In the meantime, Caitlin hands out bottles of water and protein bars, which Hala accepts with a disconsolate scowl.
“We never get to eat the local food when we go somewhere,” she moans.
“Occupational hazard,” says Caitlin, sanguine as ever.
“Even Thomas is having an Indian takeout tonight,” Hala complains. “And he’s in London.”
Caitlin and I swap a glance and Hala shifts, realizing she may have said more than she wanted to. Caitlin shakes her head at me not to pursue it—but I can’t pass it up. Opportunities to tease Hala don’t come along every five minutes.
“Really?” I inquire, still tapping on my tablet keyboard. “I’m just wondering—does Thomas tell you what he’s having for dinner every night?” Honestly, I’m trying not to grin at her discomfort.
“You know what I’m wondering?” Hala snaps.
“What?”
“Why it’s taking you so long to do your job.”
“Just because you watch TV shows where some actor from geek central casting does this in ten seconds . . . ,” I huff. “Look, I can disable the entire network right now. But someone might notice that kind of brute attack.”
But even Caitlin is getting antsy, coming around to look over my shoulder. Methodically, I look for devices that could be the cameras and try to verify them online. Within another minute, I’ve chosen the most likely ones and found my way into the camera feeds. Disabling them is satisfying, watching each streamed image drop into darkness on my screen.
“Let’s move,” I say. There’s a strong chance that someone else has those feeds on their cell phone. Who knows if they might care enough to come and check up on the place if they noticed that the cameras were not live anymore? We can’t waste any time.
Hala’s already at the top of the side fence, and once she’s explored, she gestures us to a piece of fence at the rear that’s hidden behind industrial-sized garbage bins. She cuts open a hole right there. Caitlin and I bend down to slip through it.
“Stay in touch,” she says, as we move past her.
“Of course,” Caitlin says. The plan is for Hala to stay out here. She’s the best at climbing, and it makes sense for one of us to be separated out, to stay nimble in case we come up against any problems inside. Meanwhile, Caitlin scans through the few windows while I check the doors for alarms. None of them seem wired to anything, so we choose one and use a small explosive charge to open the lock. Stepping in gingerly, we both wait for a moment to get our bearings. There’s no beeping or flashing indicating an alarm. Slowly, we track our way forward, guided by Caitlin’s low flashlight.
Closed boxes are stacked up in neat piles at the back of the warehouse. Open boxes sit out in front of them—some of them contain piles of clothing, while the contents of others gleam metallic and strange in the beam of the LED light.
We are heading over to explore when a rustling, low and constant, attracts our attention. Little tapping noises too. We both freeze, holding our breathing still. A couple of furry creatures shoot across the floor, and burrow into the cardboard of the boxes. I relax.
“Just rats,” I say.
“Ugh,” Caitlin breathes. “Can I just wait here?”
I have to smile. Caitlin will unflinchingly face bullets, knives, and fists, but faced with some oversized vermin, she’s cowering behind me like a slab of Jell-O.
“Come on, this looks interesting,” I say, indicating the boxes lying ahead of us. We both hurry forward, eager to explore—and I trip over something and fall. Caitlin reaches to grab me, but she trips too. Righting herself, she gives me a hand up.
“What was that?” she wonders, pointing her flashlight.
A taut wire is strung across the warehouse. As soon as I see it, I know why. It’s some kind of deterrent, some kind of trap for unwanted visitors.
“Dammit,” Caitlin says. “Booby trap?”
I nod, grabbing the flashlight from her. I walk down the length of the wire. It runs into one side of a bank of lockers on the back wall.
“This wire must be linked to something. An alarm, an explosive . . .”
“No shit. But if it’s a bomb, why aren’t we blown sky-high already?” Caitlin asks.
While we talk, we’re both trying to break into the lockers that the wire runs into.
“Could be they set it up with a time delay,” I say. “In case someone tripped it by mistake, they have time to reset. . . .”
Caitlin grabs a knife from her boot and helps me prize open each locker, one at a time. So far, each one of them has just clothes or shoes, just like lockers in a changing room. But I can still see that wire running through the back of them. I follow it along and down to the last row of lockers, low by our feet, ending with one in the corner, the hardest to reach. Caitlin inserts her knife blade into the edge of the door and levers it hard. It swings open. My stomach takes a hard dive into my shoes and a strangled sound gurgles up from the back of Caitlin’s throat.
It’s a bunch of explosives stuffed into a length of pipe and capped and sealed at both ends to create enough pressure to do some serious damage. Now, I’ve seen these before, and I’ve even practiced defusing them. But that was with a remote-controlled robot, or some proper equipment to hand. Both those options aren’t foolproof but they often work, given enough time. But we don’t seem to have that luxury. Because connected to the bomb is a timer, and it’s down to four and a half minutes.
“What’s that keypad?” Caitlin asks, pointing to a digital box next to the bomb.
“With the right code, it can stop the timer. And the bomb.”
“Any
