Buch lesen: «Everyday, Average Jones»

For my big sister, Carolee Brockmann.

And for my mom, Lee Brockmann,

who even likes the ones that never sell.

CHAPTER 1

It was extremely likely that she was going to die.

And with every hour that passed, her chance of making it out of this godforsaken country any way other than inside a body bag was slipping from slim to none.

Melody Evans sat quietly in the corner of the little windowless office that had become her prison, writing what she hoped would not be her final words in a letter to her sister.

Dear Brittany, I’m scared to death of dying….

She was terrified of the finality of a single bullet to the head. But she was even more afraid of the other sort of death that possibly awaited her. She’d heard of the kinds of torture that were far too prevalent in this part of the world. Torture, and other archaic, monstrous practices. God help her if they found out she was a woman….

Melody felt her pulse kick into overdrive, and she took slow, deep breaths, trying to calm herself.

Remember the time you took me sledding up at the apple orchards? Remember how you got on the sled behind me, and told me in that supertheatrical voice you sometimes used that we were either going to steer a straight course down the hill through the rows of trees—or die trying?

Her older sister had always been the adventurous one. Yet it was Brittany who was still at home in Appleton, living in the same four-story Godzilla of a Victorian house that they’d grown up in. And it was Melody who, in a moment of sheer insanity, had accepted the job of administrative assistant to the American ambassador and had moved overseas to a country she hadn’t even known existed until six months ago.

I remember thinking as we plunged down the hill—God, I couldn’t have been more than six years old, but I remember thinking—at least we’ll die together.

I wish to God I didn’t feel so alone….

“You don’t really think they’re going to let you send that, do you?” Kurt Matthews’s acerbic voice dripped scorn.

“No, I don’t.” Melody answered him without even looking up. She knew she was writing this letter not for Brittany, but for herself. Memories. She was writing down some childhood memories, trying to give herself a sense of that peace and happiness she’d known once upon a time. She was writing about the way she’d always tried so desperately to keep up with a sister nearly nine years older than she was. She skipped over the sibling infighting and petty arguments, choosing to remember only Britt’s patience and kindness.

Britt always made such a big deal over Melody’s birthday. This year, even though Mel was thousands of miles from the New England charm of their hometown in Massachusetts, Britt had sent a huge box of birthday surprises. She’d taken care to send it far enough in advance, and Melody had received it four days ago—more than a week before her twenty-fifth birthday.

She was glad now that she hadn’t followed Britt’s written orders and instead had opened the pile of presents in advance of the so-called special day. Britt had sent five new pairs of warm socks, a thick woolen sweater and some new athletic shoes. Those were the practical gifts. The fun gifts included the newest Garth Brooks CD, Tami Hoag’s latest romantic thriller, a jar of real peanut butter and two videotapes on which Brittany had recorded the past three months’ episodes of ER. It was America-in-a-box, and Melody had both laughed and cried at her older sister’s thoughtfulness. It was the best birthday present she’d ever received.

Except now it looked as if she wouldn’t live to see those episodes of ER. Or her twenty-fifth birthday.

Kurt Matthews was ignoring her again. He’d gone back to his asinine discussion with Chris Sterling. They were trying to figure out just how much CNN would pay them for the exclusive rights to their story after the deal between the terrorists and the U.S. government was made and they were released.

Matthews, the fool, actually had the gall to say that he hoped the talks weren’t going too smoothly. He seemed to think that the monetary value of their story would increase with the length of their ordeal. And so far, they’d only been held for two days.

He—or Sterling, either, for that matter—didn’t have a clue as to the seriousness of this situation.

Melody, on the other hand, had done research on this particular terrorist group who had overthrown the entire government in an unexpected coup early Wednesday morning. They’d taken the American embassy by storm shortly after that. They were terrorists, and the U.S. didn’t negotiate with terrorists. Right now they were only talking. But if the talking didn’t end, and end soon, this group of zealots was not likely to continue to show their three civilian hostages the same amount of respect and creature comforts they had to date. Provided, of course, that one could call being locked in a tiny, nearly airless office with two idiots, irregular deliveries of food and water and a washroom facility that no longer worked “comfortable.”

Matthews and Sterling both seemed to think they were being held under rather dire conditions.

But Melody knew better.

She closed her eyes, trying to force away the image of the cold dankness of an underground cell. When she’d left Appleton to take this job at the embassy, she’d had no idea that the desert could be so cold during the winter months. It was March now—early spring—and it could still be chilly at night.

She focused instead on her feet. They were warm, clad in a pair of the socks and the cross trainers Brittany had sent.

They’d be taken from her—both shoes and socks—before she was thrown into that dark cell.

Lord, she had to stop thinking like that. It wasn’t going to do her a bit of good.

Still, the image of the prison cell was better than the other picture her overactive imagination cooked up: three American infidels, dead at the hands of their captors.

* * *

Cowboy watched the back of the American embassy through high-powered binoculars. The place was jumping with tangos, arriving and leaving at apparently unscheduled times.

“Cat,” he said almost silently into his lip microphone.

Captain Joe Catalanotto, commander of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad, was positioned on the other side of the building. He was cooling his heels with the five other members of the team, having set up temporary camp in an abandoned apartment. The owner of the unit was no doubt some smart son of a bitch who had grabbed his TV and run, realizing the obvious negatives in owning real estate so close to a building that could go up in flames at any moment.

For Alpha Squad’s purposes, the apartment was perfect. The master-bedroom window had a nifty view of the front of the embassy. With one of the other SEALs seated in an easy chair in front of that window, and with Cowboy positioned somewhat less comfortably on a rooftop overlooking the back, they could track the tangos’—SEAL slang for terrorists—every move.

“Yeah, Jones.” Cat’s flat New York accent came in loud and clear over the headphones Ensign Harlan Jones, otherwise known as Cowboy, was wearing.

Cowboy said only one word. “Chaos.” He had made himself invisible on the roof, but he was well aware that the windows were opened on the floor directly below him, so when he spoke, he was as concise and as quiet as possible. He kept his binoculars trained on the building, moving from one broken window to the next. He could see movement inside, shadowy figures. The place was huge—one of those old mothers of a building, built during the middle of the previous century. He didn’t doubt for a moment that the hostages were secured in one of the inner chambers.

“Copy that,” Catalanotto said, a trace of amusement in his voice. “We see it from this side, too. Whoever these clowns are, they’re amateurs. We’ll go in tonight. At oh-dark-hundred.”

Cowboy had to risk a full sentence. “I recommend we move now.” He could hear Cat’s surprise in the silence that grew longer and longer.

“Jones, the sun’ll be going down in less than three hours,” the CO finally said. The SEALs worked best at night. They could move almost invisibly under the cover of darkness.

Cowboy switched the powerful lenses to the infrared setting and took another quick scan of the building. “We should go now.”

“What do you see that I don’t see, kid?” Joe Cat’s question was made without even a trace of sarcasm. Yeah, Cat had a wagonload of experience that Cowboy couldn’t begin to compete with. And yeah, Cat had recently gotten a pay raise to O-6—captain—while Cowboy was a measly O-1, an ensign. But Captain Joe Catalanotto was the kind of leader who took note of his team’s individual strengths and used each man to his full ability. And sometimes even beyond.

Every man on the team could see through walls, provided they had the right equipment. But no one could take the information that equipment provided and interpret it the way Cowboy could. And Cat knew that.

“At least fifty T’s inside.”

“Yeah, that’s what Bobby tells me, too.” Cat paused. “What’s the big deal?”

“The pattern of movement.”

Cowboy heard Cat take over Bobby’s place at the bedroom window. There was silence, and then Cat swore. “They’re making room for something.” He swore again. “Or someone.”

Cowboy clicked once into his lip mike—an affirmative. That’s what he thought, too.

“They’re clearing out the entire east side of the building,” Joe Cat continued, now able to see what Cowboy saw. “How many more tangos are they expecting?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Cowboy answered it anyway. “Two hundred?”

Cat swore again and Cowboy knew what he was thinking. Fifty T’s were manageable—particularly when they were of the Three Stooges variety, like the ones he’d been watching going in and out of the embassy all day long. But two hundred and fifty against seven SEALs…Those odds were a little skewed. Not to mention the fact that the SEALs didn’t know if any of the soon-to-be-arriving tangos were real soldiers, able to tell the difference between their AK-47s and their elbows.

“Get ready to move,” he heard Cat tell the rest of Alpha Squad.

“Cat.”

“Yeah, Jones?”

“Three heat spots haven’t moved much all day.”

Catalanotto laughed. “Are you telling me you think you’ve located our hostages?”

Cowboy clicked once into his lip mike.

Christopher Sterling, Kurt Matthews and Melody Evans. Cowboy had been carrying those names inside his head ever since Alpha Squad was first briefed on this mission in the plane that took them to their insertion point—a high-altitude, low-opening parachute jump from high above the desert just outside the terrorist-controlled city.

He’d seen the hostages’ pictures, too.

All of the men in Alpha Squad had held on to the picture of Melody Evans for a little bit longer than necessary. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, twenty-three at most—hardly more than a kid. In the photo, she was dressed in blue jeans and a plain T-shirt that didn’t show off her female figure but didn’t quite manage to hide it, either. She was blue-eyed with wavy blond hair that tumbled down her back and a country-fresh, slightly shy smile and sweet face that reminded each and every one of them of their little sisters—even those of ’em like Cowboy who didn’t have a little sister.

And Cowboy knew they were all thinking the same thing. As they were sitting there on that plane, waiting to reach their destination, that girl was at the mercy of a group of terrorists who weren’t known for their humanitarian treatment of hostages. In fact, the opposite was true. This group’s record of torture and abuse was well documented, as was their intense hatred of all things American.

He hated to think what they might do—had already done—to this young woman who could’ve been the poster model for the All-American Girl. But all day long, he’d kept a careful eye on the three heat sources he suspected were the hostages. And all day long, none of them had been moved.

“Fourth floor, interior room,” he said quietly into his mike. “Northwest corner.”

“I don’t suppose in your free time you found us a way into the embassy?” Cat asked.

“Minimal movement on the top floor,” Cowboy reported. Those windows were broken, too. “Roof to windows—piece a cake.”

“And gettin’ to the roof?” The south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line voice that spoke over his headphones was that of Lt. Blue McCoy, Alpha Squad’s point man and Joe Cat’s second-in-command.

“Just a stroll from where I’m at. Connecting roofs. Route’s clear—I’ve already checked.”

“Why the hell did I bother bringing along the rest of you guys?” Cat asked. Cowboy could hear the older man’s smile in his voice. “Good job, kid.”

“Only kind I do,” Cowboy drawled.

“That’s what I really love about you, Junior.” Senior Chief Daryl Becker, also known as Harvard, spoke up, his deep voice dry with humor. “Your humility. It’s rare to find such a trait in one so young.”

“Permission to move?” Cowboy asked.

“Negative, Jones,” Cat replied. “Wait for Harvard. Go in as a team.”

Cowboy clicked an affirmative, keeping his infrared glasses glued to the embassy.

It wouldn’t be long now until they went inside and got Melody Evans and the others out.

* * *

It happened so quickly, Melody wasn’t sure where they came from or who they were.

One moment she was sitting in the corner, writing in her notebook, and the next she was lying on her stomach on the linoleum, having been thrown there none too gently by one of the robed men who’d appeared out of thin air.

She felt the barrel of a gun jammed into her throat, just under her jaw, as she tried to make sense of the voices.

“Silence!” she was ordered in more languages than she could keep track of. “Keep your mouths shut or we’ll shut ’em for you!”

“Dammit,” she heard someone say in very plain English, “the girl’s not here. Cat, we’ve got three pieces of luggage, but none of them’s female.”

“If none of them’s female, one of ’em’s a tango. Search ’em and do it right.”

English. Yes. They were definitely speaking American English. Still, with that gun in her neck, she didn’t dare lift her head to look up at them.

“Lucky, Bobby and Wes,” another voice commanded, “search the rest of this floor. Find that girl.”

Melody felt rough hands on her body, moving across her shoulders and down her back, sweeping down her legs. She was being searched for a weapon, she realized. One of the hands reached up expertly to feel between her legs as another pushed its way up underneath her arm and around to her chest. She knew the exact instant that each hand encountered either more or less than their owner expected, because whomever those hands belonged to, he froze.

Then he flipped her onto her back, and Melody found herself staring up into the greenest eyes she’d ever seen in her life.

He pulled off her hat and touched her hair, then looked at the black shoe polish that had come off on his fingers. He looked down at the mustache she had made from some of her own cut hair darkened with mascara and glued underneath her nose. He smiled as he looked back into her eyes. It was a smile that lit his entire face and made his eyes sparkle.

“Melody.” It was more of a statement than a question.

But she nodded anyway.

“Ma’am, I’m Ensign Harlan Jones of the U.S. Navy SEALs,” he said in a soft Western drawl. “We’ve come to take you home.” He looked up then, speaking to one of the other hooded men. “Cat, belay that last order. We’ve found our female hostage, safe and sound.”

* * *

“Absolutely not.” Kurt Matthews folded his arms across his narrow chest. “They said if any of us attempted an escape, they’d kill us all. They said if we did what we were told, and if the government complied with their modest list of demands, we’d be set free. I say we stay right here.”

“There’s no way we can get out of here undetected,” the other man—Sterling—pointed out. “There’s too many of them. They’ll stop us and then they’ll kill us. I think it’s safer to do what they said.”

Cowboy shifted impatiently in his seat. Negotiating with damn fools was not one of his strengths, yet Cat had left him here to try to talk some sense into these boneheads as the rest of the squad went on to complete the rest of their mission—the destruction of several extremely confidential files in the ambassador’s personal office.

He knew that if worse came to worst, they’d knock ’em over the head and carry ’em out. But it would be a lot easier to move through the city, working their way toward the extraction point, without having to carry three unconscious bodies over their shoulders.

Not for the first time in the past twenty minutes, he found himself staring at Melody Evans.

He had to smile. And admire the hell out of her. There was no doubt in his mind that her quick thinking had saved her own life. She’d disguised herself as a man. She’d cut her long hair short, blackened it with shoe polish to hide its golden color and glued some kind of straggly-looking mustache thing onto her face.

Even with her hair shorn so close to her head and that ridiculous piece of hair stuck underneath her nose, she was pretty. He couldn’t imagine that he’d looked at her when they’d first come in and not seen right away that she was a woman. But he hadn’t. He’d thrown her onto the floor, for God’s sake. And then he’d groped her, searching for hidden weapons.

She glanced at him as if feeling his eyes on her, and he felt it again—that flash of sexual awareness that jolted to life between them. He held her gaze, boldly letting his smile grow wider, letting her take a good long look at this mutual attraction that hovered in the very air around them.

That photo he’d seen had made her look like someone’s little sister. But meeting Melody Evans face-to-face made him well aware—and grateful—of the fact that while she may indeed have been someone’s little sister, she sure as hell wasn’t his.

With the exception of the silly mustache, she possessed damn near everything he liked most in a woman. She was willowy, with a body that he knew firsthand was trim in some places, soft in others. Her face was pretty despite her lack of makeup and the smudges of shoe polish that decorated her forehead and cheeks and hid the shining gold of her hair. She had a small nose, a mouth that looked incredibly soft and crystal blue eyes surrounded by thick, dark lashes. Clear intelligence shone in those eyes. Tears had shown there, too, moments after he’d introduced himself to her. But despite that, she hadn’t let herself cry, much to Cowboy’s relief.

As he watched, she rubbed her left shoulder, and he knew whatever pain she was experiencing was his fault. That shoulder was where she’d landed when he’d first come in and thrown her onto the floor.

“I’m sorry we had to treat you so roughly, ma’am,” he said. “But in our line of work, it doesn’t pay to be polite and ask questions first.”

“Of course,” she murmured, glancing almost shyly at him. “I understand—”

Matthews drowned her out. “Well, I don’t understand, and you can be damned sure your superiors are going to hear about this little incident. Holding the ambassador’s staff at gunpoint and subjecting us to a body search!”

Cowboy didn’t get a chance to defend Alpha Squad’s actions because Melody Evans stood up and defended them for him. “These men came into this embassy looking for us,” she said hotly. “They’re risking their lives to be here right now—the same way they risked their lives when they opened that locked door and came into this room. They had no idea who or what was on the other side of that door!”

“Surely they could’ve seen just from looking that we were Americans,” Matthews countered.

“Surely there’s never been a terrorist who dresses up as a hostage and hides with his captives, waiting to blow away any rescuers,” she lit into him. “And of course there’s never been an American who’s been brainwashed or coerced or bribed into defecting to the other side!”

For the first time since they’d let the hostages up off the floor, Kurt Matthews was silent.

Cowboy had to smile. He liked smart women—women who didn’t suffer fools. And this one was more than smart. She was strong and clearly courageous, too—able to stand up and defend that which she believed in. He admired the swift action she took to disguise herself in the face of sheer disaster. Surely a woman with that much fight in her could be made to see how important it was that she leave here—and leave soon.

“Melody,” he said, then corrected himself. “Miss Evans, it’s now or never, ma’am. These tangos aren’t gonna let you go, and you know that as well as I do. If you let these gee—gentlemen talk you into staying here, you’re all as good as dead. Forgive me for being so blunt, ma’am, but that’s the God’s truth. It would make our job a whole hell of a lot easier if you would simply trust us to get you safely home.”

“But Chris is right. There’s only a few of you and so many of them.”

Count on a woman to play devil’s advocate and switch sides just when he was convinced he had a solid ally. Still, when she fixed those baby blues on him, his exasperation dissolved into sheer admiration. It was true, the odds didn’t appear to be in their favor. She had every right to be concerned, and it was up to him to convince her otherwise.

“We’re Navy SEALs, ma’am,” he said quietly, hoping she’d heard of the Special Operations teams, hoping word of SEAL Team Ten’s counterterrorist training had somehow made its way to whatever small town she’d grown up in.

But his words didn’t spark any recognition in her eyes.

The taller man, Chris Sterling, shook his head. “You say that as if it’s some kind of answer, but I don’t know what that means.”

“It means they think they’re supermen,” Matthews said scornfully.

“Will you please let Ensign Jones talk?” Melody said sharply, and Matthews fell silent.

“It means that even with only seven of us and fifty of them, the odds are still on our side,” Cowboy told them, once again capturing Melody’s gaze and holding it tightly. She was the one who was going to talk these other idiots into seeing reason. “It also means that the U.S. government has totally given up all hope of getting you out through negotiation or settlement. They don’t send us in, Melody,” he said, talking directly to her, “unless they’re desperate.”

She was scared. He could see that in her eyes. He didn’t blame her. There was a part of him that was scared, too. Over the past few years, he’d learned to use that fear to hone his senses, to keep him alert and giving a full hundred and fifty percent or more. He’d also learned to hide his fear. Confidence bred confidence, and he tried to give her a solid dose of that feeling as he smiled reassuringly into Melody’s ocean blue eyes.

“Trust us,” he said again. “Trust me.”

She turned back to the other hostages. “I believe him,” she said bluntly. “I’m going.”

Matthews stood up, indignant, menacing. “You stupid bitch. Don’t you get it? If you try to escape, they’ll kill us!”

“Then you better come, too,” Melody said coolly.

“No!” His voice got louder. “No, we’re staying here, right, Sterling? All of us. These steroid-pumped sea lions or whatever they call themselves can go ahead and get themselves killed, but we’re staying right here.” His voice got even louder. “In fact, since Mr. Jones seems to want so badly to die, I can give him a hand and shout for the guards to come and turn him into hamburger meat with their machine guns right now!”

* * *

Melody didn’t see the broad-shouldered SEAL move, let alone raise his hand, but before she could blink, he was rather gently lowering Kurt Matthews to the floor.

“By the way, unless you outrank me, I’d prefer to be called Ensign Jones,” he said to the now unconscious man. He flexed the fingers of the hand he’d used to put Matthews into that state and flashed an apologetic smile in Melody’s direction before he looked up at Chris Sterling. “How about you?” he asked the other man as he straightened up to his full height. “You want to walk out of this embassy, or do you want to get carried out like your buddy here?”

“Walk,” Sterling managed to say, staring down at Matthews. “I’ll walk, thanks.”

The door swung silently open, and a big black man—broader even than Ensign Harlan Jones—stepped into the room. Harvard. He was the one Ensign Jones had called Harvard. “You ready, Junior?”

“Zeppo, Harpo and Groucho here need robes,” Jones told the other man, sending a quick wink in her direction. “And sandals.”

Groucho. She fingered her false mustache. He’d gestured toward Matthews when he’d said Harpo. Harpo. The silent Marx brother. Melody laughed aloud. Chris Sterling looked at her as if she was crazy to laugh when at any moment they could be killed, but Jones gave her another wink and a smile.

Kevin Costner. That’s who Jones looked like. He looked like a bigger, beefier, much younger version of the Hollywood heartthrob. And she had no doubt he knew it, too. That smile could melt hearts as well as bolster failing courage.

“Melody, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to take off those kicks, hon.”

Hon. Honey. Well, she’d certainly gone from being called Miss Evans and ma’am to hon awfully fast. And as far as taking off her shoes…“These are new,” she told him. “And warm. I’d rather wear them, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind,” Jones told her apologetically. “Check out the bottoms of my sandals, then look at the bottoms of those things you’re wearing.”

She did. The brand name of the athletic shoes was emblazoned across the bottoms, worked into the grooved and patterned-to-grip soles of the sneakers.

“Everyone else in this city—and maybe even in this entire country—has sandals like mine,” he continued, lifting his foot to show her the smooth leather sole. “If you go out wearing those, every time you take a step you’ll leave a unique footprint. It will be the equivalent of signing your name in the dirt. And that will be like leaving a sign pointing in our direction that says Escaped American Hostages, Thisaway.”

Melody took off the sneakers.

“That’s my girl,” he said, approval and something else warming his voice. He squeezed her shoulder briefly as he turned his attention to several more men who were coming silently into the room.

That’s my girl.

His soft words should have made her object and object strenuously. Melody wasn’t a girl. Jones couldn’t have been more than a few years older than she was at most, and he would never have let anyone call him a boy.