The driver climbed out along with the man who’d been sitting in the passenger’s seat.
“We can help push your car off to the side, but we are on a schedule and don’t have much time,” the man said.
Alex nodded tearfully. “I’m grateful for any help.”
One of the men climbed into the driver’s side to steer while the other man pushed. In a matter of seconds, they pushed the vehicle off the road.
“Thank you,” Alex said wiping her tears as she watched the two men hustle away.
She walked nonchalantly to her car and retrieved her bag from the backseat. The driver of the tanker fired up the engine and started to chug forward. Alex waved again, and the man in the passenger side nodded at her.
Once the tanker cleared her, she slipped behind it before breaking into a sprint. Before the truck could gain too much speed, she jumped onto the ladder on the back and climbed up.
She wrapped one arm around the ladder to secure herself and then rummaged through her bag for a pair of gloves. Once she put them on, she took a deep breath and visualized what Blunt had told her to do. After a couple minutes, the truck slowed down and came to a stop—and she seized her opportunity.
Alex hustled up underneath the truck and braced herself using the chassis rails. It was a painful experience for her as the tanker climbed up a rocky unpaved road for about ten minutes. Her arm and leg muscles burned as she clung on after coming to a stop. But she knew the consequences of letting go and potentially getting caught would be fatal. She gritted her teeth as she listened to the driver speak with another man, presumably a guard, about where to park.
She waited until the truck stopped and the engine was turned off before considering to move. Once the footsteps of the two men driving the tanker grew faint, she eased down. Crouching beneath the truck, she surveyed her surroundings before venturing out.
The room appeared more like a showroom than a garage for Bashir’s transport vehicles. Six tankers were lined up, taking up only about a quarter of the room. With a ceiling that extended more than twenty meters in the air and was comprised of rock, the place felt just as it looked—cavernous. On another side of the room, missiles were stacked next to smaller wooden crates. Alex couldn’t read the writing on the outside from her position, but she didn’t have to guess what was inside boxes stored in a facility owned by a known weapons dealer.
Alex needed a place to pull out her computer and work. With Hawk being rendered unconscious, the first thing she needed to do was find out if he was still alive by reaching him on his com, a prototype developed by Dakarai that housed both a speaker and a microphone in a pair of glasses. Once she determined Hawk’s status, she could figure out if their plan was still viable or if she’d need to concoct another scheme to achieve a successful end.
She glanced around and saw a nook in a nearby portion of the room, hidden by stacks of wooden pallets. With spider webs and dust gathering around them, she presumed it would be a safe place to hide until she could get a better idea of the facility’s layout. Checking to see if any of the guards were nearby, she cautiously scanned the area and determined it was clear.
Alex stayed low to the ground as she hustled across the floor. She squeezed through a small opening between two piles of haphazardly stacked pallets. Behind them was a small clearing of about three square feet, just enough space for Alex to pull out her computer and get to work.
Less than two minutes later, she froze as footfalls from one of Bashir’s employees drew near. But that wasn’t nearly as frightening to Alex as the next sound she heard. The click of a key followed by the ignition of a nearby forklift.
From across the room, she heard another man yell, “What are you doing over there?”
“I am fixing this pile,” the man driving the forklift said. “It’s a mess. Plus, we need to pull out some pallets for a big shipment we have coming in next week.”
The engine hummed as the lift drove straight toward Alex’s hiding spot. The forks slid beneath the bottom pallet, almost touching her. She slowly backed toward the wall and contemplated an exit strategy.
But before she could determine anything, the pile began to move.
CHAPTER 17
Washington, D.C.
HARRY BOZEMAN’S MEETING with President Michaels earlier in the week had been intense but necessary. With approval to move forward with a backup plan should their original falter, Bozeman felt much better about his immediate future. To Bozeman, operating without a failsafe was akin to letting all his money ride on one single spin of a roulette wheel, a decision he’d never make. Yet he was acting in the same manner, only this time it was his life that he’d been letting ride until he convinced Michaels it was foolish.
Bozeman was lost in thought as he inched his way through Washington’s morning rush hour traffic. Had he not known two operatives who got pushed in front of subway trains, he would’ve never driven in the city again. But as painful as the commute downtown was each day, Bozeman prioritized his safety more.
He was halfway paying attention to the road as he listened to a radio news report about a dispute between labor union workers and a half dozen manufacturing plants in the Midwest when a horn jolted him. Bozeman widened his eyes and glanced at the driver in the adjacent lane who’d nosed his car slightly in front. In a conciliatory gesture, Bozeman raised his hand but was greeted with another honk and a middle finger salute. Angered at the man’s
