Bodyguard Lockdown - By Donna Young Page 0,1

look out, except for a small slit facing the driver’s cab. Regulation wouldn’t have permitted him to anyway. He needed both eyes on his prisoner.

Fifteen minutes later, the truck stopped. Plane engines roared outside, vibrating the concrete beneath the vehicle’s tires.

“Sounds like I’m going quite a distance,” Trygg commented, then purposefully glanced at Tom’s watch. “Or maybe not anywhere at all.”

Without warning, gunfire burst from outside on the tarmac. Bullets ripped through the front windshield. The driver’s head exploded, blood and gray matter spattered the slit window.

“Damn it!” Tom reached for his side arm. “That’s bulletproof glass.”

“New kind of ammunition,” Trygg explained, his tone deceptively pleasant. “My men have had access to it for a couple months now.”

“Your men—”

“Tom.”

Tom’s head snapped around. Harold leveled his pistol at Tom’s chest. “You stupid son of a bitch!”

Red blotches mottled Hal’s face. From anger or embarrassment, Tom couldn’t be sure. But the man’s hand remained steady, his jaw tight. “Money talks,” Hal sneered.

“This isn’t personal, Sergeant,” Trygg commented, the blue of his eyes arctic, the pupils dilated and dark with malevolence. “You are in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

A chilling calm rippled through Tom. So be it.

“You’ll never live to see any payoff, Hal,” Tom said, while his hand slipped slowly to his hip. “That’s why Trygg offered the job to you. You’re too stupid to realize it.”

“But you weren’t, Sergeant Levi. Which is why we drugged you a bit last night. Couldn’t have you thinking with a clear head this morning, now could we?” Trygg acknowledged.

“How did you know I’d be assigned?”

When the general smirked, Tom swore. Inside job. High up.

Suddenly angry, Tom grabbed for his pistol. But his fingers barely touched the metal grip when Harold fired.

“Who’s stupid now?” Hal watched his friend fall to the floor, then retrieved the shackle keys from his belt.

Hal unlocked the chains and Trygg rubbed his wrists. It was a shame really, Trygg thought, studying Tom’s body on the floor. He could have used someone like Sergeant Levi in his unit. Smart. Talented. Just too much patriotic idealism for Trygg’s plans.

“Ready, General?”

Nothing like the poor excuse for a soldier standing in front of him.

“Not quite yet, Sergeant.” Trygg grabbed Tom’s pistol, pointed and pulled the trigger three times.

Hal slumped back against the wall, a trail of blood gushing from his throat as he struggled for breath. Trygg shrugged. “Unfortunately for you, Sergeant Levi was right.”

A fist pounded the truck’s side. “All clear, General?”

“Yes, Colonel. Situation is controlled.” Trygg dropped the pistol, stepped over the two dead bodies and stood toward the front of the truck.

“Clear!”

The two doors exploded, knocking Trygg slightly off his feet. His hand shot out, found the wall, and he steadied himself.

Then the acid edge of gunpowder sliced through the air, burned his nostrils. He stepped toward the door. The frigid morning air slapped at him.

“Smell that, Jim?” He took a deep breath, looked at the man waiting at the step of the truck. “Know what that is?”

“No, sir,” Colonel Jim Rayo answered honestly. He was a man of average height, with a barrel chest and a thick trunk that left little room for more than a squat neck under hard, weather-lined features and keen brown eyes.

Trygg jumped to the ground and slapped his friend on the shoulder. “That is the scent of freedom.”

“We’re not safe yet, General.” Rayo’s mouth thinned into a grim line, then nodded to a tan sedan a few yards away. “I have a plane waiting for us at a private airstrip nearby. We should be in Taer by tonight.”

“And the good doctor? Has she been detained?”

“Yes, sir.” Rayo signaled the other men into their cars and led the general to his ride. “The men seized Doctor Sandra Haddad an hour ago.”

“And?” Trygg asked, pausing at the car.

“You were right.” Jim opened the passenger door. “She put up one hell of a fight.”

“That’s promising,” Trygg replied. “After five years of waiting, I’d hate to think she’d make this easy for me.”

Chapter Two

The storm hit the midnight air, a blistering squall of dust and grit that clogged lungs, cut into eyes and covered the empty city streets of Taer in desert sand.

Booker stepped into a nearby alley, ignoring the bite of the wind, the slap of grit against his face. Rage and impatience—and just enough uneasiness—kept his footsteps silent, his senses alert, his knife in his fist.

He was a tall man, long in the leg, lean in the hips, but broad in the shoulder and chest. He