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“So what’s the plan?” Rasheed asked.
The terrorist looked at him again. Known only as Amir, he had cold, flat eyes as black as death, and promising as much. Rasheed had met hundreds of men like him during the years he’d lived in the mountains of Jaziirastan, working his way through the training camps. Ruthless. Callous. Inured to all human feelings except one—sheer, unbridled hate. Men who would kill in a heartbeat, whose goal was the annihilation of anyone who didn’t submit to their way of life. Zealots who destroyed innocents with utter disinterest, murdering women and children with no remorse.
Like Rasheed’s pregnant wife.
“We’ll wait for the woman to show up,” Amir told him in his native Jaziirastani. “As soon as we identify her tent, we’ll rejoin Manzoor. We’ll move in tonight when the rain hits. Manzoor and I’ll stand guard. You’ll grab the woman. Just make sure you get the right one.”
“I’ll get her,” he promised. He had no choice. He had to play his part.
But why did they want a prisoner? This crack terror cell, the Rising Light’s most elite contingent, had come to Peru for one reason only—to join up with the South American drug cartel that would ferry them into the United States. Or so Rasheed had thought. This surprise detour to capture an American doctor didn’t make sense.
But he didn’t dare question their plans. Neither Amir nor Manzoor, their small cell’s leader, trusted him completely, even though he’d been careful not to cause any doubt. He’d paid his dues. He’d spent years proving his loyalty as he rose through the Rising Light’s ranks. And thanks to his Jaziirastani parents—and the CIA’s most talented forgers—he had the linguistic skills and documents to pass as a native of that land. Whether the terrorists suspected him of being a traitor or were withholding information out of their usual paranoia, Rasheed didn’t know. But he needed to show them the blind obedience they expected to keep from tipping them off.
“We’ll exit that way,” Amir continued, pointing toward a slot between the hills. “We’ll need to move fast. God willing, we’ll have success.”
Rasheed gave the expected response. But his idea of success didn’t match Amir’s. He’d only celebrate when he’d thwarted the upcoming attack and brought down the terrorists’ kingpin, the financier who’d murdered his wife.
Thunder drummed across the steep terrain. The wind bore down, sweeping through the wheat-colored clumps of grass, bringing with it the threat of rain. Then a movement on the trail below them caught his attention, and he aimed his binoculars that way, careful to keep the lens from reflecting the waning light. Two people, a man and a woman, came into view, both carting backpacks, both wearing jackets over their surgical scrubs.
Rasheed’s pulse began to speed up.
The man led the way. He was tall, thin, probably in his mid-thirties, with a long, narrow face and a large hooked nose. He had a short, scraggly beard, and blisters on his nose and ears, thanks to the scorching, high-altitude sun.
The woman walked beside him, her head bent, her face hidden beneath her wide-brimmed hat. Rasheed stayed stone-still, keeping his binoculars trained on her as she hiked along. Then suddenly, she raised her head and glanced around, as if sensing his scrutiny, and he finally caught a glimpse of her face.
His breath made a hitch. His heart stumbled through several beats. “That’s the target?” he blurted out, unable to conceal his disbelief.
“That’s her.”
She was beautiful. Strikingly so with high, sculpted cheekbones, delicately winged black brows and a full, lush mouth in her tawny face. Her skin was satin smooth, her lips a tempting pink. She wore her long black hair in a single braid, but the wind had worked the shorter strands loose, sending them dancing around her face. She moved with an athletic grace, hinting at a slender build beneath her coat. But it was her remarkable face that held him spellbound, making it damned near impossible to breathe.
Then she turned her head, staring straight into the binoculars, and everything inside him stilled. Her eyes were green, the cool, silvery-green of desert sagebrush or ancient olive trees. The pale color was unexpected, captivating, provoking something instinctive inside him—the primitive male urge to possess.
His ancestors would have raided for her, started wars over her, killed for her. She had the rare kind of beauty coveted by sheikhs and kings.
“Who is she?” he asked, aware he was taking a risk. Questions aroused suspicions. And he’d worked too hard to infiltrate this terror cell to blow his cover now.
But this woman...
“She looks Middle Eastern,” he added as an excuse.
Amir grunted. “She’s Jaziirastani.”
Jaziirastani? Why were they kidnapping a woman from their own country? His curiosity mounted, but Rasheed knew better than to ask. He had to bide his time, displaying the blind compliance the terrorists expected while somehow ferreting out their plans.
The target hiked across the clearing toward the tents, her movements graceful despite her pack. She dropped off the unwieldy backpack with the woman organizing the supplies and lingered for a moment to chat. He studied the tilt of her head, the elegant way she moved her hands, still wondering who she could be. Then she continued to a large, gray-and-blue tent beneath a tree. She disappeared inside, emerging a few minutes later wearing jeans instead of scrubs, and started back across the camp toward the fire.
Amir caught his eye. His checkered kaffiyeh headscarf flapped in the wind. “We have the information we need. She’s in the farthest tent. Let’s go.” He started scooting backward through the grass.
Rasheed hesitated, shooting the medical group another look as they went about their tasks, heedless of the raid that was about to shatter their night. If only he could warn them. They’d come here with noble intentions, doing their part to mitigate the misery of the impoverished farmers’ lives. And they didn’t deserve the fear they were about to suffer during the attack.
But he couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t do anything to blow his cover now, not when this mission’s success lay squarely in his hands. Because whatever these terrorists had planned, whatever the reason they’d hired a drug cartel to smuggle them into the United States, this thing was huge, rumored to rival 9/11 in scope. And it was up to him to discover their plot and stop them, no matter what it took.
The sky grew dim. Thunder grumbled again, rolling up the valley and reverberating against the terraced hills. The medical team members halted their activities and looked up. The clouds were drawing closer, their tombstone-colored bottoms growing more ominous as they dragged rain across the jagged peaks. The mules picketed beside the tents began to stir.
Aware of Amir’s impatience, Rasheed spared the Jaziirastani woman a final glance. No, he couldn’t warn them. He couldn’t risk interfering in the attack. All he could do was try to protect them the best he could while keeping his goal in sight.
* * *
If there was one thing Nadine Seymour would never understand, it was man’s propensity for violence. No matter where she’d traveled or worked—whether in glitzy New York City, in her father’s native land of Jaziirastan, or here, in the isolated mountain villages of Peru where thatch-roofed huts clung precariously to the craggy hillsides—she’d come across the same defeated women, their bodies battered and bruised, their eyes filled with hopelessness and despair.
She would never understand it. Never accept it. And she sure as hell would never put herself in a position to experience it firsthand.
“So how did it go today?”
Her lower back aching, her head throbbing from the scarcity of oxygen at fourteen thousand feet, she