Matt (Red, Hot, & Blue) Read Online Free PDF Page A

stepped up to the desk.
    Commander Anderson smiled. “You ready, Foster?”
    “Yes, sir.” She’d been preparing for this kind of an assignment her entire career in Special Operations.
    Communications personnel on the various special task forces set in place after the terror attacks of September eleventh rarely got to see much hands-on action, let alone go deep undercover. But for once, rather than being tied to a computer, Sam was going in. Alone.
    To say infiltrating without any team backup was frightening would be the understatement of the century, even though the assignment was in a supposed friendly zone. In the Gulf, friendly could become very unfriendly in the blink of an eye—especially for a woman. But Sam had been working as a female in a male-dominated world for a while now. She was ready.
    Her commander cocked his head toward the door of his office. “Come on inside for a sec.”
    Sam nodded.
    For the first time in the six months she’d been Omega’s comm officer, Commander Anderson seemed to be treating her with kid gloves—treating her like a woman rather than a capable member of his team. She didn’t like it one bit. She’d fought to be equal her entire career in the service. What burned her ass and confused the entire equal-rights issue was that the reason she was going to Dubai undercover was because they needed a tech-savvy woman specifically for the assignment, and she fit the bill.
    He led the way to his office and sat behind the desk. “Take a seat.”
    She sat in the chair opposite her commander as he stared at her without speaking.
    “Sir?” Nothing like silence from a superior officer to make a person nervous.
    “Samantha…”
    Now he was calling her by her full first name. Not good. “Yes, commander?”
    He shook his head. “If you weren’t a woman I’d be slapping you on the back and sending you off without thinking twice about it.”
    “I know, sir.” She kept her expression blank in the face of what she knew was sexist but true.
    “But the fact is, you are a woman, and I’m sending you deep undercover into a damn harem in the middle of Dubai with no backup and without the knowledge of our allied forces in the region.”
    That about covered it. She swallowed a nervous impulse to laugh. Now that he put it that way, it did sound pretty crazy, and damn scary.
    Commander Anderson ran both hands over his face. “Maybe we need to bring someone over there into the loop, just to be safe—”
    “No.” Sam shook her head. “The reason I’m going in is because we don’t know who we can trust. The transmissions I intercepted originated from somewhere within that compound. We don’t know who sent them. Yes, it could be a guard or a gardener…but for all we know, it could be the sheikh himself.”
    Dubai was their ally. Yet someone from within one of the residences used regularly by the royal family had been contacting known terrorists. Central Command needed to find out who.
    He drew in a deep breath. “I know, and if I was sending one of the others, I wouldn’t think twice about it.”
    “Because they’re men and I’m a woman.” This song was starting to get pretty old. The commander could talk all he wanted, beat himself up until she left and got back again, but it wouldn’t change the facts. Sam had a vagina and not a penis, and that was why they needed her for this assignment.
    “I feel like I’m pimping you out, Foster.” The commander looked as if he were in physical pain saying it. “It’s a harem. There’s a chance you may… The situation may arise…” He obviously found the thought so horrendous he couldn’t finish the sentence.
    “I’m not a virgin, sir.” She wasn’t going into the harems of old. The ones with the silk veils and dancing girls and public baths. All of their sources and her research indicated this modern-day version was less harem and more Playboy Mansion. Young, pretty girls gathered by the royal family more as window dressing for