The door slid aside.

Justin had expected a small office. A couple of guys hunched over a conference table or an electronic map. The standard bastion of military mission planning.

Instead, it was a large room, noisy with conversations. There must have been twenty people tucked into cubicles, all open toward a central table.

It felt more like Justin had always imagined those software places to be. Instead of drab gray, there were bright colors. The prints on the walls were mostly of jets launching off carriers, tanks splashing through rivers and the like, but they weren't military slogans and protocols of the day.

The air smelled of coffee, sugar, and popcorn. There was an energy here that buzzed and hummed and made him feel more awake despite the long and busy hours since taking his mother to the airport that morning.

"This room is fully secure." Michael finally spoke for the first time since taking their car keys, his voice raised to be heard above the overlapping conversations going on around them.

He indicated the circle of desks.

"The Ring, as they call themselves, are specialists from two dozen security agencies, including the British SAS. This room is about sharing, not compartmentalizing information. There isn't a person in here without top secret clearance. There are no sensitive compartmented information structures in this room."

"Whoa there." Justin stopped and grabbed Kara's arm to keep her in place.

Again Michael stopped and waited for him to ask the question, though Justin could see he already knew what it was.

"Are we even cleared to be in this room? To fly where we do, we both have top secret clearance, but what if someone starts talking about a special access program we aren't authorized to-" He didn't bother finishing.

"That is why your arrival was so precisely timed. This room goes through a full security scrub every night at midnight. For the next two hours, the only files that will be opened or mentioned are those you are cleared for."

Kara was d.a.m.ned glad that Justin was there close beside her. She'd thought this would be a grand adventure: their entry into the inner sanctum.

Now she felt as if she were on the teetering edge of some rediscovered old subway excavation that had mystically opened in the middle of a New York sidewalk, and if she fell into the hole, no one would ever see her again. She'd just disappear beneath the city streets with no one the wiser.

She'd thought to shake off Justin's tightening grip on her arm; now she hoped he never let go.

Michael led them, stumbling like automatons, into the center of The Ring-it definitely deserved the capitals. Twenty sets of eyes turned to look at them, blue ones with gla.s.ses, browns in soft faces, greens in hard faces. She felt as if she were riding a Coney Island Tilt-A-Whirl until she spotted a familiar face coming from beyond the circle of curiosity about what alien slime mold had just landed in their midst. Were they about to call the Ghostbusters?

The recognizable face gave her a focus. At first a relief and then, once she identified its owner, a place to aim a chunk of the craziness that had built up inside her.

"Major w.i.l.l.y Wilson." She almost said, Did you lose another team? but recalled Justin standing beside her and managed to clamp down on her tongue before the thought slipped out that way. Instead she singled to right field with, "What does w.i.l.l.y need the 160th SOAR to fetch for him this time?"

Tact. Kara Moretti practicing tact!

Justin was a very bad influence.

"From you, Brooklyn, I-" Wilson stopped with fists on hips as if ready to go to battle. Then he glanced aside as Michael loomed beside her, somehow growing taller and fiercer without moving an inch. "Ah...we can discuss that later."

At least his recovery was far lamer than hers. In comparison she hadn't hit a home run, but it was at least a double.

A man who had an entirely different manner stepped forward from close beside Wilson. There was a calmness about him that was a lot like...Justin's.

He and Justin were shaking hands like they'd known each other forever. The dude practically broke out in song.

"Didn't see your face behind your visor and mask last time, Captain Roberts. Just wanted to say thanks again for getting me and mine out. h.e.l.l of a piece of flying, brother." Oh, The Activity guy Justin had rescued.

"I want to thank you for being as good a driver as you are," Justin tossed back as if they were playing backyard catch. "We're most of the way to making that pickup a repeatable event without coming quite so close to bucking us all to the ground. Name is Justin."

"Blind luck, I a.s.sure you. Next time I'll crash you for sure."

"Looking forward to it, Tom."

"If it gets any more macho in here," Kara observed sotto voce to Michael, "I'm gonna have to scythe these dudes back down to size. What do you think? They past harvest time already-gone from male to stale?"

Michael didn't answer of course, but it did cut through all the glad-handing that was going on.

"So, anyone care to tell us why the h.e.l.l I'm here when I'm supposed to be on leave?"

The big guy that Justin had addressed as Tom nodded approval. "Lady gets down to it. Good call, Michael." He waved them to chairs around the central table.

Kara took her time turning the chair, sitting in it, and turning back. It allowed her to scan the whole room.

Most of The Ring returned to their work, but a couple kept their attention on the conversation. Kara guessed that they were the most likely elements to be involved, though no sign or signal identified one from another.

It also allowed her time to a.s.sess the fact that she was Michael's selection to be here. There were a lot of obvious reasons, such as being the AMC and RPA pilot on the mission. She wondered what the less obvious ones were.

Once she turned to the table, Tom-not a chance that was his real name-nodded to her. "We extracted evidence that there is a Hamas terrorist cell embedded inside Ramon Airbase-four members, all on the inside. We can't tell the Israeli Defense Force or the U.S. Air Force, as they'd want to know how we know. Telling Mossad would have the same issue."

"Tell them anyway. We'd be doing them a favor."

Tom nodded again. "We considered that. But the fact that Hamas managed to place a cell inside the air base itself implies that there is a mole higher up-so four on the base and one outside who managed to get them in place. That's why we were inside. The U.S. isn't the only one with sleeper agents embedded throughout its country. The evidence we gathered uncovered a route to the mole that is being pursued by separate forces."

A look went around the table. There wasn't time to read all of their expressions, but Michael, Justin, and Tom obviously agreed on the proper fate of such individuals. Wilson's brief look was harder to interpret. Maybe he wanted the terrorists for questioning and then dismemberment.

"So, you have terrorist Palestinian extremists camped out on a remote and key Israeli air base and we're going in to extract them?"

The silence around the table was deafening.

She watched as Justin swallowed hard.

"What?"

"I just realized..." Justin wasn't speaking to her. He was talking to Michael. "I've never seen handcuffs on a Delta's combat gear. I'm thinking that Delta wasn't exactly formed to make arrests."

Kara felt her own throat go dry. Deltas were said to be the best shooters in the world. Shooters, not policemen.

"Sometimes we carry cuffs. Not often," Michael said softly. "Not this time."

Justin was glad he'd retained his hat after all. By slouching and tipping his head down, he could stare at the table and hide that all the blood had drained out of his face a quarter of an hour ago, and that none of it had decided to come back yet.

A month ago he hadn't believed in The Activity any more than he'd believed in the Wizard of Oz. Or that he'd already met the only woman for him.

Now he was supposed to believe that they'd mapped out a complete mission to insert a strike team, eradicate the terrorist cell, and disappear with no one the wiser.

He was hoping that Kara was one of the ones who was "no wiser" about the nature of the mission.

The Activity had two specialties, SIGINT and HUMINT.

Signal Intelligence was handled by the k.n.o.b-turners of The Activity. The ones who could track cell phones by 1990. The ones who now ran the unblinking eye over war zones that allowed them to see a car bombing and then run combined RPA and satellite video backwards through a day or more to identify the bomber's point of origin.

Justin had flown some of those missions, being instructed second by second as the intelligence rolled backward in time and the attack he delivered from his cargo bay rolled forward.

Human Intelligence was guys like Tom going in on the ground and interacting with people. None of Justin's crew had been allowed near the Humvee that they'd extracted from Ramon Airbase. What, or maybe who, had been in the shadowed interior of that vehicle?

There was the question he didn't want Kara even thinking about, let alone asking.

Fooling yourself, boy, if you think she doesn't see it also. Nothing slips past Kara's guard.

Well, nothing except for himself. Somehow he'd slid past her defenses. He still didn't know how to make sense of the last few days. It was as if he'd been a different person, lost in a city, practically drunk on his joy of being around Kara.

Had he gone home for leave, he'd have ridden, maybe done some teaching with the kids, and not given a thought to any of his actions. Instead he was wrapped up in New York City and the Morettis, and totally lost out on the wide prairie that was Kara.

Kara.

To her the last days had probably made perfect sense. To her this meeting- Justin jerked upright.

"Wait a sec," he cut in on the ongoing logistics discussion. Three or four of The Activity a.n.a.lysts had now rolled their chairs up to the table. They were in a heated discussion on best methods to circ.u.mvent perimeter security, which would certainly have been heightened due to last month's raid.

Michael looked at him though the others kept talking.

"Hey!"

"Is for horses," Kara responded, finally coming out of whatever tactical haze she'd descended into.

"Does it make sense?"

Tom started to speak but Justin waved him to silence.

"Think, Kara. Something's wrong here. The Activity not willing to communicate with Mossad about a possible mole. How much you want to bet that one of these desks normally has an Israeli intelligence agent sitting at it? Maybe it does even now." He looked around The Ring. "Any of you Mossad?"

A half-dozen a.n.a.lysts popped their heads up to look at him through narrowed eyes.

"Never mind, you wouldn't tell me if you were."

But he'd seen where Wilson's gaze had drifted, to one man who studiously kept his head behind his monitor. One of the a.n.a.lysts who had been paying close attention throughout the meeting without coming forward.

"You." Justin pointed. "If you wouldn't mind joining us, we'd like to know quite what's happening that we aren't being told."

The man shrugged and rolled his chair over. His attempts to make it look casual were wholly ineffective. He was really wound up about this for some reason.

"Hi. I'm Yussel." But it didn't come out as casually as the words intended.

"For today," Kara muttered.

"Actually, that is my real name. I do use it on occasion."

Justin would feel better if there was even on lick of a smile on the man's face. There wasn't.

"They've been giving it to you straight up," Yussel insisted. Which told Justin something else about what was happening. There was some "next-level bulls.h.i.t going on," as Kara would say.

"These guys are all taking themselves too seriously." Justin kept his conversation aimed at Kara. "The horse and rider that win the rodeo are the ones who ride easy in the saddle, but these guys are acting like high-strung East Coast jockeys. No offense, guys."

Major Wilson looked p.i.s.sed; Tom looked thoughtful. Several of the a.n.a.lysts were about to tell Justin he was completely wrong, which would only prove him right. The Yussel guy looked ready to come across the table at him to defend how serious he was about his country's security.

Michael had frozen in stillness as if scenting a change in the wind and not yet knowing what to make of it. So he wasn't in on it either, but he obviously agreed with Justin now that he'd pointed out the problem.

Kara was nodding. "They're more on edge than a Mafia capo with heartburn and an FBI tail. Giving me another reason to like you, Cowboy."

Kara kicked Justin in a friendly fashion under the table. Usually his smile or his body dazzled her, but this time it was his brain. He'd picked up on exactly what was wrong with this whole meeting and then had the guts to lay it straight out on the table.

Now that he'd pointed it out, she'd felt the tension building throughout the briefing.

Now she and Justin had shifted into a perfect sync of their own. Like when he flew and she felt she was right inside his head. Like when they made love in such perfect synchronicity.

"They made a mistake, didn't they?" she asked him, wanting to rub their noses in it.

"I reckon they did." Justin laid on the Texas drawl as thick as barbecue sauce.

"What?" w.i.l.l.y Wilson snapped out. She loved that Justin could just crawl under that creep's skin.

"Y'all"-she gave it a deliberate Brooklyn nasal tw.a.n.g-"focused on distracting little ol' me because I'm the 5D's Air Mission Commander. You forgot there's a reason the cowboy is in the room and it's not only because he's pretty. He's also one of the best helo pilots there is, anywhere. That means he ain't some down-home cracker; instead he's sharp as h.e.l.l."

"But he is so very pretty." A tall blond walked into The Ring from somewhere out of their range of sight. She had one of those figures that was impossible to ignore and her tight T-shirt and form-hugging slacks did everything to display it. Her English was accented and as lush as her curves. There was an obvious strength to her, a soldier's strength. Her straight hair swung along her jaw as she sashayed over to the table.

The Yussel guy clearly was as puzzled as Kara was by the woman's ident.i.ty.

Justin's stare had been riveted in place before she'd even crossed half the distance to the table.

Kara kicked him again, not so friendly this time.

He jolted-she'd forgotten she was still wearing her new boots-glanced at Kara, and then shook his head as if trying to shake off a case of hypnosis.

Kara wasn't prepared for the deep surge of jealousy that shot through her. Did she really care that much about where Justin's attention drifted? So he was looking at another woman who was astonishing and deserved a second look. That she was blond, beautiful, and much closer to Justin's height didn't help; they would look amazing together. But that didn't make the taste in Kara's mouth one bit less bitter. Since when did Kara Moretti get all possessive over a man? Never...until now.

The woman settled into a vacant chair as if she were the queen ruling the room-a queen wholly aware of the raw s.e.xual impact she wielded with every gesture.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kara could see Michael exchanging nods with the woman. It was a nod of deep respect in both directions. Major message there. The only person who would impress the top operator in all of Delta Force would be...

Kara glanced at Justin who had also noticed the silent exchange.