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No pause.
“You got it, Liam.”
“Along the way, pick up some rope, cable wire, anything you can use to hold you up for a few seconds. You’re going to come off that roof and through one of those two windows on my signal.”
“Roger that, Liam.”
“Boyd,” he goes on. “With the bird gone, you’re with me. In ten minutes, meet me at the corner across from the building, where the bakery is located. We’ll go in from there.”
“Copy that, Liam.”
“Tommy, in fifteen minutes we need a distraction. Something to draw local and police attention away from this block. Be creative, try not to hurt anyone. But make it happen. And keep an ear on the local radio traffic, alert us if there’s anything coming our way.”
“Copy that, Liam.”
To Mike Cooper, Liam says, “Mike, your exfil is when we come running out of that building. Don’t be late, or I’ll get your ass fired.”
Mike laughs. “I only plan to be late to my funeral, Liam. I got this.”
Liam starts to pack up his equipment. “All right, on the move.”
Ten minutes later—still smelling of rat and pigeon excrement—Liam is on a dark street, alone in the darkness. Boyd emerges from the shadows around aboulangerieand says, “Liam, I—”
“Forget it, it’s done,” he says. He quickly brings up a night vision monocular and scans the front door. Heavy wood, metal hinges, and—
Damn it.
“Tommy, this is Liam,” he says. “You free?”
“Yeah.”
“I need you over here, get the front door opened. It’s got an electronic lock.”
“On my way, Liam,” Tommy says. “You’re going to get a distraction about one minute after I arrive.”
He and Boyd take a look around the narrow street. Quiet so far. The place smells of burnt food and open sewage, and there’s loud Middle Eastern music playing from a nearby flat.
Liam says, “Ferris? Location?”
He replies, “I’m up on the roof. I just took out the local HBO and Showtime, got a coaxial cable secured around me. Ready to go.”
Tommy slowly walks down the opposite sidewalk, dragging a leg, like he’s injured, and he stops at the front door for five seconds.
From his earpiece Liam hears, “Door is open. Distraction ready to roll in sixty seconds.”
Liam says, “Just like the book, gents. Surprise, speed, and violence of action. Disable the noncombatants. When Boyd and I get to the second floor, I’ll tell you to fly, Ferris.”
“Roger that, Liam.”
Liam walks briskly across the street, Boyd next to him, and up to the door. Tommy has disabled the electronic lock and it opens out easily on well-oiled hinges. In the vestibule, two young men with AK-47s in their laps, sitting in chairs, look up in surprise and Liam and Boyd spray them in their faces with small yellow canisters.
The spray is a version of CS tear gas—from which Liam and his team have been immunized—but which will disable the jihadists for at least thirty minutes. They fall from their chairs, yelping and rubbing at their eyes and faces. The wooden stairway is poorly lit, but Liam and Boyd go up as fast as they can, keeping to the side walls so their footfalls won’t cause the steps to creak.
From outside there’s a muffledthump thump,as Tony’s distractions—whatever they are—have lit off. As they get up to thesecond-floor landing, another armed jihadist peers over. In Arabic, Boyd yells,“It’s an emergency! The police are coming!”
The jihadist hesitates long enough for Liam to spray him in the face, and with a cry he crumples to the floor. At the door now, Liam and Boyd take out their 9mm Ra’ad pistols with sound suppressors.
Just before shooting at the doorknob and two hinges, Liam says, “Ferris, go!”
