Rogue Commander. Leo J. Maloney

from each one, in black suits and ties, Glocks in hand. They opened fire—at her father. They obviously thought that the young woman on the motorbike was just some thrill seeker—not a well-trained sniper.

      Alex was about to prove them wrong when Lukacs stumbled out of the car on the other side—her side.

      She let him come a short distance away from it, just so he couldn’t disappear back inside. Then she stood up and drew her Taurus automatic.

      “Freeze,” she said calmly.

      He looked at her, first in shock, then with amusement. He straightened, looking at the Taurus like it was a water pistol.

      Alex motioned with it to put his hands up. The bastard just smirked and stepped in her direction. “It is not like TV or the movies,” he said reasonably in lightly accented English. “The bad guy does not stop just because you have a pea shooter.”

      He must have heard that term in one of those movies. Okay, I’ll play along.

      “Don’t test me,” she told him, letting her voice shake. She discovered her hands were trembling as well. And he kept walking toward her. “Stop, or I swear I’ll shoot.”

      “Will you now? Your people could have killed me from a window, but you went through all this trouble to catch me alive. So no, I don’t think you will.”

      Alex glanced at her father. He had taken down one of Lukacs’s men but was pinned by the other. Alex had a clear shot to the remaining bodyguard, but she didn’t think she could nail him with all the crumpled metal in the way, and she was even less protected than he was.

      “So? What’s it going to be?” Lukacs said. “Are you going to shoot me now?”

      Movement in her peripheral vision attracted her attention: the Zeta tactical van was barreling down the bridge, its front bumper in splinters from the crash. She shifted her eyes to look fearfully at Lukacs, who was smugly smiling and placing his fingers on the 9mm barrel.

      “Now just give me the gun,” he said, pulling lightly, “ and everything will be just...”

      He stopped when Alex gave him a big, assured, knowing smile—at the same second she pushed the stun gun just under his sternum and thumbed the trigger.

      More than fifty thousand volts clawed into Lukacs’s body. The unctuous a-hole danced like a marionette having a convulsion and then cannoned onto the cobblestones like a tree felled by lightning.

      The Zeta tactical van came to a skidding halt alongside her, sliding the door open before they fully stopped. Spartan took care of Lukacs’s final security guard with a salvo of bullets from her MP5 while Alex and Bishop unceremoniously launched Lukacs inside.

      Spartan hopped in, pulling the door shut as Diesel peeled off toward the far end of the bridge.

      “Team?” Bloch asked. “Report, please.”

      “Bishop here, with Diesel, Spartan, and Morgan Jr. safe and in possession of the package. We’re on our way to switch cars.”

      “Morgan safe,” Dan started and added, in a tone mixing appreciation and realization, “Morgan Senior.” Alex smiled at the acknowledgment. “Nice work,” he told her.

      “They keep underestimating me,” she said quietly. “So they keep losing.”

      “Conley,” they heard Bloch inquire.

      “Here,” they heard the man code-named Cougar reply. “In one piece.”

      But before they could all relax, there was still one team member left to check.

      “Lily,” said Bloch.

      No answer.

      “Lily, come in,” Bloch repeated.

      Silence.

      Chapter Three

      Lily Randall woke up to the rocking of a vehicle, her left cheekbone aching from the hard floor of the van. It wasn’t long before she felt a hard tug on her hair, which pulled her up to a seated position. She tried to fight the person off but found that her arms had been tied behind her back.

      She flailed, trying to wrest herself free, and found herself staring down the barrel of a gun.

      “No,” the man holding it said. “Chill out.”

      She complied, resting against the side of the van as well as she could, given the circumstances.

      The back of the van was windowless, and she was sharing it with three men. The one opposite her, who had threatened her with a gun, looked to be, like her, nearing his thirties. He was wearing a plaid beret covering his shaved head, and when he grinned, she saw that one of his top front incisors looked to be made of gold.

      They spoke in what she supposed was Czech. She had the distinct impression that they were debating whether to kill her.

      Her eyes darted, straining to see the men sitting in front, looking for Lukacs among the occupants of the van. He wasn’t among them. Did the others succeed in capturing him? If so, that gave her a chance to survive this.

      She ventured to speak. “You want your boss back.”

      The man with the gold tooth sneered. “Not boss. No boss.”

      “Still, Lukacs didn’t pay everything up front, did he?”

      The men looked at each other, and she knew she was right.

      “So you want him back. Maybe we can help each other out.”

      Gold Tooth leaned in toward her. “What are you going to do, all tied up?”

      “Call my people. We’ll make an exchange.”

      The men exchanged some words. One of them raised his voice in anger. Gold Tooth snapped at him, then turned back to Lily. “Number.”

      The man said something and held out his hand, and one of the others handed him a cell phone.

      “Let me make the call,” she said.

      “No,” the man said. “We call.”

      She gave him the number—the emergency local number they had each committed to memory for the mission.

      The man dialed and waited, until Lily heard the faint response—not enough for her to make out who was talking or what was said.

      “Who is this?” the man demanded. Then, after the response, “We have your agent. The sexy woman with the green eyes.” Lily shuddered with revulsion at his description. He continued. “We want Lukacs back.”

      Lily held her breath. She wasn’t sure whether they would make the exchange. She wasn’t even sure whether she wanted them to make the exchange. She wanted to be saved, but they had worked long and hard to catch Lukacs—a man responsible for dozens, probably hundreds, of deaths. To give her up to hold on to him—she might take it if the roles were reversed.

      But they must not have made the choice, because the merc responded with, “Good. Stromovka Park, at the pond, south side, at midnight. We will exchange the prisoners then.”

      He listened as the person on the line spoke. Then he brought the phone to Lily’s ear, holding it there.

      “She wants to talk to you.”

      “This—” she stammered. “This is Agent Randall.”

      “Randall.” It was Bloch. “Are you hurt?”

      “I don’t think so.”

      “Keep talking to me as long as you can, understand?”

      “Yes,” Lily replied and continued. “Yes, you want to do exactly as they say. I think they took me as leverage only, in case something like this happened. The impression I get is that they’re men just trying to do a job they were hired for, nothing else.”