’m going on a mission. But not from the military. I’m not in the military.”

“Actually, it’s a CIA mission. And I’m pretty sure you’ll want to go sign on. In fact, I’m positive.”

Anna stared at Brock. Eight years ago, her father had disappeared in Southeast Asia on a secret mission with the CIA. He was one of a long line of smoke jumpers who’d been recruited over the years. They were once called “cargo kickers” and worked for the CIA’s Air America, dropping supplies to pro-American guerrilla forces. Smoke jumpers were used extensively in the secret war in Tibet in the early 60’s and the practice never really stopped. Since her father’s disappearance, Anna had become an outspoken opponent of the relationship between the CIA and civilian smoke jumpers recruited into its ranks for special missions.

For a long time Anna had hated the secrecy that kept the truth from her and her mother. Though her mother and father had been divorced for several years before he vanished, they’d remained friends. Her mother was as upset over the lack of information as Anna. Divorce was hard enough, but his disappearance almost more than Anna could take.

The CIA had continually refused to tell her what exactly had happened to her father. The only official information she’d ever been able to get was that he’d disappeared on a mission.

“I want to know what happened to my father,” she said to Brock.

“I’m going to tell you…on the way.”

“To Miramar?”

“No. Guam.”

Her throat tightened. She drank more water, staring over the bottom of the upturned bottle at Brock. The man never flinched. A real poker face if ever there was one.

She was unbelievably calm. Must be the exhaustion, she thought. Anna finished the bottle. “Why Guam? You said he was in Malaysia?”

“Guam’s the jumping-off point. We’ve got a camp there. What we call an isolation camp, or IC. You’ll be trained there.”

A sardonic smile broke across her face. This whole thing was beginning to reek, and she wasn’t in the mood for it.

“Trained for what?”

“Again, I’ll tell you about it on the way. We don’t have much time.”

Until she knew more, Anna refused to succumb to his time schedule.

“All this robotic dialogue isn’t going to work on me. Just tell me now, or you can get into your unmarked chopper and fly back to wherever you came from.”

“Your father’s situation is grave. We need to get to him. He’s requesting you to help us.”

“Why would he do that when he has the military at his beck and call?”

“We don’t know why, exactly.”

“You mean you won’t tell me why.”

“If I knew the answer, I’d tell you. We don’t know why he’s asking for you. We can only assume it’s because he’s trapped on a burning island and probably thinks you’re the world’s greatest smoke jumper. Personally, I don’t buy it. We have the best jumpers on earth working for us and he knows that.”

Anna hadn’t had decent sleep in weeks. She was tired and dirty. That she was standing in a foot of ash in a burned-out ravine listening to this guy tell her not only that her father was alive, but he was trapped on some burning island and requesting her to jump in and get him out sounded, quite frankly, preposterous.

But if this guy was lying, why make up a lie so outrageous?

Unfortunately, he had the hook in her now and she desperately wanted to know the truth.

“I’ll go to Miramar with you, but that’s as far as I go without a better explanation.”

“All right.”

They both turned to wave at the rescue chopper as it began its assent. Anna watched it slant off into the sky carrying four very grateful people back home and wished she was inside that chopper with them.

Anna followed Brock and the marine lieutenant to the unmarked chopper, its rotors swirling languidly. The pilot turned toward them, the dark sun shield of his face helmet giving him a Star Wars look.

The flight to Miramar was a quick twenty-minute hop and Anna dozed for most of it. They landed and got out next to a C-17 transport plane parked just across from a squadron of jet fighters.

“This way.” Brock motioned toward the C-17 as he walked. She followed close behind.

“Isn’t there an office we can go to?”

“Not enough time. You’ll be briefed on the plane.”

“What if I don’t like the story?”

“You can leave anytime you want.”

She stopped on the tarmac. “Why do I have the feeling if I get on board that plane, I won’t be able to get back off?”

He turned to her and pushed his sunglasses up on his head. “You saved four lives today at the risk of your own. That was no accident. I’ve read your file. When I tell you what’s going on, you won’t even think about getting off that plane.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because there aren’t just four lives at stake here, more like forty thousand lives. Including your father.”

What? She couldn’t think straight. Between the intense fatigue setting in and all the water she’d drunk, her bladder felt as if it was going to explode.

“I just really need a bathroom right now.”

“There’s a state-of-the-art bathroom on the plane.”

She hesitated, looking around for an alternative, but the nearest building must have been a quarter mile away. She made the decision to go for the plane.

There were several men on board the almost barren C-17, hovering around a few laptops. She realized that the seats were all backward. Brock told her that in the event of a crash passenger survivability would be greater.

“Has that been proven or is that some military theory?”

“That’s just what they tell me.”

She ignored him and the men and went straight to where Brock told her the bathroom was located. She found the privacy she was looking for, shut the door and struggled to get her fire suit down.

The state-of-the-art bathroom was a hard, cold stainless-steel ordinary toilet, much worse than she’d find on a commercial airliner. But she didn’t care. When she was finished she leaned against the metal wall, just to rest for a second—and fell instantly asleep.

She was jolted awake by movement.

Anna jumped up, struggled to get her fire suit on, fell back, but caught herself by grabbing hold of the sink.

Then, with her suit still around her ankles, there was a knock on the door. “We’re going to be airborne in a couple minutes. You okay in there?” Brock said.

“Yes, I’m fine. But this wasn’t part of our deal. I don’t want to go—”

“You need to get out here and get a seat belt on.”

Shit!

She pulled her suit up, then caught a look at her face in the tiny aluminum mirror. Somebody’s face anyway. It was more like a clown’s face with all the dirt and ash on it. She quickly washed as the plane rocked her back and forth. She wished she could strip off her grimy clothes and jump into a shower. Then when she was all clean again, she’d towel off and climb between silky cool sheets and sleep for a week. But she knew that vision wouldn’t be happening for a very long time thanks to John Brock.

Her father’s face flashed in her mind. She couldn’t quite believe that he was alive. It made her delirious, angry, excited and confused—all at once.

When she finally emerged, Brock told her to take one of the empty seats.

“I’m not going until you explain everything.”

“You have no choice. Make yourself comfortable.”

“No beds?” she said sarcastically.

“Sorry, no beds.”

He went and sat with the other men in the back of the plane.

Anna was furious. How dare they kidnap her like this? As the plane taxied up the runway, she realized there were no windows. It was a weird sensation sitting facing the tail of the plane as it taxied, and she didn’t like having no way to see out. It gave her a claustrophobic feeling. This was all too much.

But she was just too tired for panic. After two weeks of riding in planes to jump fires, she told herself this was just another ride. And just another opportunity to catch a few minutes of sleep. As soon as they’d landed, she’d make them take her home.

Yawning, she grabbed a small pillow from the seat next to her, stretched out and fell dead asleep even before the plane was airborne.

Chapter 3

Anna woke to the steady hum of the plane’s engines, the occasional murmuring of voices, but didn’t bother to open her eyes. They felt as if they were glued shut and she didn’t have the will or strength to force them open before they were ready.

Instead, she replayed the fire jump: cutting herself free, finding the students, calming their fears, getting them to trust her, the desperate digging, the waiting to see if they would survive as the fire blew over them, sucking out their oxygen and laying down intense heat.

They had been lucky.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

Now she opened her eyes as Brock dropped into a seat across the aisle from her. He handed her an open box containing a sandwich, a package of Oreos, coffee, creamer and sugar packets.

“It’s not much, but it’s all we have.”

She accepted the offering, and dug right in. The hot black coffee tasted especially good. “Thanks,” she said in between bites of cookie. “But this in no way changes the fact that I’m being hijacked.”

“You boarded voluntarily.”

“I had to go to the bathroom.”

“Blame it all on your father.”

She bit into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was the first time in forever she’d eaten white bread and it tasted great. The whole meal was just what she needed to get her blood sugar going again. Straight to the sugar high, no stops for nutrition, then slow it down with the peanut butter. Get herself back on cruise control.

She was glad he’d left the aisle between them. Maybe he couldn’t smell her sweat-laden body odor the way she could.

“I’m going to tell you far more than I normally would, or should,” he said. “That’s because of the abnormal circumstances involved. Your need to know, because of what you have to do, is high.”

“Are you trying to recruit me, or scare me off?”

“Maybe both. Your father has been working clandestinely with the CIA for the past eight years. He converted to Islam over a decade ago and married a Malaysian woman not long after he divorced your mother.”

She stopped in midbite, eyes wide, giving Brock her full attention.

“His wife worked with an import-export company out of Kuala Lumpur, while he wrote inflammatory articles for local papers under an assumed name. He condemned American policies in the Islamic world. His wife had relatives very deep in the radical al-Qaeda sister organization Jemaah Islamiyah.”

“Terrorists?”

“To the core. Your father, through one of his wife’s cousins, was able to penetrate deeper into this organization than any other agent has in the past. I won’t go into details beyond that. All you need to know is that he has in his possession something we desperately need.”

It was like being broadsided by hard wind. She had to recover. When she found speech, she asked, for want of a better question while she tried to process the rest of it, “What does he have that’s so important?”

“A laptop. It belonged to one of the leaders of Jamaal Islamiyah. We have reason to believe there is information on that laptop of an imminent terrorist mission.”

“And he can’t get it out?”

“No, he’s hurt—”

“How badly?” she asked, interrupting. Panic filled her.

“He was shot in the leg. We don’t know more than that.”

Her father was hurt. He needed her. Decision made. She’d do whatever she had to, to help her dad.

“Tell me the rest, Brock,” she said, leaning back in her seat.

“Most of his network has been killed. He’s in hiding on a small island off the coast of Malaysia. He made an attempt to escape, but couldn’t make it. There are thousands of tiny islands, some so insignificant they don’t even have names. He’s on one of them. There are fires on the island and it’s under a huge plume of smoke. It’s also in the middle of a dangerous area. You’ll get a full briefing from CIA when we get to the IC.”

“You said that would happen at Miramar. Why should I believe you now that we’re on our way to Guam?”

“Sorry about that, but those were my orders. I can tell you this much. An extraction requires a HALO jump into extremely bad conditions on an island controlled at the moment by pirates patrolling the waters and terrorists searching for your father.”

A high-altitude, low-opening jump. “And this is something my father thinks only I can do?”

“Apparently that’s the case. Yes.”

She knew about the incredible fires that were almost yearly events in that part of the world. Thousands of hectares of jungle in the heart of the Malay peninsula, peat-soil fires similar to the fires in Indonesia. The pollutant haze and smoke spread across the entire region all the way to Hong Kong. Most of them were started in land-clearing operations by farmers. They got out of control in the heat of a dry season and just kept burning. Jungle fires have been known to burn for months and months.

She knew that right now over a thousand fires were burning in East Kalimantan province of Indonesia alone. It seemed they would never get a handle on the fires if they couldn’t stop farmers from clearing bush for crops and companies from burning forests and jungles after logging to make way for new palm oil plantations. Between the two, the fires came every year. And now, more than a year after the horrible tsunami, and the endless battles with radical guerrilla groups, the fires were burning again.

“You’re going to be jumping at night. The fire there is really bad because of all the debris left from last year’s tsunami.”

“You said I was going to be trained. Trained for what? Jumping I already know.”

“Small-arms combat.”

He said it as if he was certain she would accept the pronouncement without hesitation. As if packing a gun and having to shoot somebody was just the course of nature…his nature, perhaps, but certainly not hers.

“I’d rather not.”

“You can’t go into a bad place without some preparation.”

“You think you’re going to make a soldier out of me overnight?”

“You’d be surprised what I can do with you in a short period of time.”

He said it with a blank face, but she peered into those pale green eyes of his and wondered if he was fooling around with a double entendre. She decided he wasn’t the type. But then, given her condition, she doubted he was seeing anything to invite double entendres.

“If you can stay awake, I’d like you to practice with a video game.” He pulled a laptop from a black case on the floor, opened it and started some sort of combat game. “It’s designed to teach the use of small arms in combat situations. You need this training and we don’t have a lot of time. You’ll need to play various levels of this video game until we get to Guam. Then I’ll put you through an intense course until we embark on the mission. It’s just a precaution. If things go right, we’ll never run into an unfriendly.”

“You’re jumping in with me?”

“Yes. You can’t go in alone. It’s too dangerous.”

“You’re one of those guys.”

“What guys?”

“What are they called? Commandos? Special Ops? What are they…oh, right, Delta Force.”

Brock concentrated on the video game, not looking at her. Immediately, she knew she’d struck a nerve. Delta Force flew under the radar screen and liked to keep it that way.

“I’m just a soldier on a mission.”

Bullshit, she thought. This guy runs around with no uniform, no name tag. Marines are flying him in choppers, then he commands a huge cargo plane with all those other commando-looking guys. Yeah, right, he’s just your average soldier. “And I’m a ground-pounding firefighter.”

Brock ignored her comment and concentrated on setting up the game.

She asked, “Is this a commercial game?”

“Not quite. This is mine.”

“You wrote it?”

“Yes. Military is doing a lot of their own now. It started with the release of America’s Army in 2002. That was mostly an interactive army-recruitment ad downloaded by millions of gamers. Since then, they’ve gotten even more sophisticated.”

For once he showed some emotion, some enthusiasm. The guy was human after all.

“This makes better soldiers?”

“Absolutely. Proficiency with the games increases reflex speed to situations, and eliminates thought pauses. Reaction time is everything. The percentage of targets hit has been increasing dramatically per round fired.”

“How did you get involved in this? Were you a big game player growing up?”

“Isn’t every kid? I was involved for a while in the Army Government Applications office in Cary, North Carolina, with a team of video-game creators and simulation specialists. I worked with guys from Red Storm Entertainment, Interactive Magic, and Timeline. Then I joined another group. This video game isn’t for public preview.”

“And that’s what this is?”

Brock looked as if he was going to smile, like this whole thing turned him on, and he couldn’t talk about it enough. She liked him much better like this, but it still didn’t mean she trusted the guy.

“Yes. What you’ll be dealing with you won’t find in your local toy store or video store. This is a big inside industry now. We have a lot of support in the field from several D.C. agencies, West Point and the Special Ops center in Florida where most of the simulation and training technologies are located. They’re all heavily involved in the military-video business.”

“They produced this game?”

“It was created by six people. I led the project. You’re going to learn everything you need to know about operating and firing certain weapons under stress. Plus escape and evasion tactics in jungle conditions. We have games to fit just about every condition, but you’ll only need this one. What’s good about this system is I’ll coach and instruct and rerun scenarios until you get them right. It can condition your reflexes in a few hours of this kind of prep. Then some fieldwork and in about the tenth of the time that it used to take, we can have you online and operational.”

He was so convincing that Anna decided to give the training tool a try, not that she was ready to jump into a Malaysian warzone, but the game looked interesting enough.

Anna played war with Brock for six straight hours. She killed hundreds of people. Some of them over and over and over until she got it right. He was a very soft-spoken instructor, nothing like she expected from his demeanor.

The only weapons Anna had ever fired before were a shotgun and a hunting rifle. Her mother, an outfitter in Colorado, was a skeet shooter and a meat hunter. Neither of those weapons was involved.

At one point when Anna was growing tired of all the action, she asked, “Do rookie soldiers really learn how to kill another person by playing these video games?”

“This just helps train reflexes. Gets the brain pathways set. The training’s progressive. You’ll go out and fire live ammo at shifting targets next. Each step will be faster and closer to the real thing.”

She looked at him, trying to get a sense of reality out of him. “You really think you can teach me how to kill someone in a day? Seriously?”

“I can get you close enough that, in a bad situation, you might just react to survive. But it’s not a given. Movies and TV shows aside, it’s very difficult to turn a civilian into someone who can kill at close range.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Actually, it’s true. In fact, studies have shown that soldiers have done all kinds of things to avoid just that. Most ground-combat units in World War I rarely fired their weapons. When they did, they rarely fired to kill. They fired high. Some of them died because they couldn’t make themselves kill. Most killing was done from long range. Mortars, bombs, cannon and machine guns. But we’ve discovered advancements that overcome most of the natural resistance.”

“You consider this an advancement?”

“In combat, yes. Not in civilization. I’m not in the business of advancing civilization. I’m in the business of trying to protect it.”

“By uncivilized means.”

“By any means necessary.”

His apparent honesty was about the only thing she liked about him at the moment. “I’m exhausted,” she told him after a long yawn. “I’ve suddenly developed a loathing for this video game and I really don’t think you’re going to make much of a killer out of me in a hundred days, let alone one. I’d just like to take a nap. There’s no shower on this plane, is there?”

“No. You can shower when we get to Guam.”

“I can’t wait.”

He smiled, finally, a warm, charming smile, and she began to warm up to this strait-laced soldier until he said, “Neither can we.”

Chapter 4

Anna dreamed that she was naked and clean, lost between creamy white sheets, ecstatic with their cool embrace, but angry at the mattress for being so uncomfortable.

When she woke a second time she still didn’t open her eyes. Instead, she listened to the steady drone of the plane’s engines, considered getting up, but the thought took too much effort. Weeks of constant grind had taken their toll. It would take a week to recover. Every part of her body ached. She realized she hadn’t moved for hours. Her muscles had locked up and she had to work to get them unwound, get some circulation. She stretched one arm, then the other. She finally opened her eyes when a smell wafted to her that she responded to with enthusiasm.

Her body felt like a piece of lead as she undid her seat belt and pulled herself up. The five men on the plane were up front talking and drinking coffee. Three sitting, two standing.

She got up and went forward.

“Coffee’s fresh,” one of the men said. Brock was talking on a satellite phone.

She accepted the offer of coffee. She smelled of fire and sweat and tried to keep some distance between her smelly self and the men.

After he hung up, Brock brought her a blueberry bagel with cream cheese and another cup of coffee. She was starving again. Then he showed her the island on the computer screen.

They huddled shoulder to shoulder around a laptop and discussed the latest satellite images of the Malaysian and Indonesian fires. The images, acquired by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, showed a thick soup of smoke.

The island was virtually invisible, covered by a massive cloud of dense smoke.

“Where are the winds?” she asked no one in particular.

“There’s no wind. It’s dead calm.”

Using a new technology she’d never heard of, the images were run though some kind of color spectrometer, and visual penetration became possible. She could see the heat pattern from the fires.

Brock pointed to an area. “This is where we’re getting our periodic beeps from. It’s the densest and hilliest part of the island. Jason was moving north, but apparently he can’t get over those mountains. He’s trapped about here,” he told her, gesturing to an area.

“How are we getting him out once we get to him?”

“We’re hoping to find a burned-over area and bring a chopper in. But the fires are now so big it’s getting hard to tell where to land. That’s going to be up to you.”

She studied the fire pattern, and the distance to the ocean. There were several lagoons, but they had limited information on the island’s trees.

“We were thinking of here,” Brock said, pointing to a spot. “It’s the closest point. The fires aren’t joined and that leaves something of an alley.”

“No. Too hot.” She explained the coloring of the fires. “Whatever the fuel load is in here, it’s very hot-burning. Unless you think walking through two thousand degrees won’t turn you into a puddle of glue. The best approach is from here.” She made a line from one of the lagoons inland. “These must be groves of old hardwood. The fires will be mostly crowning and high. There’s a river to the north we can escape to, if things get bad.” She pointed to the river. “Once we get to him, I’ll find a pickup zone and you can call your guys for a chopper.”

While Brock went over plans with his men, she closed her eyes and visualized the jump, the descent, the lagoon where she wanted to go in. Without wind, she’d be able to control the descent, though having to worry about Brock’s descent only made hers more risky.

Jumping into a fire from a high altitude at night and into a tropic combat zone was going to be something new. She wasn’t at all sure what would happen.

All she wanted to do was just get Brock to the ground and let him take it from there. He’s a leader with the most elite commando force on earth, she thought. He should know what he’s doing. Just get him in, and he’ll get us out.

That’s what she hoped for, anyway.

“We’ll refuel in the air, put down in Guam in about five hours. If you need more sleep, now’s the time.”

She walked back to her seat, thinking she might have trouble sleeping again. She cuddled up on her pillow, shut her eyes and immediately floated off into a deep sleep.

Pouco Vulcao Island

Jason Quick came out of a shaking sweat and forced himself to get up. He tried to focus so he could check his symptoms. He feared he was going into some kind of toxic shock syndrome. Septic shock was marked by fever. He had that. Malaise, he had that. Chills and nausea, check. Damn, he was four for four.

He pulled the bandages back and looked at his wound. It was nasty. He cursed bitterly. He had to get the hell off this island and into a hospital, soon.

Jason took a drink from a water bottle, then opened the laptop. He had only two, maybe three hours of battery power left. He closed the computer. He’d been able to translate enough of the text to know what he had, and it was critical he get it out as soon as possible.

Somewhere between Jakarta and Europe a cargo ship had three marine cargo containers with machine tools on board. Inside those machine tools, virtually undetectable by current methods, was enough uranium to make a dozen dirty bombs.

Jason had alerted his handler to the situation a week ago when the containers were first being loaded. It had cost him his cover and the life of his primary agent, a man deep in the terrorist network of Jemaah Islamiyah.

So far nothing had been done to find and stop that ship. But Jason now had a laptop with the information that would identify not only the ship, but where the deadly material was headed. What Jason didn’t have was the program that could break the code and get into the specific data on the laptop.

It was his opinion that the cargo was headed for a port in Europe, before heading elsewhere—most likely the States.

He made his way slowly and painfully to the front of the cave. He pushed aside the blanket and stuck his head outside. At times the smoke so completely blocked the sun he couldn’t tell if it was day or night but for his watch. The front of the narrow entrance was covered by thick vines and wide lantana fronds. He’d found the cave by accident as he’d fled the men hunting him.

He didn’t want to waste the satellite phone’s batteries, but he had to make contact. He was getting sicker and weaker by the day. His spells of fever getting worse.

He wouldn’t last much longer.

Guam

Anna sensed an absence of movement. They were on the ground.

The door of the transport plane was open, and opening her eyes, she appeared to be alone. They had brought her all the way out to Guam and abandoned her in the plane.

A fine set of circumstances. Her anger and frustration was rising again.

Brock and his associates had, indeed, deplaned without her. No one was on board but her.

She could see the jungle beyond the plane framed in the open door.

Anna unfastened her seat belt, got up and stretched. The heat and light poured in through the open doors with a nasty vengeance.

She deplaned, squinting, and began to sweat almost instantly. It was like walking into a sauna. The sun beat down on her neck and face, the humidity sucked the sweat right up out of her pores onto her skin where it heated up but couldn’t evaporate because the air was already saturated. She’d rather be surrounded by fire.

Right across the road from where she stood there was a big sign above the feeder road into the camp: Welcome to Camp Nowhere.

The camp sprawled along the road on the far side of the airfield. No colorful tents like the ones she saw in firefighting camps. This one consisted of a half-dozen Quonset huts with semicircular, corrugated roofs, the structures bolted to large concrete slabs. Behind the Quonset huts stood several smaller stucco buildings and in the distance, across from what looked like a rice paddy, Anna saw several concrete outbuildings.

The sprawling base seemed empty. She had a weird feeling about it, as if she’d stepped into a horror thriller, or one of those great old Twilight Zone episodes.

She walked away from the C-17 and then stopped and stood staring across the dirt road at the camp. There was a small road sign: Harm’s Way. Hanging from that sign by one arm was a small skeleton of a man that had been fashioned out of wire.

Then, to her right about two hundred yards down the dirt road, barging out of the jungle like a charging rhino, came a Humvee. It careened onto the road, bounced over potholes and headed her way. When it reached the entrance to the airfield it turned toward her and kept on coming as if the driver was going to run her down.

Anna stood her ground, still as a bullfighter awaiting the charge of the bull.

The Humvee came to a skidding halt in a swirl of dust five feet from her.

Brock leaned out the narrow window. “Sleeping Beauty awakens. Hop in, Quick. We have a meeting we’re already late for.”

Like smoke jumpers, like probably all military-type organizations, last names took precedence over first names. She was Anna to her close friends, Quick to her colleagues. The habit probably came from name tags on military uniforms, last names only.

The doors were off the Humvee, so she wasn’t getting into any air-conditioned luxury. Brock wore lightweight tan pants, a green T-shirt and had a weird-looking gun of some kind slung tight next to his chest.

“You going to shoot me?” she asked.

“No. We don’t go anywhere without these. I’ll get you one after the briefing.”

“I can’t wait.”

She continued to give him a hard look, letting him know she didn’t appreciate his exuberance.

In the field about a mile away behind the Quonset huts and other buildings, commandos were drop-roping from two choppers.

She climbed in to the Humvee and they took off toward the camp.

Just then a group of men jogged by in tan shorts and green T-shirts. They all looked the same, as though they were from the same family. A bunch of middleweight fighters, short-cropped hair, hard bodies, all yelling in a sharp cadence.

She began to feel ill, the effects of the heat and the lingering exhaustion.

Too hot.

She had to get the damn fire suit off or she’d pass out. “Can you stop a second?”

He pulled over.

Anna jumped out and unsnapped the suspenders and began pulling the heavy overalls down. She wore black shorts and a gray sleeveless T-shirt underneath.

“Pretty damn hot, isn’t it?” Brock said.

She stepped out of the fire suit and tossed it into the back of the Humvee.

“Crazy hot.”

“This place is locked and loaded with testosterone,” Brock warned. “I wouldn’t go any further than that. Where we’re going there’s air-conditioning.”

“I wasn’t intending to go any further, at least not until I’m standing in front of a running shower.” She refused to get back into the Humvee. “I’m not talking to anybody without a shower and some clean, dry clothes. You’ve changed clothes, now it’s my turn.”

Brock chewed on the left part of his bottom lip. He had to think about her attitude for a second. She wasn’t in the military so he couldn’t call it insubordination. At least not technically. But there was the fact that she’d made that fire jump against direct orders from her boss. So she was insubordinate by nature, apparently.

The thing about her he worked hard to ignore was the shock at how beautiful she was, even under that ash and dirt. It was hard to keep his gaze off her. He turned and looked forward.

“Well, shit,” Brock said. “I’ve got orders to deliver you.”

“Why did they send you in the first place? Was it because they knew if they’d sent a CIA guy I wouldn’t have believed him for a second without proof?”

“Maybe.”

“What if I refuse now?”

“Well, this is a top-secret base and we’re in the middle of a global war. I can to shoot you, but then this whole exercise would have been for nothing.”

“That’s right.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

Brock looked over at her, frowned and shrugged. “You need a shower and fresh clothes. I can appreciate that.”

“That’s big of you.” She crossed her arms and leaned on one hip. Stubbornness was written all over the woman. He had to quiet the brewing storm.

“Okay, since I’m the one who’s going to train you, and jump into this mess with you, we need to get along. So I’ll offer a compromise.”

She shifted her position. Maybe he was on the right track.

He continued, “This guy we’re going to see has a file on your father. We’ll be there in about five minutes so he can meet you and know that you’re willing to go in. Then, the minute that little bit of time-wasting is over, I’ll take you to the showers and get you some clean clothes. Five lousy minutes, that’s all I’m asking.”

Her arms dropped to her sides. He almost had her. Just a little more reasoning, and she’d see things his way. He was sure of it. “See, the problem is, he’s a bureaucrat, CIA type. He runs things on this mission. It’s his job to get your father off that island. So, if I were you, and you want to see your dad again, I’d just placate the man for five minutes. Is there any way you can do that for me?”

Anna stared at him for a few seconds. He wasn’t sure which way she would go. Brock hadn’t noticed before, but she had the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, and just when he was beginning to believe those eyes were hardening, and he’d have to come up with more bullshit to get her into the Humvee, she climbed in.

It had been a long time since Brock had had to deal with a civilian, or even a regular soldier, for that matter. The kind of men he dealt with were the elite of the elite from all the branches of the military. But he had a feeling that this woman was just as tough.

Anna was too foggy-headed to argue and besides he’d made a compelling case. They passed three more Quonset huts, a couple concrete structures and a few large military tents. She spotted men moving like wolves in the forest that ran alongside the dirt road. Another team of men crossed in front of them and continued into the high grass. These men did have uniforms. Jungle fatigues. And guns.

Brock pulled in front of the end hut.

“Here we are.”

“Who’s this guy I’m going to meet?” Anna asked.

“Name’s Curtis Verrill. He’s the head spook around here. This is his mission.”

“They run all your missions?”

“No. They often propose. Guys like me, dispose,” he said with a smile.

“Meaning that you carry out their orders?”

“Meaning they tell us what they want, and we figure out how to go get it. Could be rescuing somebody, delivering an important package, hunting down a bad guy, whatever.”

“In this case recruiting a smoke jumper. Which, I might add, is how this all got started with my father in the first place.”

“I don’t question the missions, I just figure out how to do ’em. They’re the brains, we’re the brawn.”

“I think you’re both. You designed the mission they want done. That takes brains.”

He smiled again. “It takes experience and professional common sense.”

“Are you modest by nature or by design?”

“Both. I’m a realist. This is an eclectic business. We put together the kind of force structure we need for each job. Each element brings something we need. We live and die by team effort and by always making sure we have the right people for the job.”

“Like me?”

“Like you. But not normally. We usually bring in specialists from all branches. Or even go outside the military. Whatever it takes to get the job done. It’s like everywhere else. The Ivy League guys dream up something to do, we tell them if it’s possible and how to do it. Then we do it and they take all the credit.”

She exchanged a little conspiratorial grin with him. She understood perfectly. “A little like having a long discussion on a short topic with Bureau of Land Management people.”

He nodded. “You got it. You’re about to meet the Bureau of World Management.”

“I detect something of a bad attitude.”

“My attitude is very flexible,” Brock said. “It depends on my proximity to things that irritate me. And right now we’re real close to an irritant.”

Anna chuckled. As much as she’d have preferred not to like Brock, he was the type, open and self-deprecating, that she could easily connect with.

They got out of the Humvee.

“One more thing,” Brock said. “You’ll be walking through the communications room on the way back to his office. There aren’t any females in there. Or anywhere in the camp, for that matter. Just horny guys who can’t get into town. We’re in shutdown, mission isolation. Don’t even smile. It’ll act like a spark in dry hay.”

“I’ll do my best to ignore anything with more appendages than I have.”

“Excuse me, but there’s nothing I’ve seen around here with more appendages than you have. Slump and frown, that might help.”

She laughed. What had she gotten herself into?

He pushed open the door and went in ahead of her. She hesitated, staring at him. He turned and shrugged. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You didn’t.”

Chapter 5

The cool air took her breath away for a moment. The inside of the hut felt just like a refrigerator. She inhaled, as if trying to suffuse every cell with coolness.

There were half a dozen computer workstations, all manned by young men. On the walls, giant maps. Several large printers along the far wall were kicking out page after page of documents. The place hummed with military paperwork.

She and Brock headed to the back as chairs moved and men stepped out of their way.

Not unexpectedly, she actually heard a few very low moans as they walked by. She saw Brock shake his head.

Brock knocked on the only office door in the place. A gruff voice told him to enter. Brock asked Anna to wait.

She stood outside, leaning against the wall, thinking that she needed to call her mother at some point and explain where she was and to tell her that her father was alive. Her mom was going to be shocked. Anna didn’t know the protocol on this CIA base and didn’t want to do anything stupid. Her dad’s life was in danger and she didn’t want to be the one to end it—just by making a phone call. Her mother was probably out in the mountains with her satellite phone, so it wouldn’t be difficult to contact her. But should she? They usually talked three or four times a week, sharing adventure stories. This time, she’d have more to share than a fire adventure. This time she would raise the dead. She had a feeling her mother wouldn’t believe it, and at that precise moment, Anna could barely believe it herself. But if she didn’t call, her mom would worry. Anna didn’t want that.

About ten minutes later, while Anna had fallen into memories of her dad, Brock opened the door and motioned her inside.

The stern-looking man sitting behind the desk told her to have a seat. “I’m Curtis Verrill,” he said without looking up from a file he was leafing through. Like that was more important at this moment than making eye contact. She knew right off that she wasn’t going to like this guy.

Verrill wore tan khakis and a blue short-sleeved knit shirt with no insignia. After a few moments, he finally sat back, looked up and studied Anna for a second.

He said, “I apologize for all the secrecy and hassle. Believe me, this has been as difficult for us as it has been for you.”

“And why is that?”

He didn’t appear to like the question, or maybe the tone, so he ignored it. “We have a problem—”

“And I take it, I’m the solution.”

He didn’t respond to that either, but he did throw an accusatory look at Brock, as if to say he knew where her prejudgment had come from.

He picked up a brown folder and held it in his left hand. “Your father’s files. I’m sure you have some questions.”

She stared at the folder. After all these years CIA was suddenly going to tell her the truth about her father’s disappearance.

She reached across the desk for the folder, but he pulled it back. Apparently, he wasn’t really going to tell her anything. Now she really didn’t like the man.

Verrill related the reasons her father went under, the reasons for the cover story, his extreme value as an agent. “For an American to have any credibility in a Muslim culture, he has to be one of them. Marry into their world. Live, dress, eat and sleep like they do for a long period of time. Do business. Have a solid bona fide relationship with the people around him. Your father succeeded in all of that. He was well known and well accepted. Once he was in, he began to network.”

She listened to the story and wondered if it was any truer than what she’d believed about her father before. These people were professional deceivers. He wouldn’t have put his own daughter through all that sorrow and pain for a job, even if it was for national security. He would have found some way to contact her. To let her know he was still out there. Alive.

Brock had already told her most of what Verrill was saying about the mission. Everyone, she was sure, was well versed in this story, but no one seemed to have a good reason about her father wanting her to come in after him.

“Why me?”

“I can’t answer that,” Verrill admitted. “We have the highest qualified smoke jumpers in the world. We didn’t need to go to a…civilian.”

You left a word out, Anna thought, but what was it? Female, perhaps?

She felt a little like she’d taken a wrong step and had fallen into the rabbit hole, Alice in Jungleland. She was standing there in the middle of the Pacific with this CIA agent and this Special Ops guy telling her she was going to jump onto some tiny island—an island in the middle of the pirate and terrorist country—in less than twenty-four hours to rescue her father.

It seemed completely unbelievable to her.

There had been times when smoke jumping felt the same way. She went from putting out one small fire to the next, and the next, and after about five or six of them she no longer could think straight.

Perhaps this was one of those times.

“If this is all true, why wouldn’t he have contacted us? We thought he was dead.”

“He couldn’t contact you. Not you, his ex-wife, relatives or friends because that’s the nature of the business he’s in. He took on a different name, different identity. He had to be believed. Any suspicions might have put you and your mother in jeopardy.”

Verrill handed her a photograph. “This was taken two months ago.”

The man in the photo was getting out of a car, wearing Muslim headgear and clothing, deeply tanned, older, but it was her dad. The nose, the shape of the face. Definitely him.

Then Verrill started lecturing her on how critical the mission was, how important it was to get her father out. That the free world was depending on her. He called it Operation Fierce Snake.

She stared at Verrill, but her mind was on her father and that day he’d left and never returned. She remembered him turning as he was getting into a friend’s car. She was getting ready to go to her first year at the University of Colorado. He’d winked, smiled and said, “Be good. Be quick.”

She had laughed. “We have to live up to our name.”

He’d smiled and given her a thumbs-up.

According to Brock, her dad was already remarried by then. He’d never said a thing.

Then Verrill regained her attention. “We’re still getting some weak, random signals from his locator. He’s up on the mountain. He has some contacts on the island and one of them will meet you when you go in. Brock will fill you in on the details.”

Her father had divorced her mother twelve years ago, but he never talked about it, or berated her mother. She’d been one of those very lucky girls to have the greatest of fathers. Anna knew, and apparently so did the CIA, that she’d go anywhere, risk anything, to get him back.

Verrill continued, “Malaysia is off-limits. If you go in, I don’t know anything about it. If you don’t come out, I know nothing about that either.”

Anna glanced at Brock. He was impassive.

Verrill said, “You will go into training immediately and train continuously until you leave. That’s all.”

He stood now and reached out to shake her hand. She shook it, but somehow she knew it was simply a formality. There was nothing friendly about the gesture. “Good luck,” he said, and pulled his hand back.

The way he said it, the dark flicker in his eyes, sent a chill through Anna. She knew he really didn’t believe she could get in there and get her father out.

She’d prove him wrong.

She followed Brock out of the office, through the Quonset hut and back into the heat.

“I would like to call my mother in Colorado.”

“No problem. But you can’t tell her anything about your father or what you’re up to. You should call her soon, because once we start the training you won’t have time to talk to her until after we get back. Plus, you should know that any calls going out of here will be monitored.”

A man coming out of one of the other Quonset huts walked toward them. He had the confident swagger of someone born and bred to run things, as comfortable at the country club as on a secret military base. “Anna Quick, I’m Tom Roca.” He shook hands with her. “Welcome on board. I heard about your saving those college kids. That was very fine work.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

“Take good care of her, Brock,” Roca said, his eyes shifting for a brief second to Brock.

Brock didn’t answer.

“Great to meet Jason Quick’s daughter,” Roca said. “Enjoy your training.” He gave her a little smile, then walked into Verrill’s hut.

When he was gone, Anna turned to Brock as she climbed into the Humvee. “A friend of yours?”

“Not exactly. CIA. One of Verrill’s boys. Actually, he thinks he’s running this mission,” Brock said sardonically. “Practice before he assumes the job of running the universe.”

Anna smiled. She was starting to like Brock more and more.

They drove on to the village of Quonset huts down the road. She reflected on the tension between Roca and Brock, and Brock’s attitude toward Verrill. Not a happy group. She wondered what had happened to cause such hostility between them, and hoped it wouldn’t affect their chances of a successful operation.

Anna called her mom on a Sat phone Brock gave her—one, no doubt, that scrambled the conversation and made it impossible to be intercepted and decoded. She assured her mom that she was all right and was just going to sleep in for the next few days. Then she finally took a shower. She lingered in the downpour like a starved desert plant under the season’s first rain. She didn’t care if she used up all the water on the base, she was going to get clean. There were times, and this was one of them, when a shower or bath vaulted ahead of food, shopping or sex as life’s great relaxer. She didn’t need yoga, prayer, drugs or alcohol to get centered. She just needed water and soap.

Brock had gone somewhere to get her some clothes. When he came back she heard him on the other side of the door. “Everything you need is here.”

“Thanks.”

Fatigue breaks down the walls of reason and lets in unbidden thoughts, such as she was naked and a foot away was a handsome soldier. She smiled at her erotic nonsense. She wished she had time for a longer daydream but she was sure Brock was pacing outside, waiting for her to finish.

After the shower she found a pile of clothes just outside the stall on a chair. A green T-shirt, light nylon pants with four side pockets and jungle sneakers. High-fashion commando gear.

“Quick, you dressed?” Brock yelled from somewhere outside.

“Yes,” she called out. He walked in sooner than she’d expected, so she turned her back to him while she pulled her shirt down.

“Shower feel good?” Brock asked.

“I’m almost human.”

“You get that scar jumping?”

Shit.

She hated that he saw the scar on her back. She’d been planning on getting some skin grafts to get rid of it, but hadn’t had the time. “Yeah. Hit a snag. I didn’t have body armor on. It’s ugly, I know. I’m going to get it fixed one of these days.”

“It’s your badge of courage,” he protested.

“I like badges I can hide away in the drawer.”

He laughed and pulled up his shirt to display two nasty scars on his stomach. “Like these.”

The scars were there, but she was seeing the body that was holding them in place. The man had no fat on him. Didn’t she see a book in Barnes & Noble once with some title about the diet of the warrior among the thousand or so other diet books? Brock could be the cover.

She asked, trying to be nonchalant, “How did you get those?”

“Some moron tried to blow up a convoy I was hitching a ride on. Long story, bad ending for a lot of good people.” He tucked in his shirt. “Don’t think of a scar you earned in battle as ugly. There’s nothing ugly about it.”

She wasn’t going to argue with him, serious as he was. Especially when his scars represented something very emotional and deep. But she fully intended to get rid of hers…one of these days.

She followed him out to the Humvee and jumped into the passenger seat.

Anna rubbed her eyes. “The training for all of this had better be good.”

He gave her a wry glance, then headed down the road.

When they’d gone a few hundred yards, he said, “We’ll get in about a thousand rounds.”

“What? I need that much?”

“It’s my job to prepare you the best I can. Besides, if you’re with me I want to know I’ve made you very comfortable with Heckler and Koch.”

“Who are they?”

“They are the assault weapons you’ll be married to until we’re extracted. A thousand rounds from now you’ll think you were born with them in your hands.”

“I’m so excited,” she said sarcastically. “How long does it usually take to train somebody for your line of work?”

“Couple years. Couple million rounds.”

“I’m going to be proficient with Heckler and Koch in a day? Yeah, right.”

“Familiar is the operative word. Proficient is a marriage of talent and practice we don’t have the time for. Just give it a chance, okay?”

She nodded.

They rode in silence for a time, then Brock glanced over at her. “You may or may not hit the bad guys. I just want to make sure you don’t shoot me should a crisis arise.”

Excuse me, she thought with an inner smile, but you, my friend, are way too necessary to my survival to shoot. “I’ll try not to.”

“What’s between you and the CIA?” Brock asked.

“Years of lies.”

“Then it must feel good to finally know the truth.”

“Is it?”

“You don’t believe that your father is alive?” He glanced over at her, a look of confusion on his face.

“I don’t know yet,” she explained. “I guess I do. It’s just such a shock, it’s hard to bring this whole thing into focus. If he’s really in trouble, I want to get him out of there. Once he’s safe, then I’ll go ahead and have whatever kind of joyful nervous breakdown it requires.”

“We’ll get him out,” Brock said. “Given your record and mine, I’d say as a team we might just be the best there is at extracting somebody from a very bad situation.”

Flattery no less. She wondered what the structure of his thought patterns might be. He never appeared condescending, like Verrill, which she found to be a bit of a shock. He didn’t seem to possess any really annoying macho mannerisms toward her. Anna had run into just about every variety of male as a smoke jumper. The heroes and the assholes. She was sure the military was no different. Brock was a mystery that didn’t look to be easy to unravel. He was charming, no doubt about that, but charm could be the most venomous of snakes. It always put women in a weak position. Anna liked to know who her friends and enemies were up front and the charmer never allowed that. They were the real high-stakes poker players in the game. The ones she had to look out for.

Another group of men appeared out of the jungle and jogged in single file across the road in front of them. These men wore jungle camouflage, carried weapons and had blackened faces. Brock slowed to let them get across the road and into the high grasses of the field.

“Why haven’t any females broken through this elite barrier yet?”

He gave her a sidelong glance with that enigmatic half smile of his.

“They have now.”

Watch this guy closely, Anna thought. He’s saying all the right things.

She was in trouble.

Chapter 6

Bethesda, Maryland

Stanford Ellis watched the silver-haired jogger move at a loping gait along the Potomac River until he turned off the trail and settled into a fast walk.

The jogger, Frank Patterson, was searching for Ellis, finally spotting him in a tree grove. He looked around as if making sure they were alone, then walked over to his former boss.

“Where are we?” Ellis asked.

“Verrill’s assembling a team to go in.”

“They still getting response from Jason Quick?”

“Yeah.”

“Who’s going in?”

“Quick’s daughter, Anna. She’s a smoke jumper and he’s demanding she come in with the team.”

“What!”

“I don’t know what the hell’s going on with him. Verrill says Quick is over the edge. Full-blown paranoia. He won’t cooperate unless we send his daughter in. She’s agreed. We pulled her off a fire in California.”

Patterson shrugged, then shook his head. He was a CIA agent who’d worked for nine years under Ellis before Ellis was pushed out. “John Brock, Special Ops, took her to Guam for some quick OJT to get her ready to jump on that island.”

“Quick wants his daughter in that mess? He must be crazy.”

“It’s bizarre as hell. Verrill thinks he’s farther over the edge than we first thought.”

“I can’t believe she agreed.”

“Well, she’s at the Guam IC right now. Verrill’s not happy about sending anybody in there. It’s a miserable situation. The island is on fire. It’s a real no-man’s-land. Neither Malaysia nor Indonesia have any authority in that area. Thousands of little islands. Most of them either controlled by pirates or criminal enterprises. Or Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists. Verrill thinks maybe the best way to play this—”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about Verrill’s worries. We need to get rid of this bastard and get that damn laptop. Verrill understands that his name might be on one of those files, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. But he thinks if we play it so we can’t find Quick, he’ll just die on his own.”

“So he thinks.”

“Or somebody from the Jemaah Islamiyah will get to him if he’s out there long enough.”

“Can’t risk it. The laptop is still out there. Besides, it’s too late for that. We have to make sure this is buried and buried deep.”

“The ship’s on course to arrive in three days in Marseilles.”

“Then you tell Verrill he better get moving.”

Patterson sucked in his breath, and said, “Consider it done.”

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