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

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.

The explosion rocked the ground and sent a burst of water thirty feet into the air.

Morgan turned over onto his back and watched as water rained down and the waves resulting from the burst lapped at the shore.

“Zero,” Bishop said drily.

“Fellas,” Shepard said over the comm, “get moving. Someone’s going to come check this out. Pickup spot, sixty seconds.”

Morgan and Lily ran side by side in the darkness, the others close behind.

She was safe. But Lukacs was gone...again.

Chapter Five

Alex Morgan forced a yawn to clear her ears from the pressure buildup in the cabin of the Dassault Falcon 2000.

Flying in a private jet was one of countless new experiences that had become commonplace after she’d joined Zeta—along with handling deadly weapons and being in frequent danger. Her father was as secretive as anyone about the organization itself, but some things were becoming clear. The first was maybe that her father was secretive because he knew little more than she did.

The internal structure was easy enough. Diana Bloch, implacable and professional to a fault, was their chief executive director. Her right-hand man was Paul Kirby, director of operations. He always had an expression on his face like he smelled something unpleasant, and she sometimes endured long rants from her father about what a spineless weasel he was. For a professional special ops agent, Dad was surprisingly invested in his rants.

Zeta also had their brain trust. Lincoln Shepard was their IT guy—the now somewhat standard kind of child genius who had gotten into hot water by hacking into classified intelligence databases like it was some sort of video game. Bloch got him out in exchange for his service.

Karen O’Neal, their numbers analyst, was the same deal, except with her it was some kind of insider trading thing. Though Karen was probably Alex’s closest friend in Zeta after her father, she’d never been too forthcoming about those details. Alex didn’t blame her, press her, or really even want to know.

Karen and Shepard were dating, kind of. They thought they were being sneaky, but it’d been going on for more than a year now, so it was fairly inevitable that everyone would catch on. But no one said anything. Alex figured everyone enjoyed the sneaking around part—Zeta being a nest of spies and all.

The tactical team was the muscle, whenever it was needed. They were physically quick—in and out, whenever they needed to move in with overwhelming force. They were also an insular group, so Alex didn’t know them all that well, despite nominally being a part of them.

Once they spread out into the Dassault, the team had gone into decompression mode. Bishop, their nominal leader—a tall black man with a shaved head and bulging muscles under his white T-shirt—had raided the minibar and was in one of the chairs toward the back. He was alongside Diesel, their resident sniper, laughing about something they’d probably be all too eager to tell her about if she asked.

Alex had a special admiration for Spartan, the only woman in tactical. Short blond hair, muscled, and tattooed, she wasn’t the kind of woman her father might consider beautiful, but he still lived in the Stone Age. Spartan, who Alex thought was magnificent, was lying back in a seat next to Bishop, downing a beer.

That left “the operatives,” like her. Well, not like her—she was as green as they came. But that was her role.

She liked to