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She was stunned by how much they knew. Apparently, men held private and even secret meetings with complete disregard for the women present. No doubt the assumption was that women would not understand anything they were overhearing. Hah .

They casually related how Dharwani was getting rich buying black market food stolen from refugee camps in Ethiopia on the cheap and reselling it to the Sudanese government.

They talked of how El Noor’s ambitions extended far beyond Sudan.

How El Noor was getting funding from Muslim charities overseas, and bribing government officials to tolerate his power grab in return for his foot soldiers driving out the Christian coalition.

And how two white men had come to town recently.

The haze from the hashish smoke cleared sharply from her head. Were the white men American? The women thought so. They had pale skin and one had orange hair—a fact which made the women laugh like drunk hyenas.

Bingo. One of the PHP leaders was a redhead.

Sadly, the women didn’t know who the white men were in Khartoum to meet. Not Dharwani, according to Fatima. Disappointed, Piper crossed her dinner host off the list of possible people the PHP guys were here to meet with. Rats.

Fatima took a long drag on the water pipe.

Her eyes fogged over even more thickly. Piper could only hope the woman forgot the entire conversation they’d just had.

When the hookah’s mouthpiece was passed to her, Piper took a cautious suck.

Her mouth filled with sweet, herbal tasting smoke.

She held it in her mouth an appropriate interval, then released it without ever inhaling it into her lungs.

Now she had to hope she didn’t get too stoned to remember the conversation.

A boy came to fetch Piper not long after that. The women escorted her to a courtyard where a cluster of antsy young men milled about, their jeans and T-shirts draped in weapons and ammunition. Apparently, she and McCloud were ever so politely being kicked out. It must be El-Noor-hunting-o’clock.

Piper noticed Fatima fading back toward the kitchen, lifting a veil over her face and casting her eyes down toward the ground, and all but disappearing—literally—into the woodwork. But Piper caught the sideways look Fatima threw at her. She could swear the woman was laughing under that veil.

She wrapped Mala’s melaya around herself, pulling its voluminous folds over her head. She caught an edge of the fabric and lifted it across her face modestly as she and McCloud were escorted through the crowd of armed youths. Local women weren’t the only ones who could play that game.

She and McCloud were shown to a Jeep, and she managed to climb inside without breaking her neck in spite of being wrapped up like a mummy.

Ian gave the driver curt instructions on where to go and when to pull over and drop them off.

They were still a few blocks from his hooch.

In this town, on this night, they might as well be ten miles from his place.

The Jeepload of soon to be dead young men, if she didn’t miss her guess, drove away into the night. Heavy silence settled, eerie in the middle of a large city like this. It was as if all of Khartoum held its breath, waiting for the violence to come.

“C’mon. We’ve got to get off the street,” McCloud muttered.

“Thanks for that update, Einstein,” she muttered back.

He scowled and unzipped his gym bag, pulling out a snub-nosed MP-7 semi-automatic rifle. He slung its nylon strap over his shoulder and glanced at her. “You did remember to get your gun, didn’t you?”

She scowled and lifted her left elbow. Without her left arm to anchor the melaya against her ribs, the fabric sheath fell away, revealing the latest version of an Israeli Tavor urban assault rifle lying close to her side.

Ian stared. “You had that on you the whole time we were at Dharwani’s?”

“His men wouldn’t dare frisk me. They’d go straight to hell if they laid hands on a woman in such a fashion.”

“Where’d you get a hold of a Tavor, anyway?”

The state of the art Israeli weapon was all but impossible to obtain on the open market. But Doctors Unlimited had inside sources for such things. It was good working for a CIA front.

She shrugged. “You military types have to go through channels. We civilians aren’t so encumbered.”

He scowled. “I hear Tavors are as good as an M-16.”

“Better. As effective as a sniper rifle out to around 350 meters. Low profile and maneuverable for urban assault ops. Lighter and shorter than an M-16, and the weight’s concentrated back by my shoulder. Great weapon for a woman.”

McCloud looked shocked that she could converse intelligently about a rifle.

“Chauvinist,” she muttered.

“What’d I do?” he protested.

She didn’t deign to answer. “Are we gonna stand here all night making small talk, or are we gonna move out?”

“Stay behind me,” he ordered. “If I hold up a closed fist, freeze. Open hand, palm down means to get down. If I grab my wrist and then flash you a number, that’s how many bad guys are located where I point next.

If I twirl my finger by my head like this,” he demonstrated, “that means get ready to go.”

“And if I stick up my middle finger like this, it means stop treating me like a fucking amateur because I know standard military hand signals.”

A snort of laughter escaped him before he managed to glare at her. He drew his thumb and index finger across his lips and then used both hands to air draw a pair of giant breasts in front of his chest. “This one means shut up. You talk as much as a woman.”

She held up her pinkie finger, bent at the middle knuckle, and didn’t bother to translate that one.

They’d gone about two blocks, gliding from shadow to shadow, when shooting broke out somewhere ahead of them.

It was distant, more of a rattle than distinct gunfire sounds.

Ian ducked into an alley, and she sprinted to its other end behind him, pleased that she was able to match her steps exactly to his, masking the sound of her passing.

He paused at the other end, listening and watching.

Their shoulders rubbed together and his body heat was tangible.

Weird how reassuring his presence was beside her.

The moon wasn’t up yet, and the night deepened around them.

More gunfire erupted, this time from behind them.

And close. He signaled for her to get ready to move out.

She nodded, and they stepped out into the street.

All hell broke loose when they were about halfway down the block. Gunfire erupted on both sides of the street, muzzle flashes exploding like firecrackers. As for her, she would’ve ducked back into the alley they’d come from. But Ian sprinted forward and she had no choice but to follow.

The gunfire intensified into a deafening cacophony, like a firing range full of machine guns. Ian dodged to the left into a recessed storefront and she careened after him, almost losing her balance when he turned so abruptly in front of her.

“Get down!” he ordered.

She crouched beside him.

“Get inside this store. Quietly if you can. I’ll cover you.” He glided forward, toward the front of the dark cave of plywood that used to be display windows.

He was trusting her with a real job? Cool. Of course, now she had to come through and deliver or else lose his respect in the last two minutes before they both lost their lives. They were trapped in this doorway unless she could open the door at their backs.

She moved in for a closer look. An iron grille covered its outside, a plywood sheet its inside.

Locked, of course. She didn’t have her lock picks with her, and besides, she wasn’t very fast with picks.

She pulled out her pistol, aimed carefully, and waited until a loud burst of gunfire erupted nearby.

She sent a bullet into the lock. The sound echoed around in the confined space twice as loud as a regular gunshot.

“What the hell are you doing?” McCloud bit out. “I said quietly. Are you trying to get us killed?”

“I’m trying to get us an escape route out of the dead end you led us into.”

She gave the door a tug. The lock was damaged but not quite destroyed.

“Get it open now …here come about eight guys.” Double taps started reverberating from immediately behind her as Ian commenced picking off the incoming hostiles.

One. Two. Morbidly, she counted them in her head as she whipped out her Tavor for a sustained burst of lead.

Three. Four. She held down her finger long enough to send a half-dozen rounds into the door.

Five. It was a horrendous waste of her limited ammo. But they were going to die if that door didn’t fly off the hinges in the next few seconds. Six .

“Got it,” she called out over the sounds of the seventh cluster of shots. Damn, Ian was a good shot.

“Fall back. Get inside!” he ordered.

Well, obviously .

She ducked inside a cavernous, utterly black space. Warehouse, maybe. Squinting in the darkness and unable to make out a thing, she crouched against the wall beside the door. A large shape barreled through the opening beside her. Ian . She felt him more than saw him.

“Go right!” she called over the barrage of gunfire nipping at his heels.

While Ian dived and rolled to the right on command, she spun into the doorway and fired a spray out into the street. Two figures flew backward. Neither moved. She yanked her weapon up and spun to the left side of the doorway.

Ian jumped back into the opening, his MP-7 at the ready. He reached forward and yanked the remains of the door shut. Complete blackness enveloped them. A momentary lull in the shooting settled around them.

“Stay here,” he ordered. “Kill anyone who tries to come through that door. He fumbled around for a moment, but she couldn’t identify what he was doing by the sound of it. Then he moved off quickly into the void. Great. The bastard was leaving her to guard his retreat while he got away.

Except as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she dismissed it. He was a natural-born hero. He would never leave the woman behind. It was a sexist attitude on his part, but tonight she wasn’t going to pick a fight with him over his subtle misogyny.

In the faint hint of light seeping past the splintered plywood, she made out Ian coming back to her side.

He shoved a long something, a piece of wood maybe, through the front door handles.

The wood caught on each side of the door frame.

It wouldn’t keep anyone really motivated from shooting their way through the door, but it would slow down a hostile for a few moments.

She made out something else. A bulky block protruding from the middle of Ian’s forehead and covering his eyes. Night optical devices. Her first reaction should have been relief. But honestly, it was chagrin. She didn’t have NOD’s, dammit. A prepared operative would have brought some.

“Grab my belt,” he muttered.

Great. Just what she needed. To be led around in the dark, blind and helpless, completely dependent on him for her life.

Resigned to his smugness when they got out of this mess, she did as he bid.

He moved out fast. She stumbled along like a drunk, her fist clenching his belt like a damned lifeline.

And then, all of a sudden, his belt dropped toward the floor, all but wrenching her arm out of the socket as she was yanked down with him. Off balance, she fell on top of him. Ian rolled on top of her fast.

She lost her grip on his belt—not that it mattered. She knew precisely where he was located from her collarbones to the tip of her toes. Every hard, heavy, muscular inch of him.

A hand clapped over her mouth. She started to fight but then realized from the angle that it was Ian’s hand.

He breathed, “Still got that cloth wrap thing Mala gave you?”

She nodded under his hand.

“Very quietly, spread it over us. We’ve got company.”