Match Play (16 page)

Dayna's pulse kicked up several notches. Hawk and Jilly were on the move with their target. Time to do the same with hers.

Except Kim Li looked as though she was having a serious bout of cold feet. The girl stood stone-still on the eighteenth green, accepting the cheers of the crowd with none of her usual verve. Her expression wavered between bravado and apprehension. Dayna could almost smell fear emanating from her.

Disguising her own mounting tension, she hurried across the green and extended her hand. “Congratulations, Kim Li. Fantastic game.”

Damp sweat filmed the Korean's palm. Her face had lost every trace of color. “I—I—”

Whatever she was trying to say was lost when a TV crew stuck a camera in her face. A shudder rippled through her, but she pulled herself together and flashed one of her trademark victory grins.

The interview took only a few moments.

Dayna's mind churned the whole while. Had the girl lost her nerve? Or had she and her father staged this whole scene, from start to finish? If so, what was the deal with the chopper? And where were Hawk and Jilly and Dr. Wu?

The sudden, silent vibration against her wrist answered that. The pulsing lasted for ten seconds. Stopped. Began again. Stopped.

Yes! They were in the car and on their way.

Trailed at a discreet distance, she guessed grimly, by Wu's watchdogs. They, too, had disappeared. They wouldn't interfere, though, as long as the scientist played his assigned role of supposed defector.

Craning her neck, Dayna spotted Luke making his way toward her. He stood at her side while Kim Li accepted the trophy and, in turn, presented a check for the funds raised during the tournament to a representative of the International Red Cross. The presentation complete, the girl searched the crowd.

The crunch point was at hand. Was she, too, playing a role? Did she intend to accompany Dayna or retreat to her own country?

As it had on the eighteenth green, her glance locked with Dayna's. The message was unequivocal, if scared as hell.

Dayna keyed her watch to relay a voice signal.

“It's showtime.”

That was the cue for highly skilled MI-6 operatives to move into place. Two amiable Scots in tartan vests blocked the path of Kim Li's burly trainer. A tall, svelte blonde waylaid her manager, begging for an interview with the golf star.

Luke, Dayna and Kim Li bypassed the hordes of reporters waiting in the media center and ducked into a nondescript vehicle driven by a cheerful Brit.

“Off we go, then.”

With another vehicle in the lead and one behind, they maneuvered St. Andrews' narrow streets. Disaster struck mere moments after Dayna had congratulated herself on a neat extraction.

T
he first indication of trouble was the traffic jam the motorcade hit mere blocks from the golf course. The second was the sudden crackle from their vehicle's radio. A disembodied female voice identified herself as field control and requested the driver pick up immediately.

“Duggan here. What's up, luv?”

“We've got reports of a crowd forming quayside. A gathering of antiwar protestors, complete with ban-the-bomb signs and banners.”

“The
Dumfries Gazette
group?”

“That's our initial reading.”

“Ach, they're harmless.”

“Harmless, but noisy. They're attracting quite a crowd.”

They were also holding up traffic. Seated beside Kim Li in the backseat, Dayna gave no indication that her nerves were crawling. When their lead vehicle slowed to a near stop, however, she had to notify Hawk. Kim Li watched, white-faced and scared, while Dayna signaled her partner.

“This is Rogue. We've hit traffic. There's a demonstration down by the river.”

“We saw the crowd forming when we crossed the bridge.”

“Where are you now?”

“Just approaching RAF Leuchars. Keep me posted on your progress.”

“Roger.”

Kim Li's frightened eyes and trembling hands begged for reassurance.

“We'll get you to the base,” Dayna told her calmly.

One way or another.

The traffic tangle grew to a snarl. Their vehicle inched forward for another few minutes, then came to a dead stop along with those ahead and behind. Windows opened for impatient drivers to stick their heads out and crane to see the obstacle. Horns honked. The blare of a loudspeaker sounded above the din, amplifying a strident female voice.

“Do ye want this plasma separator in yer backyard?”

“Sounds like our friend, Ms. Brodie,” Luke said. “Alan Parks did his work well last night.”

Too well, Dayna thought as Eileen Brodie worked the crowd.

“Do ye care if yer government has lied to ye? Again!”

A rumble of
No
s filled the air.

“We'll tramp the hills until we find this storage facility,” she shouted into the mike. “Are ye with us?”

Aye
s boomed across the car roofs.

“She's gaining steam,” the driver commented.

“And we're going nowhere,” Dayna muttered, twisting around to check the rear window.

“Rogue, this is Lightning. Come in, please.”

She fumbled for her watch. “Go ahead.”

“Pick up complete. Madam Wu is aboard the chopper and has just spoken to her husband.”

Beside her, Kim Li gave a shriek of joy.

“I have Ms. Wu on the net. She wants to talk to her daughter.”

“She's right here.”

Static filled the air. While Luke and the driver divided their attention between the bridge just ahead and the logjam behind, Dayna extended her wrist.

“Mama?”

More static. Kim Li's voice spiraled into a desperate cry.

“Mama?”

A spate of Korean shattered the gut-wrenching tension. Laughing, crying, almost incoherent with joy, Kim Li replied in kind.

Before she'd finished, one of the MI-6 operatives in the chase car jumped out and sprinted forward. Wrenching open the passenger door, he gave them unwelcome news.

“We're picking up chatter on the radio.”

Code for the bad guys knew something was up and were closing in. Dayna didn't have to interpret for Kim Li or Luke. The operative's tone said it all.

“We've called for another car,” he informed them. “It's waiting on the west side of the river. I suggest we cross the bridge on foot.”

Luke was out of the car before the British operative finished. Kim Li scrambled out with Dayna.

 

They almost made it.

With the Brits as escort, Dayna, Luke and Kim Li plunged past the stalled vehicles and down the steep street leading to the bridge. Once there, they discovered access to it was completely blocked. Ms. Brodie and her band had begun their march. Signs bobbing, banners fluttering, they tramped by en masse.

“We'll have to go through them,” Dayna said, searching for a break in the phalanx.

It came a moment later. She grabbed one of Kim Li's arms, Luke the other. Together, they shoved a path through the protestors and burst onto the old stone bridge.

The marchers had backed bridge traffic up, as well. Engines idled and growled. Exhaust fumes stunk up the air. Halfway across, Luke jerked to a halt.

“Uh-oh. Looks like trouble.”

The Brits weren't the only ones with a vehicle on the west side of the river. The team trailing Dr. Wu to the base must have gotten word something was up.

That became obvious when they spotted Kim Li. Pouring out of their car, the four Koreans shouted at her in their language as they raced for the bridge.

Dayna could never say afterward who fired the shot. All she knew was that it created instant chaos. Women screamed, men shouted and a wild stampede ensued.

“What we do?” Kim Li's voice was shrill with terror.

They had mere seconds to decide. The Koreans were forcing their way through the stalled vehicles dead ahead. The stampeding crowd battered at them from behind.

Dayna had her weapon out but hesitated to fire for fear of hitting someone in the panicked mob. Luke and the two Brits faced a similar dilemma.

“What do we do?” Kim Li cried again, panic infusing every syllable.

Dayna glanced over the bridge wall at the dark water below.

“We swim,” she told Kim Li.

“Swim? No! No! I cannot!”

Dayna's eyes locked with Luke's.

“We can,” he said.

Ignoring the girl's frantic protests, they hauled Kim Li toward the low wall edging the bridge.

Dayna stripped off her jacket. The river below was dark and running fast with the tide, but clear of boat traffic. Kicking out of her shoes, she prepared to launch.

“You haven't forgotten how to swim parallel to a swift current?” she threw at Luke.

“How could I?” He reinforced the retort with a grin. “I was taught by an Olympic gold medalist. Up you go.”

That last was directed at Kim Li. She bucked out of his hold. “No! I do not…I cannot…”

Scooping her up, Luke tossed her over the low wall.

“Nooo!”

Her scream ended when she splashed into the water and went under. Dayna sliced in not three feet away.

T
he River Eden's rushing tidal current carried them to the wide, swirling estuary of St. Andrews Bay.

A British Coast Guard cutter plucked them from the bay almost within sight of the Royal and Ancient Golf Clubhouse. The patrol boat then swept around the headland and deposited the three blanket-wrapped swimmers on shoreline contained within the boundaries of RAF Leuchars.

The cutter's captain had radioed ahead. When his passengers scrambled ashore, they were bundled into a waiting vehicle. The car whisked them directly to the USAF C-21 parked on the taxiway.

Luke shed his blanket and saluted the British air commodore standing at the aircraft with Colonel Anderson, Hawk and a visibly shaken Dr. Wu. Sobbing, Kim Li fell into her father's arms.

Jilly edged around them to greet her friend. “Nice look, Duncan. I especially like the orange kelp draped over your left ear.”

Swatting away the seaweed, Dayna lowered her voice to an urgent whisper. “How did it go with Dr. Wu?”

“He more than lived up to his end of the deal. Even before he learned he wife was safe, he used hand gestures to let Hawk and me know there was a camera buried in one earpiece of his glasses and a mike in the other. We made sure Colonel Anderson got the message. And
he
made sure Dr. Wu got a clear shot of the modified B-2 before I tripped over my own feet. The last bit the Koreans heard or saw before the doc's glasses shattered on the asphalt was silly, clumsy me squealing an apology.”

“You, my friend, are most definitely OMEGA material.”

“So I keep telling Hawk.”

Her glance shifted to the operative hustling the Wus onto the sleek executive transport.

“Maybe he'll get the message after we turn the Wus over to their new handlers and I ask Uncle Nick to break the news that I'm joining your ranks.”

“Does your uncle Nick know about that?”

“Not yet.”

“Your mom and dad?”

“Nope.” Laughter sparkled in her blue eyes. “Want to come home with me and provide backup when I tell them I'm following in their footsteps?”

“No way!”

Maggie Sinclair, code name Chameleon, would take her eldest daughter's foray into the world of spooks and spies in stride, as she took everything else. Adam Ridgeway, Dayna suspected, would rattle Washington, D.C.'s marble monuments.

“You'll have to tell them all by your lonesome. You'll also have to help Hawk with the Wus. I'm not flying back to the States with you.”

“When did you decide that?”

“This morning, right after a certain sky jockey informed me he…”

The whine of the jet's engines drowned out the rest of her sentence but Jilly got the gist. So did Hawk when Dayna told him about her change of plans.

“You sure about this?” he boomed over the engine's piercing shrill.

“Absolutely.”

Luke joined them then, shouting to be heard over the decibels that magnified with every revolution. “What's going on?”

“Not me,” Dayna yelled.

With a last wave for Hawk and Jilly, she dragged him to the edge of the tarmac.

“You didn't give me a chance to counter your offer when you reopened negotiations this morning.”

“Counter?” His hazel eyes darkened. “Don't even think it, lady. You sealed the deal.”

“Wait. Hear me out.”

Easier to say than do with the jet revved to full power and its exhaust whipping her wet hair into a whirlwind.

“The B-2s are home-based at Whiteman AFB, Missouri, right?”

“When they're not forward deployed.”

The jet began to taxi, thank God. Dayna didn't have to bellow to be heard.

“You've only got a few months left on this assignment. Then you'll rotate back to Whiteman. There's a new swift-water training center on the Moose River. I can teach there, as well as in Virginia and work my ops for OMEGA in between.”

“I don't know they'll send me to Whiteman. It could be the Pentagon. Or Armed Forces Staff College. Or Pilot Instructor School.”

“Wherever it is, we'll make it work.”

Luke wanted to crush her against him and shout hell, yes, they'd make it work, but the past held him in too tight a fist. He'd chosen his military career over Dayna their first time around. Even if he'd made that choice with her dreams as much or more in mind than his own, he knew now the decision had been dead wrong.

That Dayna was willing to work around his military commitments despite the past hurts filled him with a love so fierce he ached with it. Still, he gave her one last out.

“You sure you can live with a man in uniform for the next ten or twenty or fifty years?”

Laughing, she hooked her arms around his neck. “I'll grin and bear it, flyboy. As long as I get you
out
of uniform on a regular basis.”