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

“Linc!” she grunted. “For God’s sake!” But she heard nothing in her ear except a short-circuit crackle.

She took a hard right turn, and dove through the slicing green blades—unable to see anything but more and more of them. The shouts behind, and now to her right, were growing—the Koreans already smashing their way back through the bamboo into the grass.

Flashlight beams flicked through the blades. She heard Hyo yelling and felt the boots of his men pounding closer—like the hooves of frothing steeds hunting a fox.

The elephant grass ended, and Lily stumbled out into a wide-open space. Her heart fell into her guts. It was an enormous, circular meadow of ankle-high lichen. She kept running with everything she had left, but she was totally exposed. She wept hopelessly, turned her head, and glanced back.

Hyo and his men had entered the meadow. There were at least ten of them. They had stopped moving—arrayed in a line, their rifles raised like a firing squad. She turned back around and kept on, but her sprint had turned into a ragged jog, and she heard his voice.

“Miss Stone, you are finished,” he called out. “You will stop right now, or I will order my men to fire.”

“Then bloody well do it, you filthy scum!” she screamed over her shoulder.

She could almost hear the pleasure in his voice. “As you wish.”

Something thundered in front of her from the far side of the meadow. A powerful wind rippled through the lichen, and a pair of bright beams stabbed down from the black heavens.

Lily stopped running in wide-eyed shock and stared at a huge, bulbous shadow looming behind the lights. The cell phone fell from her hand as she stood there, gasping and drooling, as a Chinese Army Changhe Z-8 helicopter thundered into the meadow.

The engine sounds spooled down to a whine, and the blades stopped turning. A side door opened, a short stairway flipped down, and a man in uniform appeared. As if it were just a holiday jaunt, he started strolling toward her.

Lily stood there staring like a cornered rat, and as the man emerged into the aircraft lights, she saw that it was General Deng Tao Kung.

“Taeryeong Hyo,” he called to her captor and torturer. His tone was an admonishing, condescending rumble, and she couldn’t understand what he said next in Chinese. “You have taken undue advantage of my country’s hospitality and treated our guest poorly.” He looked at her with pity, put his fists to his hips, and switched to English.

“My apologies, Miss Stone,” he said. “Korean dogs have no manners.” He motioned toward the open door of the helicopter. “If you please.”

Lily fainted.

Chapter Thirty-One

Jenny Morgan didn’t know exactly what a female spy was supposed to look like, but she was doing her best.

She’d seen plenty of pictures of Valery Plame, the CIA’s modern Mata Hari, whose cover had been blown during the Bush years, so those exotic images served as a model. She didn’t own a trench coat, so she’d picked one up at Filene’s in Chestnut Hill—a light tan number with big buttons, a wide belt she could tie off instead of using the buckle, and a short, sexy hem.

She’d also bought a light purple scarf, tortoise-shell sunglasses, and a lizard brooch with a nice long pin. She didn’t have a weapon, but that long silver pike clutched in her fist would do, at least for a getaway.

She’d chosen the rendezvous point herself: the Boston National Historical Park down by the harbor. It was one of Dan’s favorite places to chill, take in the salt air, enjoy a fat “gutter puppy,” his slang for a vendor hotdog, and watch the seagulls wheeling in the sun.

But most of all he loved “Old Ironsides”—the USS Constitution, that beautiful four-masted frigate that seemed to always remind him of why his country came first before anything else. One of their very first dates had been a tour of the ship. Maybe she should have known right there and then.

Now she sat on a wooden slat bench just in front of the museum, with the fading sun behind her, the evening breeze rustling the water, and the last of the day’s tourists heading for homes and hotels. She looked at the enormous old vessel tipping languidly in the wash—her slick black flanks and cannon ports, polished elm fittings, and towering white masts— and she felt a pang of jealousy. Where did she fit on Dan’s totem pole of admiration? Had she ever been at the top? Or just somewhere farther down, beneath fast cars, sailing vessels, the army, and the CIA? Was she no more than an afterthought? Or the tip of his spear that he’d never confess?

Well, maybe she was about to find out.

After breaking into his storage locker, she’d mulled over the whole thing for a couple of days, feeling a mixture of guilt, resentment, and excitement. It wasn’t her business to stick her nose into his, but it was way past unfair for him to keep her in the dark for so long. She’d looked at that message, and the telephone number she’d copied into her cell phone from his diary over and over again, wondering what would happen if she made the next move.

“Need to find me? Call the Civil War President.”

That morning, she’d made her decision.

Yes, I need to find you, and you need to find me. Otherwise, we’re both going to be finding a lawyer.

For some reason, she’d chosen to make the call outside of the house. Maybe she was getting paranoid, but that would be Dan’s fault too. She’d gone out into the backyard, where the rain had washed away her finger scars from the stone garden, and tapped out the numbers with a trembling finger.

“Hello?” A youngish–sounding man answered.

“Hello, Sir. I’m looking for Mr. Lincoln.”

“Yes, this is Lincoln. May I ask who this is?”

“This is Jennifer Morgan. My husband told me to call this number if I needed him.”

There was