Rogue Commander, Leo Maloney [classic books for 11 year olds TXT] 📗

maybe off to the left or the right, but because of the hallway, all Alex saw was a tunnel and the white front door across the living room floor. It trembled with a thunderous slam. There was a pause, followed by the whole thing exploding. Alex dropped to one knee, her pulse pounding up into her neck. She yanked her .357 from her boot just as two figures in SWAT gear, helmets, and shotguns burst through the door.

The truth announced itself to Alex like a proud child. Those aren’t cops. Cops would have surrounded the house first and called Schmitt out with a bull horn.

A gunshot banged from somewhere to the left, the room flashed white, and the first guy collapsed as his knee cap exploded. The second one leapt over the first as his shotgun barrel thundered with smoke and yellow flame. He pumped it for a second shot, but Alex heard Alicia Schmitt scream something, and a double-tap from her Lady Smith sent him flying back out the door.

Alex jumped up to charge down the hallway, just as two more of the killers clambered inside. She took the first one down with two quick shots to his Kevlar, center mass, and his shotgun went off and shattered the chandelier. The second one ducked, ignoring her, and fired a handgun.

Alex heard Schmitt scream as she nailed the shotgunner with a bullet to the collarbone. He jerked around and bounced off the wall as if he had been thrown there.

Alex spun around to run at the back door. She yanked it open, dove over a concrete stoop, somersaulted across the grass, and popped up, spewing hot breath. She sprinted full tilt around the right side of the house and leapt over a bush, as her boots hit the front yard.

Sure enough, that damn Econoline was parked in the front, doors flung open, and another phony cop was pounding up the sidewalk toward the splintered front door. He spun and saw her heading for her bike. Each took a wild shot at the other as she ran and he dove to the grass.

Alex leapt on the seat while flinging the bike away from the curb. The kickstand snapped up as a gunshot shattered the mailbox. Alex revved it on, gunned it, and fishtailed to the left as she heard the van door behind her slam. She ducked low as the bike speared forward and another bullet zipped past her left ear.

In three short seconds she was doing seventy, her .357 still gripped in her sweat-soaked right hand. She thought she had one round left, but she wasn’t sure. She’d lost her gloves, but her helmet was still there between her thighs. Her hair whipped back from her face, and her eyes burned with the wind and her unwanted tears.

I could have saved her, she told herself.

No, you couldn’t, she heard her mind reply. Commander Alicia Schmitt is dead.

Chapter Nineteen

Dan Morgan sat on a pile of gold and maroon embroidered pillows, his back against a cream plaster wall.

To his left, on another array of cushions sat Lieutenant Colonel Kadir Fastia, late of Libyan Army Intelligence. They were ensconced on the top floor of Fastia’s brownstone in Columbia Heights, the northern environs of Washington, D.C. Many such quaint architectural structures flanked the tree-lined lane of Georgia Avenue Northwest, which were usually split up into apartments, but Fastia had bought the whole building.

His continuing work as a “security consultant” was lucrative and was enhanced by the many friends he’d made along the way. In a business rife with distrust at best and betrayals at worst, even Dan Morgan, who could make enemies the way other people make coffee, could repeatedly attest to Fastia’s remarkable ability to satisfy even the most devious client. Thankfully Morgan wasn’t one of them. He was honored to call Kadir a friend and a valued rajul hakim—wise man.

“Are you sure you do not wish to partake, Cobra?” Fastia asked as he offered Morgan a saliva-slick mouthpiece at the end of a long curling tube. Between them on the Persian carpet sat a round silver tray holding a large Middle Eastern waterpipe, commonly called a nargila. There was also a brass finjan and two ceramic cups steaming with black Turkish coffee. Morgan waved his hand.

“Shukran,” he said. “Between your cigars and that thing, I’m going to need a new lung.”

Fastia chuckled. “As you wish.” He drew on the tube. The water in the nargila bubbled, the coals at the top glowed red, and twin columns of blue smoke streamed from his wide nostrils. He was wearing a long-sleeved white chemise, no collar, over a pair of gray trousers and house sandals. With his trim white beard against his olive skin, he always looked like he’d just walked out of the desert.

Morgan reached for one of the ceramic cups, sipped the muddy brew, and sat back again, rubbing his knee. “One of these days you’re going to live in an elevator building, Kadir,” he said.

“Never,” Fastia said. “All these stairs discourage unwanted guests.”

In the past they’d always conferred in Fastia’s office a floor below, but whenever the soft-spoken Libyan wanted absolute privacy, this traditionally decorated space was his bastion. It was Levantine Bedouin, with not a stick of furniture; only pillows arranged along the walls. Fastia adored his wife and daughter, but this was off-limits even to them.

The rajul hakim leaned back with a knowing smile as his eyes grew serious and piercing. “So,” he said. “You are at a dead-end, yes?”

“Yes,” Morgan admitted.

“As am I, Cobra,” Fastia said. He always called Morgan by his CIA code name, as he had since meeting him in the Libyan desert many years before. Together with Peter Conley they had come within a hair’s breadth of assassinating Muammar Gaddafi, but the hit had been called off by Morgan’s handlers at the last second.

Gaddafi’s beasts had murdered Fastia’s first wife and family, causing him to turn against the dictator, and the mission’s failure