Merline Lovelace - Danger in the Desert

Danger

in the Desert

Merline Lovelace

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Cover

Title Page Danger in the Desert Merline Lovelace www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author About the Author As an Air Force officer, MERLINE LOVELACE served at bases all over the world, including tours in Taiwan, Vietnam, and at the Pentagon. When she hung up her uniform for the last time, she decided to combine her love of adventure with a flair for storytelling, basing many of her tales on her experiences in the service. Since then, she’s produced more than eighty action-packed novels, many of which have made USA TODAY and Waldenbooks bestseller lists. Over eleven million copies of her works are in print in thirty countries. When she’s not glued to her keyboard pounding out a new book, Merline and her husband Al pack their suitcases and take off for new, exotic locations—all of which eventually appear in a book. Check her website at www.merlinelovelace.com for travelogues, pictures, and information about upcoming releases.

Dedication To the Sensational Six. You know who you are. Thanks for making our jaunt to Egypt and the Holy Land an honest-to-goodness, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Copyright

As an Air Force officer, MERLINE LOVELACEserved at bases all over the world, including tours in Taiwan, Vietnam, and at the Pentagon. When she hung up her uniform for the last time, she decided to combine her love of adventure with a flair for storytelling, basing many of her tales on her experiences in the service. Since then, she’s produced more than eighty action-packed novels, many of which have made USA TODAY and Waldenbooks bestseller lists. Over eleven million copies of her works are in print in thirty countries.

When she’s not glued to her keyboard pounding out a new book, Merline and her husband Al pack their suitcases and take off for new, exotic locations—all of which eventually appear in a book. Check her website at www.merlinelovelace.com for travelogues, pictures, and information about upcoming releases.

To the Sensational Six. You know who you are. Thanks

for making our jaunt to Egypt

and the Holy Land an honest-to-goodness,

once-in-a-lifetime experience.

If she hadn’t tripped over her own feet while gawking at the tombs in Cairo’s City of the Dead, Jaci would never have spotted the tiny bit of green. It was almost buried in the dirt, tramped down by the centuries of mourners who’d brought their dead to be buried in the jam-packed maze of tombs that stretched for miles along the west bank of the Nile.

“Be careful, dear!” Susan Grimes, the seventy-something retired schoolteacher who sat next to Jaci on their tour bus, stretched out a quick hand to keep her from falling.

She didn’t go down, thank goodness. She still had a nasty bruise on her hip from the tumble she’d taken a week ago. Wishing to heck she was a little less klutzy, Jaci righted herself. That’s when she spotted the bit of green. She thought at first it was a shard of glass or broken piece of plastic. Curious, she nudged it with the toe of her sneaker.

Mrs. Grimes leaned closer and squinted under the brim of her University of Florida visor.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure.” Jaci dug a little deeper with her toe. “Hey! It looks like a scarab.”

It wasn’t the first scarab she and her fellow tourists had spotted since arriving in Egypt early this morning. Cairo’s souvenir shops were crammed with cheap plastic imitations of the beetle that ancient Egyptians associated with the creator god Aten.

This one, Jaci saw when she pried it out of the dirt, looked different from the fat little good luck charms hawked by souvenir sellers. Its body was longer, leaner. And it had lost one of its antennae. When she turned it over, the hieroglyphics on its belly were so worn they were barely distinguishable.

“Looks like a cheap fake,” silver-haired Mrs. Grimes commented.

“Feels like it, too,” Jaci confirmed. “Probably dropped by some other gawking tourist.”

But a nice souvenir just the same. A keepsake of the trip she’d scrimped and saved so long for. If she could keep it.

She wasn’t about to get crosswise of Egypt’s stringent antiquities laws. Their tour group leader had cautioned them repeatedly about picking anything up at the pyramids or purchasing “stolen treasures” from supposed grave robbers.

And she was in the City of the Dead, with Saladin’s massive fortress and the great mosque of Mohammed Ali looming above the jumble of tombs. The scarab Jaci had dug out of the dirt looked and felt like a modern-day, mass-produced version, but it wouldn’t hurt to get the opinion of someone more knowledgeable about these things.

The tour leader had moved ahead, guiding her flock to the next intricately carved tomb, but the Uzi-toting guard who’d accompanied the group from the moment they’d boarded their bus was only a few paces behind.

“Hanif?”

“Yes, miss?”

“I found this buried in the dirt.” Jaci uncurled her palm to reveal the little green beetle. “Do you think it’s of any value?”

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.”

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.