Iron Dove

“Right!”

Robin’s brow wrinkled in a frown. “What’s that sound?”

Nova hesitated, listening, as she, too, heard a thrumming. “Helicopter,” she said.

They searched the sky, and within seconds a gray-green military-type helicopter—a Huey, Nova noted—appeared, moving directly toward them.

“Oh, it’s coming our way,” Robin said, her voice again in a quiver.

“It’s not going to shake us out of these slings. We’re fine.”

The blissful stillness of the jungle, already assaulted by the chopper’s blades, suddenly crackled with the sound of bullhorn being turned on.

Just wonderful, Nova thought. This cannot be good news. Why in the world would anyone come out here in a helicopter?

“I’m from Cosmos Adventure Travel,” rumbled a voice over the loudspeaker. “My name is Joseph Cardone. I need to speak to Nova Blair.”

Joe! My God! If Joe was here for her, whatever was brewing must be serious.

Her tour folks were pointing her way. The helicopter edged overhead. She and Robin swayed.

For a second, Nova was transported to a street in Germany and Joe was kneeling beside her, his face ashen. He’d just saved her from being run over, maybe even killed. She remembered the strength of his hands, the rich chocolate of his brown eyes, that football quarterback body.

She briskly hand-signaled the helicopter to back off, afraid the downdraft might break branches or topple nests. The pilot responded, lifting the craft higher but still keeping it above them. Joe, holding the bullhorn, stood inside the starboard door.

“Hey, Nova!”

She recognized his voice and her heart—which was already pumping from the adrenalin rush of the rescue so hard she could feel it in her throat—sped up still more. The goddamn idiot never called.

She gave him a thumbs-up of recognition.

“CAT needs you to do something. Urgent. No time to get a Jeep out here. You should turn over the tour to Bruce, collect your stuff, and then we’ll pick you up from the hotel’s deck. Say, ten minutes?”

How about, say, never! How dare they assume she’d jump when they called! She couldn’t have made it clearer that she no longer intended to work Company jobs. She gave a thumbs-down.

“Bruce,” she called out. “You can pull Robin across now.”

Robin started moving away toward the far side of the canopy.

From the sky, “We’ll pick you up. Ten minutes. Okay?”

She looked up at him, happy to see him and furious at the same time. She wanted to climb up there and ask him what he’d been doing lately. Again, she gave him the thumbs-down.

“Are you saying you aren’t going to come?”

She nodded and simultaneously gave a thumbs-up.

She began to pull back to where Padgett, Charles and the others waited. The helicopter followed, hovering high over her at first, and then slid swiftly to hover over the hotel. She wondered what havoc the blades were stirring up with anything loose on the deck. A rope ladder dropped down from the starboard door.

No is no, she thought.

By the time she reached her group, Joe was halfway down the ladder. She unhooked her carabiner and stepped out of the sling.

“Sorry, folks. This shouldn’t take long, but I’ve got to deal with it before we can go out today. Clearly CAT has some special problem they think I can solve. Everyone wait here, until I get back. Or you can come back with me to the hotel.”

“I’ll wait here since Robin is already across,” Charles said.

“I’ll wait here, too,” Padgett added.

“Don’t leave us in the lurch,” said a teacher from Ohio.

“I’ll be back in no time,” she assured everyone. No is no!

Chapter 4

Her feet felt light, as though her tennis shoes had the power of levitation. Nova closed the space between herself and Joe, who had just dropped a couple of feet from the helicopter’s ladder onto the broad Treetops deck.

The khaki, lightweight military jumpsuit showed off his dark brown wavy hair and deeply tanned skin in a way that triggered a too damn familiar sexual fantasy she had of being swept off her feet by Joe, and more. Lots more. Across the narrowing distance between them, he sent her one of those goddamn fantastic smiles.

Her pulse beat a tattoo at her throat. She didn’t even try to suppress the smile she sent in return. How wonderful to see him again. How amazingly good it felt.

He grabbed her hand for a handshake. She embraced him in a bear hug. He smelled wonderfully like fresh air and Texas sage—soap or shampoo, she thought. She’d never known him to wear cologne. Then she pushed him away. “You are a typical male jerk.”

“You’re pissed.”

“You betcha.”

He tilted his head, gave her a sheepish half grin.

“As I recall you uttered something about keeping in contact, and I haven’t heard word one from you. How many months now? Since I know you’re a man of your word, I decided you must surely be dead.”

They were yelling over the sound of the chopper. Joe waved the pilot to back off farther, noting as he did that Nova had a bit of tan on that extraordinarily fair skin, something she’d not had the last time he’d seen her.

He also wondered whether her greeting was the kind she’d use with a kid brother—or a friend—or one she used with a man she was attracted to. So far, he couldn’t tell.

She’d braided her glossy, long black hair into a twist at the back of her head. He checked her earlobes and found a plain pair of silver studs—not the dangly silver doves that he’d given her as a parting gift. He suddenly realized he’d been hoping she’d be wearing those. She always wore earrings, acted as though she was somehow naked without them, but it certainly made more sense out in the middle of the jungle to be wearing simple studs.

She might not be wearing his earrings, but she clearly had remembered his promise. And she was right that promises should be kept. “My humble apology.” He added a little bow at the waist.

She laughed, and the deep, throaty sound made the small hairs at the back of his neck stand up. He enjoyed looking at the curve of her breasts beneath the tight, gray tank top, and then at the long legs exposed below her gray shorts. He forced his eyes to her lips. He sure wasn’t thinking about business and why he’d been sent here. He was thinking of sex.

Gazing at those moist, luscious lips didn’t solve his thought problem, so he turned sideways and, staring out at the expanse of green foliage, said, “Look, I know you’ve turned down a couple of Company assignments. But this one, I promise you, is critical.”

A man and woman approached from the other end of the deck. Nova said, “Joe Cardone, this is Hans Licht and his wife, Jennie. They pretty much make Treetops happen. Joe works with me at CAT.”

He shook hands with them, and Hans Licht said, “Is there anything wrong? What is happening?”

“It’s okay, Hans,” Nova said. “CAT has hit a snag and they think they need me. I’m quite sure they don’t, but Joe and I need to chat about it.”

Sensitive hosts that they obviously had to be, given their exclusive clientele, the Lichts made a swift departure. Joe was again alone with a reluctant Dove.

“I’m stunned they would send you all the way out here,” she said at once. “I’m finished with CIA business.”

The irony of this scene struck him, momentarily interrupting the argument he’d prepared for her. Here he was, tasked to get Nova to work for the Company again on pain of professional discomfort, or worse, if he didn’t succeed. Yet during the last conversation he’d had with her, he’d asked why in the world she ever worked for the Company. He’d even said something to the effect that he didn’t understand why someone with her many gifts would spend any time dealing with the lowlifes of the world, even for her country.

He shook his head. A smile must have accompanied the headshake because Nova said, “What’s funny?”

“Sorry.” He leaned back against the sturdy deck rail—one guaranteed to keep distracted or tipsy guests from tumbling a hundred or more feet to the ground. He crossed his arms. “Not funny. Just ironic. I should be glad you want to quit, but here I am, and I’ve got to convince you to take just one more job. Just one more.”

“No.”

He waited. He’d let her wonder a bit just what they might need her for.

“Look,” she said.

She leaned against the rail beside him, close enough so that he felt the skin of her arm brush his forearm. Would she stand so close to a man she thought of as a kid brother?

“I’m burnt out. I lost a man I loved. I had to kill people again. I hate it. I’m out of the game.”

“Okay. You don’t need to convince me. I’m not someone who wants you…well, I’d just as soon you quit. But we’ve got a megaproblem, and we need you.”

“That’s ridiculous. They can always find someone else.”

“Someone else who speaks and reads, fluently, English, Italian, Chinese and Russian?”

She snorted in disbelief. “Why in the world would they need…?” She studied his face. “You’re not authorized to explain unless I agree to take the job, are you?”

“Correct.”

“Does it really have to be one person with all of those languages?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“I don’t want to do it, Joe.”

She frowned in a way he’d never seen before. A look of true hurt. She wanted to be free to take her beautiful photos and spend her days in magnificent and exciting places with interesting and nice people. And why not?

“When we were in Virginia training for the German mission,” he said, “someone told me that you never took jobs for the Company unless people had been killed. Not agents, and not bad guys, but ordinary people. I can tell you one thing. No one has died yet, but if we don’t succeed in this mission, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people will die.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

He said nothing. He waited a moment more to let that sink in, and then, “You’re unique, Nova. You are fluent in all the languages we need.” Another pause. “Just one more job.”

“Why do they need me? Us? Why not use local talent? Use several of their own break-in specialists and translators?”

“I wasn’t told that, but you can be sure they have their reasons. If I had to guess, I’d say maybe they need someone on-site to translate, for whatever reason, and to avoid leaks or generating suspicion by the target, they don’t want to have more people on location than is absolutely necessary. They require one person with heavy-duty language skills. And who knows about viruses. He definitely mentioned viruses. You know about viruses?”

“I did a job several years ago in Pakistan that involved bioweapons.”

“Well, a translator fluent in a bunch of languages who knows about bioweapons is an exceedingly rare bird. That’s you. Or maybe they think they need an on-site translator with a good cover who won’t obviously smell like security. We’re foreigners. We, as a team, would fit. Maybe they want all of those things.”

“I cannot tell you how much I don’t want to do this.”

“Look, it’s not going to be like last time. No wet work involved. This is a break-in and translation job, and I do the break-ins. I’ll even tell you where. It’s in Italy. The Amalfi Coast. What could be more beautiful? It’ll be more like a vacation. How’s that? A great, paid vacation for a little translation work and the potential to save thousands.”

She remained silent. “You’d be lead agent,” he added with an encouraging smile. “In charge, just like in Germany.”

Nova sighed and shifted her weight. She put her hand over Joe’s. She could tell from his tone that he was honestly reluctant to drag her back into this, but reluctance wasn’t stopping him. He believed she was, in fact, essential.

Her stepfather’s sexual and verbal abuse had hardened her. Killing Candido to save her younger sister Star from that same abuse and the years she’d served in prison for the killing had toughened her still more. Being recruited for the CIA by a man she thought had loved her but who’d dumped her when she no longer served his purposes, had been the finishing touch. She was capable of taking out the bad guys, and if Joe was being honest—and she believed he was—then how could she turn down this job and live with herself afterward? All they asked from her was translations. Was she going to call Claiton Pryce at Langley and say, “I absolutely refuse to translate one word for you or the Italians no matter how many people might die if I don’t?”

“Okay,” she said. A heavy weight descended onto her shoulders. “One more time.”

Chapter 5

The young man’s feet felt like great stones, every step requiring a huge effort. His palms were clammy and even though he had rubbed on massive amounts of deodorant to prevent perspiration in his armpits lest he be detected too soon, he felt some wetness there.

Scarcely one block away, he saw his target, Madrid’s famous and busy Gaudi Galleria, a shopping and entertainment center that at this afternoon hour would be crowded with hundreds—no, thousands—of infidels. Although people were dashing across the boulevard, he crossed the street at the light. He must do nothing that might call attention.

Half a block from the entrance, his vision of the glassy Galleria structure ahead momentarily blurred. He stopped, his legs shaking, and sucked in a breath.

“Don’t stop,” Ahmad al Hassan had coached him repeatedly. “It will seem strange.”

To cover the moment, he glanced in the window of the shop beside him. Nothing he saw registered in his mind. He turned again to his target and walked at the same practiced pace. Not too fast.

But his heart raced with his eagerness to get there, to have it done. He prayed he would not lose courage at the last minute, that he would be the one to press the button. If for any reason he froze, two others were with him on this mission, and one of them would do it for him. There was no way out now, no way back, only forward to honor and paradise.

No one seemed to notice a clean-shaven, nicely dressed youth with dark, intense eyes and well-combed hair.

Fifteen paces inside, he put his shaking finger on the detonator button. “God is great,” he shouted in Arabic. He pressed, the circuit completed connection.

The roar, which he did not hear, was deafening.

In his small, tidy office on the second floor of a building in Amalfi that housed a bakery on the first floor, Ahmad al Hassan fought the urge to squirm in his desk chair. The aroma of fresh bread seeped into the room from below and his mouth watered despite his anxiety. His two assistants, Mohsin and Brahim, appeared to be busy laboring at their desks.

He stroked his beard, kept short so that he would not draw excessive attention to that fact that he was Muslim in this heathen land. So much was happening all at once. In his pocket he carried the e-tickets that would take Nissia and the children out of Italy, and he was anxious, now, to tell her she must leave. But he could not possibly leave work until he knew if today’s attack had succeeded. Ahmad had spent enormous emotional energy and substantial Al Qaeda financial resources to get the bomber in place.

To Mohsin he said, “If the boy is caught—”

He spoke in Arabic, which he allowed his assistants to speak only in the office. Outside it, they were never to speak anything but Italian, the better to blend in.

Success meant he could concentrate his efforts immediately on the still greater spectacle, one that would bring Italy and the continent to its knees. Failure in Madrid meant he would have to deal with criticism from Syria.

Again he checked the television screen. The station put out continuous news but Ahmad had ordered Mohsin to silence the sound. He simply had too much to do to have the monstrous machine blaring at him in Italian.

He checked the clock. If the boy had succeeded, the Galleria would be in chaos at this moment and the boy in the presence of Allah. The news should appear on the screen soon.

Mohsin sneezed. His head, a small round ball atop a long skinny neck, nodded over the fake documents he was preparing for Al Qaeda recruits due to arrive soon from Palestine, Egypt and Syria, on their way to Germany.

By habit, the dua associated with sneezing spilled from Ahmad’s lips, “May Allah have mercy on you.”

“May Allah be praised,” Mohsin responded.

Mohsin was a graybeard of fifty-five, much older than Ahmad’s thirty-six years. They had met in Palestine. Then ten years ago, Ahmad had become a sworn member of Al Qaeda and the two of them had been sent here to Amalfi. Now fronted by Ahmad’s profitable and legitimate fishing business, both of them were deep undercover. And although Mohsin felt the creeping affliction of Parkinson’s disease, the fire of jihad still burned hot in his soul. He would sacrifice his life, if he had to, to get all Westerners out of the Holy Lands.

“I am sure that all will go as we have planned,” Brahim said from across the room. His voice, high with anxiety, betrayed his confident words. Brahim, twenty-five years old, short and plump, was a financial whiz, skilled at laundering money through the fishing business.

Ahmad studied Brahim for a moment, fascinated as always by his remarkably fat yet agile fingers, then he snapped, “Concentrate on your work. The list of weapons needs to be sent to Greco by tomorrow at the latest.”

The weapons, to be secured from the weapons dealer Fabiano Greco, who lived in Positano, would be smuggled via Lebanon into Syria. The heart of Al Qaeda now resided in Syria under the leadership of the Saudi imam, Ramsi Muhammad.

Ahmad forced his eyes once again to his own work. Because of his language skills, one of his tasks was to translate all-important, sensitive messages from Kenya, Libya and France, brought by courier to this office, into Arabic. Another courier carried them on to Syria. The secret to remaining undetected by the electronics of the infidels was to avoid electronic devices for all really critical communications. At the moment, he labored over a report from the Al Qaeda cell in Kenya.

“That’s it,” Brahim shouted.

With his two assistants, Ahmad turned to the TV, his gaze transfixed by the scene of twisted metal, broken glass, scattered paper, here and there, something recognizable as a body.

“Allah be praised,” Ahmad said, almost a whisper, his head bowed.

Mohsin leapt to his feet and turned on the sound.

The news anchor spouted the basics: how many known dead so far, twenty-three but the death toll swiftly rising; that it was the work of a suicide bomber, but as yet no clues and no one claiming responsibility; that the wounded were being taken to nearby hospitals.

Ahmad turned to Brahim. “I am going to be busy with preparations for the fourteenth. You are in charge of getting the information out to the usual outlets that this is our accomplishment. Make sure Aljazeera receives it first, by at least an hour. They are fanatical about having priority. And the video, too.”

Brahim nodded.

Mohsin said, “I have the article for the Web site ready. Do you still wish it to be posted tomorrow, not today?”

“Yes.”

From the beautifully carved cedar PrayerKeeper on the wall came the call to prayer, interrupting Ahmad’s growing sense of joy, swelling sense of pride and relief that the boy had not been caught and they were all still safe. As the head of the Al Qaeda cell in Italy, keeping this Amalfi operation safe—their home base in Italy—was his most solemn duty.

Like the good Muslim that he was, he prayed five times daily at the appointed hours, and the PrayerKeeper let him know the correct moment. It could indicate the time for prayer at any place in the world. In addition to playing the call to worship, it indicated the direction of Qiblah. The time was 16:09, the time for mid-afternoon prayers.

The timekeeper had been a gift last year from his son, Saddoun. A good son. Smart. Devoted to Allah. Ahmad could never have hoped for a better seed. He had tried to have at least one other boy, but Allah, the one true God, had blessed him with three daughters instead. Allah’s will be done.

He made ablution, as did Brahim and Mohsin. Afterward, he unrolled his carpet as they did theirs. They all took the position of reverence. “Allahu Akbar” they intoned.

Praying on clean ground would be better, but even the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, had used a carpet. Although Islam was growing in fertile soil in Italy and the country now had more than four hundred mosques or cultural centers, there were none yet in Amalfi, so they prayed together at the office.

He prayed thrice, at the end said Aameen, and used both hands to rub his face. He stood and rolled up the carpet.

“I have to leave now,” he said. “I cannot return, so you should close up.”

Ahmad rushed out the door, down the outside stairway and to his ancient Audi. As he seated himself inside and turned the ignition, he said the appropriate dua.

He pulled into the Amalfi traffic, heading for home. Nissia was not going to want to leave, but before the fourteenth, his entire family must be out of Italy.

Chapter 6

Joe hung above her, climbing quickly, halfway up to the hovering Huey. Someone had hauled up her minimal gear. She’d taken only four minutes to change from walking shorts into a pair of light gray cotton slacks and matching short-sleeved top.

“It’s such a shame they can’t get someone else,” Charles Scott said, his hair and clothes rippling in the downdraft. “Robin is going to be horribly disappointed. She admires you enormously.”

James Padgett grabbed Nova’s hand. “Take care,” he bellowed. “I’ll try to remember what you said. ‘Don’t give up.’”

Joe disappeared into the Huey. James Padgett gave her a leg up onto the first rung. She grabbed the ladder with both hands and climbed swiftly.

Joe and a blond, blue-eyed, and quite young military woman pulled her into the Huey. With Joe beside her, Nova buckled herself into a jump seat, and the blonde went forward to join the pilot and copilot.

“Where are we headed?” Nova yelled.

“The USS Ronald Reagan. About thirty minutes off the coast.”

The blonde then reappeared carrying two cups. She handed one to Nova. “Coffee?” she yelled over the noise of the helicopter blades.

“Yes, thanks.” Nova loved Costa Rican coffee. Better still, a cappuccino made with Costa Rican coffee. She was pretty much hooked on cappuccinos.

The blonde extended the second cup to Joe. “How about you?” She gave him an unabashedly come-hither smile.

Nova snapped her gaze to Joe’s face. He captured the blonde’s gaze with those dark chocolate eyes of his, returned her smile and, when he took the cup, managed to let their fingers touch.

Or had the blonde arranged that?

This guy is absolutely incorrigible.

He’s a jock. Women are crazy about him—beautiful women younger than me. He’s younger than me. And if I let him get under my skin again, I’ll richly deserve the disappointment I’ll eventually have. I’ve got to stow it.

The blonde went forward. Nova gave Joe a cocky smile. “Still got that winning way with women, I see.”

He just grinned and shrugged.

Twenty minutes later, they touched down onto the carrier’s deck. They had barely dashed out from under the still rotating blades when a young, sun-blistered lieutenant colonel met them. “We have an EA-6B Prowler waiting for you,” he said. The lieutenant colonel’s aide carried a couple of bags Nova assumed must belong to Joe.

The blonde deposited Nova’s two bags at Nova’s feet. She gave Joe a parting smile and strode off, back straight, hips in a swagger. Nova felt a flash of admiration for the confidence in her stride.

Looking at Joe’s gear and the large duffel bag and aluminum camera case at her feet, the lieutenant colonel added, “I don’t think the Prowler will handle that much.”

“Sure it will,” Joe countered.