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in Washington, D.C., dressed in civvies to blend in with the tourists. The mission was straightforward: recover the Vilyas boy unharmed, hand the terrorists over to the Ladavians and keep the entire operation completely secret despite the few hundred bystanders with cameras who were wandering through the target zone.
Oh, hey, piece of cake, right?
A small, balding man Flynn recognized as Anton Vilyas walked past his bench. His features were sharper than they had appeared in the briefing photo. Exhaustion did that to people—the man reportedly hadn’t slept since his kid had been taken three days ago. Poor bastard looked to be near collapse. The top of his head gleamed damply and his fingers were white where they curled around the strap of the green canvas backpack he carried.
How heavy was twenty million dollars? Flynn wondered. Even in the large denominations the kidnappers had demanded, the weight would be substantial. He’d heard the entire amount of cash had been provided by the U.S. government, an indication of how vital they considered Ladavian goodwill…and the mission of Flynn’s team.
Vilyas reached the designated spot and stopped. It was hard to tell whether he intentionally dropped the pack or whether it simply slipped through his sweaty fingers. It hit the floor with a quiet thud, wobbled briefly, then slumped against the base of a trash can. The green backpack stuffed with twenty million dollars lay discarded like someone’s forgotten lunch. The ambassador walked away without a backward glance, just as he’d been instructed.
“All right, people. Stay alert.”
Flynn heard Major Redinger’s voice and grunted an acknowledgment. Mitchell Redinger, the team’s commanding officer, was stationed at the temporary base they had established in a vacant warehouse. He was monitoring the feeds from the surveillance equipment that was positioned around the target zone, watching everybody’s backs. When this went down, it would go down fast.
And that’s just the way Flynn liked it. He felt his pulse pick up. It didn’t race. He was too disciplined for that. No, it was a steady, solid rush of blood to well-conditioned muscles that hummed in readiness.
He didn’t know what the target would look like, or how many there would be. He didn’t know what direction they would come from or how long he would need to wait. The odds of following the kidnappers without their knowledge, of assessing the best way to free the hostage, of bringing the whole incident to a quiet, successful conclusion weren’t good. As a matter of fact, they were abysmal.
But Flynn’s team had pulled off missions that had been far worse. When they did, there was never any recognition. No medals or official commendations, because the government wouldn’t even admit that Delta Force existed. The hours sucked, the stress was incredible. He had to be prepared to go anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice. His home was whatever base he was stationed at, his family was the soldiers of Eagle Squadron. He was expected to accomplish the impossible, continually challenging his brain and straining his body to the limit.
Flynn pressed his lips together and exhaled slowly through his nose.
Damn, he loved this job.
“Everything sure is old here, Miss Locke.”
Abbie smiled at the boy on her left. “Yes, Bradley. That’s because this is a museum.”
The child on her right side leaned over to roll his eyes. “Boy, Bradley, are you ever dumb.”
“You’re dumb, Jeremy.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Uh-huh. As if.”
The children were getting tired, Abbie thought. The squabbling was a sure sign. “But as museums go, the exhibits here aren’t all that old,” she said. “How can anyone think of space flight as old? Not that long ago it was science fiction. Look over here.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s the space capsule that John Glenn used when he orbited the earth.” She paused. “The first time, anyway.”
“He went to space twice?”
“Yes, but the second time he was much, um, older.”
“It looks burned.”
“Yes, it heated up when it went through the atmosphere. That was before NASA developed the space shuttle. Astronauts were shot into space inside a little capsule like this that was fitted on the tip of a rocket.”
“Wow,” the boys said, tipping their heads one way and then the other to study the capsule.
“That was more than forty years ago.”
“Wow! That’s older than my mom!”
“It’s older than my mom.”
“Is not.”
“Is, too.”
Abbie put her hands on their shoulders and gently guided them along with the rest of the class. “It’s older than me, too, Jeremy.”
The boys looked up at her, their mouths rounded. “Hey. Really?”
Abbie suppressed a grimace at their expressions of disbelief. She wasn’t old, she reminded herself. Turning thirty didn’t mean that she was over the hill. She was just coming into her physical and sexual prime. A woman’s vitality peaked in her thirties, isn’t that what people said? She had plenty of good years to look forward to.
But if she had intended to keep a positive attitude about her youth, visiting a museum on her birthday wasn’t that great an idea.
“Miss Locke?”
She smiled at a plump redheaded girl. “Yes, Beverly?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Me, too,” another child said.
Abbie turned to the parent volunteers who had accompanied the class and efficiently divided everyone into rest room squads. It was time to call it a day, anyway. They had been on the go since the morning, and the bus was due to pick them up in half an hour. Well-accustomed to the vagaries of seven-year-olds, she knew enough to allow plenty of extra time to organize their departure.
The unfortunate reminders of her advancing age aside, it had still been a good day. She was lucky to have a job she enjoyed as much as this one. She loved children and longed for the chance to have one or two of her own someday. Yes, her ambition was embarrassingly old-fashioned: a home in the suburbs filled with the warmth of a loving family…and of course, a nice, stable husband to share it all with. Was that really too much to ask?
Perhaps it was, since she’d always assumed she would have been married by the time she was thirty. That’s probably what was causing her to be so conscious of this milestone of a birthday. But chances were that she wasn’t going to find Mr. Right by the end of today…unless he jumped out of the cake at her surprise party.
For a moment Abbie imagined the scene in her parents’ house. Her family always threw her a birthday party. She always pretended to be surprised. There was something wonderfully comforting about the whole thing, a sweet ritual that arose from her family’s love. Her mother would fix her favorite potato salad, plates of fried chicken and egg sandwiches with no crusts. Her father would make the same joke he always did about how Abbie couldn’t possibly be more than two because her mother hadn’t aged a year since her birth. They would hug and laugh and make toasts to the future while she opened her gifts.
She would bet a hundred, no, a million bucks that the gifts wouldn’t include a cake with a man inside.
Abbie chuckled at the whimsical thought and scooped up a pair of discarded jackets from the rest room counter, then guided the children to the lobby where they waited for the stragglers. Of course, more jackets came off and backpacks hit the floor as they waited.
“Miss Locke, I lost my hat.”
“What did it look like, Ricky?”
“It was blue.”