The Defiant Hero Read Free Page B

her gun at the men over by the sinks. First things first, then she’d deal with . . . other issues. “Get over with the others. Move it, let’s go!”

    They moved.

    The K-stani embassy men’s room was much larger—at least five times more so—than the women’s room. The walls were covered with blue tile, the floor a paler shade. Urinals lined one wall, the stalls were across from the sinks. There were no windows and only that one door.

    It was the perfect location for holding off a siege.

    “Keep your hands high.” Meg quickly checked to make sure there was no one else in the room, no one hidden in one of the stalls.

    “Do you mind if I—”

    “Yes.” She cut the heavy man off. “Keep your hands up.”

    She wanted to apologize. So sorry for the humiliation but I can’t let you lower your hands, not even for that. . . . But she knew she couldn’t risk coming across as weak. She had to keep them believing that she knew how to use this gun, that she would use this gun if they threatened her.

    And she couldn’t let them lower their hands. Not if she wanted to stay alive.

    Sure, the ambassador’s staff weren’t supposed to carry weapons in the embassy. But there was also a rule stating that she wasn’t supposed to have a gun, either. And here she was. Fully armed and dangerous.

    “Do you honestly think you can take the Kazbekistani ambassador hostage inside his own embassy?” the heavy man asked. He was sweating, and Meg realized that he didn’t fear a hostage situation. He was afraid she had come here on a suicide mission, to gun them all down. Such were the ways of the violent world from which he’d come.

    Razeen was silent, just watching her, his dark gaze impossible to read, but another man spoke up. “Perhaps we could negotiate. If you would tell us what it is that you want . . . ?”

    “I want silence,” Meg told them sharply. “I want your hands in the air. I want you—” She pointed with her gun at the heavyset man in all his unzipped glory. “—to take a message to both your government and mine. I want all guards and police to stay far away, I want this entire floor cleared. If someone so much as touches this door, I’ll start shooting. You make sure they understand that—they breathe funny on the door, and these men are dead.”

    He nodded his understanding, his double chins wobbling.

    “Tell them,” Meg continued, “that I have a list of demands, but the only person I’ll consider negotiating with is Ensign John Nilsson of the U.S. Navy SEALs. Tell them to find him and bring him here, and then I’ll talk.”

    Please God, let John be somewhere close by . . .

    “Do you understand?” she asked.

    He nodded. “John Nilsson. U.S. Navy.”

    “He’s a SEAL. Make sure you tell them that.”

    “A SEAL,” he repeated obediently, his eyes longingly on the door.

    “Go.”

    Hands still high, the heavyset man took his various exposed parts and lunged for the door.

    And Meg sat down, her back to the tile wall, her gun on her remaining hostages.

    Waiting for John Nilsson to come and save the day.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Two

    LIEUTENANT JUNIOR GRADE John Nilsson was on a mission. Under his leadership, a six-man team of SEALs had been ordered to break into an Iraqi compound and rescue Captain Andy Chang, a downed American fighter pilot.

    Getting inside would be easy. It was getting back out after their presence had been detected and an alarm had been raised that was going to be the hard part.

    Nils’s original plan had been to insert and extract without waking even the lightest sleeping Iraqi soldier. But—what a surprise—there were ten times as many soldiers in this compound as intel reports had indicated, and what was described as a sleepy little ill-equipped and poorly manned outpost was in truth a brightly lit, teeming center of activity, even at 0300.

    Going in after that pilot with only a six-man