Dangerous to Hold Read Free Page B

thought. For all her worry, however, Jake knew, Maggie wouldn’t panic.
    The tight, coiled knot of tension between his shoulder blades loosened imperceptibly. Maggie wouldn’t terminate the operation. Nor would she send in an extraction team. Not until she heard from him or figured out for herself what had happened. Jake had worked with most of the agents assigned to OMEGA, and Sinclair was one of the best.

Chapter 2
    O ne more hour, Maggie thought. Two at the most. That was all she could allow herself. And Jake.
    She took another sip of coffee, unmindful now of its cold, sludgelike consistency. Holding the cup at her lip, she began tracing a second ring of circular indentations around the rim. Suddenly a light flashed on the upper left portion of her console.
    The front legs of Samuels’s chair thwacked down on the tiles. “It’s Big Bird!”
    Maggie’s heart pounded in sudden excitement. Big Bird! She should have known the surveillance craft orbiting high above the Caribbean would be the first to break the wall of silence surrounding Jake. The huge air force jet, with its Frisbee-like rotating radar dish, was officially termed the USAF Airborne Warning and Control System, but everyone had a different tag for it, some affectionate, some irreverent. No one, however, made fun of the vital information processed via its banks of on-board computers.
    With the speed and skill of a magician performing sleightof hand, Samuels flipped a series of switches. The clear, calm voice of an air surveillance officer came over the speaker. Maggie hunched forward in her chair, listening intently.
    An aircraft meeting the specifications Jaguar had called in earlier had taken off from a deserted airstrip in Alabama, Big Bird confirmed. Two F-15s had scrambled from a base in Florida to make a visual ID, then shadowed the slower-moving plane across the Gulf of Mexico. At the last minute, the aircraft under surveillance had aborted its landing in Cartoza, for reasons unknown at present. The report went on to provide a wealth of technical detail on the suspect’s flight pattern, air characteristics and radar signature.
    Maggie acknowledged receipt of the transmission and sat back, thinking furiously.
    â€œSo the drop didn’t take place?” Samuels asked.
    She met the communications specialist’s steady gaze and shook her head. She wasn’t surprised by his question. Everyone in the OMEGA control center during an operation was briefed on every detail. They worked as a team, together, twenty-four hours a day, throughout the duration of the mission. Everyone involved had a personal stake in the outcome.
    â€œGet me a voice link to those F-15s,” Maggie said. “I want to talk to the pilots and find out what—”
    Another flashing light interrupted her.
    Samuels verified the caller’s credentials, then sent Maggie a wide grin. “It’s the on-duty rep at the State Department crisis center. He has a report of some action in your sector of operations.”
    Maggie picked up the handset, adrenaline pumping through her veins. Although she far preferred fieldwork to acting as a control agent, she had to admit that being stuck at headquarters had its moments. Like now, when the reports started to flow in from a dozen different sources. From CIA, from Treasury, from any and all agencies whose intelligence networks OMEGA tapped into. She’d need a cool head, and the insight gained only through years in the field, to piece togetherthe fragmentary and often conflicting bits of information that would soon pour in.
    â€œState Department, this is Chameleon,” she rapped out, identifying herself with the code-name she’d earned by her ability to melt into whatever locale she was sent to. “What do you have?”
    Forehead furrowed in concentration, Maggie listened as the on-duty operations officer relayed information about a rebel raid on a small village in the interior of