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The sniper was nowhere the wiser.

Mason's voice came through the comms. “Your brother was not some naive innocent.” His voice was measured and hard and she knew that tone. It was the one he used when he was saying something true that was going to hurt. “He'd been with the Boko Haram for three years. Three years, Sula. He planned multiple raids. He arranged a suicide bombing at a school.” A pause. “Children died in that school, Sula.”

A weighty silence followed.

The door to the top floor of the production building was unlocked. Drake opened it, checking it out. He went inside. Sophia waited for his signal to follow him. It was a large, open space that smelled of old wood and cold stone and the ghost of wine. Equipment sat dormant and dark around them. There were vats, tubing, the machinery of a place that had stopped mid-breath and never started again.

“Jack.” Drake kept his voice barely above nothing. “Rylie. Where are you?”

“Thirty seconds,” Rylie whispered back.

Drake positioned them at the far wall, away from the elevator, close to the staircase that according to Lydia's blueprints went straight down to the barrel room. He looked at the staircase door and then looked at Sophia and she read him clearly.

Not yet.

Ibrahim's voice came up through the floor as it simultaneously came through their comm set.

“My brother was a soldier fighting for his people. You were an invader in his land, following orders from men who did not know his name or care about his life.” His voice had gone very quiet, which was somehow worse than when it was loud. “You executed him.”

“We were trying to take him alive, but he had a vest bomb. We had no choice.”

A door opened softly behind them. Drake had his weapon up before it finished moving, and then Jack came through with Rylie right behind him, and Drake lowered it.

Rylie's eyes found Sophia's. She did a quick assessment, and Sophia gave her a small nod.

All four of them waited at the top of the stairs.

Angie's voice came through the comm, barely a breath. “Since the electricity's working, I'm looking at a button beside the loading dock door. Panel's lit up. My guess is it opens the door remotely.” A pause. “If you need a distraction, I can give you one.”

Drake's eyes moved around the group. Something worked through his expression.

“Stand by on that,” he said.

Below them, Ibrahim kept talking. The words had taken on a rhythm now, the cadence of a man delivering something he had rehearsed, a sermon, almost.

“Everything I have built, I have built in his name. Every school, every clinic, every road. And none of it has been enough.” His voice shifted, dropping into something quieter and more sinister. “But this will be.”

Mason didn’t reply.

“I have thought about this moment for twelve years, Mason. I have imagined your face.” A pause. “I think I am going to enjoy it very much. Killing your daughter in front of you.”

Sophia's hand was on Drake's arm before she knew she'd moved it. Her fingers gripped hard.

He didn't shake her off.

“Angie,” Drake said.

“Ready.”

“Hit the button.”

A half second of silence.

Then from below, a mechanical grinding as the loading dock door began to roll open, and Ibrahim's voice cut off mid-breath.

And then he screamed.

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