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Zack sat next to the body armor, his eyes flitting between the open door to Anton’s office and the bright morning outside.
Anton said, “Need about a half hour to catch up with emails, then it’s off to the labs.” Hinton put his big over-the-ear headphones on and turned his attention to his laptop.
Zack nodded politely, then reached down and rubbed his thighs. This morning’s run had been a tough one; his muscles ached, but since he assumed today would be another long day, he was glad he knocked his PT out before dawn.
Anton looked over his laptop at Zack. “You okay, mate?”
“All good. Should have stretched this morning.”
“You can join me down at the yoga studio after lunch. That’ll put you right.”
Zack smiled. “I’ll go with you, of course, but I’m your bodyguard, not your yoga partner.”
Anton laughed at this, then grabbed his tea, spun his chair around, and looked out at the bright day.
•••
Carlos Contreras smiled at the monitor in front of him, because after just thirty minutes sitting in this cramped van and scanning the area with his four micro drones, he now had a positive ID on his target. His camera was fifty meters above and over two hundred meters away from the man, but he zoomed in tightly on his face, and then he spun to his other laptop to type out a message.
This is Zero One. I have the target in sight.
Without delay, a reply came. Cyrus acknowledges. The operations center will move the asset into position.
Contreras knew this was the point of no return, and the magnitude of what he was being asked to do today was not lost on him.
After a brief pause, he looked again at the man on the monitor, then pushed aside his concerns about what he was part of. He typed, I will continue to monitor and report. And then he went back to the other laptop to return his attention to the target.
•••
Jamie had just finished reattaching bolts to the container door, and Victor Two had just sealed it, when Travers pulled out a locking seal identical to the one he’d caught earlier and popped it back into place. S&T had manufactured the seal the evening before, and it looked exactly like the one they’d removed, so the recipient of these goods would have no way of knowing anyone had snooped inside.
Travers clicked his mic. “We’re out of here.”
Pace responded quickly. “The Estelle is docking at the quay now. Suggest you try to egress on the starboard side, then swim back across the harbor and egress the way you came in.”
“Sounds good. We’re Oscar Mike.”
“On the move, understood.”
•••
Scott Kincaid drove a lime green 1981 Volga four-door down a narrow road, his earpiece in his ear and his Republic Forge pistol on his hip, with the silencer in a backpack next to him. He wore denim pants, a black T-shirt, and a thin black hoodie.
In his ear, the female French controller said, “Lancer, be advised, we have the target fixed. Once you’re in the area, we’ll have you connect with the ISR tech on the ground and you two can work directly together.”
Kincaid recognized that this was a new method from Gama. “So I won’t go through you? I’ll work directly with the drone guy?”
“Correct. This is Cuba, you need his real-time intelligence so you can avoid any state security presence at the scene. Coordinates to Wrangler Zero One’s position to follow.”
Kincaid looked at his phone as he drove; he clicked a message when it came, and it took him to a map.
He saw that he was on the right street already, and the drone pilot would be just a few blocks ahead of him.
“Got it,” he said.
“He is in a gray Polar Air Conditioning Service van with two armed security men supporting him. Good luck.”
Lancer ended the call. Those two armed security men were about to be leaving the drone pilot and joining him on the assassination, whether they knew it yet or not. The high profile of today’s target as well as the nation where the hit would take place made him fully expect that this would be a difficult operation, and he needed all the help he could get.
