PROLOGUE
Adam Lynch ducked as another bullet whizzed by his head. Didn’t these assholes know he had a plane to catch?
BLAM!
Nope, they obviously didn’t care. Lynch crouched low and bolted toward a pile of concrete and crumbling tile. He was at the site of a nineteenth-century school building in what had once been a thriving factory town in these hills. Now, however, the factory, shops, homes, and schools were rubble, relics of a bygone era.
Which he would be, too, if he didn’t find a way out of here, Lynch thought. If he counted correctly, there were four men trying to kill him. He leaned over and found an opening between chunks of concrete and took aim with his automatic.
BLAM! The concrete next to his head exploded before he could squeeze off his shot. He’d been spotted! Lynch rolled away and scrambled toward the remains of a gardening shed.
He stopped to listen.
Three sets of footsteps were charging toward his old location.
But where in the hell was the fourth?
More footsteps, behind him.
He spun around and threw his knife. Contact! Right in the chest. His would-be killer fell less than fifteen feet away.
Close one.He was probably luckier than he should have been.Can’t depend on that kind of luck again.
This was supposed to be a simple mission, he thought ruefully. Fly to the U.K., set up the target, then get the hell out of Dodge.
No such luck.
The simplest jobs were always the ones that could get you killed, his mentor had often told him. The guy was so right; after a lifetime of dangerous missions all over the world, he’d been killed by a dumb, dirty cop in rural Mississippi.
Lynch shook his head. He wasn’t going down. Not here, not today. He retrieved his knife from the man’s body and pressed himself against the old gardening shed.
BLAM-BLAM-BLAM! Bullets riddled the backside of the shed, penetrating the tin walls all around him. Except one, which skimmed his back and went through his upper arm.
Dammit! Lynch grabbed his wounded left arm and rolled several feet toward a rusty VW bus. Which, he realized, probably wouldn’t stop bullets any more than the shed.
He stopped and listened. All the movement was still on the other side of the shed. But they were coming his way.
He needed to play offense, not defense.
His sleeve was sopping with blood. Shit. The wound was more serious than he thought. It hurt like hell, and he was getting lightheaded.
Fight through it. He’d been through worse.
“Mr. Lynch . . .” It was a man’s voice speaking in an Eastern European accent. “We don’t want to kill you.”
Sure they didn’t.
He continued. “We just need some information.”
He knew exactly what they wanted, and he also knew that a bullet to his brain would quickly follow. No dice.
Was he trying to elicit a response from him so they could zero in on his location?
No, he realized. The guy was trying to distract him, to keep him from hearing the two other men surely heading his way.
“What do you say, Mr. Lynch? Do we have a deal?”
Lynch peered underneath the van and surveyed the broken patio beyond. No sign of his pursuers, but there was something he couldn’t immediately identify . . .
