Her skin was sun worn, and her eyes were shadowed by fatigue. She wore a plain olive green blouse tucked into black pants. Her dark hair was pulled back into a hasty knot. Caspian thought there was something feral about the way she moved.
“Liesel,” he murmured. “Your sister’s here.”
Chapter Eleven
Port de Sóller
Mallorca, Spain
Maximilian Kross sat at a table on the shaded terrace of a gelateria, a half-eaten cup of frozen yogurt in front of him. He stirred the melting dessert with his plastic spoon as his eyes lingered on the photo glowing on his phone screen. A picture of his target.
No name. No dossier. Just a face.
The only additional intel Verena had shared with him had been that this operation was a continuation of his last mission in Manchester.
Kross leaned back in his chair and glanced at the sky. Bright blue, with a few white clouds, but the sun was dipping lower now, edging toward the horizon. He had been made aware that there were at least three drones circling overhead, their powerful cameras tracking and scanning dozens of faces per minute. Despite the drone’s facial recognition algorithms running at full capacity, they hadn’t yet located Kross’s target. Port de Sóller was small, but it was dense with tourists.
Way too many faces for only three drones.
His phone buzzed.
“Yes.”
Verena’s voice came in through the wireless earbud in his left ear.
“We’re still searching for the primary, but I just got word that someone of interest was identified by the drones,” she said.
Kross didn’t respond. He kept stirring his frozen yogurt.
“I have a pair of two-man teams on their way to intercept,” Verena continued. “I’m sending a pic to your phone.”
A notification popped up. Kross tapped the screen. The man in the photo looked to be in his thirties. He wore a pair of white pants and a loose, light blue shirt with the top few buttons undone. He had an average build and brown hair. Clean cut. Bland. Nothing special. Kross used his fingers to zoom in. The picture quality wasn’t good enough for Kross to see what color the man’s eyes were, but was still sharp enough to have triggered a hit with the recognition software.
The photo, taken from a high angle and slightly distorted by motion, had clearly been taken from one of the drones.
“Why are you sending me this?” Kross asked.
“I want you to support the grab. Don’t get involved but keep an eye on things.”
“From a distance?”
“Yes. From a distance. If we find the primary, I want you to be able to redeploy in less than five minutes.”
Kross wiped a drop of yogurt from the rim of his cup. “That might not be possible,” he said.
“Will you at least try?”
He considered his options, then said, “Yeah. I can do that. But if I feel it’s too risky, or there’s too much heat—”
“I get it,” she interrupted. “I can live with that. I just want to make sure the guys I’m sending won’t encounter anything they can’t handle.”
Kross glanced at the photo again. “Don’t you think four men are enough? The guy doesn’t look like much.”
“He neutralized two of my officers earlier today. He left them zip-tied on the beach, one of them with a sock in his mouth.”
He zoomed in again on the man. Some of the most dangerous men he’d ever met and served with hadn’t looked like much either.
“Where is he now?” he asked.
