“The terminal’s full of Tiernan’s men,” he mutters. Cat’s eyes track the movement of his mouth. “Two cars, maybe three. They’re lying low, don’t want to be seen but my local guy has eyes on them.”
“Fucking Tiernan,” I growl. I’m already on my feet wearing a stupid disguise and sliding Donal’s hood off his head. “Fine. Let them think they got lucky.”
We work fast. Donal’s still dead weight under the drug, breath even, and cuffed wrists neat under a blanket. Leo snaps a cervical collar around his neck, then adds a portable oxygen mask. From ten feet away, he looks like a man who shouldn’t be moved without a doctor.
Perfect.
“Decoy’s ready.” Leo nods, arms pressed tight across his chest.
“Get him out the obvious way,” I tell him. “Then once we’re out of the airport, I’ll give Tiernan his Marco Rossi.”
Cat is already zipping her jacket, jaw set. The plane door yawns open, and rain needles the stairs.
We descend to a private apron bordered by chain-link fences and sodium lamps. Two men in cheap jackets try to look like they belong to baggage carts. A third leans on a pillar with his phone but never scrolls. I clock them all without turning my head. My men, six in total, fan out on the blind side of the hangars, local hires Leo pulled from a list I don’t keep on paper.
We wheel Donal down the stairs. In scrubs and a surgical mask, I fall in beside the gurney and tilt my cap low. From adistance, Donal could be me, same height, same build. To the airport crew, he’s just a patient flown for specialized medical care and to Tiernan’s men, it’s my body, prettied up for the optics.
“Out the main door,” I murmur. “And make it obvious.”
The terminal air reeks of disinfectant and fried food. Cat ghosts to my six in the same hospital scrubs, head down, and hands in her pockets. Leo pushes the gurney at a medic’s clip, wheels squealing just enough to turn heads. Tiernan’s men take the bait. One peels off a column, and another shadows from a magazine rack. The third lifts his phone like he’s calling for a ride.
We burst through the sliding doors into weak daylight. A white van screeches up. It’s one of ours. Leo loads the gurney, swings the rear doors shut, and hops into the passenger seat. The van fishtails out, too fast, calling too much attention.
“Go,” I bark into the mic. Across the street, two of my men ignite a minor car-park argument. Horns blare along with lewd hand gestures, and someone knocks over a cone. Both watchers choose the van.
I turn the other way.
Cat keeps pace, hood up. “Where to?” she asks without looking at me.
“Docklands,” I reply. “Warehouse row. These guys love their theater. He’ll want cranes in the background when he breaks things.”
She swallows like glass and nods once.
Two cars idle in a shadowed bay just ahead. Gemini men, my men. We split across them. I take the lead with Cat, and the other car ghosts four lengths back. We cut east, past crumbling terraces, a sorrow etched into the landscape two generations ago and never forgotten. Before long, we roll into the port.Containers are stacked like ugly Legos, and the driving rain makes everything reflective.
For a second, I’m back in a different rain, in what feels like a lifetime ago and damn it, I wish I could go back.
Instead, I swallow it all down and kill the engine behind a low berm of rusted scrap. For a second, we just listen to the port breathe, to the chains clinking, gulls arguing, and water slapping iron. My throat is ash. “Hey, listen to me.”
She finally looks at me. The space between us is ice.
“No trying to be the hero today. We stick to the plan, and we all come out of there alive.”
She nods with her hand already on the latch.
“You go in there with Donal hooded. Sell it like you’re delivering me. Ask to see Siobhan first. When they crowd the ‘body’ and lift the hood, my team hits the doors.”
“Just like we planned.” She hesitates, finger clutching the handle.
“Cat.” The word scrapes and she looks over. The rain on the glass throws a thousand versions of her back at me, and I pick the only one that’s real. “If this goes to hell… if we don’t make it?—”
“Don’t,” she whispers.
“I have to.” I swallow the blade in my throat. “If I don’t walk out, you get your sister out and you keep running. Go back to Jersey, to London, I don’t care, just… live. And know that leaving you back then was the worst thing I ever did. Everything since has been me trying to crawl back to that beach and do it right.”
Her mouth trembles, then hardens. “You don’t get to say goodbye.”
“It’s not goodbye.” I manage a crooked smile. “It’s insurance.”
