She was just easing him to the floor when she realized Jodi was still shouting at her over the secure radio channel to tell her what was happening.
Alina reached up to adjust the volume on her wireless earbud, not sure what the hell she was going to tell Jodi, when she realized she wasn’t even wearing her earbud anymore. It had gotten dislodged in the fight. She had no idea where it had gone.
And yet she could still hear Jodi’s voice.
She looked around and saw a radio lying on the floor near one of the dead shooters. It was too big to be one of theirs, but Jodi’s voice was coming out of it loud and clear.
That’s when everything hit her. The prerecorded voices designed to lure them into this room, the way the well-armed attackers had known exactly when to hit them, the low-tech rebels having access to a CIA-encrypted radio frequency, and Wade never showing for the mission. A mission he’d set up almost completely on his own.
Wade had betrayed them. He never showed up because he’d set them up to die.
Heart pounding, Alina ran out into the hall and snatched the radio off the floor. This ambush might not be over.
“Jodi, get out now!” she yelled into the radio as she ran for the front entrance, her heart hammering in her chest. “The mission is compromised. Communications are compromised. Cut and run!”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then, “What about Fred and Rodney?”
“Dammit, Jodi. Go now!”
More silence. “Understood,” Jodi finally said, and it tore at Alina’s heart to hear the fear in her voice. “Falling back to rally point Charlie now.”
Alina almost stepped into another ambush outside as the two shooters who’d disappeared earlier stepped out of the darkness and started shooting. She fired off one shot to make them duck, then darted back into the safety of the alcove.
“Negative, Jodi,” she said into the radio as she peeked around the concrete corner of the entryway to make sure the men weren’t coming toward her. “It’s not just the operation that was compromised. It was the team. Don’t use any rally points, safe houses, transportation assets, or money drops that were set up for the mission. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
There was a moment of hesitation, then, “I understand. Good luck, Alina. I hope I see you again.”
“You will,” Alina promised.
She heard the pounding of footsteps over the radio and knew Jodi was on the run.
Alina shoved the radio in her jacket, then stepped out to face the two men. If they still had their radios, they’d know Jodi was making a run for it. Alina would be damned if she’d let them kill Jodi, too.
She walked across the street, ignoring the downpour as she aimed slow, steady shots at the corner of the building the two men were hiding behind. That kept their heads down until she was close enough to put herself right in their sights, encouraging them to come at her.
They obliged, stepping out and lifting their Russian-made automatic weapons. She put the first man down before he got off a shot. But the second one was ballsy, standing his ground and taking time to get a bead on her. He fired first, the round of his AK-47 tearing through her jacket, skipping along the left side of her torso, ripping open the side pocket, and spilling her confiscated radio to the street.
The pain of the wound—and that of Fred’s and Rodney’s deaths—sharpening her focus, she put a 9mm ball round right through the center of the man’s chest. He bounced back off the wall behind him, then tumbled to the wet ground.
Only after she was sure they were dead did Alina finally lower her gun. She put it away, clutching a hand to her side as she bent forward to collect the radio. She’d intended to pick up the radio and toss it in the bushes along with her weapon, but then she heard a thump and clang of a heavy metal door on the back side of the apartment building. Alina breathed a sigh of relief knowing her friend was going to get away, but then she heard another sound that was impossible to mistake for anything other than the pop of a silenced weapon going off.
Alina sprinted for the front door of the apartment building, slamming open the door and racing down the hall as fast as she could. She still had a hundred feet to go when she heard Jodi’s soft voice over the radio.
“Screw you, Wade.”
There were several more pops, then silence.
Alina ran as fast as she could, but it took her a few minutes to find the door that Jodi had shoved open. It was tough, because the building was large and had at least two exits on each side of it. When she finally found her friend, Jodi was curled up in a ball beside a big trash can. Wade was nowhere in sight.
It almost looked like Jodi was sleeping, but the hand she had clenched to her stomach was all the proof Alina needed to know she wasn’t.
Alina gently rolled her friend away from the trash can to find she was already dead. Two shots to the stomach and three to the chest. Since Jodi had cursed Wade before she’d died, the son of a bitch must have shot her in the stomach first just because it would hurt, then followed up with the kill shots to the chest. After he’d let her suffer a bit. He’d always been such an asshole.
Sitting on the wet ground, Alina wrapped Jodi in her arms, squeezing her tightly as she finally let the tears come. A part of her knew she should get out of there before the police showed, but she couldn’t make herself move. She needed time to cry for her friends before she let them go.
Slowly, anger replaced the horrible, soul-crushing sorrow. While she was furious with Wade, she was mad at herself, too. She should have seen this betrayal coming. She’d always had some reservations about him, but instead of trusting the instincts that had been screaming at her from day one that Wade was a piece of crap, she’d gone along with the flow, assuming the Agency wouldn’t have hired him if he was dirty. That assumption and lack of faith in her instincts had gotten the three most important people in her life killed.
Sirens echoed in the distance, but Alina ignored them. The police would congregate around the industrial building first, securing the perimeter, searching for survivors, trying to make sense of the scene, and talking to witnesses from the apartment building. They wouldn’t get around to searching back here for a while.
