Heart Strike Read Online Free Page A

vessel standing in its center, complete with a flybridge sticking out to either side like wings.
    The white steel tower had given her endless hours of trouble; big ships were designed with far too many sharp corners and narrow ladderways for the bad guys to use to their advantage. The training cadre had helped them beat it, but it had been so much harder than it looked, even tougher to take down cleanly than an airplane filled with passengers.
    As a former museum technician, she had to admire each of the sets that The Unit’s training cadre provided. When she was in the scenarios, they were incredibly believable. Radar scopes swept, instruments lit, televisions displayed—everything authentic right down to the questionable fashion sense of the mannequins. To add to the authenticity, they often did the raids with Simunitions rather than live ammo. In those situations, armored training cadre shot back.
    Melissa had worked at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, for three years before she’d decided to use her dual citizenship to sign up for the U.S. military. At the museum she’d helped build elaborate sets that had to stand up to millions of visitors a year yet still be interactive and intriguing. The cadre’s set dressers were of an equally high caliber.
    In moments Gibson and their team were all seated in thoroughly believable command chairs of a cruise ship’s main bridge. Last time she’d fought her way aboard, it had been configured as a container ship. The set was battered, but the training cadre did a fine job of putting it back together despite stray gunfire and the occasional application of explosives. Thankfully the museum’s tourists hadn’t been quite that aggressive.
    Colonel Gibson sat in the helmsman’s seat, looking greyhound fit, his dark hair and light eyes a startling contrast when you noticed them, when he wasn’t being invisible. He was dressed in the same ACUs they were—Army Combat Uniform and boots—nothing to distinguish his superior rank or vastly superior skill.
    She’d always felt a little uncomfortable around him and could never quite be still when he watched her. She realized that she was fooling around with the switches on the communications officer’s panel and pulled her hands into her lap.
    A smile quirked at the corner of Gibson’s lips, which was wholly impossible, and then it was gone, so she knew she’d imagined it.
    â€œWell done,” Gibson began. “Three Delta against seven terrorists, very well done.”
    And suddenly Melissa felt about three meters tall and, like Alice in Wonderland, wondered how she still fit in the room. She reached out to slap a high five with Mutt, who sat in the radar tech’s chair beside her.
    â€œGosh, Colonel. You sure know how to make a girl’s head spin.”
    His smile was wintry.
    Then she pointed at Mutt and Jeff. “I mean, just look at them.” They were clearly feeling the same effects she was from the rare compliment.
    That earned her the first laugh she’d ever heard from the Colonel. Mutt stuck his tongue out at her. When she was foolish enough to turn her back on him, he tugged on her short French braid. Jeff merely sighed.
    The three of them had plagued each other from the first day. They’d tried to tag her as M&M because, “Melissa Moore, you gotta know you’re total eye candy.” She might be, but she’d walked more than a hundred other top soldiers into the ground to get here.
    Most men who’d tried to bed her called her The Ice Queen because she froze them out. She had a dream of finding someone who brought the heat and the heart, not just fun but someone who would be a keeper. She had that dream as a young girl…she’d had a lot of stupid, naive dreams back then.
    In vengeance for M&M, Tom Maxwell and Sem Jaffe became Mutt and Jeff.
    Worse for them, she’d made sure that M&M didn’t stick and