The Impossible Alliance. Candace Irvin

least someone had removed the oxygen and feeding tubes from her throat. She wet her lips, wincing as the saliva caused her flesh to sting. Her lips were as dry and raw as her throat. Cracked. Desperate to make contact with the man before she lost consciousness again, she tried whispering.

      An explosion greeted her. Then another…and another.

      In a hospital?

      Sweet mercy, what was going on? Just where was she? And how long had she been here?

      More importantly, why couldn’t she remember?

      She traced the intravenous line from the distended vein on the back of her left hand to the bag of clear fluid hanging upside down beside her bed. Disappointment swamped her as she realized she couldn’t understand the handwriting on the label.

      Another explosion rocked the room. The blast was so intense the resulting vibrations caused the steel frames of the curtained walls to separate and roll several inches apart. She forced her stare to the foot of her bed, horrified as the musty odor of bargain basement sanitation sealed her suspicions. The tangled roll of expended, bloody hospital gauze. The pile of soiled bed linens. Half a dozen bags of IV fluid, all empty. The nest of discarded needles and syringes.

      This was not your typical hospital.

      She shifted her right arm. Two inches later, it jerked to a stop. Bemused, she stared at the gleaming cuffs locking her own wrist to the rails on her bed. The heck with sanitation—this was not your typical hospital restraint. She flinched as another, louder, explosion reverberated through the walls of the room, hammering through her skull. The curtains parted another foot, affording her a partial view of a scarred slab of wood.

      A door.

      Where did it lead?

      Before she could ponder the possibilities, much less gather the strength to find out, she heard the voices again, jangling keys scraping against the lock.

      The other patient.

      She swung her head to the left as another explosion rocked the room. The man’s eyes were still closed, but he shifted, moaning softly as he twisted his battered body toward the side of the bed. Toward her. Her lips stung as she opened her mouth—but the door flew open, as well. She slammed her eyes shut instinctively. Dizziness swirled in along with the dark. She eased her lids up. Just a crack. It was enough. She watched as two men she didn’t recognize shoved the hospital curtains aside. Two more men followed them through. All four wore camouflage fatigues.

      Soldiers?

      Perhaps. But not American.

      Americans wouldn’t be brandishing Romanian Kalashnikovs rifles. One of the thugs shouted something to his buddies as he raised the barrel of his AK-47. The thug then sighted the automatic rifle in on the battered head of the man in the opposite bed and shouted again. She had no idea what he’d said, but the dialect wasn’t Romanian. The largest of the two thugs dragged the woozy man from his mattress, wrenching his arm behind his back as the smallest thug unlocked the steel cuffs. The man groaned in protest as his shoulder popped. He received a fresh bash to his skull in return. His glasses flew off, landing at the thugs’ boots with a slap. A distinctive crunch followed.

      Crude laughter filled the room.

      Another thug shouted above the din as they dragged the now moaning man from the room. Yet another responded. As before, she had no idea what the men had said, but a split second before the door slammed shut and silence reigned within, she caught several mangled syllables she did recognize.

      A name.

      Alexander Morrow.

      She stiffened, the implications of that memory alone giving her the strength to bring her free hand to her face. Dizziness and shock gave way to searing confusion as her fingers collided with the thick swaths binding her head.

      That pile of expended, bloody gauze was hers?

      Was that why she couldn’t remember where she was, much less how she’d gotten here?

      She searched the contours of her face, hoping for clues. Desperate for answers. But all she gained was another question. And this question burned more deeply than all the others combined. If the man those camouflaged thugs had just dragged from the room was Alexander Morrow—

      Who the hell was she?

      “Four minutes to the drop zone!”

      Jared adjusted his oxygen mask and flashed a thumbs-up toward the plane’s crew chief. He double-checked his parachute and gear one last time before latching on to the succession of safety straps dangling from the overhead as he worked his way down the belly of the CIA-modified C-130. Wind colder than a penguin’s ass slammed into him as he reached the plane’s yawning tail ramp, ripping through his pressure suit.

      He ignored it.

      This high up, he could take in ninety percent of the Rebelian countryside through the blanket of intermittent clouds, as well as all four major cities. Cities that were woefully dark despite the midnight hour. Hell, from here light pollution bleeding up from the destitute capital city of Rajalla put out less wattage than the subdued altimeter strapped to his wrist. Jared lowered the night-vision goggles from his helmet and locked them over his jump lenses. Seconds later the crew chief’s voice flooded his earpiece.

      “Two minutes!”

      Jared flashed another thumbs-up. The second he bailed out of this bucket of bolts, the pilot would swing the plane’s nose due west and hightail it back to Ramstein. By the time the droning C-130 reached German air space where he and Hatch had established a command post, he’d be knocking on DeBruzkya’s door. Or rather, his DeBruzkya. Jared muscled his way into the icy crosswinds, stopping when the tips of his boots were flush with the lip of the plane’s ramp. One predetermined electronic signal from the transmitter in his pocket and a well-timed blitzkrieg from the CIA team on the ground—artfully disguised as a renewed rebel offensive—would provide the necessary cover and concealment for the remainder of his objectives.

      He hoped.

      “One minute!”

      Jared grabbed on to the familiar, heady adrenaline surging through his veins and harnessed it, using it to beat down the unexpected flash of panic. The doubt. Dammit, Hatch trusted him to see this through. Hatch also knew the situation, understood the risks. Mentor or not, surely the man would have tapped someone else—hell, anyone else—for Morrow’s snatch if there was a chance of him screwing up, however unintentionally.

      But there was a chance he might slip, wasn’t there? The worst part was he’d never see it coming.

      Or was that the best?

      “Thirty seconds!”

      Pull it together, Soldier.

      The decade-old taunt worked. Two years with Army Special Forces, five more in Delta Force, another eight with ARIES. He hadn’t botched a snatch yet. And he’d never lost a package.

      He wasn’t about to start now.

      “Go!”

      Jared pressed his fingers to the gold medallion beneath his pressure suit for luck and tipped his helmet toward the crew chief, vaulting boots first into the icy void before the sergeant could return his nod. Three breaths of canned oxygen later, he popped his chute. The dark-gray canopy billowed out, jerking his spine into perfect alignment as the C-130 roared off into the night. A minute later there was nothing but eerie silence and overly bright stars. Then the chilling frost creeping across his goggles…and ten long minutes to kill. Determined to banish the doubt from his brain, he ran through the coming mission. He embraced the hope.

      Unfortunately, all three converged on one man.

      Alexander Morrow.

      Just let him be alive.

      His trusty medic’s bag would do the rest. Hell, ten seconds after he stabbed Morrow with the pre-filled amphetamine injector, he’d have trouble keeping up with the nerdy, myopic geologist, bashed body