Danger in the Desert

The curly haired Egyptian gave it a casual glance. Then he frowned and looked more closely.

“You found this?” he said slowly. “Here?”

“Yes.”

When he took the scarab and turned it over, the crease between his dark brows deepened. The guard studied the markings for so long that Jaci was convinced she would have to forfeit her find.

“This is …”

He stopped, shook his head and dropped the beetle into her palm.

“This is nothing to worry you, miss. You may keep it.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to get thrown in jail for pilfering an antiquity.”

“No, no. Trust me, miss. You found it. It is yours. You must keep it with you.”

“Well …”

“Jaci!”

Susan Grimes beckoned urgently from the entrance to a narrow alley lined with tilting monuments.

“Stay with the group, dear, or you’ll get lost among all these tombs.”

Chapter 1

A frigid November breeze rattled the branches of the chestnut trees lining a quiet street just off Massachusetts Avenue, in the heart of D.C.’s embassy district. It was late, well past midnight. The windows of the brick, Federal-style town house halfway down the street was shuttered and dark.

As far as most of the world knew, the elegant town house served as home to the offices of the president’s special envoy. Only a handful of insiders were aware that the person appointed to the job of special envoy also served as director of OMEGA, an agency so secret that its operatives were activated only at the direction of the president.

One of those agents had just reported to the high-tech Control Center, which was tucked behind impenetrable walls on the third floor of the town house. An urgent phone call from OMEGA’s director had yanked him out of the arms of the very accommodating flight attendant he’d bumped into at D.C.’s Reagan National Airport earlier that evening.

Deke Griffin, code name Ace, was no stranger to airports. Or flight attendants. A former air force fighter pilot, he’d ruptured a blood vessel in his eye when he’d had to eject during the first Gulf War. The injury meant he couldn’t pull G’s or fly high-performance jets any longer. But he could still fly the big heavies, which he did until he left the military to head his own aeronautical consulting service. Ace now jetted all over the world to advise developing countries on air safety.

The nomadic lifestyle suited him. As an added benefit, it provided a perfect cover for his covert OMEGA missions. He’d performed a good number of them over the years, but this one looked to be a real bitch. The political ramifications alone had Ace staring at his boss.

“Did I hear right?” he drawled in the West Texas twang that slipped into his voice at unguarded moments. “You’re tellin’ me we have an American tourist on the loose in Cairo.”

“Supposed American tourist.”

“… Who may be the focus of a small but fanatic religious sect determined to oust the current Egyptian president by any means possible?”

“You heard right.”

Nick Jensen, code name Lightning, shoved a hand through his sun-streaked hair. Usually so urbane in Brioni suits and Italian silk ties, he’d pulled on well-worn jeans and a warm turtleneck for this hurried trip to the Control Center. Like Ace, he’d been yanked out of bed by a phone call, this one from the president himself.

Ace knew Lightning had been thinking about turning over the reins of OMEGA so he could devote more time to his wife and young twins. Everyone at the agency hoped that day wouldn’t come soon. Lightning didn’t look anywhere close to retirement tonight, however. His jaw tight, he’d focused his formidable energy on the American tourist at the center of what could be a diplomatic nightmare for the United States. A quick click of a mouse brought up her passport photo on the Control Center’s wall-size screen.

“Her name’s Jacqueline Marie Thornton,” Lightning related tersely. “Goes by Jaci. Age, twenty-nine. Marital status, single. Residence, Gainesville, Florida. Occupation, assistant research librarian at the University of Florida.”

Ace leaned forward, his gaze intent. The woman in the photo hardly looked like a radical subversive out to overthrow a government. Her soft brown hair just brushed her shoulders. Her green eyes stared straight at the camera. A tentative half smile curved her full lips.

But Ace knew all too well that appearances could be very deceptive. He’d been burned once by a sweet young thing who promised more than she’d ever intended to give. He’d ended up having to face down two very angry fathers—hers and his own. He’d only been eighteen at the time, but the lesson he’d learned from that fiasco had seriously impacted his outlook on relationships with the opposite sex.

As a result, Ace now confined his extracurricular activities to females who played the game by the same rules he did. No starry-eyed romantics for him. No nesters itching for hearth and home. Just savvy, fun-loving women looking for nothing more than a few hours of companionship. Ace couldn’t help wonder what category Jacqueline Thornton fell into.

“She arrived in Cairo yesterday morning and joined a group of fellow travelers at the airport, all part of a tour organized by the University of Florida for alums and employees,” Lightning continued. “Eight days and nights exploring the mysteries of Egypt’s past.”

“How many of those days will the group be in Cairo?”

“Four more, including today. That should be enough time for you to get close to her and find out what she’s up to. I’m thinking it won’t hurt for you to tap into the resources of your friend, Colonel El Hassan.”

Ace nodded. He’d known from the moment his boss mentioned Egypt why he’d been tagged for this op. He and Kahil El Hassan had gone through undergraduate pilot training together at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma. With little else to do in their off-duty hours, the two bachelors had cut a wide swath through the adjacent town’s available females. He and Kahil had stayed in touch over the years, each visiting the other whenever they happened to be in close proximity. Kahil was now a colonel in the Egyptian Air Force. He was also deputy director of his country’s elite Military Intelligence Division.

“What have we got that indicates this Jacqueline Thornton is involved in a plot to overthrow the Egyptian president?” Ace wanted to know.

“Less than twelve hours after she arrived in Cairo, her name popped in cell phone chatter being monitored by Egypt’s counterterrorist agency.” Lightning paused, and a dry note entered his narrative. “Seems this far-out religious sect I mentioned thinks she’s a messenger sent by an ancient goddess.”

“Come again?”

“Evidently there are a scarab and some hieroglyphics involved. Also a legend handed down through the centuries.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I wish. We pulled together a dossier. You can read it on the flight to Cairo. We’ve got you on a 6:20 a.m. departure out of Dulles.”

“Roger that.”

“In the meantime, we’ll keep digging into Thornton’s background,” Lightning promised. “Rebel will act as your controller for this op. She’s on her way in from Atlanta as we speak.”

Ace gave a quick nod of approval. Victoria Talbot, code name Rebel, was relatively new to OMEGA but she, too, had once sported the silver wings of a United States Air Force pilot.

Word was she’d earned her call sign at the Air Force Academy, when she flatly refused to put up with some sadistic hazing that later got a whole bunch of academy officials, including the commanding general, fired. Her subsequent military training and the lethal tricks of the trade she’d picked up since joining OMEGA had quickly inducted her into the ranks of highly skilled operatives. Ace was more than pleased to have her working this op with him.

Along with his old friend. Thinking of the wild times he and El Hassan had shared, Ace extracted his cell phone from the case clipped to the waistband of his jeans.

“I’d better call Kahil and give him a heads-up.”

The phone was no ordinary cell. It was sleek, super high tech and the brainchild of OMEGA’s guru of all things electronic. Mackenzie Blair Jensen had cut back on her work for various government organizations since the birth of her twins. Except her work for OMEGA. Her ties to the agency went too deep, and the fact that she was married to its director kept her personally involved.

This particular Mackenzie-special was right out of a James Bond novel. It looked like an ordinary flip phone, but one touch of a key turned the user into a walking, talking biometric sourcebook. Sensors instantly verified the user’s fingerprint and body heat signature. A built-in camera performed iris scans and facial recognition. A microchip-size voice synthesizer not only authenticated speech patterns but it analyzed them to determine if the speaker was under duress. The phone also provided instant, encrypted satellite access for email, texting, GPS locator service, flight tracking, weather updates and more gee-whiz applications than a dozen iPhones cobbled together. Ace was still trying to figure out how to use half of them, but he knew enough to rouse his old buddy from sleep with one touch of a key.

“Kahil, you ugly bastard. I’m headed your way.”

The long flight from D.C. to Cairo provided plenty of time for Ace to multitask.

His first order of business was a catnap to catch up on the sleep he’d forfeited to the sexy flight attendant. His second was to brush up on the Arabic he’d learned over the years from Kahil. Most of the phrases he’d picked up involved ordering beer or cursing at Cairo’s kamikaze taxi drivers, but there were enough polite words sprinkled in there for him to order a meal and find his way around town. The rest of the flight he spent studying the dossier OMEGA had pulled together on this crazy legend. It made for some wild reading.