of almost all the information he’d provided long before she’d left Langley. In spite of that, she nodded, having decided a couple of hours ago that the occasional gesture of agreement was the easiest way to deal with her gregarious military host.
It had been painfully obvious from the first he didn’t believe she was the right person for the job she’d been given. Just as obviously, he didn’t realize that his attitude was nothing new.
Grace had spent more than a decade climbing the ranks in the CIA, an agency that celebrated its old-boys network. And Grace Chancellor had never been one of the “old boys.”
“In spite of our presence here,” Stern went on, “massive shipments still make it though those mountains and into Pakistan.” He nodded toward the chopper’s open door and the rugged peaks that stretched below.
This trip along the Afghan/Pakistani border had been an afterthought. Stern had already shown her the vast fields of poppies that now covered the relatively fertile valleys of Afghanistan. In full bloom, their flowers had thrown a blaze of color across the otherwise monochromatic landscape.
With the disruption of the Taliban’s control, the country’s trade in heroin had once again grown to staggering proportions. More than one-fifth of the world’s opium was currently being produced here.
Although heavily backed by an American and British commitment of money and manpower, recent attempts by the Afghan government to rein in that very profitable business had led to deep resentment and even violence among the general population. In a country whose grinding poverty rivaled any in the region, people were dependent on the cash produced by the poppies to feed their children.
It was now Grace’s job to find a workable solution for all of those involved. And to do it before the antipathy generated by the attempts to control the drug trafficking boiled over into a full-blown rebellion.
No one at the CIA, including Grace herself, had had any doubt that her current assignment was a demotion. In her opinion at least, it had been intended as a punishment, as well, but she was determined that the people at the Agency who had made this decision would never have the satisfaction of hearing her complain.
Almost the only thing she could control in this situation was how she conducted herself. Despite her bitterness over the undeserved castigation, she was resolute in her intent to bring to this challenge the same degree of professionalism and all-out effort she had invested in everything else the Agency had ever asked of her.
The colonel, a tall, spare man already deeply tanned by the relentless Afghan sun, raised his index finger and then moved it in a circle. His aide, who had apparently been keeping a watchful eye on their conversation, placed his hand on the shoulder of the chopper pilot and bent to shout whatever unspoken instruction he’d just been given against his flight helmet. The helicopter immediately began to turn, its nose tilting slightly downward as it did.
Before it had completed the maneuver, there was a loud bang. The Kiowa seemed to hesitate in midair, almost as if it were catching its breath.
Then the noise of the jet engine, which had made normal conversation impossible, was no longer there. In its sudden and eerie absence Grace could hear what sounded like the clatter of small-arms fire from below and the continuing whomp, whomp, whomp of the rotor blades over their heads.
“What the hell?” Stern muttered before he leaned forward, shouting the same question to his aide.
As he did, Grace was again able see the ground beneath the chopper. Following the Kiowa’s shadow, a stream of horsemen galloped over the rocky terrain below. The gunfire she’d heard had obviously come from the rifles they brandished in upraised hands.
She couldn’t hear the answer the aide had conveyed from the pilot to Stern, but the colonel’s expression when he turned toward her left no doubt that it hadn’t been what he’d been hoping to hear. His lips flattened as she met his eyes, trying to keep hers from revealing the fear that had already tightened her chest and rested cold and queasy in the bottom of her stomach.
“Looks like the bastards got lucky.”
Unlike the colonel’s previous comments, this one hadn’t been shouted. And there was a note in his voice she liked even less than she had liked his previous condescending manner.
“What does that mean?”
The hesitation before he answered lasted through several more endless seconds. Her heart rate, already elevated, increased exponentially while she waited.
“They hit the engine with those pea shooters. We’re going down.”
His eyes held hers, watching for reaction, she supposed. Although she tried to control any outward sign of what she was feeling, she was the one who finally broke the contact between them, looking down again on the horsemen who, even as she watched, seemed to grow larger and more menacing. The pilot fought to control their too-rapid descent, the blades thankfully still turning above their heads, allowing him a chance to try to set the chopper down.
She’d always heard that when you faced death, your entire life flashed before your eyes. Fingers tense around the metal arms of her seat, she realized that in her case, at least, that wasn’t true. There was only one image that kept repeating over and over in her head.
She had run into one of the old hands at the Agency shortly after she’d been called to testify before Congress. She hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, certainly not to talk to, so that she’d wondered at the time if he had arranged their “chance” meeting. If so, she was grateful. Most of the others at Langley had simply turned the other way as she walked by.
Neil Andrews had looked her in the eye. His warning had been equally straight and to the point:
“Watch your back,” he’d said. “Don’t think for a minute that they’re going to let you get away with it.”
“I’m sorry,” Stern said, bringing her abruptly back to the present. He sounded as if he might actually mean it.
Of course he does, she told herself. To believe anything else was sheer paranoia. After all, whatever dangers lay ahead, the colonel and his aide would experience them, as well.
Except they aren’t women, Grace acknowledged, looking down again on the barren ground and the riders who seemed to be rising up to meet their rapid descent. And although she had functioned in a masculine realm for years, she knew with a cold certainty that the world she was about encounter was far different in its approach to women than any she had ever faced before.
Chapter One
“I’ve already told Griff I’m not interested. Several times, actually.”
The deep voice on the other end of the line seemed resigned, almost amused rather than angry. Dalton Rawls knew that amusement wouldn’t last.
This was a call he’d been dreading having to make for several days, ever since Griff Cabot had broached the idea. They had both agreed, however, that there was no one better suited for this mission than Landon James. And since technically it wasn’t a Phoenix undertaking…
“This isn’t about joining the Phoenix,” Dalton said.
There was a beat of silence as the ex-CIA operative he’d just phoned digested the information. “Then what is it about?”
“A
