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“Pierce.” Hope’s grim voice came over his earbuds. “The Sommers operators are racing down the stairwell. All together. They’ve located Riley. I don’t know how.”
Fuck!
There were bollards on the access road. He couldn’t get closer to the building. Riley was running across an open space. Right now, it looked as big as a football field and she was totally exposed. If they were willing to shoot, they had her. Though they couldn’t catch her. She had a head start and few men could run as fast as she could.
Special Forces operators were trained to run for long distances, but they weren’t especially fast. Riley wasfast.
“They’re at the outside door,” Hope said.
Riley was only halfway across the square.
Pierce was going to reach the square on the driver’s side. Riley would have to round the car to get to the passenger side. Across the square, the big door opened and three men rushed out. Two started running after Riley, one assumed a gunman’s stance, legs braced, left hand holding the right hand. With a Glock 19 in it.
Pierce stood on the brakes and turned the steering wheel, doing a 180, and reached across to open the door. He’d calculated it perfectly, the car coming to a stop, wheels smoking, exactly where Riley reached him.
She dove in and he held out his right hand with his Glock 22 and shot right over her head. The man who was shooting spun around so fast Pierce could see drops of blood floating in the air. Pierce shot again, twice, hitting the concrete right in front of the feet of the two men chasing Riley. Concrete chips shot up.
He pulled Riley’s door closed, just in time to hear twopocks!as two bullets hit the armored door. Two seconds more and those bullets would have hit Riley.
Pierce did a 180 again. In the rear-view window he could see the two operators standing in the road, lowering their guns. Those Glocks weren’t going to penetrate an armored vehicle.
Riley was curled in the passenger seat.
“Riley.”
“Yes?” The face she turned up to his was sheet white.
“Fasten your seat belt.”
“What?” She blinked slowly.
“Fasten your seat belt.” He put command into his voice. “Now.”
She scrabbled, and when he heard the click of the belt engaging, he hit the accelerator.
3
During the Kosovo War, fighter jets would take off from Whiteman AFB, fly to Kosovo, drop their bombs and fly back, without ever landing. Pilots flew for thirty hours or more. They flew perfectly, bombed perfectly, landed perfectly after a day and a half of flying. They were drugged to the gills, of course, mainly on amphetamines.
Adrian Sommers often thought of them. He’d just joined the Navy and was awed at the thought of being able to fight, tirelessly, for long periods. He happened to be at Whiteman AFB on TDY when one of the pilots flew in, landed as sweetly as a baby’s bottom.
Someone said the pilot had been flying for thirty-five hours, and Sommers waited to see him get out of the cockpit, expecting to see a man on his last legs, drawn and exhausted. Instead, the pilot hopped down, bright-eyed and energetic, hair wet with the sweat of wearing a helmet for so many hours, but otherwise looking great. He slapped the back of one of the mechanics and with a little group of airmen went off to have a beer.
Sommers asked one of the airmen at the hangar what kind of man could fly a fighter jet for so long and look so good at the end of it, and the man winked and said, “St. Dextroamphetamine. Works every time.”
Ever since, Sommers had been obsessed with performance-enhancing drugs. He left the military as early as he could. No money to be made in the military. Even if you made it to the top, kissing asses all the way up, the average salary was 100k a year.
Peanuts.
As soon as he could, he got out and founded a security company. He had perfect operators, too. Men who had tried out to become Navy SEALs but had to ring the bell and quit. Anyone who made it to Hell Week was pretty good. Who the fuck cared if they made it all the way? If they did make it all the way, they stayed until they retired, and were no use to Sommers. And SEALs charged top dollar.
No, the ones who almost made it, who were strong and fast and smart, under thirty—that was a Sommers operator. They were grateful, too, when he recruited them, at double the salary they’d been making. And most of them weren’t too picky about following the rules.
He operated mainly abroad. There were damn few rules he had to follow, no stupid rules of engagement, as long as he got results.
He also made sure his men got whatever they needed to perform. Amphetamines, methylphenidates, creatine, anabolic steroids, even cocaine. Their performance doubled.
The money rolled in.
