The Nostradamus File

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The flight from Jordan to Ramstein took four hours. An ambulance waited on the runway to take Lamont to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and straight into surgery. He was out of their hands. At the base, they were assigned rooms reserved for officers passing through.

They met in the Officer's Club for dinner.

Ronnie looked around the room. "Not bad," he said, "but the NCO club is friendlier."

Nick had a black eye and swollen face from being kicked in the head. He had flashes of dizziness and a low grade headache. The doctors had told him it was a concussion, as if he didn't already know that. It wasn't the first time.

"What's the plan, Kemo Sabe?" Ronnie sipped a coke.

Nick had an Irish whiskey in his hand. He wasn't supposed to drink, but he didn't give a damn what the doctors said. He took a swallow. It hit him with a soft burst of warmth in his stomach.

"Harker wants us home. She thinks things are too hot right now."

"What about France?" Selena said.

"What about it? That chapel isn't going anywhere. Harker figures Ahmed would have told someone about what we found at Petra and the bad guys already know about it. If they don't, it can wait."

"And Lamont?" Ronnie asked.

"We won't leave until we know he's stable. It shouldn't be more than a day or two. Once he's out of danger, they'll fly him to Bethesda. He's tough. He'll be all right."

"I talked with Stephanie," Selena said. "Elizabeth is really angry about this. She thinks she knows who is behind it."

"Whoever he is, he'd better watch out," Ronnie said. "You don't want Harker mad at you."

Nick smiled. "No, you don't."

Later, back in her temporary quarters, Selena was getting ready for bed. Nick's room was in another part of the building.

She wrapped herself in a white robe and stood in front of the bathroom mirror, drying her hair. There were deep shadows under her eyes, lines of fatigue on her face. She ran her fingers through her hair. The Jordanian sun had brought out red highlights, rose red like the rocks in Petra, mixed with the blond.

Her 35th birthday was coming up. Not exactly over the hill, but the stress of the job was beginning to show. There was tension in her face that hadn't been there a year ago. Still looking good, though, she thought. At least that's not a problem. Not yet.

She let the robe fall open. She ran her fingers over the puckered scar low down on her abdomen where a bullet had nearly killed her. She let the robe slip to the floor and turned, looking over her shoulder. The scar where the bullet had exited was a rough, red ripple on her skin, next to a white line that reached to her buttocks and marked where the surgeons had gone in to repair her spine.

The weight she'd put on after being shot was almost gone, now that she could work out again. Physically she felt a lot like her old self. The mental part was a different story.

Something had changed. The jacketed round that almost paralyzed her had done more than put her in a hospital. It had left her with a sense of vulnerability that hadn't been there before. Before Mexico she'd felt she could handle anything, even after the close calls that had filled her life since she'd joined the Project. She was strong. She was skilled. She could kick ass. And now she knew that she could die just as quickly as the weakest person on the planet. Worse, she could be crippled for life. All it took was a well-placed bullet.

She wasn't like Nick and the others. Maybe it was their military background, some male thing. Whatever it was, the idea they might get killed didn't seem to bother them. They never talked about it. They didn't seem to worry about it.

Since Mexico, she worried about it. She covered her feelings up with flip remarks or black humor. Come to think of it, that was what they did, Nick and Ronnie and Lamont. She remembered Nick had told her black humor helped, back when she'd first joined the team. So maybe they felt the same way she did, they just didn't talk about it. Like her.

The thought was comforting, somehow.

She turned out the light.

She wished Nick was lying next to her.

Sleep wouldn't come.