Match Play

The girl returned it with the first genuine warmth Dayna had seen on her face. Whatever else the teen had going on in her life, she obviously loved her dad.

They couldn’t have spent much time together. The detailed dossier OMEGA had assembled on the Wus indicated Kim Li had lived at a government-sponsored athletic training center for thirteen of her eighteen years. Dr. Wu’s work had kept him isolated at the center of a small, highly select cadre of scientists. Kim Li’s mother was the one who’d made periodic visits to the training center until her death a few years ago. Yet the bond between father and daughter seemed as strong and unshakable as the report had suggested.

Any defection would definitely have to be a package deal.

That thought stayed with Dayna throughout the banquet and the pairings that followed. By the luck of the draw, she was teamed with Eleanor Tolbert. A longtime member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, Eleanor was one of its biggest money-winners. She and Dayna would have been the team to beat in scratch golf, but this was a charity event so handicaps were used to level the playing field. The ranker the amateur, the higher her handicap and the more strokes deducted from her final score.

Wu Kim Li drew one of those high-handicapped amateurs for her partner. An Irish neurosurgeon, as it turned out, with little time for golf but a wild enthusiasm for the sport. Flame-haired Brianna Kilkenny towered over her partner during the media barrage that followed the drawing. Unwilling to stand in anyone’s shadow, Wu adroitly sidestepped and took the cameras with her.

To Dayna’s intense satisfaction, the links draw put her and Eleanor on the same course as Kim Li and her partner for the initial qualifying rounds. They weren’t in the same foursome and would tee off at different times, but she would make opportunities to connect with the girl while Mike worked the father.

The two agents reconvened in Dayna’s suite after the banquet.

A cold, damp fog had rolled in off the bay. Rather than up the room’s thermostat, Dayna put a match to the kindling laid in the brick-and-tile fireplace. The neatly stacked logs soon caught the flames. Snapping and crackling, they filled the sitting room with a pine-resin scent.

Mike had studied the course layouts Dayna had given him earlier that afternoon. He’d also annotated a detailed map of the St. Andrews area. Together, they went over emergency escape routes and formulated options for detaching Wu and his daughter from their watchdogs.

“Assuming they really want to defect.”

“Yeah,” Mike agreed. “Big assumption. We’ve got the next week to find out if it’s true.”

“If it is, I don’t think Kim Li will want to pull a disappearing act until after the tournament. She’s too competitive.”

“That’s my assessment, too. We can move sooner if we have to, but for now we’ll plan to whisk her and her Papa Wu away immediately following the trophy presentation. We’ll use the crowd and the media to run interference with their handlers. I’ve coordinated with our counterparts in the CIA and British Intelligence. They’ll provide back-up, transport vehicles and escort to our departure point.”

He thumped a knuckle against the air base just northwest of the town of St. Andrews proper.

“One of the crews from the USAF detachment at RAF Leuchars will fly us back to the States. I figure I’d head over there before your practice round tomorrow and bring the detachment commander up to speed.”

Dayna hesitated. She hated to introduce the subject of her failed romance, but Hawk needed to know it might present a complication.

“Before you talk to the detachment commander, you should be aware that I used to date one of his pilots. Captain Luke Harper.”

Mike cut her a surprised look. “I remember the hype about you and some flyboy. He’s here, at Leuchars?”

“He is. Matter of fact, I bumped into him this afternoon.”

Bumped, as in locked lips. To Dayna’s profound disgust, the memory of Luke’s mouth on hers sent heat seeping into her cheeks. She fought to keep her expression neutral but Hawkeye hadn’t earned his code name by missing subtle signals. Nor had he stayed alive as long as he had in this business by shrugging off even small, seemingly innocuous incidents as mere coincidence.

“Are you sure it was a chance meeting?”

Like Hawk, Dayna had learned the hard way that training and experience were no substitutes for gut instinct. She went with hers now.

“I’m sure. I was a last-minute entry in this tournament. Harper didn’t know I was coming to St. Andrews and he doesn’t have a clue I work for the government. The problem is, he isn’t supposed to be here, either.”

When she indicated he flew the super-secret Stealth bomber, Hawk grasped the implications immediately. The material he’d studied on the flight up from Algiers had included a brief detailing of the antiwar movements in Britain and the sensitive issue of the presence of U.S. nuclear-capable bombers on British soil.

“If the media gloms on to his presence and tries to resurrect your old affair, it could jeopardize both his mission and ours.”

“Lightning and I discussed that,” Dayna replied. “Our initial assessment was that the air force has sufficient measures in place to keep their operation at Leuchars under wraps, but…”

She blew out a long breath. The unexpected encounter this afternoon had forced her to reevaluate the situation. St. Andrews was a small university town, crammed at present with newshounds from around the world. Any one of them could sniff out the story of her old flame.

“You’d better lay out the problem when you meet with the detachment commander in the morning,” she told Hawk. “Get his take on the threat to his operation.”

“Will do.” Those too-keen eyes studied hers. “What about the threat to ours?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too. If the media does latch on to my old romance, we could use the hype to deflect attention from our efforts to get close to the Wus.”

“Something to consider,” Hawk agreed, “but you don’t sound too thrilled about letting this character back in your life. Just say the word and I’ll take him out of the picture.”

Lightning had already made that offer. Once again, Dayna turned it down.

“No need. The meeting this afternoon caught me by surprise. I’ll be prepared if it happens again.”

She was still trying to convince herself of that some four hours later.

Lifting her head, Dayna glared at the digital alarm beside her bed. When she saw the hour, she let loose with an expletive that would have earned her a warning if she’d muttered it during the tournament. Still swearing, she dropped her face into the goose-down pillow.

This was ridiculous. She was playing a double game of golf and deception tomorrow. She’d have to make every stroke count while keeping tabs on Wu Kim Li. She needed sleep.

“Get out of my head, Harper!”

Chapter 3 (#ulink_d0ac85ab-95ae-50d8-ad92-3e5d33df57c6)

Why couldn’t he put the woman out of his head?

Luke shifted restlessly in the mission commander’s seat of his bat-winged B-2. The pilot whose performance he’d been evaluating occupied the left seat, breathing easier now that he’d completed most of his check ride.

Outside the cockpit a star-studded night sky stretched to infinity. Inside, the instrument panel gave off a muted glow shielded by specially screened and darkened windows.

“Thirty-two thousand and holding steady on course niner-three-six,” the other pilot reported.

Luke acknowledged their position and rolled his shoulders to relieve the strain of his seat harness. They’d been in the air for seven hours now, a mere hop compared to their normal missions. Tonight’s training run had taken them out over the Atlantic for an in-flight refueling. They would return to base before dawn, gliding in with the same stealth that made the B-2 invisible to the world’s most sophisticated radars—and to antiwar protestors hoping to obtain photos that would prove beyond any doubt the bomber’s presence in the U.K.

The B-2 crews and support personnel were every bit as determined to remain as stealthy as the two-billion-dollar aircraft they flew. Hence the night-only takeoffs and landings and the fiction that their detachment was part of an exchange program at Leuchars.

So far the ploy had worked. Would it still work if the paparazzi sniffed out the fact that Dayna Duncan’s old flame just happened to be in St. Andrews?

From past experience, Luke knew how the media rooted around for personal tidbits to salt into their coverage of otherwise impersonal sporting events. He and Pud had once provided just the mix of glamour and romance the tabloids loved.

The nickname tugged his mouth into a lopsided grin. Pud, short for the puddles he’d teased her about paddling around in. The teasing had lasted only until she’d taken Luke for his first white-water run.

The experience had been as exhilarating as any he’d every experienced. It had also scared the crap out of him. When they’d gone over Horseshoe Falls, his stomach had dropped right through the bottom of the fiberglass kayak. He could still hear Dayna’s joyous whoop, still see her hair flying under her helmet and wet suit molded to her curves as they…

Well, hell! There she was again. Front and center in his thoughts.

Resigned, Luke checked the instruments and gave up trying to shove the woman out of his head.