1 Chapter 1

2013

Charging through a street market in Al Mayadin, Syria, trying to lose a tail, Michael Rousseau and Maggie Degginger ducked through a stall and out the back into an alley. The sun was setting and some of the vendors were packing up.

“Go left,” Mike snapped.

Maggie veered sharply and headed down an even narrower passage, hand in the pocket of her pants gripping the 9mm that was there. “Are they still following?”

“Not sure. Don’t stop.”

She hurried onward. Either they would lose the people following them or they were going to have to choose a place to fight it out. There was one extra clip in the opposite pocket. She thought Mike might have two. With every new step, her eyes scanned for a defensible position. It needed to be someplace with cover and preferably with a brick or cement wall that they could put at their back.

This whole fucking op had been a litany of bad luck and worse choices. In the year that she’d been working overseas for the Department of Homeland Security, this was the worst planned mission. Her usual handler, Zach, had taken a couple of months off to spend with his wife after the birth of their first child. Lord…if ever she needed good backup. This Naval Intelligence guy they’d sent her seemed competent but she barely knew him. He was a last minute replacement when one of her more familiar colleagues had gotten critically injured in a car accident.

She saw a flight of stairs ahead of her and she realized she’d been here before. The roof of the building featured several half walls and the far side was no more than four feet from the next building. It could be jumped in a pinch. She charged up the steps and wove her way toward the west corner. Mike was hot on her heels.

“Where the hell are we going?” he demanded.

“There.” She snaked around a clothesline and a barrel that contained some kind of a small tree. Ducking down behind the cover of the half wall, she took the time to check and see exactly how many bullets were left in her current clip. Five.

“Why are we stopping?” Mike asked.

“Best option. Either they’re still following and we can take them out when they come up the stairs, or we’re in the clear.”

Mike gave her a pointed look then a curt nod.

Huzzah, a guy who actually believed she knew what the hell she was doing. Maybe she should search the sky for flying pigs? Shit, that sounded like footsteps on the stairs. She peeped up over the edge of wall, 9mm in her hand.

Several seconds ticked by. The man who had been following them came into view. Maggie squinted in the fading light. It looked like the dude had a IWI Tavor assault rifle. Well, shit again. Anybody with that level of firepower was not likely to want to play nice. He was looking around, obviously not sure where his quarry had gone. She exchanged a glance with Mike and mimed taking a shot. He nodded.

She looked down the sights and squeezed off a pair of shots. Her target staggered back against the stairwell wall but didn’t fall. He flailed slightly and gasped, then yanked up his rifle into position and sprayed a volley of rounds in the general direction of where Mike and Maggie were hiding.

“Fuck! I think he’s got body armor!” Mike raised up on one knee and put a shot through the man’s eye.

That man fell back limply and slid down the wall leaving a smear of blood, but not before his buddy took his place and shot toward Maggie and Mike. Maggie emptied her 9mm at him and then hastily jammed the fresh clip in. Taking a deep breath, she rolled away from cover and fired three shots at the second man. He went down.

“That was damn risky,” said Mike.

“Yeah, whatever. This way.” Maggie scrambled to her feet and took off in the direction of the far side of the roof, knowing exactly where she wanted to jump across. Not for the first time, she was glad she was fairly tall and had the long legs to go with it. Mike followed.

Maggie jumped the four-foot gap between the buildings, barely glancing down at the multi-story drop. Swiftly she wove her way across the second rooftop, avoiding several clotheslines and antennas. There was an access ladder on the far side and she went down.

It took another fifteen minutes to get back to the tiny efficiency apartment she was using. It would have taken only ten, but she detoured several times to double check that they had lost the tail.