5 of 5 stars
I want more of Ex-CIA agent
Steve Dane and his lady love, ex-FSB (formerly KGB) agent Nina Talikova!!!!
Steve and Nina are freelancing agents these days working hard to foil as many
bad guy plots as they can. Their latest target is The Duchess who wants to buy
a portable nuclear weapon and Steve is determined to bring her down. There's a
major problem when Steve discovers his ex-30-30 partner, Sean McFadden is her
#2 man. Steve has a mission to accomplish and he can't allow any sentiments for
former friends to get in the way.
The action is non-stop as Steve and Nina
track The Duchess across Europe, Mexico and the United States. The prose is
clipped and to the point, keeping the plot moving forward at a fast pace. Mr.
Drake knows his weapons and it enhances the storyline without overpowering it.
I look forward to reading more from this author.
I received a copy of this book from the
publisher and was not obligated to leave a review.
Blurb:
Lovers. Spies. Killers.
Steve Dane should never have set foot in Italy. After
witnessing a young woman's kidnapping, the former agent turned rogue mercenary
is hired to get her back by the girl's father and soon finds himself drawn in
to the decades-old vendetta behind the crime.
Racing against time as her life hangs in the balance, Steve battles the mafia
who want him dead and the police and international agents who want him out of
the way. With the help of his lover, former Russian spy Nina Talikova, he
rushes down a path that leads into an ever-more complex world of deception
ruled by a powerful and mysterious woman known as The Duchess.
Life, it seems, is getting cheaper by the minute. And The Duchess has put a
price on the ultimate weapon that will make it all but worthless. Only Steve
and Nina have the power to stop a clock that is ticking away the life of the
missing girl--and the world.
Amazon buy
link:
Excerpt:
“Will
you shoot him already?”
Steve Dane laughed and
shifted in the bed. The accordion down the hall continued blaring. Nina rolled
away from him and pulled the covers over her.
Male and female laughter
mingled with the noise. The party had been going on since midnight.
“Laugh all you want,” she
said. “You won’t get any of my goodies until that man is dead.” Her words were
dusted with a soft Russian accent.
Dane said, “Other than
the noise, it’s a nice hotel, right?”
“It is not. I get to pick
next time.”
“This is one of the
nicest hotels in Italy. This is what you wanted.”
“Next time we’ll go to
Geneva.”
The downstairs staff had
acknowledged receiving many complaints, but they were powerless to help. The
accordion player was a pop star, whose name Dane had forgotten, who had lots
and lots of money that he spent at the hotel and surrounding establishments,
and they were not going to disturb him lest he start breaking things and decide
to spend his lots and lots of money elsewhere.
“It’s too late for polka,”
Dane had told them. “It’s the wrong century
for polka.”
The appeal had been
ignored. This was no way to start a vacation.
Dane drifted off to sleep
and started to snore. He jerked awake for a moment when Nina punched him in the
arm.
Dane
rose before Nina, who lay on her stomach,
arm dangling over the side of the bed. Her snoring sounded like a chain saw
stuck in a log. After a hot shower, he scraped whiskers off his face and pulled
from the closet a set of clothes he’d had the hotel dry-clean and press the day
before.
The long-sleeved Sedona
Silk shirt with pearl buttons fit perfectly, covering the warped and puckered
flesh on his right arm. Years ago, Dane had been in a helicopter crash while on
a CIA mission in Central America. The ruptured fuel tanks splashed gasoline
onto Dane’s clothes and the clothes of a friend trapped in the wreckage. Dane
pulled his friend out. The chopper exploded, and they went up like Roman
candles. Dane hit the dirt and rolled back and forth like a madman and put the
fire out. He’d been lucky. Only his right arm, part of his side and chest, and
a portion of his right leg had been affected. His friend Len Lukavina had not
been so lucky.
To Dane the scars had
become a symbol with its own motto: “You’ve survived the worst. Everything else
is easy.”
But the scars also
symbolized a darker truth: “You are not invincible.”
After cutting loose from
the CIA, Dane had formed a mercenary unit called the 30-30 Battalion. A
skirmish in South Africa netted him several million dollars’ worth of diamonds,
and he disbanded the unit. It was time to fight the battles he wanted, to bring
a fight to the predators who sought to exploit the defenseless who had nobody
to turn to. Idealistic, yes. He could afford to be idealistic. And he could
afford the luxurious lifestyle that came with such independence.
Plenty of action, plenty
of rough spots, and he’d always come out on top. Then he almost died in a fire.
And then came a betrayal so close to home that he turned his back on that home
and took off for the wild pastures of the world.
