For a moment, the limo was quiet and we all settled back into our seats. Katya looked from me to Viktor, before leaning back and pressing her head against the headrest behind her.
“Where are we heading?” Viktor finally asked.
“Point Alpha for now,” I said. “Then we break and scatter to secondary locations. I don’t want to go straight to anywhere where Revenant can guess where we are.”
Katya, seated between us, still watched out her window. “Those drones are going to have them occupied for a while.”
“Not for long,” I said. “But long enough for us to get some distance.”
She nodded, her jaw flexing.
The driver took the next turn, tires humming over smooth pavement. We crossed an underpass, then angled toward a wider road that would feed into the outskirts of Dubai proper.
That’s when I saw the tiniest shift in the driver’s posture. The way his hands tightened on the wheel. The way he glanced into the side mirror one too many times. I wasn’t the only one who noticed; Viktor’s smirk faded too.
“What?” Viktor asked him. “Talk to me.”
“Sir,” the driver said, voice clipped now. “We’ve got company.”
I twisted in my seat and looked back.
The second limo was still there.
Behind it, two dark, flat silhouettes rolled into view, lights off.
It took me only a second to figure out that they were armored trucks.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“What is it?” Katya asked nervously.
“Visitors,” Viktor said dryly.
“Not the friendly kind,” I added.
As we cleared an intersection, the road opened up just enough to give a clear view of our flanks.
Two more trucks slid out of side streets ahead and to the right, movements too smooth to be improvised. These weren’t random vehicles. They had been waiting for us.
“Brake!” I yelled. “Back?—”
Too late.
The lead truck swung sideways across the lane, cutting us off completely. The other one surged up on our right and veered in, forcing our driver to slam on the brakes to avoid being crushed. The limo fishtailed, skidding before halting at an angle that pinned us between the trucks and a concrete divider.
The second limo didn’t hesitate.
Our driver shouted a few words in Arabic into his radio, and I watched in the side mirror as the car behind us jerked, paused, then shot forward through a narrow opening as more trucks closed in on our rear.
The other limo threaded the gap like a bullet, barely missing being boxed in. One of the trucks tried to correct and block the move, but the driver floored it and disappeared down a side road.
Gone.
“Good,” I said under my breath. “Go. Don’t come back.”
The truck blocking our nose slammed into park. I could make out just enough of the emblem on the side door to realize that these people were from ARCHEON. The doors to the trucks flew open in unison. Men poured out wearing dark uniforms, helmets, rifles, and visors.
“Stay down,” I snapped, hand already moving toward my sidearm.
