Summer Games (34 page)

The rhythmic driving power of the horse beneath her was all the answer she needed. She laughed without knowing it. Excitement raced through her as Dev cleared another obstacle, then another.

The remainder of the jumps flew beneath Dev’s black hooves. When he went through the timing posts at the end of the steeplechase, sweat had darkened his coat and he was breathing hard. The score flashed out: 0 faults; 20 positive points for coming in under the required time limit.

Raine felt a single thrill of elation before she forced herself to concentrate on sparing Dev through the second round of roads and trails. Despite having just finished a steeplechase, the stallion fought against being slowed to a canter. She didn’t give a quarter inch of rein to him. She intended to take every second of the allotted time for part C.

Before two miles were up, Dev caught his second wind. He cantered easily, rhythmically, giving the impression that he could do this all day and well into the night. His rider knew that wasn’t true. The course had already demanded a lot of the stallion’s strength. She checked her stopwatch regularly, giving Dev every break that the course, careful riding, and time allowed.

Even so, when Dev approached the timing posts at the end of part C, he was breathing heavily. Lather gathered whitely down the slope of his shoulders and flanks. Yet his rhythm was still good, and his breathing was deep rather than gasping. He was tired, but not exhausted.

Not yet. That would come somewhere during the last segment, the cross-country. Raine knew it even if her stallion didn’t.

She dismounted the instant the timekeeper signaled her arrival at the end of part C. Captain Jon and Cord walked forward quickly. Cord stripped off tack and held Dev while Captain Jon and Raine worked rapidly, washing down the stallion.

Normally a stable crew would have worked over the horse while the rider rested and Captain Jon described the state of the course ahead—what was muddy from the passage of horses, what was dry, which obstacle had fooled the most riders. But with Dev, handling was never normal. So Cord held the restless, adrenaline-loaded stallion while Captain Jon talked and worked and Raine listened and worked.

“The French have four refusals and a fall so far on the cross-country,” the captain said tersely. “No pattern. One obstacle is just as bloody awful as the next. We have two refusals.”

“Dev never refuses,” she said. She sponged out the stallion’s mouth. That was as close to a drink as Dev would get until the endurance event was over and he was cool again.

Captain Jon grunted. “A refusal is cheaper than a fall.”

She bit her lip. She knew better than anyone how hard it was to come out of Dev’s more spectacular jumps still in the saddle. The stallion’s greatest virtue as an event horse was that he would try to jump anything he saw. It was also his greatest vice. A well-timed refusal was better than a bone-breaking fall.

The veterinarian came over, watched Dev move, listened to his breathing, and checked for swelling or injuries to his legs. Cord and Raine held the stallion firmly, her words mingling with the shaman’s murmur of Cord’s voice. Dev’s ears flattened when the vet’s hands probed his legs, but the stallion tolerated it. Barely.

“Hell of a horse,” was the vet’s comment as he stepped out of reach. “Steel tendons and a temper to match.” He nodded to Raine. “You’re in, young lady. Saddle up.”

Cord lifted the weight-laden tack to Dev’s back and cinched the saddle in place.

“One minute,” the captain said, looking at his own watch.

Cord boosted her onto the tall stallion’s back. Dev was still breathing deeply, but wasn’t laboring for air. Not the way he would be in a few miles, as each obstacle demanded more from the stallion’s diminishing reserves of stamina and will. The cross-country segment of the course was five miles long.

Five very long, brutal miles.

“Jump straight and clean, you tough red bastard,” Cord said, smoothing Dev’s hot neck.

The stallion bumped his nuzzle against Cord’s chest and breathed out twin streams of hot breath.

Raine checked her watch, then looked at Cord, wishing there had been time just to touch him. He watched her as though he knew her thoughts. She saw his lips move, but the meaning was drowned in the roar of the crowd greeting a new horse and rider. She could see that he spoke only three words. They could have been, Good luck, Raine.

Or they could have been, I love you.

She turned to ask him which, but it was too late.

“To the posts,” Captain Jon snapped.

Automatically she obeyed.

Even as Cord stepped back, his beeper squealed in a series of coded staccato pulses that made adrenaline pour into his blood.

Blue all the way to the moon.

Delta Blue.

Quickly, ruthlessly, Cord pushed his way through the crowd and ran toward the command center.

Just as Raine positioned Dev at the starting posts, she had heard the faint, familiar electronic squeal of Cord’s beeper. She wanted to look over her shoulder, but it was too late; her own electronic leash had shortened.

The timer clicked over, the course waited, and she must take Dev over it.

She brought the stallion out of the posts in a steady canter, a pace she would try to hold for the next five miles. The obstacles would make that impossible. It was what they had been designed for—to test horse and rider mercilessly.

Blind jumps tempted a horse to refuse. Blind landings rattled a horse’s confidence and tested the rider’s ability to stay in the saddle. Two falls were permitted, though heavily penalized. The third fall disqualified horse and rider.

Raine didn’t see the Olympic officials or the crowds around the obstacles. She focused solely on the harsh requirements of the cross-country. The course unrolled in her mind even as it unrolled beneath Dev’s feet.

Downhill and turn left, jump up onto a bank, two strides, ditch and rail, turn right, long downhill with the Coffin at the bottom—fly, Dev!—now uphill uphill uphill and over the top sliding into a blind downhill jump—easy boy, easy, No!—and the terrible shock of a bad landing, Dev nearly pulling her arms off as she fought to keep his head up, to keep him on his feet and herself in the saddle.

She didn’t hear the cries of the crowd as she rode with every bit of her strength and skill and leverage, hauling Dev’s head up so that he could gather himself. The force required to put him right left her back and arms and legs aching.

But that was nothing new. She had been aching since the first miles of the event, time blurring into eternity. When you rode to spare your horse, you suffered for it.

After the bone-rattling landing, Raine collected Dev and talked to him, praising his courage, letting him feel her confidence despite the miscalculation. The stallion’s ears came up again. He settled into a rhythmic canter, eager for the next obstacle.

She checked her watch. Still on schedule. Dev’s long-legged strides ate up distance. She reached up to wipe sweat from her eyes and saw blood on the riding glove. Somewhere in those wild seconds of nearly falling and then recovering she had cut herself, probably on the buckle at the top of Dev’s bridle.

If she was lucky, it would be the worst that happened to her today.

Talking to Dev, riding to spare him and not herself, she took the stallion over obstacle after obstacle, enduring as he endured, knowing that the landings would be harder for him each time, for each time he would have less strength to call on. It would be the same for her, each time less strength.

The pond was a nightmare, a blind leap into water above Dev’s knees, mud slick and sucking at his hooves. He slid, wrenched free, and cleared the center jump on sheer guts and determination, landing blind again, cantering out of the pond, spraying sheets of water and mud.

Dev was breathing very hard now, the air groaning in and out of his body, lather running in white ribbons down his shoulders and flanks. Yet he cantered with his head up, ears pricked forward, game for whatever lay ahead. He was a stallion in his prime, born for the grueling test. He needed no whip but his own love of extending himself, no goad but his own desire to please the soft-voiced rider on his back.

Though her breath was coming as harshly as Dev’s, Raine praised him lavishly, continuously. Sweat ran from beneath her helmet into her eyes, mingling with blood until she wiped impatiently with her already reddened glove. She saw the next obstacle, chose her approach, and settled in for the final two miles. She rode lightly even though her muscles ached to sit back and let Dev do the work.

The end of the course was almost a shock. The last obstacle, the time posts, the cheering crowd. Two scores were posted. The first score was 0, no penalties, a perfect cross-country run. The second score was +20, the total of penalties and plus points for the endurance event.

Dev had redeemed his indifferent performance in the dressage ring.

She reined the stallion down to a walk, praising him constantly with a voice that had gone hoarse. When the official signaled that she could dismount, she slid off Dev and leaned against him, letting her shaking legs absorb her weight.

After a few moments she undid the cinch and slowly led Dev to the weighing stand. Staggering slightly under the burden of lead and leather, she stepped on the scales. The official read the weight aloud and approved it.

For Raine and Dev, the endurance event was over. All that remained to test them was stadium jumping. But that was for another day.

Tomorrow.

As she led the stallion away, her eyes searched the people around her. She didn’t bother to look for her father or the rest of her family. She knew they wouldn’t be allowed within shouting distance of her. But she looked for Cord. At that moment she wanted nothing more than to feel his arms around her and see the relief in his eyes. Dev had performed brilliantly. She had finished the brutal course with no more than a cut to show for it.

Abruptly she remembered hearing Cord’s beeper. Her shoulders sagged and her feet slowed. He wouldn’t be here.

Beep beep and good-bye.

She fought down irrational tears, knowing that they were the aftermath of adrenaline and exhaustion as much as disappointment. She would see Cord later, when he had finished whatever business had called him away. Until then, she had plenty to keep her busy.

“Come on, boy.” She tugged gently on Dev’s reins. “We’ve got a lot of work to do on you if you’re going to be in any shape to jump again tomorrow.” Neither Dev nor his rider noticed when people made way for the exhausted stallion and the slender woman with blood welling down the side of her face. Slowly, very slowly, they walked through the dust and heat back to the stables.

Three helicopters were parked on rough desert ground that had never known the weight of a machine. The unmarked, matte-black choppers looked frankly menacing against the wide, empty land at the edge of the Mojave. The setting sun called long black fingers of shadow out of every ravine, every crease.

Cord lay in one of those shadows. He no longer looked like a stable hand. He was covered head-to-toe in black. The weapons he carried were equally black. Nothing on him would reflect light, telling an enemy where he was, providing a target.

He prayed for darkness the way a sinner prays for salvation. In the dark, more things were possible. Deadly things.

No one knew how Barracuda had sensed the trap closing around him in Rancho Santa Fe. They only knew that he had. The assassin had abandoned the field, stolen a car, and fled east, over the dry mountains. Followed by Bonner, Barracuda had driven into the vast uninhabited desert.

Cord spoke softly into a headset that was very much a part of his fighting equipment. “Blue Herring?”

The answer was long in coming. Too long.

“No change.” The voice was weak, hoarse, the sound of a man who had lost too much blood. “Still . . . there.”

Bonner had taken a bullet trying to get close enough to Barracuda to kill him. Now the agent was up in the rocks bleeding and waiting, bait staked out by a Barracuda. From time to time the assassin would call out taunts. He had offered to exchange the agent’s life for safe passage to Libya. Bonner had said he would kill himself first.

Cord believed him.

“Nobody shoot until I order otherwise,” he said grimly. “I’m getting our man out. I need two volunteers.”

He had twenty.

“The two closest to me,” Cord said tersely. “When we’re clear, the rest of you move in. If he won’t surrender, leave enough of the bastard for me to make a positive ID.”

A muted assent filtered through Cord’s delicate headphone. The various invisible warriors hugging the contours of the land would wait for his signal before trying to move in. Without a sound, he began gliding from shadow to shadow, working his way up the dry ravine.

Cord was fifteen feet from Bonner when he caught a motion from the corner of his eye. Even as his brain registered the silhouette of a man—head, shoulders, and sniper scope—bullets exploded in a deadly line that started at Bonner and ended up with Cord. Metal thudded into flesh.

Cord staggered and went down. Even as he fell, he turned toward the rocks where the shots had come. Then he waited, fighting off waves of pain and darkness, clenching his teeth against making an animal noise of agony.

Five minutes later, Barracuda looked over the rocks to check on his kill.

Cord managed two shots before darkness broke over in him in a long, howling wave.

A medic slithered forward, clinging to shadows. It didn’t take long to assess the damage. He spoke into his headphone. “All clear. Two gone. One more will be if we don’t move our asses.” Before he finished talking, the bloody gully was swarming with black-clothed men.

Raine climbed down the motor home’s steps without her usual grace. She was stiff from yesterday’s endurance run, but not as stiff as Dev would be. She was also restless and deeply uneasy. She hadn’t seen Cord since he had boosted her up onto Dev’s back for the last part of the course.

Thorne was in his usual place, doing his usual good job of looking lazy while being very alert.