Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

She clicked on one, bringing up a search for airlines and flights to Frankfurt, Germany, from Dubai, all for the following day.

She minimized Explorer and began searching his hard drive, looking for anything related to the envoy’s visit. She found the envoy’s itinerary, then the same passport information for the Ghost that she’d already seen.

Looking at her watch, she decided to simply image the hard drive and study it later, in the TOC. She pulled out the original thumb drive and inserted the same type system she had used in Lebanon. Two clicks later she had a bar saying ten minutes until download complete.

She moved to his luggage and began sorting through his clothes. She found nothing of interest. Lucas apparently had very good operational security, leaving little to be found by a snooping maid.

She found a leather satchel and zipped it open. Inside were small knickknacks that she found odd. A kitchen magnet with the picture of a couple embossed inside. Two separate key chains, one with a bottle opener from a hotel in Reno, the other with the name “Dani” dangling from it. And three driver’s licenses.

Finally. His alias documents.

She looked at the first, seeing it was for a woman of about sixty. No way could he use that.

She looked at the second and felt a shock so great it made her knees weak. She made the connection with Lucas and sat heavily on the bed. She stared at the picture, then the name, making sure she wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t. She slipped the license into her pocket behind her phone and stood up, thinking through the ramifications. She didn’t realize someone had entered the bedroom until he spoke.

“Well, well. Looks like my day isn’t going to be all bad after all.”

She whirled around and saw Lucas between her and the door to the living room of the suite, a flex-cuff still attached to one wrist, the other wrist raw and bleeding. She eyed him warily, but he remained where he was.

“Come on. I’m not going to do anything. You can leave. Right through the door there.”

She said nothing, keeping her distance. He shuffled to the left and glanced at the closet. She followed his gaze, and he struck, closing his hands on each of her wrists in a steel grip.

Reacting instantly, she windmilled both arms in a circle, breaking his hold. She slid into his body and hooked her right leg behind the one bearing his weight. She jerked upward with her leg and pushed as hard as she could against his chest, slamming him to the ground.

She turned to run to the door, only to have him kick it closed from the ground. She whirled around and moved into a fighting crouch as he leapt to his feet. He grinned at the stance, then swung a slap at her face. She parried it with her left arm and lashed out in a jab, popping his head back.

When he returned her gaze, he was no longer grinning. He touched his nose, wiping a wisp of blood with his finger. “A fighter. I like that in a woman.”

He launched into her, throwing a flurry of combinations in an attempt to knock her down. For several seconds, the only noises were the slapping of skin and the panting of the combatants, Jennifer furiously protecting herself against every blow. Lucas backed off, having failed to harm her.

Jennifer reached behind her, blindly trying to find the door handle. Lucas saw the move and came in again. This time, having gotten a feel for his technique, Jennifer not only stopped his attack, but she landed two more jabs to his face.

Lucas backed off again, breathing hard. “You fucking bitch. You’re just making this hard on yourself.”

She said nothing, reaching behind her again for the door handle. Lucas feinted in, and she returned to a crouch. Instead of closing the distance, he grabbed a lamp and hurled it at her head. She ducked, feeling the porcelain shatter against the door above her. Lucas was on her before she could recover, slamming his shin into her thigh, drawing a cry.

He followed the kick with a left cross to her head. She raised her arms and took the blow harmlessly, but opened up her left side in the process. He shot a right hook to her kidney, causing a blinding pain to radiate beneath her rib cage. She felt him close his hands around the back of her neck, controlling her head, and knew she was in trouble. She threw her arms down low to ward off what was coming, but it had little effect.

Lucas speared his knee through her feeble attempts at protection, hitting her in the solar plexus and driving the air from her lungs. She threw jabs at a body she couldn’t see, connecting in one way or another, but doing little damage.

Maintaining control of her head, Lucas placed her back against the wall and drove his knee into her stomach two more times, the wall itself increasing the force of each blow. She screamed, the pain causing her to double over. Lucas let go of her neck and she fell to the ground, gasping in a shallow pant in an attempt to draw in air.

She felt Lucas loop the lamp cord over her wrists and jerk it tight, her strength to resist gone.

“That little bit of work is going to cost you some foreplay,” he said.

Jeff McMasters pasted on an interested smile and ignored the man droning on and on about all of the wonders of the Burj Khalifa.

Could you cram one more record in there? Tallest building, highest observation deck, longest elevator, highest swimming pool…My God, give it a rest.

He’d relinquished his ambassadorship in 2009, at the crest of Dubai’s heady days of expansion. Months later, the world financial crisis had left Dubai facing epic debts that threatened the very stability of the state. Its neighbor, the oil rich state of Abu Dhabi, had ridden to the rescue, providing an infusion of much-needed cash. The very building he was standing in highlighted Dubai’s meteoric rise and subsequent rapid descent: An architectural marvel unrivaled in the world, its name had been changed from Burj Dubai to Burj Khalifa after the bailout, in deference to the ruling sheikh of Abu Dhabi, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Following the tour guide around the eight-foot plastic scale model in the anteroom, he thought the rattling off of statistics and record-breaking feats sounded a little desperate, as if the tour guide was trying to convince him of the building’s greatness-and by extension Dubai’s worth.

McMasters let the voice fade into the background, the ever-present mission in Qatar creeping forward to his conscious mind. He was due to arrive at the peace conference the following day, and the closer it got, the more he thought about what could go wrong.

He’d agreed to become the new Middle East envoy before they’d told him what that entailed, namely a covert action involving passing money to the Palestinian Authority. As an ambassador, he’d been privy to various covert actions conducted by the CIA, but none had involved his embassy, and he’d certainly never participated in one as a player. In truth, as a diplomat, he found the whole notion of covert action distasteful. Lying and sneaking around simply wasn’t in his makeup. Or so he had thought.

Now that he was a primary actor, he found it exciting. True, he was just the catalyst and not the agent who would actually transfer the money, but it was still a thrill. When first told of the mission, he had balked, asking how he was going to travel from country to country toting around a suitcase full of cash. He’d been told that the money would be coming separately, brought by two members of the CIA during the conference, and that it wouldn’t be dollar bills, but diamonds. Much smaller to haul around.

The actual transfer plan had been withheld from him, using sources and methods known only to the CIA. He’d toyed with the idea of demanding the information, since it would be his head on the chopping block if something went wrong. He knew it was simply because he wanted to satisfy his curiosity. Wanted to feel more a part of the mission.