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He wasn’t going to make it.

Rapp was applying smooth pressure to the trigger when his shot was interrupted.

Again.

This time by a scream.

“Don’t shoot!” Greta said. “Mitch, don’t shoot!”

Rapp looked over the pistol’s sights to see Greta stretched the length of the front windshield. “They are bodyguards! My grandfather’s bodyguards!”

Once Rapp decided to kill someone, very few people could change his mind.

Greta was an exception.

So was her grandfather.

CHAPTER 8

DAUGAVPILS, LATVIA

ANinvisible fist smashed into Joe’s back and hurled him against the wall.

Through more luck than skill, he interposed his forearm between his skull and the exposed brick, but the collision still left him seeing stars. Joe groaned and tried to make sense of what had happened. His ears rang and his eyes burned from the sudden grit in the air. For a long moment he couldn’t seem to breathe.

Then his quivering lungs began to function.

He inhaled, drawing much-needed oxygen into his chest, and then promptly coughed it back out. The air tasted of soot and smoke.

“David?” Joe croaked.

His partner lay on the dirty floor in a crumpled heap, blood trickling from the back of his head. Joe knelt by the newbie operator’s side, reaching for his neck to check for a pulse. The moment his fingers brushed David’s skin, his teammate reacted.

“Blyat,” David growled as he came awake swinging.

“Easy, tough guy,” Joe said, parrying the strike. “It’s just me.”

David hadn’t been able to put much force behind the blow, but Joeclamped his teammate’s arms to his sides anyway. The punch stung, but he didn’t mind. The guy had just been knocked unconscious and he came to cursing in Russian and throwing a right hook.

He definitely had a future in the Unit.

“What happened?” David said. His words were slurred and his voice raspy, but his eyes were focused.

Progress.

“Great question,” Joe said. “Can you stand?”

David closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Think so. Why aren’t we dead?”

Another great question.

“Our bomb didn’t explode,” Joe said, helping his teammate to his feet, “so I’m guessing the bomber was an overachiever. Something detonated in the other room. The brick wall and thick wooden door must have attenuated the blast’s shock wave and prevented the box of fun in the cupboard from sympathetically detonating.”

“My head doesn’t feel like anything got attenuated,” David said.

“The door blew open and brained you,” Joe said. “You’re bleeding, but the cut looks superficial. Come on, we gotta get moving.”

As if to emphasize Joe’s statement, a resoundingsnapechoed from beyond the door followed by an equally ominousthunkas something heavy and once solid collapsed. The pub occupied the basement floor of a multistory building. There was bound to be structural damage after a blast of that magnitude.