Denver, Colorado August 21 5:30 a.m.
Ian Wallace pressed his back into the wall and drew his semiautomatic pistol. The visor of his helmet was pulled low. Black pants. Black shirt. Black Kevlar vest. He blended into the darkness like a shadow.
“Ready,” he said, his voice pitched low. His helmet mic transmitted his command to his team of ten, waiting behind him. His words also went to a van, parked three blocks away, that served as a mobile headquarters.
There was a singular objective with the raid—arrest the three drug dealers, dubbed Comrades One, Two and Three. Yet he was far more interested in what the trio of Comrades knew about Nikolai Mateev, the godfather of Russian organized crime.
For Ian, the hunt for Nikolai Mateev was more than a job, it was his life’s work. It covered his skin, raced through his veins and filled his lungs. He hadn’t felt this soul-deep yearning in years. And the memory of the last time stung deeply. Not for the first time, he found the image of Petra Sloane stealing into his mind at the most inconvenient moment.
He shook his head to clear it, determined to free himself of all thoughts of her. Past was past. They were over. The most important bust of his career—of his life—was about to go down, and he had to remain focused. Eternity passed in the span of a single heartbeat.
“Go! Go! Go!” he said out loud.
Two agents rushed forward, swinging a battering ram, breaking the lock and knocking the door off its hinges. Ian lobbed a flash-bang grenade into the room. Turning away, he ducked down. Light and sound exploded as tendrils of smoke wafted over him.
Comrade Three lay on the floor. A seam had been sliced into his forehead and it filled with bright red blood. Flex-cuffs were immediately slipped around the man’s wrists, and two team members remained as guards. The rest fanned out. Three went upstairs. Ian, with the remaining three, searched the ground floor.
Voices drew Ian’s attention. He sprinted down a short hallway to the rear of the house. He entered the kitchen in time to see Comrade One slip through the back door and into the predawn mist. Comrade Two rushed after him.
“You aren’t going anywhere.” Grabbing him by the shoulder, Ian gave a hard pull, throwing the man to the floor. Instantly, three guns were pointed at his head. The Russian lifted his hands in surrender.
Pulse and breath resonating inside his helmet, Ian ran out the back door in time to watch Comrade One scuttle over the fence. He stopped the chase, his eyes drawn to the ground. The final member of the team writhed in pain, a knife protruding from his thigh.
Ian slid his gun into a holster at his hip as he dropped to the ground and began to apply pressure to the wound.
“What happened?” he asked, his attention torn between his injured teammate and the escaped Russian gangster.
The other man gritted his teeth. “It was Comrade One. I didn’t see the knife and he stabbed me when I tried to apprehend him. I’m sorry, man. I screwed up.”
It was a serious mistake, for certain. Yet there was nothing to be gained with second-guesses.
“We’ll get you patched up,” said Ian. Then into his mic, “Man down. I need backup, stat.”
Roman DeMarco, an RMJ employee with combat experience, slid in next to the downed man. He began to administer rudimentary first aid. “I’ve got this,” he said. “Go.”
Ian was already consumed with the need to capture Comrade One. He took off at a sprint and vaulted over the wooden fence.
He landed in a neighboring yard. It was empty and eerily quiet. Ian scanned his surroundings. Nothing. Yet he refused to give up so easily.
With a curse, he jumped over the next fence, dashed through the yard and jumped over the next two fences after that. Landing on a sidewalk, he spun toward the sounds of screeching tires, as a set of headlights raced up the street. The car swerved. The undercarriage hit the curb as the bumper headed straight for him.
Without time to think, Ian propelled