“You didn’t want Bruneseau overhearing. You don’t trust him?”
“There aren’t too many spies I do trust. Present company excluded. Once we reach the lake and I’ve got evidence that Hatcherly is plundering a Panamanian archeological site I don’t want anything to do with him. And as far as China taking the canal? It was a mistake years ago for the U.S. to give it away so I couldn’t care less what happens to it now.”
“Bullshit!” Lauren spat, not letting his lie hang in the air for even a second. Mercer cocked an eyebrow, secretly pleased that she had seen through him. “I’ve been watching you for the past few days,” she went on, “and I think I know what makes you tick. Bruneseau has dangled another challenge in front of us and you can’t wait to take it up.”
“Am I that obvious?” Mercer smiled at her fury.
“Why else would you have sent Harry after those dump trucks? You’ve already guessed Hatcherly is up to something beyond gold smuggling. You said that crap about not caring what happens to the canal because you want to drop me the same way you’re going to drop Bruneseau.”
“This isn’t your fight,” Mercer said seriously.
“Don’t try to push me aside because I’m a woman,” she returned hotly. Unlike many women who mask their sexuality by defensively crossing their arms over their breasts, Lauren stood with her hands on her hips, her chest out proudly. “This is as much my fight as yours.”
“I want to keep you out because you are a commissioned officer in the United States Army who could lose everything by helping me.” Mercer raised his own voice to match hers. “Not because you’re a woman. I’m trying to protect your career, not your gender.”
Lauren glowered then suddenly backed down because she saw that he wasn’t lying. Mercer wasn’t the type to step over the line between chivalry and chauvinism. Her voice softened. “Thank you for that, but it’s my career. Besides, I have a secret weapon to get me out of hot water with the army.” She paused, a little embarrassed. “My father is a general.”
The admission came as a surprise, as were the implications. He couldn’t resist teasing her. “And you’re not above crying, Daaaddyyyy!”
She bristled, having spent her career dodging rumors that her father had paved the way for her promotions. Knowing it wasn’t true and with nothing to prove, she had still taken tough postings to stifle her detractors, deliberately staying away from duties that would have fast-tracked promotion. It rankled that she’d been forced to sabotage her own career because her father happened to be a general.
Then she saw that Mercer wasn’t serious, and couldn’t possibly know what was said behind her back. Her expression turned sheepish. “I’ve never needed to but the option’s always open. And if you repeat that to anyone you’ll be digesting your teeth.”
Mercer realized he’d hit a sore spot. He could imagine the hell she’d gone through being the daughter of a general, like being a student in a school where a parent was the principal. Only this wasn’t school. This was her entire life. He wished he’d held his tongue. “Deal.”
Lauren nodded and something silent passed between them. She knew one of his deepest secrets and now he knew the root of her pain. It was more than either expected to share and yet they had. She turned away before she blushed. “Give me fifteen minutes in the shower and the bathroom’s yours. I think I’ve got a couple beers in the fridge if you want one.”
The sting of the shower slowly washed away the exhaustion that cramped her muscles and caused her joints to stiffen. She luxuriated under the spray, soaping and rinsing her entire body twice and digging her fingers through her hair until her scalp went numb. Even as her entire being craved sleep, she thought about the man in the other room. He was unlike anyone she’d met before. Handsome, yes, but that wasn’t what she found so compelling. It was the way others listened to him. People sensed his confidence and responded automatically. Bruneseau was a trained spy but by the end of their talk he was taking orders from Mercer, a geologist. Her father was a little like that.
Where’d that thought come from? Stop it, Lauren, she chided herself, thinking a Freudian would be having a field day with that idea.
She recalled the way he’d looked at the picture of her in a bathing suit and how she’d liked how it made her feel. With a quick gesture, she twisted the tap to cold, and the thermal shock on her skin scattered any further thoughts in that direction.
By the time she had toweled off and stepped from the bathroom to tell Mercer the shower was his, he was asleep on the couch, still smelling of sweat and combat. Lauren pulled a spare blanket from a linen closet and draped it over him. Even in sleep his jaw was firm. She resisted the urge to touch his face, to feel the rasp of his thirty-hour beard. She killed the lights and went to her own bed.
Panama City, Panama
Mercer had always carried a clichéd mental picture of the French Foreign Legion. In his mind, they were still lonely guardsmen in isolated sandstone forts blistered by the Saharan sun and doomed by overwhelming odds. Gary Cooper in a kepi and Berbers on camels wielding Saracen swords. What he’d seen the night before, his and Lauren’s rescue from Hatcherly, had helped dispel the image. He now realized he was in the company of an elite fighting force as well trained as the SEALs or Green Berets.
The two soldiers accompanying them to the lake were in the safe house living room when he and Lauren arrived, their FAMAS assault rifles disassembled and blindfolds over their eyes. With a sharp command from Lieutenant Foch, the men fitted the weapons back together, their hands a blur of rote action. Foch clicked off his stopwatch when the last man cocked his gun and held it out for inspection.
“Two seconds quicker than last. Do it again.”
While the men pulled the rifles apart again, Lauren Vanik frowned at Foch. “Do you think it’s a good idea running disassembly drills with weapons we may use in combat later on?”
Foch gave her a patronizing smile. “Of course not. Those rifles are with the men’s kit. These are just trainers. Don’t worry, Captain, we know what we’re doing.”
Rene Bruneseau came into the living room from the back of the house. Like his men, he wore civilian clothes. “Good morning, Captain Vanik, Mercer. May I offer you coffee.”
Because he and Lauren hadn’t gotten to sleep until three in the morning, Mercer quickly agreed to the offer. The coffee Lauren had made for him was watery instant and had done nothing to jump-start his body.
Over cups of rich French roast, Bruneseau laid out their plan. The Legionnaires had a helicopter stashed at a deserted plantation beyond the ruins of Veija Panama, the old city that the pirate Henry Morgan had sacked in 1671. They would carry an inflatable boat to a point above El Real. There they would transfer to the boat for the remainder of the trip up the Rio Tuira. Before reaching the River of Ruin, they would stash the Zodiac and flank around the volcanic mountain, climbing it from the opposite side from where its waters disgorged down the falls that Mercer and Lauren had climbed earlier with Miguel.
As Rene explained his strategy, Mercer loaded film into the camera he’d bought on the way to the safe house. He’d also purchased a four-hundred-millimeter telephoto lens, the largest the camera shop stocked. He hoped to get shots of Hatcherly’s plundering of an important archeological site. At Lauren’s suggestion, they would take that evidence to the curator of the Reina Torres de Aruez Anthropology Museum, where she felt they’d get a better response than from Omar Quintero’s shaky government. Quintero had only been in the Heron Palace, the presidential residence, for six months following his corruption-tainted election and had yet to solidify the congress or the bureaucracy.