Strangers When We Meet. Merline Lovelace

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.

      “How’s it going out there in cowboy country?”

      “It’s going,” Dodge replied.

      After a succinct status report that included his initial impressions of the three Russians, he broached the reason for his call.

      “I need you to check out a dude by the name of Hank Barlow. He’s the CEO of E-Systems.”

      “Hank Barlow. E-Systems. Got it. Anything in particular you want me to look for?”

      “See if he has any connection to our visiting Russians.”

      “Roger that. I’ll get back to you.”

      Blade hung up and keyed the name into OMEGA’s computers. While the supercomputer did its thing, he skimmed a glance around the busy control center.

      It was geared to operate 24/7. Active and passive electronic countermeasures prevented interception of its encrypted emanations. Communications techs kept the array of computers and wall-size digital displays humming. Even the field-dress unit, which could turn a grungy agent just back from three weeks in the jungle into a tuxedoed James Bond in the blink of an eye, had at least one team