LITMIR.BIZ

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inside. To the left of the front door was a large glassed-in office that looked like a reception area lined with institutional, Formica-topped desks. Several women sat at them. A little girl who looked about eight years old stood beside one, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

      Piper stepped inside. “Is this where I drop off a lunch a student has forgotten?”

      “Yes, ma’am. Just a minute.” The gray-haired woman who answered her went back to talking with the child. “Your mom says she’ll be here in ten minutes with your inhaler—” The woman broke off, staring at something behind Piper.

      A flurry of movement in the hallway outside caught Piper’s attention out the corner of her eye. Something—someone—adult-sized had just run past.

      Was there a problem?

      As she turned to take a better look, a man dressed all in black with a black ski mask over his face burst into the office. Piper flipped into combat mode in a millisecond, her senses going on high alert and adrenaline rushing to all her muscles.

      She noted several things at once. The weapon, held across the man’s body, was an AK-47 with an extended mag, and he handled it like he was familiar with it. He was a shade over six feet tall. Athletic in build. Moved fast and silently, rolling from heel to toe with each step. Like a Special Forces operator.

      “Everybody down!” he shouted.

      The three women at their desks started to scream, and the little girl awaiting the inhaler froze, staring up at the man in openmouthed terror, like a rabbit in front of a wolf.

      Stunned, Piper dropped to the floor with the other women. She was unarmed, alone and had no idea how many more men like this there were already inside the school. Terror and panic exploded in her gut in spite of all her Special Forces training.

      God. Not a school shooting. A worst-case scenario on all counts. Nonexpendables everywhere—children—completely unequipped to defend themselves from harm. Targets handily clustered together in classrooms. Limited egress points. Even more limited sight lines. Chaos guaranteed.

      Tragedy guaranteed.

      By force of will and outstanding training, she pushed back all the paralyzing feelings and focused on acting.

      Surreptitiously, she eased her cell phone out of her jeans pocket and dialed 9-1-1 by feel. She stuffed the phone under her hip lest the armed man brandishing the AK-47 hear the operator ask what the nature of her emergency was and kill her before she could answer.

      She eased her hip off the phone and shouted, “What do you want, barging into an elementary school with an automatic weapon like that?”

      “Quiet, or I’ll kill you!” the man shouted back. “Where’s Mrs. Black?”

      “She’s out sick today,” one of the other women quavered from the floor.

      Piper eased back on top of the phone, praying the emergency operator had gotten the idea and called for the SWAT team. And the FBI and the National Guard and whoever else could be called.

      Standoffs with kids caught in the middle were no picnic, but maybe when law enforcement got here, they could negotiate some sort of hostage release.

      She calculated her options at the speed of light. She could probably take out the lone armed man—she did have all the necessary unarmed-combat training and the element of surprise on her side.

      Question was, where were the other men she’d peripherally seen racing past, and how many of them were there? If she got the weapon away from this one, she could go hunting for the others...although hunting in a building full of children and teachers would be a dreadful environment for taking out bad guys. The odds of shooting an innocent bystander were far too high to risk.

      As those thoughts darted through her mind, the armed man did an odd thing. He strode over to the little girl, grabbed her by her upper arm, glanced around, then led her over to a tall wooden coat cabinet against the wall.

      He opened the door, pushed her inside and said low, “Stay in there until the police come for you and don’t make a sound until then.”

      Piper stared, so confused she momentarily forgot her terror. Did the intruder just save that little girl? Why on earth would an armed assailant do something like that?

      He shut the closet door just before two more men raced into the office, dressed like him and similarly armed. Terrorist the First nodded tersely at his buddies.

      What in the hell was this about? What did a bunch of men, attired and armed like bank robbers, want with a freaking elementary school?

      “Where is she?” one of the newcomers demanded in Farsi. Piper’s Farsi wasn’t fluent, but that was definitely what she’d heard. These guys were Iranian? What on earth did they want here?

      The terrorists commenced walking around the room, examining each of the women cowering on the floor. One screamed as an assailant grabbed her shoulder and lifted her up enough to see her face. These guys were looking for somebody? This was a hell of a violent and aggressive way of finding whoever they wanted.

      The terrorists reached Piper, and she stared fixedly at their combat boots. Steel toes, nylon uppers, flexible rubber soles, quick-don zippers. Special operators’ footwear.

      Was this some sort of exercise aimed at her? The Medusas did some wild stuff in the name of training, but surely they wouldn’t scare the hell out of a bunch of kids and teachers. Nah. This was the real deal.

      A hand grabbed her shoulder roughly and threw her over onto her back. She rolled with the shove, not resisting. Unfortunately, the roll exposed her cell phone, and one of them kicked it away from her with his foot. Reflexively, her hand went out to retrieve it, but she froze as she made eye contact with the kicker.

      Clear amber eyes stared down at her, the color of a fine cognac. They were hard eyes, but they didn’t contain the rage or fanaticism she’d expected.

      He glanced at her outstretched hand splayed on the floor and did a double take. She swore mentally. Clearly visible on her fourth finger was her West Point class ring. In her guise as a civilian historian, she told people it had been her father’s, but it was actually hers.

      The man’s eyes lit with recognition as he spied the chunky ring and its dark green central stone.

       Dammit.

      “Here she is!” he called out to the others in Farsi.

      What? These men were here for her? How on earth did they know who she was? Nobody knew about the Medusa Project. It had been resurrected from ashes less than a year ago, for crying out loud.

      Everyone had been led to believe the program was defunct and the military had abandoned the idea of training and equipping a team of female Special Forces operatives after the second Medusa team was wiped out in a mission gone terribly wrong.

      The other two masked men grabbed her by her arms and hauled her upright. Adrenaline roared through her body, and it took all the discipline she had not to lash out and fight for her life against these men. She was hopelessly outgunned, and three on one was not the kind of odds she wanted to take into a fistfight.

      She was a good hand-to-hand fighter, but she wasn’t invincible. Martial artists won against three attackers only in the movies. Carefully choreographed and scripted movies. Not real life. Not in an elementary school full of children.

      “You’re sure this is her?” one of the other men asked the terrorist who’d hidden the little girl.

      He stared at her indecisively. His gaze strayed to a telephone sitting on the desk beside her, to the exit door and then back to her face. He exhaled hard. Regret glinted in his stare. “Yes. That’s her.” His voice was a rough baritone and sounded stressed.

      Who in the hell did they think she was? Who were they?

      Her only play was to delay these guys as long as she could. Give the

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