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  “Why special forces?” barked Lieutenant Colonel Jack Scatalone.

  Air Force Major Vanessa Blake shrugged. “I’ve got the skills. I’ve got the drive. I’ve got the desire. Why not?” she threw back at him.

  He betrayed no reaction to her challenge. He asked stonily, “So it’s still your goal to be the first woman to enter the Special Forces?”

  The question made her feel naked. It was her most closely held dream, and she’d privately trained for it for years. But she wasn’t the least bit comfortable sharing her life’s ambition with this gruff stranger. She answered defensively, “I don’t give a flip whether I’m the first woman or the last. I just want a shot at it.”

  He put the typed paper back in the file and closed it deliberately. He leaned back in his chair and looked at her long and hard. Finally he said, “Then today’s your lucky day, Major.”

  Dear Reader,

  Silhouette Bombshell is dedicated to bringing you the best in savvy heroines, fast action, high stakes and chilling suspense. We’re raising the bar on action adventure to create an exhilarating reading experience that you’ll remember long after the final pages!

  Take some personal time with Personal Enemy by Sylvie Kurtz. An executive bodyguard plans the perfect revenge against the man who helped to destroy her family—but when they’re both attacked, she’s forced to work for him before she can work against him!

  Don’t miss Contact by Evelyn Vaughn, the latest adventure in the ATHENA FORCE continuity series. Faith Corbett uses her extrasenory skills to help the police solve crimes, but she’s always contacted them anonymously. Until a serial killer begins hunting psychics, and Faith must reveal herself to one disbelieving detective.…

  Meet the remarkable women of author Cindy Dees’s The Medusa Project. These Special Forces officers-in-training are set up to fail, but for team leader Vanessa Blake, quitting is not an option—especially when both international security and their tough-as-nails trainer’s life is at stake!

  And provocative twists abound in The Spy Wore Red by Wendy Rosnau. Agent Nadja Stefn is hand-picked for a mission to terminate an assassin—but getting her man means working with a partner from whom she must hide a dangerous personal agenda.…

  Please send your comments to me c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279.

  Best wishes,

  Natashya Wilson

  Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Bombshell

  CINDY DEES

  THE MEDUSA PROJECT

  CINDY DEES

  started flying airplanes, sitting in her dad’s lap, when she was three. She was the only kid in the neighborhood who got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. After college, she fulfilled a lifelong dream and became a U.S. Air Force pilot. She flew everything from supersonic jets to C-5s, the world’s largest cargo airplanes. During her career, she got shot at, met her husband, flew in the Gulf War and amassed a lifetime supply of war stories. After she left flying to have a family, she was lucky enough to fulfill another lifelong dream—writing a book. Little did she imagine that it would win the Golden Heart contest and sell to Silhouette! She’s thrilled to be able to share her dream with you. She’d love to hear what you think of her books, at www.cindydees.com or P.O. Box 210, Azle, TX 76098.

  Books by Cindy Dees

  Silhouette Bombshell

  Killer Instinct #16

  The Medusa Project #31

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Behind Enemy Lines #1176

  Line of Fire #1253

  A Gentleman and a Soldier #1307

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 1

  August 6, 8:00 a.m.

  Free-fire zone Alpha

  Air Force Major Vanessa Blake ducked and spun, plastering her back against the muddy wall of her foxhole, narrowly avoiding a barrage of incoming fire. Enemy infantry had their position surrounded on three sides, and the only reason it wasn’t all four sides was the river at their backs. Correction. The water moccasin-, alligator-infested river at their backs.

  “Ammo check!” she called.

  “Low!”

  “Low!”

  “Out!”

  “Low!”

  “Five minutes’ worth!”

  “Somebody get over to Echo position and pass that ammo around. We’re not gonna last two more minutes at this rate!” she ordered tersely. Crud. They were in a heap of trouble. She had only sixteen guys left standing out of fifty, and the enemy had close to forty. She had to do something radical, here. Something unexpected. Think, Vanessa! The woods around them had plenty of cover for enemy shooters, and that’s why they were getting slaughtered like trapped rats in this foxhole complex. She had to turn the tables. Make the woods work against the advancing forces. She glanced up at the trees overhead. Big, mature oaks, mostly. Sturdy. Strong enough to climb…

  “Guys,” she called out low, “I’ve got an idea. Huddle.” The enemy was close enough to hear her plan if she shouted it to the far end of the bunker.

  “We’re going to crawl out of here and climb the trees around this position. Then we’ll let the enemy advance to the foxholes and pick them off from above. Set your weapons for single shots. We don’t have enough ammo left to spray their lines with automatic fire. Use sticks and leaves to camouflage yourselves. Get up high in the branches, and when I give the signal, start firing down through the leaves. Think snipers, here. No wild shots. Wait till your targets are close enough to guarantee a hit. Take your time. Aim carefully. Keep your wits about you. Got it?”

  The glum faces around her lit up with hope. They were all likely to die messy deaths before this day was out, but by God, they’d go out fighting if she had anything to say about it.

  “We’re gonna have to move fast. We’ll split up and crawl out each end of the bunker. Stay behind cover as much as you can, but keep moving. We’ve only got a couple minutes to get into position. Let’s do it,” she said forcefully. She turned and led half the men in a crouching run to one end of the linked foxholes.

  She slithered on her belly out of the red clay muck of the foxhole, her bulky rifle cradled awkwardly across her elbows. Belly crawling with a fast twisting motion of her torso, like the alligators that inhabited the area, she passed up a couple trees with nice, low branches for climbing. Better leave those to the guys with less physical strength than her. One by one, she dropped off her troops in an arc around the enemy’s right flank. And then she was alone. Staying low, she tossed a length of nylon rope around the girth of a giant oak tree. Using the rope as a climbing harness, she shimmied up the tree as slick as any lumberjack.

  She worked her way a good thirty feet up the tree and turned to survey the situation. Perfect. Clear line of sight down the brown-shirted line of enemy soldiers. She chambered a round in her rifle and took aim carefully. And fired.

  A satisfying red circle blossomed in the middle of the chest of one of the enemy soldiers. One down. Shots began to rain down from all directions, and in a matter of seconds, half the enemy line was out.

  “Fall back!” the enemy commander screamed. Chaos ensued as his forces attempted to obey in the midst of the death raining from above.

  “Everybody down!” Vanessa shouted. “Charge!”
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  She shimmied out of the tree and joined up with her troops. They took off in hot pursuit, picking off stragglers as the skirmish turned into a lopsided rout.

  August 6, 8:15 a.m.

  Free-fire zone Alpha

  “Jesus H. Christ. What a mess,” Lieutenant Colonel Jack Scatalone announced in disgust from the fat edge of the battlefield as he watched the tide of the mock battle turn abruptly. He put down the field glasses and held out his hand. “Give me one of those toy guns.”

  “Are you sure, sir? Your uniform…”

  “It can be cleaned,” he snapped. “Or replaced. How do you fire this damn thing?” He inspected the oval canister attached to the top of the half-scale rifle that somebody had thrust into his hands.

  “It’s full, sir,” his host stammered. “Two hundred half-inch paint pellets. It’s really an honor to have you show us a couple moves.” The eager kid quickly showed him how to pressurize and fire the paintball rifle.

  He took off his wheel cap and stripped off his dark blue Class A jacket, with its multiple Special Forces badges and Christmas tree of ribbons. He passed them to a pair of waiting hands along with his crisply starched, light blue shirt and tie. He squatted, scooped up handfuls of red mud and streaked his face with the stuff. A little in his hair, and great stripes of it across his white T-shirt, and then he was off and running, low and fast. He circled wide of the current action, closing in silently from the left rear.

  Rather than fire his weapon and give away his position with the popping sound of the air rifle, he stepped up behind his targets, pressed the rifle barrel into their ribs and murmured low in their ears, “Bang. You’re dead, buddy.”

  He took out most of the right end of the line before Major Blake realized her troops were disappearing like magic. He heard her call for her remaining men to pull in tight in a close fighting formation.

  Thank you, Major. Now her men were all nicely clumped for him to wipe out all at once. He moved in for the easy kill.

  The eight remaining men had taken cover behind a huge, fallen log. He was going to have to circle around it and come in from the other side. But the poor bastards would be ducks in a shooting gallery. This wasn’t even going to be a challenge. He eased forward, at one with the woods around him. One foot in front of another in complete silence, he glided forward. He hadn’t been in the Special Forces for fourteen years for nothing.

  Down a hill streaked with runoff gullies to that little stand of brush at the bottom. It would provide perfect camouflage for the shot. Dead leaves lay in an ankle-deep carpet in this part of the woods, and he eased each foot down separately to minimize the rustling noise of his passing. He crouched and braced the barrel of the toy rifle against a sapling. Peering through the leaves, he caught sight of the cluster of scared-looking soldiers. Bingo. He took aim and began to squeeze the trigger.

  And jolted violently as an apparition in brown rose out of the flat ground beside him. Something hit him hard in the chest, stinging sharply. He looked down in disbelief at the circular splatter of red paint on his chest. Then looked up at the broad, white grin showing out of a face completely covered in mud and crushed leaves.

  “Gotcha,” the woman declared triumphantly.

  Son of a bitch. She must have laid down in one of those runoff gullies and covered herself in leaves. And she’d done it so carefully he hadn’t noticed the disturbance to the ground cover. He scowled narrowly. Okay, so Vanessa Blake was good in a game of paintball. Big deal. But that didn’t mean she’d be worth a damn under live-fire conditions.

  “Major Blake, I presume?” he said coldly.

  She climbed to her feet and brushed leaves off herself. Not that it did a bit of good. She was caked from head to foot in red mud. “Who wants to know?” she replied coolly.

  “I do,” he bit out. “Lieutenant Colonel Jack Scatalone.” He held out a hand to her. Normally he’d expect a salute from a lower-ranking officer, but they weren’t in uniform, and she’d just killed him. Her grip was firm, confident, as she returned the handshake in a businesslike fashion.

  “What brings you out here today?” She glanced down at his ruined navy blue uniform slacks. “You’re not exactly dressed for this kind of fun.”

  “I was sent to fetch you.” The words tasted sour in his mouth. He did not appreciate being the errand boy for anyone, even if his new boss was a four-star general.

  One graceful eyebrow arched under the mud. “By whom?”

  “If you’re done playing toy soldier, come with me. I’ll tell you more on the way.”

  “Do I have time for a shower?” she asked as she tromped out of the woods beside him.

  It gave him a perverse sense of satisfaction to think about dragging her through the pristine halls of the Pentagon looking like a pig in swill. “No,” he snapped. In fact, he probably had the time, but he’d cooled his jets long enough while she played toy soldier this morning. His foul mood didn’t improve one bit when he and the major emerged from the woods. A rousing cheer went up, and a hundred weekend warriors grinned like idiots at the big, fat splotch of red on his chest. Bested by a woman. Dammit.

  The good news was that he was going to get all kinds of opportunities to get his pound of flesh back from her. The major just didn’t know it yet. But she would soon.

  August 6, 10 a.m.

  northern North Carolina

  Vanessa studied the man driving the civilian car in hostile silence beside her. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark tan. Lean features. Hard. His profile could’ve been chiseled from rock. So could his personality. He hadn’t said two words since they’d left the paintball range an hour ago. So much for telling her more about this mystery summons en route to wherever they were going. She’d met his kind before. Macho jerks who couldn’t stand the idea of women infiltrating their precious military. She shrugged mentally. His kind were a dying breed. Women were here to stay and he could just get used to it.

  She was surprised when he turned into what looked like a private driveway. A brick mansion came into view, but he kept on driving, around to the back side of the spread. What the heck? And then she spotted a hefty helicopter on the back lawn. Black, ugly and powerful-looking. A Black Hawk. Standard issue special ops aircraft.

  Ah. Uncle Sam had used this house’s private helicopter pad. For convenience or for secrecy? Fort Bragg wasn’t much farther from the paintball range than this spread, and it had an entire airfield. Dang. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to “fetch her” in the middle of her vacation. Her once-every-five-years, the-Air-Force-made-her-take-it vacation. Of course, she doubted her boss had high-stress mock combat in mind when he shoved leave orders at her and told her to relax. She grinned. This was relaxing. Or, had been until the colonel showed up. She waited silently while Scatalone tossed the car keys to a gray-haired man standing by the helipad. The guy looked retired military. Scatalone motioned her into the copter.

  She strapped herself into a no-frills, nylon-webbing seat across from Scatalone. The bird lifted off without delay, and her stomach rumbled ominously. She swallowed hard and prayed that the secret nemesis of her career—persistent airsickness—wouldn’t reveal itself. Although the grumpy colonel’s black patent leather shoes were caked in mud and looked liked hell, she didn’t want to barf all over them.

  How she managed to hang on to her breakfast through the interminable chopper ride she had no idea. It was probably just as well that she was filthy. Nobody could see the sickly green color her skin had to be.

  She’d just about decided to let rip with the contents of her stomach when the distinctive skyline of Washington, D.C., came into view outside her window. Whoa. Who wanted to talk to her so urgently here? And about what? She was a know-nothing computer programmer working on a new database for a supply squadron in North Carolina. Not that she chose that career. Uncle Sam stuck her in a dead-end job to shut her up. To get her off everyone’s case about the idea of letting her apply to the Special Forces. Not that her efforts had done a lick of good.
Her dream wasn’t to be.

  They rushed north along the Potomac River and swooped in aggressively for a landing on top of a big red H painted in a white circle on the gray roof of the Pentagon. Almost back to terra firma. Don’t barf. Do not barf.

  The colonel was true to his word and gave her no opportunity whatsoever to clean herself up, refusing even her request for a rest room stop inside the Pentagon’s plush heliport arrival lounge. Sheesh. She might accuse the guy of engaging in psychological warfare were he an enemy interrogator.

  Clearly he was hoping to intimidate her. Throw her off balance. But he didn’t know her well enough to realize she got a kick out of strolling down the high-gloss corridors of the Pentagon looking like the creature from the Black Lagoon. The looks all the scurrying flunkies threw at her in the halls were priceless. She was grandly amused by the time the lieutenant colonel turned into a rich, walnut-paneled corridor. Holy cow. The offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Well, then. That was definitely intimidating. But damned if she’d let Jack Scatalone know it.

  They stepped into a sitting area furnished like some old-world gentlemen’s club with leather couches and thick rugs. Despite its soothing décor, the atmosphere in the office was electric. Like this place was the center of something important. Like life and death decisions were made here. Her adrenaline surged. God, she loved being where the action was.

  Okay, so now she felt a little weird in her camo fatigues and full-body mud wrap. When they’d landed, Jack had shrugged back into his shirt, tie and Class A jacket, and he’d brushed most of the dried mud off his pants and shoes. In stark contrast to her, he looked reasonably presentable. To cover her discomfort, she occupied herself with picking bits of oak leaves off her clothes and tossing them into a trash can.