Agents Under Fire by Dana Marton Page A

two cents in the same language.
    She had to admit, whatever he did, he did it with effortless competence.
    Even the men looked at him with newfound respect. The conversation went on, switching back and forth between Arabic and English. She only understood about half, so she paid close attention to body language. When the commissioner laughed, Jake laughed with him.
    The men seemed relieved that they no longer had to deal with her, but could talk to Jake instead. The interview ended in twenty minutes, concluding with stern warnings on what she should and shouldn’t do while she remained in the country.
    Jake had driven them in his car, so this time she didn’t have to worry about the cab driver leaving, either.
    “ Thank you for all that,” she said as they got into his white Land Rover. “Please tell me they no longer think I’m a spy.”
    “ I’m not sure if they ever did. They just don’t like women around here who are all confident and question men on the street. I think they wanted to intimidate you into leaving. I let them know that I’d be keeping you under tight control from here on out.” He winked.
    Her core temperature jumped up another few degrees, and she’d been plenty hot already. She couldn’t wait to be back in her room at the hotel and change out of the tent she was wearing in deference to local customs. Then she would start working the phone again.
    The embassy topped her list. Somebody had to know something. She just hadn’t reached the right person yet.
    But when Jake started up the car, he didn’t turn toward the hotel.
    “ Where are we going?”
    “ You said the hotel had no record of Kenneth staying with them.”
    Frustration tightened her jaw when she thought of her repeated failed attempts to get useful information from anyone behind the front desk. This wasn’t like her company where she could expect some deference. From the employees anyway. She’d had her battles with the board of directors.
    “ He told me he was staying there. Where else would he go? There’s no other hotel for foreigners in town.”
    “ There is one other place Americans stay at, if they’re not at the hotel,” Jake said carefully. “Khanbaba’s compound.”
    “ Who is he?” Maybe some local hotshot businessman. Maybe he’d invited Kenneth to stay at his place because they were negotiating some deal. That didn’t explain why Kenneth had stopped calling, but still, hope filled her suddenly.
    “ Khanbaba is the local warlord I told you about last night.”
    She nearly choked on her saliva. “Kenneth wouldn’t have anything to do with people like that!”
    “ Khanbaba is no longer at the compound. He was run off years ago. The place is utilized by XO-ST, a private security firm here on a contract from the U.S. government.”
    “ You mean like those mercenary mini armies they talk about on TV?” The embassy had mentioned a group like that, but not by name.
    The corner of his masculine lips twitched. “Exactly.”
    “ I haven’t seen them around here.” Or any U.S. Army presence, which she’d counted on when she’d decided to come to this place. The region had been a lot safer in her imagination than it had turned out in reality.
    Her new ‘protector’ drove around a small herd of goats that blocked the road. “They’re not in town at the moment.”
    “ Then why are we going over there?”
    “ Just want to give their quarters a quick look. If they’re not there, I won’t have to ask permission.”
    She couldn’t argue with that logic. And she wasn’t going to discover anything by sitting around at the hotel. Maybe Jake Tekla was more impulsive than she liked but, for Kenneth’s sake, she needed to learn to roll with the punches.
    Then she thought of something. “This could explain why the embassy is confused. They told me Kenneth was here as part of some commando group. They probably think every American man who comes to Lahedeh has something to do with this XO-ST outfit.”
    “