“You don’t reckon they made us and are escaping through a back exit?”
Marcus shook his head. “His driver is an idiot. He would have tried to make a run for it if he really thought they were being followed.” He sighed and slumped in his seat. “No, they have no clue we’re out here.”
Ryan sighed and followed suit. He settled in and locked his eyes on the side mirror, watching the front of the building. “Too bad we don’t have a drone. We could—”
He barely was able to duck the swing that Marcus launched from the passenger seat.
Karachi, Pakistan
BRIDGER WANTED TO throw the phone against the wall but reached for the liquor cabinet instead. He poured a stiff double and tossed it back neat.
“Problem?” Steve Gibbons asked as he slid in behind his desk. He began rifling through a drawer and glanced to Bobby for an answer.
“It’s like everything is coming apart at the seams.” He reached for the bottle again and poured another whiskey.
“How so?”
“Roger is feeling the heat. I’m guessing that there’s a wetwork team in play and he’s scared.” Bobby tossed the drink back then forced the lid onto the bottle. “I sent him to my place.”
Steve stiffened and glanced at Jim. “Don’t you keep your place booby-trapped?”
Bobby nodded at Jim. “Yeah, but they’re disarmed. I gave him a…reference…on where to look for instructions on that.”
“A reference?” Jim’s curiosity was piqued. “How so?”
“I keep a small bookshelf of classics. Moby Dick is blank. Just a cover. Inside is the layout to my traps, the alarms, where I squirreled away weapons and ammo. That sort of crap. As long as Roger can get there alive, the stuff I left behind can help him stay that way.”
Deric sat his coffee down and nodded to Jay. “We could charter him out of there, couldn’t we?”
“And what? Bring him here? Do you really think it would be any safer for him? Hell, then we’d all be compromised,” Jay said quietly.
“He’s a field agent,” Bobby added matter of factly, “not an operator.”
“So keep him safe at your place. At least until they try to act.” Jay added, “Then we can bring him here if we need to and squirrel him away some place safe until this has blown over.”
Bobby exhaled hard, his eyes pinched shut. “Not the best of plans, but the only one we have at the moment.” He reached for his phone and punched in the number for Sheriff Evans. It was time to call in a favor.
Langley, VA
DARREN CHESTERFIELD FELT the smile creep across his thin features and he hit the button to print what was painted across his screen. “Gotcha. You sons of bitches can run, but you can’t hide.”
He snatched up the printed sheets and picked up his phone.
“Nelson.”
“Colonel, I have the mercs that Bridger is running with.”
“Don’t make me ask, son. Spill it.”
“Jay Wolf, Deric Bundy, James McDougall, Gregg Soares, Steve Gibbons and Viktor Teplov.”
“Why do those names sound familiar?”
“Contractors, sir. They’re contractors for us. We’ve used them, along with Bridger, on a host of different operations.” Agent Chesterfield felt like giggling. It had been harder than usual to use facial recognition on the people in the video because most of their data had been scrubbed from the systems. The Company couldn’t risk having their contractors tracked using their own means.
Colonel Nelson was quiet on the other end and Darren had to increase the volume on his phone to hear him breathing on the line. “Sir? Isn’t this good news?”
He could almost hear Colonel Nelson shaking his head. “No, Agent Chesterfield, it isn’t.”
Darren glanced at the printouts then back to his phone. “But, sir…we have them. They’re all culpable and—”
“Come to my office now,” Nelson barked. “And destroy any hard copies you may have made.”
Darren nodded as he reached for the phone. “Yes, sir. On my way now.” He punched the end call button and glanced at the shredder beside his desk. He stared at the dossiers he had printed out and hesitated. So much information to feed to a shredder…reluctantly, he placed them into a file and dropped it into his desk.
He grabbed his coat from the hook on the wall and flipped the lock as he pulled the door shut behind him.
Karachi, Pakistan
MAMOON SMILED AT the stack of newly minted flags. Sameer said nothing as his hand caressed the larger than normal wad of bills in his pocket.
“So many just to burn.” Balil almost sounded sad as he stared at the stack of Western nation flags waiting to be torched by an ugly mob. He shook his head as he imagined the protesters, the majority of which were paid to act angry in their demonstrations.
“They are beautiful.” Mamoon lifted the top flag and held it up. “They could hang from the White House itself.”
Sameer rolled his eyes. “They are screened!” he spat. “No beauty to that.”
Mamoon placed the flag back atop the stack and patted his friend and employee on the shoulder. “And as I have told you, we will only screen the larger orders. We still need your skills.”
Sameer grunted as he reached for a box to package the flags. “They will be here shortly to pick these up. We should have them ready.”
Tariq stepped forward and began pulling the flags three and four at a time and folding them neatly in the middle before stacking them in the cardboard box. “Perhaps we can sell the smaller flags to the crowd?”
“That is the idea, Tariq.” Mamoon picked up the smaller, twelve inch flags and waved them about. “These are perfect for children and maybe even the women to destroy.”
Tariq smiled as he imagined the number of happy customers they would have, effectively putting Mamoon-ur-Rasheed and his shop on the map with the locals once more. “Perhaps we
