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•••
Carlos Contreras had a perfect view of the covered exterior walkway leading to all the tiny flats up on the third floor of the market building. The stairwell door on the northern side of the building was closed, but Lancer had just communicated that he and one of the Cubans were about to exit, and he wanted Contreras to give him an update on the status of his target.
The Mexican shifted the camera with his joystick, zoomed in tight through the open front door of the fourth room, and inside he saw the man behind the big spotting scope.
“He’s still in the same place. Still looking out towards the water.”
“Is he armed?” Lancer’s voice was labored, presumably with the exertion of climbing the stairs.
“I…I don’t see a weapon visible. He’s looking through his glass at the container yard.”
“Okay, we’re coming out. Keep updating me on his disposition.”
“Yes,” Contreras said.
Suddenly, Contreras heard a knock on the back door of the gray panel truck. He looked back over his shoulder, completely confused at the interruption when all his attention had been on his laptop.
Police? Some busybody? Either way, anyone at the door meant he had to quickly hide his equipment. He closed the laptop and tossed a bedsheet over it, then pulled off his headphones and tucked them under, as well, not taking the time to alert Lancer.
As his attention was fixed on the rear door and his own equipment, the loud crashing sound of broken glass came from the driver’s-side window of the truck.
His head spun back around just in time to see a hand reach through the broken window, then open the door from the inside.
And then, to Carlos Contreras’s utter astonishment, a woman launched into the driver’s seat, spun around to him, and pointed a short, squat pistol at him at a range of six feet.
She looked him up and down. “Español? Ingles?”
“I…I speak English.”
She moved between the seats and came back to him, knocking over the empty Pelican cases in her way as she did so. She yanked the sheet off the tiny table with the laptop, joystick, and headphones, and then opened the laptop, her pistol now right between Contreras’s eyes.
She pulled the headset out of the laptop, disconnected the call he had open with Lancer on the phone, then said, “Is your drone armed?”
His first inclination was to tell her he had no idea what she was talking about, but he knew she had him dead to rights. He just shook his head.
She glanced down at the screen and saw the image broadcast from the quadcopter over the harbor in front of the market building, and just then the door to the stairwell on the north side opened.
Contreras saw that Zakharova seemed completely fixated on the images, so he considered grabbing a Pelican case to knock her out with, but just as he began looking around, she moved the pistol away from his face, and pushed it hard into his knee.
“I need you alive, but I swear to God if you try anything I will fuck you up.”
Contreras changed his mind and sat still.
•••
Lancer spoke into his mic now, careful to keep his voice low. “Zero One. Are you receiving?”
After a moment without a response, he pulled his phone from his front pocket, looked down at it, and saw that his connection with his drone pilot had been broken.
Standing there on the walkway looking over the harbor, just one hundred feet or so from the open door behind which the CIA officer was positioned, Lancer considered calling his overwatch back so that Zero One could help walk him in to the target safely. But he was so close, and so exposed right here, that he didn’t want to take the time.
He looked out over the water for the drone, but it was too small to see.
Almost immediately, however, another idea came to him.
He turned to the baldheaded Cuban next to him. The man had a CZ 75 9-millimeter pistol, 1970s technology but reliable enough, and he looked like he’d be the type to know how to use it. The weapon was in his right hand, with his left hand wrapped around it, as well.
Lancer said, “We go together. You first.”
