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.”
She could practically see Bloch doing one of her death’s head smiles at how Lily was following her orders as well as subtly instructing the men holding her captive. “Do you know where you are? Any identifying elements you can tell me?”
She couldn’t see anything outside. “No. There’s nothing...nothing seems done to me while I was unconscious. These men seem intent on their job, that’s all. No reason to contact any local authorities.”
“Very good, Randall,” Bloch reassured her. “Tell me anything more.”
Lily thought furiously of some way to pass on details without alerting her abductors. “It was five,” she said. “Five o’clock your time when they took me. I don’t know how many more minutes since then...”
The man with the gun yanked the phone away from Lily’s ear.
“Stromovka Park,” he repeated for Bloch. “Midnight.” Then he hung up.
The blow came too quickly for her to dodge, hard on her right temple. She felt dizzy and retched from the pain.
“I did not let you talk to give information to your people. Do not play with me.”
The man removed the battery from the phone. Damn. There was no way Zeta could track it now.
* * * *
“I lost the signal,” Shepard said over the video connection.
Morgan walked restlessly around the living room, which held his daughter and Peter Conley. They were in a city apartment a few blocks from the historic downtown. It had belonged to an old widower who’d died heirless a few weeks before. Zeta had arranged their occupation by pulling a string of favors, which gave them a near-ideal base of operations with no paper trail.
“Of course,” Alex said sarcastically. “Don’t you always?”
“Find it again,” Morgan said.
“It’s no use,” Shepard said. “It’s gone.”
“Then do something else! Track the vehicle!”
“Spoken like a field agent,” Shepard sighed. “It’s not that simple. We don’t know which vehicle it was. Tracking the phone gives us a radius, that’s all. It was on the highway. Too many cars, too many ways to go.”
“Just get it done, Shepard.”
“If you really need me to, I can prove to you mathematically that we can’t,” Karen O’Neal broke in. “Too many variables. Too little data.”
Morgan felt like he was going to explode at any second. Lily had been captured, and he couldn’t stand doing nothing.
“So what do we do?” Alex asked.
“We go get her,” said Morgan. “Of course we go get her. We make the goddamn exchange and get our agent back.”
“Actually, that question is not settled yet.” The speaker was Paul Kirby, who was back at Zeta headquarters in Boston with Bloch, Shepard, and Karen O’Neal.
“We expended significant resources and manpower to find Enver Lukacs. If he disappears now, we may not get a second chance.”
Morgan was seeing red. Kirby ought to have been glad that he was on another continent. “You can’t be serious.”
“Let me remind you that this is a man who moves top of the line Russian arms to US enemies in active war zones, who puts high explosives in the hands of Colombian militias, who provided chemical weapons to ISIS. Let’s not forget who we are dealing with here, and what the price would be if we were to lose him again.”
“Bloch,” said Morgan. “Tell me you’re not going to leave Lily in the hands of these—”
“We will make a decision and let you know.”
“There’s nothing to think about. We don’t leave an agent behind.”
“Your position on the issue is noted, Morgan. I need to discuss this with my superiors. I will let you know.”
“You tell that dickless Smith that if he doesn’t—”
Bloch cut the connection. Morgan pounded the wall with his fist. Paintings and a cuckoo clock rattled from the force.
“Dad...” Alex said softly.
It didn’t work. He was filled with bile and darkness.
He looked at the door to the guest bedroom, where they were keeping Lukacs. “I’m going to get that bastard,” he growled.
“Morgan,” Conley said, holding his hand up to calm him down.
“Get out of my way,” Morgan said, pushing past his friend. He opened the door and found Lukacs tied to a heavy wooden chair, a sack stuffed over his head.
“Wake up, you piece of shit.”
Morgan pulled the sack off. Lukacs squinted in the light, blinking as he adjusted.
Morgan punched him in the face.
“Ouch,” Lukacs deadpanned. Blood trickled down from his nose.
“You’re going to tell me where I can find the bastards who work for you.”
Lukacs licked the blood from his lips. “They took your agent, did they?” He laughed, showing his red-stained teeth. “My men?” Morgan stared at him, eyes slits from rage. “The door is not so thick, you know.”
Morgan smacked him with an open palm. “Tell me where they are!”
“You hit like a girl.”
Morgan grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. “I can do a lot worse if you’d like.”
“Break some bones, pull teeth, I don’t care,” Lukacs said, laughing. “You need me alive, and you need to give me back today. That means I don’t have to tell you shit.”
“You’d better hope they decide to make the exchange,” Morgan said. “Or else it’s you and me until the day you die.”
“Or until the day they set me free, after I tell them what I have to give them.”
Morgan drew his knife from its sheath and held it two inches from Lukacs’s eye. “I think you’ll still be able to talk even if you can’t see. Don’t you?”
Lukacs’s eyes flitted to something behind him, at the door to the room. Morgan turned to look behind him. Alex was watching him from the door.
His rage seeped f
rom him, and he lowered the knife. No. He couldn’t torture a man in front of his daughter.
Morgan sheathed the knife and put his foot on Lukacs’s chest, shoving the chair half a foot up against the wall with the force that the arms dealer knocked his head. “This isn’t over, Lukacs.”
Alex stepped back as he walked out of the room and slammed the door. Conley approached him. “Got it out of your system, buddy?”
“No.” Morgan sank into a musty armchair. “There’s a lot more where that came from.”
“Keep your cool. This isn’t over yet. Shepard might catch a break—”
“He won’t,” Morgan said. “Have you ever seen that cocky bastard underestimate his own ability?”
“Well, maybe something else will come up,” Alex said. “Maybe Lily will manage to get away somehow.”
“Maybe,” said Conley. “But I don’t like her odds.”
The ticking of the cuckoo filled the room. Dust mites, accumulated over the years, danced in the afternoon light filtering in through the window.
“I’m going,” Morgan said. “No matter what Bloch says. We’re not leaving Lily behind.”
“If it comes to that, I’ll go with you,” Conley said.
“Me too,” Alex said.
“Not you. Don’t argue.”
It took all of Alex’s willpower not to roll her eyes.
“I’ll go,” Conley broke in to stem an argument. “But Lukacs stays. That’s my price.”
Morgan gritted his teeth. Conley laying conditions like this grated on him, but truth be told Morgan didn’t know whether he’d bring Lukacs to the exchange either. It made his skin crawl to agree with Kirby, but the bastard was right about what it would mean for Lukacs to go free.
Morgan did not have to make up his mind because they were hailed on the screen by Bloch.
“I spoke to Smith,” said Bloch. “We’ve come to a decision.”
Morgan’s fingers tightened on the chair’s armrests.
“We are going to make the exchange. We’re going to get Lily back. Get in touch with Tactical and plan this operation. We are not losing anyone today.”
Chapter Four
Dan Morgan moved forward, tense, alert like prey in predator country. Lukacs, with a bag over his head, was walking alongside him, hands in cuffs. Morgan led him by the arm.
Stromovka Park was dark, all the lights having been turned off because it was hours after closing time. The ground was carpeted in yellow and orange leaves, fallen off the trees. They crunched underfoot as the team advanced, well spaced out.
“You’re coming up on the rendezvous, dead ahead,” Shepard said through their comms. “I got five of them total. Only one with the build to be Lily, in the center.”
“Time to break off,” Morgan said. “Take positions and keep out of sight.”
The team, wielding rifles and night vision, disappeared into the darkness to surround Lukacs’s mercs. Morgan, who was taking the lead, couldn’t afford the clunkiness of the goggles, so he had to see by the scant light of the moon.
His eyes had adjusted enough that he could make out the shape of things. They were approaching a broad open space—a pond whose shore was dotted with low-hanging willow trees, its limp branches swaying in the chill wind.
He saw the figures in the darkness, moving as he approached. Five of them in all. He spotted Lily in the middle, where Shepard said she’d be, in a heavy jacket that didn’t belong to her. The lower part of her face, from nostrils to chin, was tightly wrapped with industrial tape.
A merc with a golden tooth, glinting even in the moonlight, stepped forward. “She is a screamer,” he said, motioning to Lily. Then he looked at Morgan’s prisoner, head hidden under a bag. “Show me Lukacs.”
Morgan pulled the bag off Lukacs’s head. He squinted as the merc shone the flashlight in his face.
“Good. You have your own men, watching us, of course.”
“Of course,” Morgan said. “I want my agent back. Now.”
“Fair exchange is fair,” the merc said. “Nobody wants violence here. Give us Lukacs, we give you the girl, and we each go on our way.”
“Fine,” said Morgan. “I say go, and both begin walking.”
Lily’s eyebrows were doing a dance like they were straining to meet in the middle. She was trying to tell him something. She looked down pointedly, then looking back at him in expectation.
Damn. Anything could be under that coat with her. He was going to have to play it by ear. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go. Nice and easy.”
Morgan nudged Lukacs, who started walking, as Lily did the same.
Tension filled the air as the two prisoners walked. Lukacs’s men had their hands on their guns, holstered, and Morgan was ready to draw.
“Eyes on the prize,” Morgan said, through the communicator. “Anyone seeming to go for a detonator should be dropped.”
Lily passed Lukacs halfway between Morgan and the merc with the gold teeth. Their footsteps crunching on dry leaves were deafening in the silence.
She crossed the distance to Morgan. When she reached him, she looked down at the tape around her mouth and moved her jaw around. But instead of trying to tear the swath off, Morgan grabbed her coat and tore it open.
“They strapped her with explosives!” Morgan barked, sending the team into immediate action—including Shepard, whose fingers were flying over his keyboards half a world away.
As Lukacs’s team drew their guns. Morgan moved to reach for his, but he didn’t have to. Conley, Bishop, and Spartan were flanking him within a fraction of a second.
“If we die, we take you with us,” the gold-toothed merc said and added, for effect, “Boom.”
“Then defuse her,” said Morgan. “Then we all leave here with everything we want.”
The man grinned, tooth glinting in the scarce light. “I do not think so. Good luck. You have about forty-five seconds.”
They walked backward, guns drawn, deeper into the darkness, taking Lukacs with them. Bishop and his team had them in their sights, but a slaughter was the last thing they needed right then.
“Stand down,” Morgan said, turning his attention to Lily and the two packets of C4 duct-taped around her torso. “You, too, Shepard. No signal to block. It’s a classic time bomb.” He quickly pulled out a pocket flashlight and spotlighted the device.
“Forty,” Bishop said, already counting down.
“They’ve run wires twice around her waist,” Conley noted, looking for any booby traps as he started unwrapping Lily’s mouth. Her breathing was heavy, and her green eyes were wet with fear.
“It’s a hasty job,” Morgan said. “Amateurish.” Even so, his hands remained careful.
“Piece of cake, then?” Spartan said flatly, trying to keep even a hint of hope out of her voice.
“Didn’t say that.”
“Thirty-five,” Bishop said.
The C4, detonator, and blasting caps were all encased in a thick envelope of duct tape. Morgan pulled out his pocket knife and probed at it. “At least it looks like there’s no shrapnel,” he said.
“Hooray,” Spartan deadpanned.
“Let’s do it,” he said as much for his own benefit as hers. Then he barked to the others, “Take cover. There’s nothing you can do here.”
Conley snorted. “Yeah, right,” he drawled. “And leave you two exposed to snipers?”
“Thirty,” Bishop said.
Conley tore a hole in the tape gag, finally freeing Lily’s parched lips. “You all go,” she gasped. “I’ll dive into the lake.”
Morgan’s lips curled into a mirthless smile. “I’m not abandoning you here, English. It’s either both of us or neither of us.”
“Twenty-five,” Bishop continued quietly.
Morgan brought the blade against the tape and started cutting.
It was so thick and jumbled with wires he could only cut half an inch at a time. It didn’t help that every slice might reduce the two of them to mincemeat.
“Twenty,” said Bishop.
“Hurry up.” The words seemed torn from Lily’s teeth.
“This is not the time to be rushing me!”
“Then when is?”
He finished slicing through. The wires and tape were a tangled mess, but it was enough for Lily to wriggle free in record time. But one thing remained holding the bomb vest in place: the wires winding around Lily’s torso.
“Fifteen.”
Morgan was certain he couldn’t cut through them—breaking the circuit would most likely set off the bomb, if the mercs were half-competent, which from the looks of the circuits they were.
“Oh yeah,” Conley said. “The old which-wire-to-cut conundrum.”
Morgan felt his lips pull back from his teeth in a wolf’s grin. Yeah, he thought, chastising himself. For this I gave up a loving family and peaceful life. He used the knife to strip the wires, trying to move as fast and steady as he could. A false move would have him cut them clear through, which would be bad.
Cut. Pull. And two sets of copper wires gleamed in the moonlight.
“Ten,” Bishop said.
He twisted the exposed wires together.
“Lily?”
“Yeah?”
“If there’s a time for this to kill us, it’s now. Just a heads-up.”
“Oh. Okay. Good to know.”
“Five,” Bishop said, his tight tone communicating that this might not be the best time for small talk.
Morgan cut the wire and survived to see the next moment.
Lily exhaled in relief.
“We’re not done yet!” He pulled the vest over her head, holding the wires where he had twisted them together.
Once the vest had cleared her head, he yelled, “Run!”
They all took off. Morgan swung the vest around like a discus and hurled it as hard as he could. The vest sailed in the air toward the lake.
Morgan turned around and ran after Lily, feet pounding grass.
“Get down!”
Morgan jumped onto the ground and covered his head.
Rogue Commander Page 3