Strangers When We Meet

“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.