Strangers When We Meet

“Roger that,” Sergeant Lewis acknowledged.

“There they are,” the lieutenant murmured.

Dodge had no difficulty identifying Major Petrovna when she appeared. The treaty required inspec tion personnel to wear civilian clothes while visiting a host country, but even in her badly cut navy suit, she was striking. She wore her silver-blond hair pulled back in a high twist that emphasized her sculpted cheekbones. A decidedly aristocratic nose gave her an elegant air, at odds with that lush, sensual mouth.

When she got closer, Dodge saw that her eyes were blue, as her bio had indicated. A deep purplish-blue, almost the same color as the monkshood that blanketed the high valleys in spring—also known as wolfsbane, women’s bane, the Devil’s helmet and the blue rocket, Dodge reminded himself wryly. Highly toxic if the roots were ingested. Something he’d best remember.

Those intense blue eyes flicked over him, taking in his height, stance and uniform in a quick, assessing glance before moving to the two men with him. As she approached, Dodge spotted the puckered skin on the left side of her neck and lower jaw. Not even that spiderweb tracery of scars could detract from the overall package.

The look she gave him as he extended his hand was another story. It went past cool and hovered somewhere around icy.

“Welcome to Cheyenne, Major Petrovna. I’m Dodge Hamilton.”

She gave his hand a brisk shake, after which they took turns introducing the others. Then she got right to the point in heavily accented English.

“My team requires transportation to their quarters. You will arrange it, then escort me to call upon Colonel Yarboro so I may present my credentials.”

Although the clipped instructions coincided exactly with Dodge’s intentions, that imperious “will” had him lifting a brow. The lady was obviously used to being in charge.

“Lieutenant Tate and Sergeant Lewis will help your folks with the baggage and drive them to their quarters,” he replied. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you directly to the wing headquarters.”

Leading the way, he escorted his charge out of the terminal to the blue air-force sedan parked at the curb and opened the passenger-side door. Petrovna slid into her seat without so much as a nod or word of thanks.

If the grueling flight from Moscow and nine-hour time differential had sapped the major’s energy, she didn’t allow it to show. Sitting ramrod straight in the passenger seat, she answered Dodge’s polite question about her flight in curt monosyllables, and displayed no trace of weariness during the fifteen-minute drive from the airport.

Her blue eyes absorbed Cheyenne’s rolling landscape, then locked on the tall, white missiles standing sentry at the base’s front gate. When the gate guard had waved them through and the white-trimmed brick buildings of the old fort appeared, Dodge made another attempt to break the ice.

“The base started life as a cavalry post. It’s part of our wild-and-woolly Western heritage.”

“I know this,” Petrovna replied repressively. “I haf been …” She stopped, corrected herself. “I have been here before, on an inspection team under the old treaty.”

So much for that conversational gambit. Flicking the directional signal, Dodge turned into the parking lot beside the two-story brick building that housed the headquarters of the 90th Space Wing. Once parked, he reached behind him for a fat envelope.

“This contains your identification badge, a base directory and a paper copy of the slides that will be presented at the in-brief tomorrow.”

He passed over the package. The major accepted it without comment.

“You should wear the badge whenever you’re on base.”

With a look that said she was perfectly aware of the protocol, Petrovna clipped the plastic identifier to the lapel of her navy suit jacket and didn’t wait for Dodge to come around and open her door.

Her low-heeled black pumps beat a precise tattoo on the sidewalk as she led the way to the headquarters’ front entrance. Sturdy outer wooden doors opened into a glassed-in foyer, designed to break the force of Wyoming’s constant winds. Once inside the foyer, security forces checked their badges and handheld articles before waving them through.

Some kind of high-powered meeting had just broken up, Dodge saw. A small crowd of civilians in expensive-looking suits and power ties were just filing past the security checkpoint. The badges dangling from their suit pockets identified them as contractors. Dodge picked up bits and pieces of conversation as the group passed.

“The Pentagon’s still working the RFP.”

“… won’t release the initial specs until January.”

“We’re talking five, maybe six years for development, integration and testing.”

The last speaker had already passed, but his voice snagged Dodge’s attention. It was low and rough. Almost rasping. As if someone had punched the man in the throat and he was still getting his wind back.

“I don’t see it happening,” Gritty Voice was saying, “before …”

“Ummph!”

With a startled grunt, Dodge collided with the woman who’d stopped in her tracks just ahead of him. The force of the collision propelled Petrovna into a near free fall. He lunged forward and caught her just in time.

Whoa! There was a real woman under those layers of permafrost. Dodge didn’t exactly cop a feel. He had a little more class than that. Besides, there was the treaty’s explicit prohibition against touching. But he certainly registered a set of long, sinuous curves under her shapeless navy suit.

“Sorry ‘bout that.” Reluctantly, he set her on her feet. “Colonel Yarboro’s office is straight ahead.”

Instead of moving on, the Russian pivoted slowly.

“This way, Major Petrovna.”

She paid no attention. She stood rooted in place, staring at the backs of the departing men. Every trace of color had drained from her face. Her blue eyes were glassy with shock.

Chapter 2

“Major?”

Petrovna didn’t respond. She’d gone so pale that the puckered skin on her neck and lower jaw stood out like the shadowed craters of the moon.

“Major Petrovna? Are you okay?”

Dazed blue eyes swung toward Dodge. “Shto?”

“Are you all right?”

The blonde didn’t answer. She stared blankly at him for several seconds, then pushed past. Backtracking through security, she shoved open the door to the building’s exterior and searched the crowd now climbing into various vehicles. Whatever she saw didn’t appear to satisfy her. Spinning around, she fired off a torrent of Russian.

“Sorry,” Dodge said. “I don’t understand.”

With an obvious effort, she fought to recall her English. “Did you see him?”

“See who?”

“The one who speaks … How do you say? Like a … Like a …”

“You mean the guy who growled like a dog?”

“Yes! The one who growls like the dog. Did you see him?”

“I heard him, but I didn’t see him.”

“Do you know who he is, this one?”

Dodge didn’t have a clue, but he sure as hell intended to find out.

“From their badges,” he said slowly, “I’d guess he was part of a group of civilian contractors.”

He waited for her to explain. When she didn’t, he pressed her. “What’s with the growler? Have you crossed swords with him before or something?”

“What do you say?”

“Obviously, you recognized that guy’s voice. How do you know him?”

“I …”

Petrovna lifted a hand. The fingers she pressed against her scars were trembling, Dodge noted with a sudden kink in his gut.

“I once …”

“You once what?”

The question seemed to recall her from wherever her racing thoughts had taken her. Abruptly, she dropped her hand. Beneath the rumpled suit jacket, her shoulders stiffened.

“I think perhaps I hear a voice like this one before. I make the mistake.” Turning, she marched down the hall. “Come, we will be late for my appointment.”

“Hold on!”

Dodge caught up with her in three quick steps. When she refused to slow, he said to hell with the rules and snagged her arm.

“You looked as if you were about to pass out on me a moment ago. Why did hearing that growl almost buckle your knees?”

“I make the mistake.”

She glanced down pointedly at his hand. When she lifted her gaze again, she could have chipped granite with her flinty stare.

“We waste time. Come.”

Stiff-spined, she swept down the hall. Dodge trailed her, swallowing a few decidedly uncomplimentary remarks about Russians in general, and tight-assed Russian majors in particular.

They were ushered into the 90th Missile Wing commander’s office a few minutes later. Although the major maintained her stiff, professional manner, she unbent a little during the courtesy call. Once, she even smiled. Just a polite curve of her lips, but even so, the transformation was startling.

Well, damn! Good thing she didn’t do that more often, Dodge thought. Her snow-princess looks were enough to make a man start thinking of ways to initiate a spring melt. When she thawed even a few degrees, his thoughts took a sharp jump into long, hot summer nights.

The brief thaw probably had a lot to do with the fact that she and the colonel spoke the same missileese. Within minutes, the two astrophysicists had left Dodge behind in the technical dust.

When they were joined by the vice-commander, Dodge used the cover of polite conversation to slip into the outer office and pop a question at the colonel’s administrative assistant.

“Can I ask a favor, ma’am?”

“Sure.”

“When Major Petrovna and I entered the headquarters building a little while ago, we passed a passel of civilian contractors. Would you check and see if there was a meeting or briefing in the conference room they might have been attending? If so, I need the name and telephone number of the officer who set it up.”

“No problem.”

She punched a button on her intercom. Within moments, she’d obtained the requested information from the conference-room scheduler.

“It was a briefing on the proposed new exoatmospheric defense system,” she informed Dodge. “Lieutenant Colonel Haskell from the plans directorate conducted it.”

She scribbled his name, office symbol and phone number on a pink memo slip.

“Thanks.”

Stuffing the slip into a zippered pocket of his uniform, Dodge waited for Petrovna to make her farewells. Once they were back in the sedan and headed for the quarters set aside for the visiting team, he tried again.

“About the voice you heard in the hallway. You sure you don’t want to tell me why it spooked you?”

Petrovna’s jaw clenched, stretching her scarred skin tight over the bone. “I make the mistake. We will speak no more of it.”

Wrong. They would speak about it a whole lot more, once Dodge got a tag on Dog Voice.

“You will take me to my quarters so I may rest from the flight,” she announced coldly. “Tomorrow, you will report at oh-six-hundred. We must breakfast before the in-brief.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled, with just enough of an edge to cause her to cut him a quick look.

“You must escuse me if I sound …” She waved a hand, searching for the right word. “If I sound …”

“Uptight?” Dodge supplied helpfully. “Like maybe you sat on the pointy end of a missile?”

Her jaw dropped. She stared at him for several seconds before a gleam of what looked suspiciously like laughter lit her eyes. She controlled the impulse before it could make it to her lips.

“You will excuse me,” she said again, repressively. “It has been a long day.”

Dodge figured that was as close as he was going to get to an apology. Nodding, he cut through the traffic headed off base and circled the parade ground. Stately homes left over from the cavalry days lined two sides of the meticulously mowed field. On the south end were the long, low buildings that once had housed unmarried cavalry officers. They now served as Visiting Officers’ Quarters.

The buildings’ exterior retained the look of the 1880s. The redbrick walls, tin roof and long, white-painted porches were all original. Successive renovations, however, had brought the interiors up to modern comfort standards. Each suite contained a living room and bedroom, with a bath and small kitchenette tucked into the hallway between the two. The sofa and chairs were upholstered in earth-toned fabrics, and the accessories scattered around the rooms reflected Warren’s frontier heritage. Lamps made of welded horseshoes sat on the end tables. A shadow box displaying crossed cavalry swords hung above the campaign-style desk. Framed prints and wide windows brought Wyoming’s spectacular mountains and rolling plains into the room.

In keeping with his cover of a reservist recalled to active duty to assist during severe pilot shortages, Dodge was quartered in the VOQ across the parking lot. He would have preferred to bunk down with his cousin Sam on the Double H, but the ranch was more than an hour’s drive north of Cheyenne. This arrangement let him keep a closer eye on his charge.

He’d checked the major’s suite earlier to make sure the cupboards were stocked and the protocol office had delivered the prerequisite gift basket. It sat on the coffee table as Petrovna skimmed a quick glance around the living room and dropped her briefcase on the desk. After ascertaining that her suitcase had already arrived, she confirmed the room numbers assigned to her teammates before dismissing her escort.

“I will see you tomorrow.”

Dodge ignored the brush-off. The woman intrigued him in more ways than one. With her odd reaction at wing headquarters front and center in his mind, he tendered a casual invitation.

“The pantry’s stocked with soup and such, but I could pick up you and your folks after you’ve rested and take you to dinner.”

“We ate the sandwich on the airplane.”

“You’re sure?”

“Da.” The blonde held out an impatient hand for the key. “You may leave now. And …” As if recalled to her manners, she gave him a quick nod. “I thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Her brief spate of cordiality ended, she dismissed him once again. “I will see you tomorrow.”

Damn straight she would, Dodge thought as he tipped two fingers to his forehead in a casual salute.

It took every bit of Lara’s iron discipline to keep her face expressionless and her voice steady until the door closed behind the American officer.

As soon as it shut, her discipline imploded and the tremors she’d fought with every ounce of her being took over. Her arms and legs began to shake. Her breath shortened to strangled gasps that cut through the silence of the suite like a Cossack saber.

That voice! That rasping growl! It couldn’t be the same one she’d heard that horrific night. It couldn’t.

Blindly, she groped her way to the nearest chair and collapsed. Her breath razored from her lungs through a throat clogged tight. As if it were yesterday, she could feel the heat scorching her face, her hands. Feel the paralyzing panic as the wall of fire roared toward her. She’d screamed for Yuri, for Katya. Dragging off her heavy military overcoat, she’d wrapped it around her head and was about to plunge through the wall when her husband burst through the flames with their baby daughter in his arms.

Lara didn’t cry. Not anymore. She hadn’t since the night her husband died in her arms. But she couldn’t hold back an agonized groan as she rocked in the chair and tried to force the searing memories back into the black corner of her soul where they would always live.

Larissa Petrovna was front and center in Dodge’s mind when he pushed through the door at the end of the long hall and stepped into an early dusk. The ever-present Wyoming wind nipped at his face and hands as he walked past the blue sedan he’d been assigned for the duration of the Russians’ visit. He would have preferred to chauffeur the major around in his rented 4x4, but protocol dictated a vehicle with USAF markings and license plates for their official duties.

His quarters were just across the parking lot. The rooms were similar in design and layout to Petrovna’s, and a hell of a lot more comfortable than some of the rat holes he’d occupied during other ops. As he keyed the lock, he kept returning to that business outside the wing commander’s office. What the heck was that all about?

Tossing his hat and keys on the table, he checked his watch. Just a little past six. He fished out the piece of paper with the number jotted down by the wing commander’s administrative assistant. Colonel Haskell had probably left for the day, but Dodge decided to give him a call anyway.

Haskell picked up on the third ring. He was, he informed Dodge, just on his way out the door.

“Then I’ll make this quick. I understand you gave a briefing at wing headquarters this afternoon.”

“That’s right. The subject of the briefing wasn’t classified, but I’ll tell you right up front I can’t discuss any of the specific issues we addressed over an open phone line.”

“I’m more interested in the attendees than the issues. One attendee in particular. A civilian contractor.”

“There were upward of thirty contractors in the room.”

“This one spoke in a low, sort of rasping voice, as if he had something stuck in the back of his throat.”

“I know who you mean. His name’s Hank Barlow. He’s the CEO of E-Systems.” He paused a moment. “What’s your interest in him?”

Dodge fully intended to report Major Petrovna’s reaction to this guy Barlow. It had been too odd to let pass. He’d confine his report to those with a need to know, though.

“I heard his voice as he was going out of the head quarters and I was coming in,” he said easily. “Thought I knew him from somewhere and was curious as to his identity.”

“Now you know. Want me to track down his number for you?”

“That’s okay. I can get it. Thanks.”

He hung up and made two additional calls. The first was to the Office of Special Investigations. The OSI conducted counterintelligence ops within the air force, in addition to investigating everything from terrorism to desertion, drug trafficking and/or murder.

The local OSI duty officer patched him through immediately to the F. E. Warren detachment commander, Lt. Colonel Paul Handerhand. Hander hand listened without comment when Dodge described Major Petrovna’s odd behavior, and promised to have his people check out Hank Barlow.

“I’ll do the same,” Dodge advised.

That was met with a short silence. Handerhand had been read-in on some of Dodge’s background and knew he’d been brought in from an outside agency. That was all he knew.

“Let me know what you find out,” Handerhand said briskly.

“Same goes.”

Dodge disconnected and pressed the star key on his cell phone. The instrument looked ordinary enough, but Mackenzie Blair Jensen, the agency’s guru of all things electronic, had crammed in enough circuitry to bounce signals off a supernova. The device also performed an instant thumbprint, iris scan and voice analysis to identify the user’s biometrics and detect if he or she was under duress before connecting to OMEGA’s control center.

The high-tech control center was located on the third floor of a town house in the heart of Washington D.C.’s embassy district. All a casual passerby would see if they strolled past the town house was a discreet bronze plaque identifying the building as home to the offices of the President’s Special Envoy. The title was one of those empty honorifics dreamed up to give a wealthy campaign contributor a chance to rub elbows with Washington’s movers and shakers. A mere handful of insiders knew that the President’s Special Envoy also served as director of OMEGA. As such, he fielded highly trained and specialized agents, only at the direction of the president and only when it wasn’t expedient to use other, more established agencies.

Which said a lot about Washington’s determination to make sure this START III inspection went off without a glitch. With the international situation so precarious and wild-eyed insurgents blowing themselves up all around the world, the last thing either the U.S. or Russia needed was an incident that could lead to a nuclear showdown.

Feeling the weight of all those nukes on his shoulders, Dodge held the cell phone up so the scanner could beam his iris print. Seconds later, his controller’s face painted across the screen.

“Hey, Dodger.”

“Hey yourself, Blade.”

Clint Black, code name Blade, had been with OMEGA almost as long as Dodge himself. They’d worked several ops together and would trust each other with their lives. That trust didn’t extend to women, though. Blade was still plotting payback for the fun-loving UPI reporter Dodge had whisked out from under his nose last year.

Although … Dodge and everyone else at OMEGA had been watching with some interest the fireworks that sparked between Blade and one of the newer agents. The betting was Blade’s sharp edge was about to get blunted, big-time.

“How’s it going out there in cowboy country?”

“It’s going,” Dodge replied.

After a succinct status report that included his initial impressions of the three Russians, he broached the reason for his call.

“I need you to check out a dude by the name of Hank Barlow. He’s the CEO of E-Systems.”

“Hank Barlow. E-Systems. Got it. Anything in particular you want me to look for?”

“See if he has any connection to our visiting Russians.”

“Roger that. I’ll get back to you.”

Blade hung up and keyed the name into OMEGA’s computers. While the supercomputer did its thing, he skimmed a glance around the busy control center.

It was geared to operate 24/7. Active and passive electronic countermeasures prevented interception of its encrypted emanations. Communications techs kept the array of computers and wall-size digital displays humming. Even the field-dress unit, which could turn a grungy agent just back from three weeks in the jungle into a tuxedoed James Bond in the blink of an eye, had at least one team member working some esoteric disguise or another.

Blade dragged his chair closer to the operations control panel to key in the name of the individual and company Dodge had just requested data on. Blade intended to run both through a wire-tight screen. He’d done enough covert ops for OMEGA to know success or failure on any mission hung by a thread. A late contact, a small detail buried under others, a blurred photo—any or all of them could spell disaster. He’d just started skimming the info that came when his nemesis strolled in.

“Oh, Christ.”

Victoria Talbot, code name Rebel, caught the low mutter and pasted on a saccharine smile.

“Good to see you, too.”

Blade blew out a slow breath and swung around to face the honey-haired operative. She was dressed in her usual leather: bomber jacket, thigh-hugging pants, boots, all the same thin, supple black. All she needed to complete the image of an oversexed biker babe were a few tattoos.

It wasn’t that Blade disliked the woman. Hell, the truth was, she turned him on. But they’d had this love/hate thing going ever since they’d clashed during Rebel’s first week at OMEGA. It had been a simple misunderstanding, for Christ’s sake. She didn’t need to knock Blade flat on his ass. Wouldn’t have, if he’d had the least inkling she would even try.

They were both professionals. They’d smoothed things over. On the surface, at least. But they both knew whatever the hell was going on beneath that surface would blow up in their faces one of these days.

“You need something?” he asked, with a credible attempt at civility.

“No. Just wanted to check on Dodge.” She cranked her too-sweet smile up another notch. “I thought I could help, since he and I are both former air force.”

And Blade wasn’t. Obviously she thought his stint as a lowly army special-forces grunt didn’t count for squat when dealing with one of her fellow hotshot pilots.