Wasn't talking to her two young escorts anymore.
She stared straight at him, breathing faster in rapid bursts that lifted the gentle curves of br**sts against her dress in a passionate rhythm of arousal. Damned if the ache in his knees didn't fade right that minute and it was all he could do not to climb back on the roof.
And double damned if he didn't feel a little like he was already flying, anyway.
Damn but he wished he were flying.
Parked in a seat at the mobile command center, Jack twitched his boot against the metal underpinnings of the console on a pallet down the belly of the plane. Close-up intelligence gathering from the SEALs for the next couple of days was crucial, though, so he would just have to cool his jets.
His shitty mood from the night before simmered on the back burner. Only completing this mission would clear his mind enough to deal with it. Three screens hummed in front of him, just like at the other eleven stations manned by military representatives from each service in the joint mission, maintaining databases, ensuring comm links remained up and working.
Colonel Cullen sat across from him, slowly drinking from a coffee mug with the words "It's All About the Hoo-Uh'' stenciled across.
Jack's dual flat-screen color monitors contained intel on one side, maps on the other. A smaller six-by-six, black-and-white monitor perched above with continuous feed from the Predator unmanned spy drone.
Monitoring went on pretty much 24/7 now to make sure the hostages weren't moved, but the daily walk time was of particular interest. They logged with interest the one time of day they were assured the hostages still lived.
That Monica's sister still lived.
Dusk approached. Predator images scrolled by, over the locale where coordinates indicated two SEALs lay completely camouflaged in their desert ghillie suits—strips of tan cammo and mesh that resembled a desert swamp thing monster. Effective as hell. Someone could pee right on them and never know.
The rest of the SEALs were holed up two miles back in a bunker dug out of a knob dune. Once the sun set, the pair—Blake and his swim buddy Carlos—would start recon along the compound's perimeter for intel. But now they waited silently with their handheld parabolic satellite dish sending back any sound from the compound.
Unusually little sound.
"Control," Gardner's voice echoed through, "the place is too damned quiet."
"Hold steady," Jack answered. "I show a human target at your two o'clock. Looks like a sentry. He's lighting up a smoke."
"Roger that."
Lighting a cigarette screwed with night vision for valuable seconds, crucial info to be exploited for a point of entry on a recon run after dark.
"Predator three-seven," Jack called to the pilot and his sensor operator flying the unmanned spy drone by remote from Indian Springs Auxiliary Airfield in Nevada, "how many do they have stationed around the northeast guard tower?"
"Only the one," the sensor operator answered, his job being to interpret data and adjust the pilot's remote-control flight path accordingly.
Catching some fresh movement on the screen, Jack keyed up the mike to transmit to the SEAL pair. "Check your six o'clock. Truck moving toward the front gate. Looks like...just a dump truck. Gravel and some rocks in the back."
An airman at the end of the console chuckled. "Maybe they're going to build themselves an outhouse."
"Hey, not bad," an Army lieutenant answered, "or some kind of Zen rock garden to spruce up the place."
As much as Jack couldn't find the laugh within himself, he knew these guys needed the release from stress. Everyone was tense, ready to roll, in need of an outlet for all the pent-up energy. Hell, the Rangers were even jumping from rooftops.
"Truck's clear of the gate," Jack informed the SEALs, then straightened sharply. "Okay, heads up, people. We have some serious activity."
The SEAL pair stayed silent except for louder breathing, heavy, but steady.
On the screen, figures poured from brick and cement buildings, men, women, at least a hundred, most armed with machine guns and rifles carried as casually as a businessman's briefcase. "We've got some kind of gathering in the works. Not the regular afternoon walk."
The dump truck rumbled down a central dirt road until it reached the compound's main square. A groundbreaking ceremony?
Another door opened from a small cement outbuilding. Three stepped out. Two men. One woman covered in a burkah from head to toe. Jack shifted in the unrelenting seat, not liking one damned bit the bad feeling creeping over him faster than a debilitating rapid decompression.
And liking even less the gaping pit dug in the center of the town square.
"Oh, shit," the young airman at the end of the console whispered.