“Ah, he and the reporter are a thing.” Jewell shrugged. “I think it’s cute.”
Joseph blinked and flopped back against the chair. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“No doubt.” Jason chuckled, “Anubis, go?”
“Yes.”
“Charley and Smoke?”
“Agreed. Yes,” Smoke said after glancing at Charley.
“Con?”
“Exfil from Serbia is confirmed. Go.”
“Jewell?”
“Everything on our end is green.”
“Then he has the green light,” Jason said and glanced at Joseph. “Tell Ember we said hello.”
“Will do.” The screen went blank as they moved to another mission that didn’t involve Blake.
He blinked and shook his head. Of all the things he thought could happen during this mission, Blake falling for the reporterwasn’t one of them. Well, now, he had to ensure the woman was cleared from that fucking video. He’d call Jason when the man wasn’t in a meeting. They needed to talk.
CHAPTER 19
The ridge smelled of wet stone and grass. Blake sat with his back to the deepest depression of the knoll with his night vision goggles. The compound below became a cluster of amber and metal. His kit laid in neat halves at his feet: tools, blades, spare magazines he wouldn’t use, a tiny jammer cooled in foam, dozy doggie treats, and a length of parachute cord. Everything had its place. Everything had a reason.
Zane’s voice was a quiet thread in his ear. “Five-count cue. I kick the grid spoof on my mark. You get a clean window of roughly ninety seconds from the feed drop. Deploy the masker at the service door, and you add a localized blind of three to five minutes on the way out if they somehow counteract our camera interruptions. Timing is tight, Blake. You have one chance at a clean run.”
Blake listened silently. He ran the route over in his head, and every step was measured.
The ridge to the bush line, the bushes to the service wall, pick the lock, move through the corridor, toss the jerky into the kennels, slide into the courtyard, reach the office, find Zajac, finish him, vanish to the culvert.
He’d slog through the stench of ancient standing water and let the river take him to his exit vehicle parked a mile downstream. He knew where the jammer would sit, active but not activated. Zane would hit it if needed. The plan had no collaborators. It had only him and the cold logic of motion.
“The count will start in thirty seconds,” Zane said.
Blake zipped his kit and slung it over his back. The lock pick set was stored in his cargo pants, making it easily accessible. The jammer was placed in his other pocket. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, exhaling slowly.
“Five, four, three, two, one,” Zane counted down the timestamp and keyed the spoof. The municipal feed died like someone cutting a thread. The outer lights went gray as the automatic transfer switches snapped and the generators kicked. For a beat, the compound hung in a frozen frame. The ninety-second clock started.
Blake bolted forward. He dropped down the slope on silent feet, his boots finding ledges and roots with practiced confidence. His lungs burned from the sprint as he folded into the hedgerow shadow. A quick glance right and left before he sprinted across to the service approach. He laid his palm on the metal of the service door as his other hand pulled out the kit. The pick slid between bolt and frame. The lock sighed, and the door opened to an outdoor corridor that stunk of warmed air and generator oil.
He sprinted to the right ninety feet and tossed the jerky, piece by piece, into each of the runs. The dogs alerted to the sound of something dropping inside their run but never looked his way. The delivery out front and the sounds of the guards lamenting another power outage covered any sound he might have made. Blake bolted back to the service entrance at the back of the house. He placed the jammer on the far side of the door. When the power came back on, it would be part of the shadows.
Zane’s voice in his ear counted down the seconds until the generator kicked on. “Seven, six …” Blake opened the back door and slipped in, standing quietly in the hall as the power flickered back on.
“Hall camera spoofed,” Jewell said. “Continue slowly. Cameras are coming online, and I’m working them.”
Blake moved with caution but ducked into a closet when he heard forceful steps down the main hallway.
“It’s a municipal outage. Let him know we are on generator,” a man said in Hungarian.
An acknowledgment came quickly, and the boots disappeared.
“Clear. Sorry, didn’t see them heading down. We have all cameras monitored now,” Jewell said as he exited the closet.
