Exclusive

“Do you have a weapon?” Ben demanded as gunfire exploded behind them.

Tory reached into her bag and took out the hunting knife her dad had given her.

A sound at the other end of the alley had her turning. She slipped away from Ben, farther into the shadows to give him a clear shot at the assailants. They let out a burst of semiautomatic fire and dove for cover.

Ben moved left and she took the right side. She watched him blend seamlessly into the darkness. She closed her eyes and focused her senses, listening for things that were out of place. She heard it then, the rustle of cloth against the building.

She just made out the silhouette of a man with an assault rifle crouched low to the ground, waiting for her or Ben to make a mistake.

As soon as he scanned away from her, Tory moved. Quickly she ran forward and attacked him from the back. Holding her knife to his throat, she growled, “Drop your weapon.”

Her grip slipped and the man lifted his gun.

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Dear Reader,

I’m so excited to be a part of Athena Force again. Given the current climate in the world and the danger to journalists everywhere, I knew that Tory would be up for another adventure. And Ben is still trying to keep his macho instincts in check and figure out how to live with such an independent woman.

I was lucky enough to interview a local newscaster in Orlando, Florida, when I was researching Exposed, the first Ben and Tory adventure, so I used my notes on that as a starting point. I also researched the very hunky Anderson Cooper—oh, I mean the very reliable Anderson Cooper—to see how he covered the news. I liked the freedom that cable news channels have to send their reporters wherever news is happening, and I started at that point to come up with a new plot for Tory. I wanted her to be conflicted about having gotten what she always wanted…her own news show. That was based on my own experience in wanting something really badly and then getting it and finding it wasn’t what I thought it would be.

The country of Berzhaan is fictional, but it is loosely based on Azerbaijan, a country that is struggling to find its feet after years of Communist rule. It was interesting to me to read about the economy and the companies that were building there, many with familiar names like McDonald’s!

Returning to Ben and Tory also gave me a chance to look at their relationship and to see if it would last past the initial attraction. They both have demanding jobs, like many couples I know. Two careers are hard on any couple and I wanted to explore that. I hope you enjoy this adventure with Tory and Ben and their Athena Force friends.

Enjoy!

Katherine

Exclusive

Katherine Garbera

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Katherine Garbera for her contribution to the ATHENA FORCE miniseries.

KATHERINE GARBERA

is the award-winning, bestselling author of more than twenty-five books. She started making up stories for her own benefit when she was on a competitive swim team in high school. Katherine holds a red belt in the martial art of Tae Kwon Do and vows that there’s not a piece of plywood out there that can take her in a fair match! Readers can visit her on the Web at www.katherinegarbera.com.

To my kick-ass gal pals—Beverly Brandt, Eve Gaddy,

Nancy Thompson and Mary Louise Wells—who make

the adventure of writing such a fun one.

Acknowledgments

A huge thank-you to Cindy Dees for answering every question imaginable pertaining to the military and for doing it so quickly. Any mistakes are my own.

Also thanks to all the writers in the Slave Away Café whose shared company made it easier to write this book!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

Ben Forsythe was having a crappy day.

He’d been in meetings virtually all day and now, when he finally had a free moment to dial Tory Patton’s number, he got her voice mail. He rubbed the back of his neck and almost hung up without leaving a message. He couldn’t tell her where he was, didn’t know when he could call again. But he needed to hear her voice. Needed for just a second to remember who was waiting for him at home.

“Babe,” he said, just to needle her, “it’s me. Don’t know when I’ll be able to call again. Be good.”

He hung up. He had e-mail available but seldom used it because his team was always on the move and he didn’t want to leave an electronic trail of where they’d been.

It was dry and blazing hot in late June in the desert of Berzhaan and he was sick to death of sand. He shaded his eyes and wished for a minute that he was a different man. The kind who could walk away and never look back. The kind who could blithely go about his everyday life and never know that there were men and women who were risking their lives to enable that.

But he wasn’t.

Ben’s father had been an undercover CIA agent, a man whose government’s only acknowledgment of his death overseas while on an assignment was a star and a date on a wall. Ben was starting to think that he wanted more than that at the end of his days.

He entered the makeshift command center and awaited his orders. He worked for a covert military group called LASER, the Lost Airman’s Service. Their mandate was simple and focused—they rescued servicemen who were being held prisoner in hostile places. They used whatever means were necessary to bring them home.

With the help of AA.gov, a Web site and organization whose main function was to keep alumni of the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women in touch with one another, but whose covert side included certain spy missions, he’d embedded one of his men with a television news crew. The lead reporter, Andrea Jancey, was Tory’s protégé at UBC. She and Tory had both attended the prestigious Athena Academy. Andrea had the same skills that Tory did, which meant she could handle herself in almost any situation. Ben had a lot of respect for the Athena grads he knew, including his own sister, Alex.

For this mission, Ben was using Andrea and her news crew to get close to the insurgents fighting in the desert of Berzhaan. His intel had identified a group under Kemeni rebel leader Al Ahib as having captured two Marine pilots. The Kemeni were down in strength at the moment, but highly uncooperative with the U.S. Ben’s team was in country to get the pilots out. He had a small team of seven men. They’d worked together for a long time and knew each other well.

“Any word from Manning?” he asked Lewis Salvo, their communications guru. Salvo managed the satellite, navigation/GPS and emergency radios. Ben had seen him coax a waterlogged radio back into action. If anyone could raise a signal on Manning, it was Salvo.

Salvo didn’t glance up from the frequencies he was monitoring on their personal radios. “Nothing yet, he missed the last check-in.”

Ben leaned over the shoulder of Robert O’Neill, their computer expert. O’Neill was using satellite images to search the location where Manning should have been, as well as running a GPS trace. Everyone on the LASER team had a GPS homing beacon in their cell phone. Manning’s cell was still in country, but not where it should be.

The itch at the back of Ben’s neck said that his crappy day was about to get worse. And there was nothing he could do but wait for Manning to check in.

What the hell was going on?

“Sir, I think you should see this.”

Ben turned to O’Neill, who was monitoring the cable news networks as well as watching all the satellite monitors. Ben leaned over his shoulder. Shannon Conner appeared on the screen, her blond hair windblown and her brown eyes more worried than usual.

Ben knew Shannon through Alex and Tory. They’d both gone to school with Shannon at Athena Academy. Shannon had the distinction of being the only student ever to be expelled from Athena. He knew that she and Tory didn’t get along. Though Tory wouldn’t say why, Ben had always suspected it went deeper than mere competitiveness.

“ABS News sources have learned that UBC reporter Andrea Jancey, a UBC translator and a cameraman have been taken hostage in the small Middle Eastern country of Berzhaan. Here is the exclusive video that we’ve obtained.”

Shannon’s image faded to be replaced by a video feed that showed Andrea, Paul Manning—Ben’s man—and Cobie McIntire.

The three said nothing, only held a copy of that day’s newspaper underneath their faces to show the date. Andrea was a tall, curvy blonde. Normally she was perfectly put together but in the video her tailored suit was ripped and she had a bruise along the side of her face. Paul’s nose was bleeding, and his cropped black hair looked matted on one side with blood or sweat. Cobie, a tall, lanky guy with shaggy brown hair, just looked shocked. The video went black and Shannon was once again back on the screen.

“ABS News will be following this story and will keep you up to date.”

Ben tossed the headphones down and paced back to the command center. Well, now they knew why Manning hadn’t checked in. “When was this video shot?”

Robert and Lewis both scrambled to get the information. Ben cursed under his breath. He had to contact his commanding officer and plan what to do next. Manning was part of Ben’s team…more than that, he was a friend. Ben’s gut said to go after him immediately.

But he couldn’t make that type of decision without orders. He put a call in to his CO and set up an in-briefing with the field general in Berzhaan. Ben knew that their mission wouldn’t change in essence—they still had to find those two Marine chopper pilots who’d gone down in the mountains. Now, they also had to retrieve Manning and the TV crew he’d been using as cover.

As soon as she realized that Andrea Jancey had been taken hostage, Tory Patton went into action. She phoned her boss and made an appointment to see him.

Tory had convinced Andrea to come to the United Broadcasting Company. She felt personally responsible for the young woman whom she’d been mentoring in the television news business. She’d steered Andrea away from risky assignments and trained the girl to keep a cool head. Now Andrea was in danger, and Tory needed details.

Andrea’s field producer, Joan Simpson, was still in Suwan, the capital of Berzhaan. Tory spent ten minutes on the phone with her, ascertaining the situation and getting what information she could. She jotted notes on the paper in front of her, a quick list of facts plus the news that ABS had reported. That Shannon Conner had reported. Damn.

Next she put in a call to Jay Matthews, her favorite cameraman.

“What can I do for my favorite reporter?” Jay asked with an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before their time together in Puerto Isla nearly two years ago. Before he’d pushed her for a personal relationship and she’d had to turn him down. The assignment on which she’d met Ben.

He’d asked for a transfer overseas and had been covering the ongoing military action in the Middle East. She wanted him by her side, if she could convince Tyson to send her to Berzhaan. “Did you hear about Andrea and Cobie?”

“Yes, what have you heard?”

“Shannon was just on with a breaking story. I’m going to see Tyson in a few minutes.”

“If you get him to send you, I’ll work with you on this. I’ll dig around and see what I can find for you until you get here. Even if they send someone else. Damn, I can’t believe ABS broke the story on our own missing reporter.”

“Pisses me off, too. Thanks, Jay.”

“No problem, Patton.”

She disconnected the call, turning to her computer. She sent an e-mail to Cathy Jackson in UBC research.

Cathy—

Please pull together whatever you can on Andrea Jancey and Cobie McIntire and their last known coordinates. Find out any information on who their contacts were and what story they were following. Thanks, Tory

She also placed a called to Yasmine Constanine to see if she would be amenable to anchoring the show while Tory was in the field. She then e-mailed her producer, Shawna Townsend, and ran the proposed idea past her. Shawna soon replied with the green light. Now all Tory had to do was get Tyson to go for it.

She camped in her boss’s office for twenty minutes making small talk with Anita—Tyson Bedders’s secretary—while they waited for him to return from a meeting. As soon as he saw Tory, he groaned.

“Not now, Patton.”

“Yes, now, Tyson. I need to go to Berzhaan and find out what happened to Andrea.”

“We’re on it. You have a show now, and anchors don’t go into the field.”

It was the same argument he’d used to keep her from covering hurricanes last fall and from heading to London after a terrorist attack. To be honest, she was sick of being an anchor. Sure it had been her dream, but she had to admit that dream had been based on reaching a goal that had seemed far off more than on understanding what it entailed. “Then take me out of the anchor spot.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. Tyson was a tall African-American man with one of the sharpest minds in the business. He was the kind of boss that most people dreamed of having, and Tory didn’t like to put pressure on him.

She followed him into his corner office. “Okay, so what’s the scoop? Why did ABS get the story before us? This is one of our people.”

“Shannon Conner was already in Berzhaan and the terrorists sent the video to her.”

“Well, it’s an interesting move on their part, to take one of our reporters.”

“Yes, it is. Did you hear their demands?” he asked.

“Not yet. As soon as I heard the news I started working on getting down there to find Andrea and Cobie.”

“I haven’t approved that yet, Patton.”

“Tyson, I’m the only one you can send. I know Andrea, I trained her. I know the way she thinks. I’ll find her.”

“Tory, you asked for this promotion, your own newsmagazine, and yet you’re always in my office wanting me to send you back into the field.”

She knew what he was saying. Understood that she wasn’t fulfilling the commitment she’d made to Ty and the network when she’d said she’d take the anchor position. But anchoring just wasn’t as exciting as she’d thought it would be, she craved the adrenaline rush that being in the field gave her. She missed the excitement and camaraderie of waiting at the assignment desk to see what kind of story she’d be given. She missed the unpredictability of always doing something new.

“What did they demand in exchange for the hostages? And who are ‘they,’ by the way?”

“The terrorists didn’t name themselves. It’s odd—no one knows if they’re Q’rajn, or part of the Kemeni rebels, or some new group. They want a total U.S. pullout from the region in three weeks time.”

“That’s not even realistic. There’s no way the government will go for that. They don’t bargain with terrorists, anyway.”

“We know.”

“Come on, Ty. Let me go down there and see what I can find. I’m the best investigative reporter you have.”

He rolled his eyes. “Every one of you thinks that. There’s no ego like the investigative reporter ego.”

She bit her lip, staying quiet. She knew her boss well enough to know that he’d give her a shot if she didn’t push him into a position where it didn’t look as if it were his decision.

“This has to be the last time you leave the anchor desk. Do you remember your latest contract negotiation, when you lobbied for this job? A show of your own where you could bring cutting-edge stories to the viewers at home?”

“I didn’t realize that I’d be bringing them stories that other people researched, Tyson. That’s not me. You know it’s not.”

“I know, Patton. That’s why I cut you some slack usually, but this has to end.”

She jumped up from her chair. “Of course, when I get back from Berzhaan, I’ll stay put.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

She nodded, knowing she was going to have make a few changes to make that happen. To be happy with the choices she’d made.

“I’ve already started working out the details for my trip. I hope to get out of town tonight.”

“You need to get your shots up-to-date. And don’t tell me they are. I had Anita pull your file before I went to my meeting. You haven’t even had your required yearly physical.”

“Ty, that’s a waste of time. I’m healthy has a horse.”

“Whatever. No examination, no Berzhaan. And I’m not budging on this. Immunizations and yearly physicals are mandatory for all staff members going out of the country.”

Tory added the exam to the growing list in her head of what needed to be done. She hated the time it would take. She needed to contact AA.gov to see if Andrea had been doing anything extra for them while she was in Berzhaan. Now Tory had to focus on a stupid physical. “I’m healthy, Tyson. You know I am. What if they can’t get me in?”

He reached for his phone and hit the intercom button. “Anita?”

“Yes, Tyson?”

“Does Ms. Patton have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon?” Tyson asked. He had a pen and pad of paper in one hand. He passed the pad to her.

“Yes, sir. With Dr. Waters in twenty minutes. She should leave now if she’s going to be on time.”

“Thanks, Anita. Do you have the address?”

Anita rattled it off and Tory wrote it down. She was going to really be pushing it to reach the doctor’s office on time. Tyson disconnected the intercom and raised one eyebrow at her.

“Thanks, Ty.”

He nodded. “Bring Andrea back and get the story. We can’t have our competition making us look like idiots.”

She left his office and went back to her own, grabbing her purse and her cell phone. She saw that she had voice mail, a message from Ben. He sounded tired, and hearing his voice made her miss him.

She’d seen a photo of him in the Daily Globe with two British heiresses at a polo match. Despite the fact that his family knew they were dating, to the rest of the world, Ben had to appear to be the playboy he’d once been. It was the perfect cover for him. She understood. Knew the job he did was demanding and worthwhile. Her twinge of jealousy at seeing her man wrapped around two tall beauties wasn’t something she should feel—but she did.

Voice mail wasn’t the same as talking to him. She missed him, and she didn’t like that. She wasn’t used to depending on anyone else and a part of her resented the way she felt about Ben. The hold he had over her emotions unsettled her, because it was something she couldn’t control.

But she didn’t have time to think about Ben or their relationship. She had a meaty story to sink her teeth into. This story was going to be the kind of challenge she’d been longing for, after sitting behind the anchor desk and interviewing politicians and heads of state.

Russ Dorn felt alive for the first time since he’d received the news that his only son, Private First-Class Thomas Russell Dorn, had been killed in the line of duty in Berzhaan. The terrible weight that had pressed down on him every day, as he’d sat in front of his computer reading the newswire stories about the continuing effort to bring peace to an area that didn’t want it and the climbing death toll, had fed his own anger and need to do something.

In an Internet chatroom he’d found other likeminded individuals who had also lost children in the Middle East. They’d formed a loosely organized group, at first to support one another. Over time, it had grown into an action group. Their mission was to prevent other parents from having to experience what they did.

They’d been to Washington, D.C., too many times and had come away frustrated. The death toll from the Middle East action continued to rise, and the grief of the parents continued to grow. Nothing short of serious action would stop the deaths.

The door opened and Larry Maxwell walked in wearing desert camouflage and an AK-47 slung over his shoulder.

“The package has been acquired,” Dorn said. “We’re set to meet the rest of the team in-country.”

“Berzhaan. Damn. I never thought I’d leave the U.S.A. again,” Larry answered. “Well, this place looks good. We’ve got to move if we’re going to make our rendezvous. My plane’s waiting.”

Larry had more money than God. He’d arranged the difficult parts of their transport, namely, getting in and out of countries with the hostages.

“Just wanted to be sure we had everything ready before we brought ’em here.”

“This place is just as you said.”

This place was empty, much like his life had become. Russ remembered that when Betty had been alive it had been a comfortable retreat. Not anymore.

Larry nodded. Both men walked through the room one more time before stepping outside. The desert was hot and dusty, different from places where he’d seen action when he’d been in the military years before. The desert terrain didn’t even come close to resembling the jungles of Southeast Asia, but being with these other men and functioning together as a unit brought that memory into focus.

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the small hunting shack that he’d had on his property for more years than he could count. Larry went around back to double-check that area, and Russ fought against memories of the first time he’d brought Tommy out here. Damn. Sometimes he could still see his son on the ramshackle front porch, leaning against the beam and watching the sun rise over the great expanse of desert.

Betty had given the place little touches of home, a Marine Corps sun catcher in the window, pretty handwoven Navajo rugs on the floor. Russ hadn’t been able to remove the reminders of his late wife. They were dusty and weathered with age, but he didn’t care.

His mind still had a hard time understanding how he could have survived three tours in ’Nam but his son hadn’t lasted a week on his first deployment. It wasn’t right that Russ should live after facing fire so many times and young Tom didn’t.

He shook off his grief and focused instead on the job he had to do now. He and Larry climbed into his old Ford pickup. The truck had seen better days, much like Russ himself. He drove unerringly over the desert where there was no track or road to speak of. Just a big barren empty landscape. A place that hid a million dangers. Poisonous snakes, plants, insects. Not one had ever harmed his son.

Russ felt tears burn at the back of his eyes and his anger grew as he approached the private landing strip. He had his doubts that this course of action was the right one but at the end of the day, sitting around and waiting for someone else to step in was too much.

Besides, if he sat alone in his house for one more day, he was going to give in to the temptation to swallow the barrel of his old six-shooter. And Russ wasn’t ready to give up his life yet. Not until he’d exhausted all avenues of getting the U.S. military out of Berzhaan. That wouldn’t bring his boy back, and he knew it. But taking action, doing something constructive for a change, was what he needed to do to finally move past the mind-numbing routine of raising the American flag and then visiting his son’s grave every day.