Smith opened his eyes and squinted against the fluorescent lights. Randi’s face was hovering above him and he could feel the warmth of her hand in his.

“Good to have you back. I swear you’ve been nothing but trouble lately.”

“You get what you pay for,” he mumbled, trying to figure out where he was and how he’d gotten there. He remembered Randi coming to rescue him and the wheels falling off that operation pretty quickly. Then a car trunk and after that nothing.

“Jon? How are you feeling?”

A man’s voice. This time he was able to process it without too many skipped beats. He let his head loll to the left and saw Fred Klein standing there in his ever-present rumpled suit. His mouth was curled into a disapproving frown but Smith sensed it wasn’t aimed at him.

“I think…I think I’m okay.”

“My people had to do a little more work on your back and reinflate your lung again but they said the screws in your shoulder blade were fine and the broken ribs will heal on their own. Until they do, though, I’m told they’ll hurt like hell.”

Smith nodded weakly and turned back to Randi, who seemed genuinely worried. “Stop looking at me like that. It’s making me nervous. How did you get us out of the trunk?”

She released his hand and backed away, the expression of concern turning uncertain.

“I was having her followed,” Klein said when it became clear she wasn’t going to answer. “We set up an ambush, took out the men in the car, and then flew you here.”

Smith looked around him at the windowless hospital room. “Are we back in the States?”

“I’m afraid not. We had a doctor and equipment on the jet but you were having a lot of trouble breathing. We had to make an emergency landing in South Korea.”

“Seoul? What hospital are we at? I know the director of…”

He fell silent when Klein shook his head and walked to the door. Smith leaned forward as far as he could when the director of Covert-One opened it. The building beyond was nothing more than the rotting carcass of an abandoned warehouse. Rain fell through the collapsed roof, and the rusted top of a crane jutted from the floor twenty feet below. A dangerous-looking man with Eastern European features and an Israeli assault rifle glanced back at them and then returned his attention to the warehouse floor.

Klein quietly closed the door and took a seat next to a table, its only purpose seeming to be to hold an enormous flower arrangement. “We have places like this set up all around the world specifically for these kinds of situations. It’s the first time we’ve used this one.”

“The president will be happy his money wasn’t wasted,” Smith managed to get out.