Athena Force 12: Checkmate by Doranna Durgin Page B

Butcher twine, very nice. Candle stubs and matches she’d find in the entrance to the service corridor.
    “May I ask,” Atif said, clearly prepared to ask regardless, “your intent? You are just one woman. They are many men. You cannot defeat them all.”
    Selena tucked away the twine in a thigh pocket, and yanked the ice pick free of the dead terrorist, squinching her face up in matter-of-fact distaste. Stay strong, stomach of mine. She cleaned the pick and threaded it between her belt and her hip. “You’re right. I can’t defeat them all. I’m not sure that’s my job.”
    “Then—?”
    “Keep them off balance. Keep them distracted from the hostages. Make it personal to Ashurbeyli, so he loses perspective.” Check. Been there, did that. “Make them think I am important, so they’re caught off guard when the real rescue comes along.” And there’d better be a real rescue. She had to count on Cole…had to believe he’d see to it, whatever he had to do. Meanwhile…she looked around the room, from the dead Kemenis to the live ones. “Three down. And the rest to go.”

Chapter 9
     
    T he condo closed in around Cole. It surrounded him with Selena, with her belongings and her style and even her scent. And with UBC muted, it surrounded him with memories of her voice on the phone. He wasn’t used to the uncertainty he’d heard from her only hours earlier—uncertainty that underscored the problem between them.
    He’d been on assignment; he’d come back. Somewhere in between, something had hit her hard.
    He just needed the time to find out what. The chance.
    He understood her request that they use the hardwired phone—it didn’t crackle with static, nor drop every other syllable in a whimsical verbal word game. They wouldn’t be overheard by those baby monitors—or by the various intelligence communities of the world. But if he only could leave—
    What then, Jones?
    Nothing, that’s what. He’d called his office; he’d been shuffled all the way up to the deputy director himself. He’d passed along what he knew, the tidbits Selena had given him, and he’d been admonished to do the same with any further information she gave him. But what had he learned? Nothing. What had he gathered by way of reassurance that the CIA would immediately share this information to best benefit Selena? Nothing. And if there was one thing Cole had learned in his years of covert operations, it was that the various intelligence agencies jealously guarded their information. They talked a good game, and on some levels the situation had improved immensely—his recent assignment had proven that much—but cooperation was a boon, not the norm.
    Call the State Department.
    Yeah, he could do that. And they’d play the same games with him, and he’d still have no assurance they wouldn’t lose Selena in the big picture.
    He caught sight of Tory Patton, gesturing at the Berzhaan capitol building, her classically beautiful features tight with concern. The bottom of the screen held a scrolling tally of the damage and death tolls caused by the terrorist activity since it had kicked off in the village of Oguzka.
    Go to the news station. Call UBC, spill everything he knew…dangle his inside source. That would light a fire under the CIA, the State Department and even the FBI. It would bring the troops circling around, forcing them to share intel…forcing them to act.
    And he’d give it about thirty seconds before the CIA came and lit a fire under him. They’d haul him away for questioning, and he wouldn’t be here to answer that phone at all.
    Everyone else had their eyes on the student hostages, knowing that along with a tragedy, it’d be a publicity nightmare if those kids were hurt. They had their eyes on Razidae and Allori, both men that the region—and their countries—couldn’t afford to lose. It was Cole’s job to keep his eyes on Selena. To make things happen in a way that included her best interests. For neither the