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more difficult situations.”
    â€œTrue, but we’ve got a wild card in this situation that none of us anticipated—Senator Chandler. He’s liable to mount his own rescue operation if we don’t do something soon.”
    When Adam didn’t respond, Maggie pressed her point.
    â€œRemember how he chartered his own plane and flew into Somalia to negotiate the release of the downed chopper pilotlast year? The one who just happened to be the son of one of his constituents?”
    â€œI remember,” Adam replied coolly. “Somalia wasn’t our operation.”
    â€œNo, but Cartoza is. Chandler could get Jake killed if he blunders in down there.”
    â€œSo you want to go in instead and work the extraction, if possible?”
    The fact that Adam didn’t reject her plan out of hand told Maggie that he’d been considering alternative courses of action, too. Still, she’d have to talk fast to convince him to send her in instead of another agent. She knew he was reluctant to relieve her as Jake’s control.
    The relationship between field agent and controller was critical to any mission. The tie between them grew so intense, the ability to communicate instantly so vital, that the partnership transcended that of mere co-workers. It became a nexus, a bonding such as soldiers experienced in combat. But in this instance Maggie’s instincts told her she could help Jake more on-scene than in the OMEGA control center.
    â€œI won’t break the communications loop. Samuels will relay Jake’s transmissions to me real-time. And Cowboy can take over as controller for us both. He’s recovered from his last mission, and knows almost as much about the area as any of us after his years as an attaché. Besides,” she added, “he owes me one.”
    â€œI take it you’re referring to the incident at Six-Shooters?”
    Maggie glanced at Adam in mingled surprise and exasperation. “How did you know about that? That was personal, between Cowboy and me.”
    He merely quirked a brow.
    â€œOkay, so you have your own sources.”
    She should’ve guessed Adam would hear how she’d rescued the handsome, easygoing Cowboy a few months back from the tough-as-nails EPA attorney who’d sunk her claws into him and refused to let go. Her disguise for that little private operation had been perfect. Not even Cowboy, as goodas he was in the field, had recognized the streetwalker with the frizzy blond hair and thigh-high black plastic boots who’d sidled up to him in D.C.’s version of a country-western bar. Maggie’s husky whisper that he didn’t have to worry anymore, she’d been treated at the clinic for that little inconvenience, had made him sputter into his beer. It had made the attorney gasp, snatch up her purse and sail out.
    The quick, irrepressible grin that was Maggie’s alone flitted across her face. Among the dozen or so OMEGA agents, she was the acknowledged master when it came to impersonations. And the most outrageous. She’d perfected a chameleonlike ability to adopt the smallest nuances of any environment. That, combined with her ear for the rhythm and cadences of a local dialect, had gotten her in—and out!—of the most unlikely, impenetrable target areas. And she knew just the ticket to get her into Cartoza.
    â€œIf you agree that Cowboy can take over as controller, I have the perfect cover,” she announced. “I’ll go in as one of the sisters of Our Lady of Sorrows.”
    She caught the quick, involuntary glance Adam sent skimming down her figure. So her brilliant turquoise above-the-knee knit tunic with the picture of the latest addition to the Washington Zoo on the front wasn’t exactly nunlike? So her tight black leggings hugged her calves? Adam knew that she could go from flashy to demure in the blink of an eye, or vice versa. She much preferred vice versa, Maggie acknowledged with an