The first bullet struck the man beside him.
The second shattered the windshield.
The third would have killed Daniel Cross if he hadn't already been reaching for the steering wheel.
The black Mercedes swerved across the rain-slick streets of Prague, clipped a parked delivery van, and slammed into a concrete barrier with enough force to turn the passenger-side window into a thousand glittering fragments.
For half a second, there was silence.
Then the driver began screaming.
Daniel grabbed him by the collar.
"Look at me."
The man was barely twenty-five. Blood poured between his fingers where he clutched his throat.
"Look at me, Tomas."
Tomas tried to speak.
Daniel leaned closer.
"The package," Tomas whispered.
"I have it."
"No." The young man's eyes widened. "The package isn't"
A burst of automatic gunfire ripped through the rear window.
Daniel dropped below the dashboard.
Tomas stopped moving.
For three seconds, Daniel listened.
Rain against metal.
Footsteps approaching.
Two men, perhaps three.
Professional spacing. No shouted orders. No hesitation.
Not street criminals.
A recovery team.
Daniel pulled the suppressed pistol from beneath his jacket and checked the magazine.
Six rounds.
He had six rounds, a dead driver, and approximately eight seconds before the men outside reached the car.
His earpiece crackled.
"Raven, this is Control. Status?"
Daniel looked at Tomas.
Then at the silver briefcase wedged beneath the passenger seat.
"Transport compromised. Asset deceased. Package secure."
A pause.
"Confirm asset deceased."
Daniel stared at the young man who had spent the last eleven months risking his life to get them the information.
"Confirmed."
"Proceed to extraction point Echo Seven. Arrival window twenty-three forty-five. Authentication phrase: The winter birds have flown."
Daniel checked his watch.
23:17.
Twenty-eight minutes.
"Control, hostile team has our route. Possible operational breach."
"Understood. Echo Seven remains secure."
Daniel glanced through the fractured windshield.
One gunman appeared beside the hood.
Daniel fired twice.
The man dropped.
Another silhouette moved behind the delivery van.
Daniel fired once through the shattered rear window, then kicked open the driver's door and rolled into the street.
A bullet tore through his coat.
He hit the pavement, fired twice more, and sprinted into the darkness.
Behind him, someone shouted in Russian.
"Don't kill him!"
Daniel froze for the smallest fraction of a second.
Not kill him?
He ducked around a corner as another shot struck the brickwork beside his head.
"He's carrying it!" the voice shouted. "We need him alive!"
Daniel ran harder.
He had been hunted before.
He had survived ambushes in Damascus, interrogation rooms in Belarus, and a six-day escape through the mountains of northern Afghanistan.
But there was something different about tonight.
The enemy knew his route.
They knew his vehicle.
They knew exactly what he was carrying.
And apparently, they had orders to take him alive.
His earpiece hissed.
"Raven, confirm you're moving."
Daniel slipped into a narrow alley.
"Moving."
"Echo Seven. Twenty-three forty-five. Do not deviate."
Daniel stopped.
Something about the voice bothered him.
Not the words.
The timing.
Control had responded to his report almost instantly. Too quickly for anyone to assess whether an extraction point remained secure after a possible breach.
He looked down at the silver briefcase.
Then he asked a question he had never asked in fourteen years of service.
"Control, who authorized this extraction?"
Silence.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Then the voice returned.
"Raven, you are not authorized to question extraction protocol."
Daniel slowly removed the earpiece.
He crushed it beneath his boot.
And somewhere across Prague, in a room filled with surveillance monitors, a man wearing a charcoal suit smiled.
"He's suspicious," the man said.
A woman beside him studied a live map.
"Does he know?"
"Not yet."
She looked at the red dot moving through the city.
"Then we still have time."
The man checked his watch.
"Send the second team."
"And if he refuses to reach the extraction point?"
The man looked at her.
"Then kill everyone he tries to contact."