“Let’s go to work,” she said.
We dispersed to our vehicles.
The warehouse team would take the diplomatic sedan—the woman, Thomas, and Marcus. They would position themselves by eight o’clock and wait for activity to begin.
My team had a nondescript Opel that Bisch had acquired through channels I didn’t want to know about. Danny drove, Eddie rode shotgun, and I sat in the back with my camera and my fear.
Before we left, Thomas caught my arm.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
He pulled me close and kissed me—hard and desperate, the kind of kiss that said everything words couldn’t.
“Come back to me,” he said against my mouth.
“I will if you will.”
“Deal.”
He let me go. I climbed into the Opel. Danny started the engine.
I rolled down the window before he could drive away and called, “Condor!”
Thomas turned, his face a question mark.
“Try not to get shot again.”
The smile on his face as we drove away filled my heart—then I prayed to anyone who would listen that I would see it again.
The night of the 14th had begun.
30
Thomas
The cold was a living thing. It crept through my coat, through my sweater, through my skin. It found the wound in my shoulder and settled there like a second bullet, a dull throb that pulsed with every heartbeat. I’d stopped feeling my fingers twenty minutes ago. My toes had followed shortly after.
But I didn’t dare move. I couldn’t move. Movement was death.
I was wedged into a gap between two shipping containers on the west side of the warehouse, thirty meters from the building. I was close enough to see, and hoped I was far enough away to run if I had to. The gap was barely wide enough for my shoulders, and the metal walls magnified the cold like ice blocks. Above me, a sliver of sky showed stars and only a teasing sliver of the moon.
The radio crackled in my ear with the CIA woman’s voice. It was barely a whisper: “Condor, status.”
I keyed the mic twice. Two clicks. All clear.
“Copy. Warehouse team, holding position. Comms blackout now. Clicks only.”
Silence returned. Like the cold, it was the kind of quiet that pressed against your ears and made you hear things that weren’t there.
I’d been in position for two hours.
Two hours of nothing.
Two hours of watching the west side of the warehouse and seeing exactly what Eddie had predicted.
Absolutely nothing.
