72 Hours

Touching her was a mistake.

The men hidden below them resumed talking, but he wasn’t listening.

He could remember, as if it were yesterday, massaging shampoo into her hair, the two of them in the shower, water sluicing over her curves, followed by his hands. She’d been ready, had always been ready for him, and he’d lost himself in her, so much so it took his breath away.

Her low gasp brought him back to the present and he realised he had gripped her arm harder than he had meant to.

And although he couldn’t see much in the dimly lit duct where they were trapped, it sure looked as if her eyes were throwing sparks. Well, as long as she was already mad at him…

He dipped his head forwards and took her lips. She was soft and sweet, as mind-bending as he remembered. He had been craving this reunion from the day she had walked away, and he liked to think that now and then she had thought of him, too.

Still, it came as no surprise when she put a hand to his chest and pushed, not even whispering but breathing the words “No. Parker, no” against his mouth.

Like the bastard he was, he kissed her anyway. Because he could.

And felt immensely gratified when in the next second she melted against him.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Parker McCall – This undercover soldier knows how to disarm a nuclear warhead, but when faced with the only woman he ever loved, will he be able to save her as well as the other hostages whose lives depend on him?

Kate Hamilton – Her life is in grave danger when her ex-fiancé charges to the rescue. Through their mad escape, she begins to realise that she never really knew the man. And the new Parker might be more than she can resist.

Piotr Morovich – A known anarchist and mercenary. Is it possible that he’s working for the Tarkmez rebels this time?

Victor Sergeyevich – Former KBG agent who is responsible for the death of Piotr’s father.

Ivan – A Russian embassy guard. Is he there to protect the embassy staff, or does he have another agenda?

Colonel Wilson – Head of the Special Designation Defense Unit.

SDDU – Special Designation Defense Unit, a top secret military team established to fight terrorism. Its existence is known by only a select few. Members are recruited from the best of the best.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author Dana Marton lives near Wilmington, Delaware. She has been an avid reader since childhood and has a master’s degree in writing popular fiction. When not writing, she can be found either in her garden or her home library. For more information on the author and her other novels, please visit her website at www.danamarton.com.

She would love to hear from her readers via e-mail: DanaMarton@yahoo.com

DANA MARTON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Zaza. And to Susan Mallery for being the

wonderful friend that she is.

Chapter One

August 9, 21:11

A good spy had many tools at his disposal. One of them was the instinctual knowledge of when to run. Parker McCall was running for his life, toward the Tuileries on Rue de Rivoli that stretched parallel to the River Seine.

When he’d been on jungle missions, running for the river was a good idea most of the time, and often the only way out. But right now he was on a street dense with tourists. Jumping into the Seine would do nothing but draw attention to himself and bring the authorities.

He hated Paris. It was the city that had taken Kate away from him.

“Excusez-moi.” He slipped between two businessmen deep in discussion, blocking the sidewalk.

The chase scenes they showed in action movies, where seasoned professionals madly scrambled from their pursuers, knocking over vendor stands and causing all kinds of commotion, were nonsense. When you were hunted, you went to ground. You went quietly, did everything you could to blend in and become invisible, part of the usual tapestry of local life. You ran in such a way that nobody looking at you could tell you were running.

He glanced at his watch again, deepened the annoyed scowl on his face and smoothed down his tie as he moved briskly through the crowd. He was a businessman late for a dinner. And the throng of people who’d seen hundreds of late businessmen rushing through identified him as such and parted in front of him, paying him scant attention. He was swimming through people and he had to be careful not to cause any ripples. Ripples would be noticed.

And his enemies were watching.

He figured at least four men were after him. He had caught glimpses, but mostly he operated by instinct.

They, too, were professionals. Professional killers who moved through the city the way the lions of Africa moved forward in the cover of the tall grass, in a well-coordinated hunt, invisible until they were but a jump away from their prey.

“Excusez-moi.” He stepped around a twin stroller and glanced up at the large M sign a few yards ahead—Le Métro, Paris’s famed subway system. He could try to disappear there or go for the Tuileries and see if he could deal with the men in the garden.

The subway would be packed. This was one of the busiest stations, the one closest to the Musée du Louvre. He could get away without confrontation.

But he wanted more. Information was the name of the game. And right now, the information he needed was the identity of the man who had sicced his henchmen on Parker. He had too many enemies to take a blind guess.

Like New York, Paris never slept. Especially not on hot summer evenings. Tourists and locals filled the streets.

He moved forward and could see the garden at last. He crossed the Avenue du Général Lemonnier and hurried to the nearest entrance. The sixty-three acres of mostly open landscaping that lay before him was enough to make anyone stop in wonder, but he didn’t have the time to enjoy the sight. He planned and calculated.

The lions that hunted him were hidden in the tall grass. At least he didn’t have to worry about the approaching darkness and not being able to see. They didn’t call Paris the city of light—in addition to love—for nothing. It was lit up like Methuselah’s birthday cake.

Head for higher ground. Get a good vantage point. But there weren’t many of those in the garden, so he strode toward the Ferris wheel.

Too late.

A blur of movement caught his attention by the pedestal of a large statue. They’d gotten in front of him. Or at least one of them had. But hunters as good as these four didn’t reveal themselves by accident. Parker had a feeling that he’d been supposed to see that. They wanted him to run in the opposite direction. They were trying to herd him someplace out of sight where they could take him out.

He strode to the statues instead, feinted in one direction and went around the other. He didn’t take the time to look or evaluate. His fist connected with a man’s face in the next second. He caught the guy as he staggered back, then looped the man’s arm around his shoulder, holding his gun against his side, and dragged him off into the stand of trees nearby, away from the curious gazes of passersby. Nobody would be walking off the paved paths today. The ground was muddy from this morning’s rain.

“Who are you?” He was disarming the man as he spoke, confiscating first his gun, then the near-microscopic communications device attached to the guy’s ear. “Who sent you here?”

The man—in his mid-thirties, around six feet, cropped hair—had a swarthy skin tone and that wide Slavic facial type that marked him from somewhere around the Black Sea. He pressed his thin lips together and went for the knife that had been hidden up his sleeve. Parker turned the blade and drove it home. No time for a tussle, to subdue him then get him to talk, although he could have made him talk, given some time. But the others could be here any second.

He lowered the body to the ground and searched the man’s clothes, found no identification. He hadn’t expected any.

One down, three to go. He headed out of the woods.

He’d come to Paris on the trail of Piotr Morovich, a slippery Russian mercenary who’d been discovered to have connections to a Middle Eastern terrorist group his team had been watching. But he’d run into something bigger than he had anticipated. Good thing that handling the unexpected was his specialty.

He moved through the strolling tourists and children playing and reached the Ferris wheel. His tie was off now, his jacket swung over his shoulder, his body language the same as all the other casual sightseers’.

“One ticket, s’il vous plaît.” He scanned the tourists already on the ride. “Merci,” he said, then boarded the Ferris wheel.

The giant wheel turned slowly, taking him higher and higher. But while the others oohed and aahed over the sights, he was watching the people below.

There. One of the men he was looking for was coming down the central walkway. Parker looked even more carefully and spotted another by the fountain. Where was the third? Where would he be in the same situation? Every hunt had a pattern; he just had to find it.

He watched the two men as they looked for him and for their lost teammate who wasn’t checking in over the radio. The four would have formed a U originally, trying to get him in the middle. He looked in the direction of the river. And he found the third man.

He was impatient now for his cart to reach the ground again, keeping his eyes on the men. He would get them one by one, would get some answers.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the display, intending to return the call later. Then he saw the coded ID flashing on the small screen—the Colonel.

“Sir?”

“This evening at 21:03 hours, Tarkmez rebel forces overtook the Russian Embassy on Rue de Prony,” the head of the SDDU, Secret Designation Defense Unit, one of the U.S.’s most effective covert weapons against terrorism, said.

The hundred-plus-member unit did everything from reconnaissance to demolition, personnel extraction, spying, kidnapping and assassinations. Parker himself had done it all. He glanced at his watch—21:25.

“The Russians haven’t made it public yet. They haven’t even notified the French authorities,” the Colonel went on.

He didn’t have to ask how the CIA, from whom the Colonel had no doubt gotten his information, would know this fast. They’d had the Russian embassy bugged for decades. Well, on and off. The Russians were as efficient at sweeping out the bugs as the agency was creative at placing them.

“The U.S. consul was at an unscheduled, informal dinner with the Russian ambassador and his wife. She is in the building, but we don’t have an exact location on her.”

While ambassadors represented the head of their country and there was only one of them, consuls handled visa applications and all the various problems of U.S. citizens abroad, representing their country in general, the position more administrative than political. The U.S. had about a dozen consuls in France.

But Parker had a bad premonition, cold dread settling into his stomach. “Kate?”

“Affirmative.”

The single word slammed into his chest with the force of a.22 bullet.

“Is she okay?” Tightly locked away emotions broke free, one after the other, tripping his heartbeat.

“We don’t know. The Russians are not good at asking for help. It’s possible that they’ll keep the situation secret for several hours, unless the rebels themselves make contact with the media.”

His cart was approaching the ground. Ten feet, nine, eight, close enough. There were times for blending in, then there were times to break all the rules, even if it did draw attention. He lifted the safety bar and stood, eliciting a warning cry from the operator and loud comments and gasps from bystanders. He jumped and landed in a crouch, staying down so the next seat wouldn’t knock him over the head, then sprinted into the crowd.

“What do the rebels want?” he asked, scanning the park for the men. His business with them would have to wait.

“Don’t know yet. Probably autonomy. We can’t offer help to the Russians until they tell us about the problem. Saying anything now would be tantamount to admitting that we have their embassy bugged. Considering the current political climate, the last thing we need is to cause an international incident,” the Colonel said. “Be careful. This has all the makings of a disaster.”

Pictures of news reports flashed through Parker’s mind: the infamous Dubrovka theater siege and the Ossetia school-hostage crises. The Russian elite Alpha counterterrorism troops and their Vymple special forces, like their U.S. counterparts, were known for not negotiating with terrorists. Unfortunately, they were also known for getting their enemies at any price, even at the cost of innocent lives. In the theater siege, 115 hostages were killed, in the school standoff, over 300, many of them children.

Parker popped his earpiece into place, tucked away his phone and broke into a flat run. The men who hunted him would have to wait. The embassy had been taken only minutes ago. There was a small chance that the entire behemoth of a building hadn’t been secured yet by the rebels. The sooner he got there, the better his chances were for getting in.

“Of the few men we have in the area, you’re the closest,” the Colonel said. “And you know the most about the Tarkmezi situation.”

And Parker suspected that the Colonel had also taken his private connection into consideration, knew he would want to be involved. Not that the Colonel would ever admit to personal favors.

“I appreciate it, sir,” he told the man anyway.

Rain began to fall again.

“Do try to remember that this is a minimum-impact, covert mission,” the Colonel said in a meaningful tone.

Which meant that he was to make as little contact as possible, remain close to invisible as he searched for Kate and got her out. He was to change nothing, interact with no other aspects of the situation but those strictly required for the extraction.

“And the other hostages?”

“As soon as their country asks for our help we’ll give it. Our hands are tied until then.”

That idea didn’t sit too well with him. He hated when politics interfered with a mission of his, which happened about every damned time.

“Parker?” The Colonel’s tone changed to warning. “Don’t make me regret that I tagged you for this job.”

“No, sir.”

“Just get Kate Hamilton out.”

“Yes, sir.”

That he would. Yeah, he was still mad at Kate for leaving him. Mad as hell, but he wasn’t going to let any harm come to her. Any Tarkmez rebel bastard who laid a hand on the woman he’d once meant to marry was going to answer to him.

August 9, 23:45

“DO YOU have visual?” The question came through his cell phone. His battery was at twenty-five percent so Parker was rationing his calls to the Colonel. But he had called in to report that he was inside.

He tapped the phone once in response. He was trying to speak as little as possible, wasn’t sure who could overhear him as he docked in the vent system that had openings to the various rooms. One tap meant no, two taps yes.

At least four of the gunmen who had overtaken the building were talking in the room below him. He could hear no one else. If there were hostages in there, they were kept quiet.

“I’m scrambling to get you some backup, but I can’t pull anyone who’s near enough,” the Colonel said.

He understood. His team was specifically created for undercover missions. A lot of the members were built into terrorist organizations, rebel groups around the world or sleeper cells. To pull one at a moment’s notice before his or her job was done would ruin months or years of undercover work.

“I’m going to get someone else in to help as fast as I can,” the Colonel went on.

Parker tapped no. He’d snuck in before the embassy had been fully secured. Anyone trying to get in now would have to fight their way in. And that could mean disaster for the hostages. He could bring Kate out on his own.

Muted pops came from somewhere behind him. He immediately reversed direction.

“Gunshots. Two,” he whispered into the phone.

“I’ll check it out. Contact me if there’s anything else,” the Colonel said and then he was gone.

Those bugs hidden throughout the embassy were still transmitting. From his CIA connection, the Colonel should be able to get some information on what was happening. Parker backed through the vent duct as fast as he could. Since the weather was cool and overcast, the air-conditioning wasn’t on; there was nothing to hide the noise he made. So he didn’t make any.

He had a rough idea of the building’s outline. The Colonel had briefed him on the way over. Since Kate had last been heard near the kitchens, he’d been heading in that direction, surveying all the rooms he could see as he went. So far he’d seen or heard a dozen or so rebels but no hostages.

The gunshots changed everything. There was a better-than-fair chance that the hostages were that way. His phone vibrated. He opened it without halting his progress.

“Bad news.” The Colonel’s grim tone underscored his words. “To prove how serious they are, the rebels just shot Ambassador Vasilievits.”

Parker went faster, crawling with grim determination, one hundred percent focused on the job. Kate had been with the ambassador and his wife at the time of the initial attack on the embassy. He hoped she had somehow been separated from them and had managed to escape the rebels’ notice.

Because if she hadn’t, if the rebels figured out who Kate was, she would be next. They hated Americans as much as they hated the Russians.

He wished he had prepared for more than surveillance before he’d left his hotel late that afternoon and then run into the four men who’d seemed hell-bent on taking him out. He had nothing but his gun and his cell phone with its dwindling battery. Right now he would have given anything for the full tool kit that waited hidden behind the ceiling tiles of his hotel room.

“Any publicity on this yet?” he asked, able to talk more freely having gotten into a section that didn’t have any openings to rooms.

“Nothing. The Russians might not break silence until morning. Their counterterrorism team is on its way. We don’t think they asked the French for permission, but once the team is in place there isn’t much the French can do. That’s all I have.”

They ended the connection, and he kept crawling. When he reached the next vertical drop, he lowered himself inch by inch, stopping when he heard voices ahead. The men were talking in Tarkmezi.

“And if they gas us?” The speaker sounded on edge.

“That’s what we have the masks for,” came the calm reply.

“What if they have something new and nasty? Kill us before we get the masks on.”

“Get it on and keep it on, then,” another guy snapped. “Maybe it’ll shut you up.”

“What do you think’s going on?” The worrywart on the team didn’t seem to be able to stop himself. “I wonder if they are negotiating?”

“When there’s something to know, Piotr will tell us.”

Parker picked his head up at the mention of the name. What were the chances that this was his Piotr? It was a common name, the Russian equivalent of Peter. But his instincts prickled. Could be that this was why Piotr Morovich had come to Paris. And if that was the case, then he hadn’t come alone, something that U.S. intelligence had failed to detect.

“I could go check,” Worrywart said.

“You stay the hell here.”

The men fell silent just as Parker reached the vent hole.

Three Tarkmezi fighters, armed to the teeth, stood among two dozen tied-up hostages who were sitting in the middle of the floor in some sort of a gym, probably set up for embassy staff. He zeroed in on Kate and his heart rate sped up.

Hello, Kate. How have you been? He’d pictured, on too many occasions, the two of them meeting up again after all this time, but he had never imagined it would be under these circumstances.

She looked unharmed and calm. The spring that had been wound tightly in his chest since the Colonel had called now eased. Her hair was different from when he’d last seen her—a classy, sexy bob. He felt a ping of annoyance. Why had she changed? For whom? He had loved to run his fingers through her long, honey-blond hair. She had lost weight, too, but not much, still had those curves that used to drive him mad.

Memories flashed into his mind—hot, sweaty and explicit—and his body tightened. For a second he was transported back to the past, with Kate under him, her back bowed, her silky hair fanned out on the pillow, that soft moan of hers escaping her full lips as she looked at him the way she had always looked at him during their intense lovemaking, straight in the eyes. Man, it used to turn him on.

Not much had changed since, he realized ruefully and shifted in the tight space.

Keeping control with her in bed had always been a challenge. One of the many things he had loved about her. A single touch and all he could think was fast and hard, now, now, now. Slow and easy took superhuman effort. Pleasurable, highly gratifying effort. He pushed that thought as far away as he could. He couldn’t go back there now. Not now, not ever.

One of the rebels moved and blocked her from view.

Come on, get out of the way. Parker gritted his teeth until the man finally moved again.

Kate stretched her long legs without getting up. In her dark slacks, white top and a cook’s jacket, she blended in with the other half dozen kitchen staff among the hostages. Where were the rest? He didn’t see any of the security team that would have guarded the embassy.

He focused on the three rebels. They would have to be distracted and neutralized before he could go in to save Kate. He surveyed the room, noting every detail, including the position of the doors and windows and their distance from each other, every piece of exercise equipment that could be used as a weapon or for cover. He swore silently at the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that lined the walls and made it impossible to sneak up behind anyone.

The easiest thing would be to go in predawn when the guards were ready to nod off, exhausted by their night vigil. But he hated the thought of waiting that long. He wanted her out before the Russian counterterrorism team got here.

He preferred planned and coordinated operations where nothing was left to chance. But those took time. And Kate’s life was at stake. To save her he would do anything.