Shield Maidens Return — Mike Whicker

The year is 1948. CIA Deputy Director Leroy Carr is forced to bring the Shield Maidens back together. The Shield Maidens are a hard to handle, yet elite field agent team of four women: Erika Lehmann, a former Nazi spy; Kathryn Fischer who was a Gestapo officer during the war; and Zhanna Rogova, a deadly Russian sniper and assassin. All three women now work for the newly-formed CIA along with the fourth Shield Maiden, Sheila Reid, a U.S. Army major. A year ago, Carr had dissolved the team after a harrowing mission in South America where they had disobeyed orders and gone rogue, disappearing with Carr's wife who had gone along solely as their Spanish interpreter. Recent intelligence leads Carr to believe Kathryn's sister, a former German Abwehr spy who was thought killed during the war, is alive and being held in one of numerous Siberian gulags. If a trade with the Soviets cannot be arranged, it will the Shield Maidens task to find and acquire Stephanie Fischer.