Match Play

“Dayna! I’ll be damned.”

An all-too-familiar grin hiked up the corners of his mouth. Before she realized his intent, he hooked an arm around her waist and swooped in for a kiss.

His mouth covered hers, and for an instant, for one searing instant, the years rolled back. She was in college again. So hungry for this man she couldn’t get enough of him, in or out of bed. So much in love she wanted the whole world to share her joy.

Reality returned with a crash. Remembering the bitterness that had followed her joy, Dayna jerked out of Luke Harper’s arms.

Chapter 2

She was even more vibrant than he remembered.

The realization slammed into Luke as the woman he’d once thought he’d spend the rest of his life with backed away from him.

Her face was thinner than in their college days, her honey-colored hair lighter than he remembered. But her skin still had that healthy glow that came from regular exercise and hours spent outdoors while her eyes…

Christ, those eyes! How many times had Luke lost himself in their shimmering green depths? They’d been filled with such love and laughter then.

They weren’t now. Flashing from fury to disdain in a single heartbeat, they raked him from head to toe.

“Harper.”

That was it. No “Hey, Luke. Been a long time. Hope you finally got your head screwed on semistraight.”

“Hello, Pud.”

The pet name sent red flags into her cheeks, but before she could slice into him for using it, one of his buddies jabbed him in the ribs.

“Jeez, Harper, introduce us. Not that you need any introduction, Ms. Duncan.” Elbowing Luke aside, the lanky American thrust out his hand. “I was on leave in Athens during the last Olympics and saw you paddle across the finish line for gold. The name’s Alan. Alan Parks.”

She shook his hand and relaxed into a smile, looking so much like the woman Luke had fallen for that his stomach pitched into a ninety-degree roll.

“These clowns,” Parks said, “are Gabe, Tucker and Dweeb.”

“Dweeb?”

“His call sign. Short for dumb-ass dweeber, after he missed a direct approach to a well-lit runway at a location that shall remain nameless.”

“So you’re all flyboys?”

“We are,” Parks confirmed. “We’re on an exchange tour, attached to RAF Leuchars.”

By now the response was so automatic that it sounded authentic even to their ears.

“We saw some of the advance PR on TV about the women’s Pro-Am International,” Parks said, eyeing her golf bag. “I didn’t know you were competing in it, though.”

“I’m a last-minute entrant. And I’d better hustle over to the driving range if I want to make it past the qualifying round. Nice meeting you all.”

When she turned to Luke, all he got was a cool nod. He should have let it go with that. Like a fool, he didn’t.

“Good to see you, Dayna.”

“Sorry I can’t say the same.”

She walked off without a backward glance, leaving a stone-cold silence in her wake. Dweeb broke it with a low whistle.

“Damn, Harper. What did you do to the woman?”

Parks jumped in with a reply. “You haven’t heard the story? Dayna Duncan and our boy here used to get all hot and heavy.”

“No kidding?” Eyes wide, Dweeb followed her progress as she crossed the cobbled street. “What happened?”

“Woman got smart and dumped him. Best I recall, it happened a few months before the 2004 Olympics. That right, Harper?”

Parks had the year right but the rest of it wrong. Luke didn’t bother to correct him.

Like a radar lock, his gaze stayed fixed on Dayna’s hip-swinging stride, trim rear and long legs. All the while his mind churned up memories of how those legs used to hook around his.

They’d met during the last half of his senior year at the University of Colorado. Luke was in air force ROTC and had been selected for pilot training. Dayna was a junior. A star athlete in both golf and kayaking, she was already a prime contender for the Olympic kayaking team.

They’d dated throughout the spring and into the summer, while Luke waited for an undergraduate pilot training slot to open up. Just the memory of those long, hot days and even hotter nights had him sweating under his leather bomber jacket.

Dayna began her senior year about the time Luke left for pilot training at Columbus AFB, Mississippi. They continued a long-distance love affair throughout the fall and into the winter—until Dayna’s coach contacted Luke and bluntly informed him that she stood to lose both her scholarships and her spot on the Olympic team if she didn’t cut out the cross-country commuting and focus.

Luke knew how desperately she wanted to make the team. He also knew he was about to enter the most intensive phase of pilot training. Following his head instead of his heart, he suggested they take a break. Hurt and angry, Dayna suggested he take a flying leap.

Judging by the acid dripping from her voice a few moments ago, she obviously thought he hadn’t fallen far enough or hit anywhere near hard enough.

With a spear of regret for what they might have had, Luke thrust his hands in the pockets of his jacket and turned away.

“I need to head back to the base,” he told his buddies. “I’ve got mission prebrief in a couple hours.”

More rattled than she wanted to admit by the encounter, Dayna stalked past the Old Course’s eighteenth green. Workmen were busy erecting bleachers and scaffolding for camera crews, but she barely noticed these modern scars on the face of the ancient course.

She’d known Luke Harper was stationed at the RAF base, dammit. She should have been more prepared for a chance meeting with her old flame.

That was as good a description as any for him, Dayna thought with a stab of self-disgust. She’d gone off the deep end, but Luke Harper had never loved her. Lusted for her, yes. Driven her half out of her mind with his muscular body and his busy, busy hands, certainly. Yet he’d cut the cord fast enough when their romance began to interfere with their respective training regimens.

Something to remember, she told herself fiercely as she hailed a shuttle. The gaily decorated carts ferried golfers between the five courses, two clubhouses, modern golf academy and state-of-the-art practice center that comprised the St. Andrews Links complex.

“G’day to ye, Ms. Duncan.” The trolley driver greeted her with the rolling Scots burr that required careful attention by the listener or the services of an interpreter. “Are ye gaein’ oot for a bit o’ practice?”

“Yes, I am. Would you take me to the driving range, please.”

“I wud indeed.” Relieving her of her bag, he stowed it on the rack at the rear of the cart. “Off we go, then.”

Dayna used the short drive and the stiff breeze coming in off the bay to blow Luke Harper out of her head. The man was history. For the next week her sole focus would be Wu Kim Li.

Kim Li and this course, she thought, eyeing the rolling fairways and deep sand traps. It was the oldest course in Scotland, the playground of kings and commoners, covering a stretch of land beside the sea like an old, crumpled carpet. Unlike the manicured fairways and lushly landscaped grounds of most U.S. courses, St. Andrews pitted man against the elements. There were no stands of pine or oak to blunt the often gale-force winds that blew in from the bay, no banks of colorful azalea or rhododendrons to separate the holes.

The fairways had been planted centuries ago in a stubby, scruffy native grass that put its roots deep into the sandy soil and sent shock waves through wrists and arms when hit with a club at the wrong angle. Worse, there wasn’t a level patch anywhere on the course. The burns, sways, gorse-topped hummocks and treacherous sand traps required intense concentration on every shot. Dayna would have a real challenge to keep her ball in play and Wu Kim Li in her sights.

She found the North Korean holding court at the practice center.

A modern facility devoted to the art and science of golf, the center’s driving range boasted sixty bays with air-cushioned mats and automated power tees. Wu Kim Li occupied the center bay—in full view of television crews crammed into the glassed-in viewing area, naturally.

By shamelessly playing on her name and former Olympic glory, Dayna had snagged the bay next to the teenaged megastar. She waited patiently until the golfer who had it before her finished, then walked out to the open-sided booth. Removing the head cover from her driver, Dayna hooked the club at the small of her back and did a few stretching exercises.

The movement snagged the attention of a woman two stalls down. Obviously an amateur, the observer violated range etiquette by calling an excited greeting.

“Hi, Dayna! I’m Ann Foster. I saw you were registered for this tournament. Hope we get to play together.”

Reluctant to disturb the others’ concentration, Dayna merely smiled and tipped her club in response. The golfer in the next bay, however, wasn’t nearly as restrained.

“Tak-cho!” Wu Kim Li followed her disgusted exclamation with an immediate translation. “That mean be quiet. We practice here.”

Kim Li turned her back on the now thoroughly embarrassed amateur. Eyes narrow, she raked Dayna from the brim of her ball cap to her soft-spike shoes. She was sizing up the competition obviously, or trying to pysch her out.

No stranger to the guerilla warfare of sports, Dayna teed up a ball and swung. Her driver connected with a solid whap. The ball soared in a high, smooth arc. With another loud crack, it bounced off the metal sign designating the two-hundred-and-fifty-yards mark.

Not bad for a first practice shot. Not bad at all—unless, of course, you were trying to worm your way into the good graces of a rival sports star like Wu Kim Li.

Dayna could feel the competitive vibes eddying across the stall as the North Korean addressed her ball. With a whoosh, Wu’s driver sliced through the air.

Two seventy.

Dayna teed up, swung again.

Two seventy-five.

Wu’s driver descended, connected.

Three hundred, or close enough to generate an outburst of spontaneous applause from the women who’d interrupted their practice to watch the impromptu competition. Wu accepted the ovation as her due and unbent enough to offer Dayna a grudging compliment.

“Your swing very good.”

“Not as good as yours.”

“I young,” Wu said with a careless shrug. “Have more strength.”

Yeah, right. Dayna would love to plunk the little twerp into a kayak, drop her in Alberta’s Castle River during the spring runoff and let her see what kind of strength it took to finish the course.

Trying her damnedest to sound friendly, she teed up another ball. “They draw for the initial pairings at the banquet tonight. Maybe we’ll play together.”

Wu turned away with another shrug.

The kickoff banquet was held at the venerable Royal and Ancient Golf Clubhouse.

Showered, shaved and looking ruggedly handsome in tan slacks and a navy blazer with an embroidered Military Marksmanship Association patch on its pocket, Mike escorted Dayna into a banquet hall lavish with eighteenth-century crown moldings and intricately patterned parquet floors. Tables laden with glowing candles and sparkling crystal added to the elegant atmosphere. The waiters wore tuxedos, the women were in cocktail dresses and many of the Scottish tournament officials sported kilts. The talk, however, was all sports.

Dayna introduced Mike to some of the greats in women’s golf, many of whom said graciously that they hoped to draw her for a partner. She also met a number of the amateurs who, like her, had interrupted busy professional lives to play in this charity tournament. All the while she and Mike kept steering toward their targets.

“There they are,” Dayna murmured, indicating the Wus with a small nod.

The Koreans stood in the middle of a swarm of TV execs and tournament officials. The group also included Kim Li’s support team—her manager, her trainer, her agent, her PR rep, her bodyguards. Every one of them, Dayna knew, charged with ensuring that North Korea’s darling and her father returned home after the tournament.

Kim Li spotted their approach and summoned them into her royal presence with a lift of her chin. Her dark eyes were all over Mike as Dayna made the intros.

“This is my friend, Mike Callahan.”

“This my father, Dr. Wu Xia-Dong.”

Both Mike and Dayna shook the scientist’s hand. She didn’t need more than a touch of Wu’s clammy palm to sense his nervousness.

“You must be very proud of your daughter.”

The flicker of acknowledgment in his eyes told Dayna he’d understood the compliment, but he waited to respond until a North Korean with a badge that identified him as an official interpreter had murmured in his ear.

“So sorry. My English very bad.” Wu turned a smile on his daughter. “Kim Li make all Korea proud.”

The girl returned it with the first genuine warmth Dayna had seen on her face. Whatever else the teen had going on in her life, she obviously loved her dad.

They couldn’t have spent much time together. The detailed dossier OMEGA had assembled on the Wus indicated Kim Li had lived at a government-sponsored athletic training center for thirteen of her eighteen years. Dr. Wu’s work had kept him isolated at the center of a small, highly select cadre of scientists. Kim Li’s mother was the one who’d made periodic visits to the training center until her death a few years ago. Yet the bond between father and daughter seemed as strong and unshakable as the report had suggested.

Any defection would definitely have to be a package deal.

That thought stayed with Dayna throughout the banquet and the pairings that followed. By the luck of the draw, she was teamed with Eleanor Tolbert. A longtime member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, Eleanor was one of its biggest money-winners. She and Dayna would have been the team to beat in scratch golf, but this was a charity event so handicaps were used to level the playing field. The ranker the amateur, the higher her handicap and the more strokes deducted from her final score.

Wu Kim Li drew one of those high-handicapped amateurs for her partner. An Irish neurosurgeon, as it turned out, with little time for golf but a wild enthusiasm for the sport. Flame-haired Brianna Kilkenny towered over her partner during the media barrage that followed the drawing. Unwilling to stand in anyone’s shadow, Wu adroitly sidestepped and took the cameras with her.

To Dayna’s intense satisfaction, the links draw put her and Eleanor on the same course as Kim Li and her partner for the initial qualifying rounds. They weren’t in the same foursome and would tee off at different times, but she would make opportunities to connect with the girl while Mike worked the father.

The two agents reconvened in Dayna’s suite after the banquet.

A cold, damp fog had rolled in off the bay. Rather than up the room’s thermostat, Dayna put a match to the kindling laid in the brick-and-tile fireplace. The neatly stacked logs soon caught the flames. Snapping and crackling, they filled the sitting room with a pine-resin scent.

Mike had studied the course layouts Dayna had given him earlier that afternoon. He’d also annotated a detailed map of the St. Andrews area. Together, they went over emergency escape routes and formulated options for detaching Wu and his daughter from their watchdogs.

“Assuming they really want to defect.”

“Yeah,” Mike agreed. “Big assumption. We’ve got the next week to find out if it’s true.”

“If it is, I don’t think Kim Li will want to pull a disappearing act until after the tournament. She’s too competitive.”

“That’s my assessment, too. We can move sooner if we have to, but for now we’ll plan to whisk her and her Papa Wu away immediately following the trophy presentation. We’ll use the crowd and the media to run interference with their handlers. I’ve coordinated with our counterparts in the CIA and British Intelligence. They’ll provide back-up, transport vehicles and escort to our departure point.”

He thumped a knuckle against the air base just northwest of the town of St. Andrews proper.

“One of the crews from the USAF detachment at RAF Leuchars will fly us back to the States. I figure I’d head over there before your practice round tomorrow and bring the detachment commander up to speed.”

Dayna hesitated. She hated to introduce the subject of her failed romance, but Hawk needed to know it might present a complication.

“Before you talk to the detachment commander, you should be aware that I used to date one of his pilots. Captain Luke Harper.”

Mike cut her a surprised look. “I remember the hype about you and some flyboy. He’s here, at Leuchars?”

“He is. Matter of fact, I bumped into him this afternoon.”

Bumped, as in locked lips. To Dayna’s profound disgust, the memory of Luke’s mouth on hers sent heat seeping into her cheeks. She fought to keep her expression neutral but Hawkeye hadn’t earned his code name by missing subtle signals. Nor had he stayed alive as long as he had in this business by shrugging off even small, seemingly innocuous incidents as mere coincidence.

“Are you sure it was a chance meeting?”

Like Hawk, Dayna had learned the hard way that training and experience were no substitutes for gut instinct. She went with hers now.

“I’m sure. I was a last-minute entry in this tournament. Harper didn’t know I was coming to St. Andrews and he doesn’t have a clue I work for the government. The problem is, he isn’t supposed to be here, either.”

When she indicated he flew the super-secret Stealth bomber, Hawk grasped the implications immediately. The material he’d studied on the flight up from Algiers had included a brief detailing of the antiwar movements in Britain and the sensitive issue of the presence of U.S. nuclear-capable bombers on British soil.

“If the media gloms on to his presence and tries to resurrect your old affair, it could jeopardize both his mission and ours.”

“Lightning and I discussed that,” Dayna replied. “Our initial assessment was that the air force has sufficient measures in place to keep their operation at Leuchars under wraps, but…”

She blew out a long breath. The unexpected encounter this afternoon had forced her to reevaluate the situation. St. Andrews was a small university town, crammed at present with newshounds from around the world. Any one of them could sniff out the story of her old flame.

“You’d better lay out the problem when you meet with the detachment commander in the morning,” she told Hawk. “Get his take on the threat to his operation.”

“Will do.” Those too-keen eyes studied hers. “What about the threat to ours?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too. If the media does latch on to my old romance, we could use the hype to deflect attention from our efforts to get close to the Wus.”

“Something to consider,” Hawk agreed, “but you don’t sound too thrilled about letting this character back in your life. Just say the word and I’ll take him out of the picture.”

Lightning had already made that offer. Once again, Dayna turned it down.

“No need. The meeting this afternoon caught me by surprise. I’ll be prepared if it happens again.”

She was still trying to convince herself of that some four hours later.

Lifting her head, Dayna glared at the digital alarm beside her bed. When she saw the hour, she let loose with an expletive that would have earned her a warning if she’d muttered it during the tournament. Still swearing, she dropped her face into the goose-down pillow.

This was ridiculous. She was playing a double game of golf and deception tomorrow. She’d have to make every stroke count while keeping tabs on Wu Kim Li. She needed sleep.

“Get out of my head, Harper!”

Chapter 3

Why couldn’t he put the woman out of his head?

Luke shifted restlessly in the mission commander’s seat of his bat-winged B-2. The pilot whose performance he’d been evaluating occupied the left seat, breathing easier now that he’d completed most of his check ride.

Outside the cockpit a star-studded night sky stretched to infinity. Inside, the instrument panel gave off a muted glow shielded by specially screened and darkened windows.

“Thirty-two thousand and holding steady on course niner-three-six,” the other pilot reported.

Luke acknowledged their position and rolled his shoulders to relieve the strain of his seat harness. They’d been in the air for seven hours now, a mere hop compared to their normal missions. Tonight’s training run had taken them out over the Atlantic for an in-flight refueling. They would return to base before dawn, gliding in with the same stealth that made the B-2 invisible to the world’s most sophisticated radars—and to antiwar protestors hoping to obtain photos that would prove beyond any doubt the bomber’s presence in the U.K.

The B-2 crews and support personnel were every bit as determined to remain as stealthy as the two-billion-dollar aircraft they flew. Hence the night-only takeoffs and landings and the fiction that their detachment was part of an exchange program at Leuchars.

So far the ploy had worked. Would it still work if the paparazzi sniffed out the fact that Dayna Duncan’s old flame just happened to be in St. Andrews?

From past experience, Luke knew how the media rooted around for personal tidbits to salt into their coverage of otherwise impersonal sporting events. He and Pud had once provided just the mix of glamour and romance the tabloids loved.

The nickname tugged his mouth into a lopsided grin. Pud, short for the puddles he’d teased her about paddling around in. The teasing had lasted only until she’d taken Luke for his first white-water run.

The experience had been as exhilarating as any he’d every experienced. It had also scared the crap out of him. When they’d gone over Horseshoe Falls, his stomach had dropped right through the bottom of the fiberglass kayak. He could still hear Dayna’s joyous whoop, still see her hair flying under her helmet and wet suit molded to her curves as they…

Well, hell! There she was again. Front and center in his thoughts.

Resigned, Luke checked the instruments and gave up trying to shove the woman out of his head.

She was still there, hovering around the edges of his mind, when he finished his mission debrief. Slinging his flyaway bag over his shoulder, he exited the debriefing area and was headed for the crew room to change out of his flight suit when one of other pilots hailed him.

“The old man wants to see you, Harper.”

Nodding, Luke detoured to the suite of offices tucked in one corner of the massive hangar. He figured the colonel was waiting for an update on the check ride just completed and prepared a rundown in his mind.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

Colonel Don Anderson waved him into the office. Big, barrel-chested and as strong as a Brahma bull, Anderson had been part of the initial B-2 cadre. In the decade since, he’d racked up more hours than most pilots did in a lifetime. Customarily gruff and to the point, Anderson jerked his chin at the stranger seated in the chair angled in front of his desk.

“Harper, this is Mike Callahan. He’s with the government. Callahan, Captain Luke Harper.”

The stranger rose and offered his hand. His square-shouldered bearing suggested he’d spent at least one hitch in the military. The embroidered sharpshooter’s patch plainly visible above his visitor’s badge indicated he wasn’t someone to mess with.

“Harper.”

Callahan’s grip stopped well short of bone-crunching but something in the man’s narrow-eyed, assessing look stirred an instinctive and wholly atavistic response in Luke. Without warning, the skin on the back of his neck prickled.