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The dog came with a two-man team—his handler and a rather young but earnest security officer holstering two sidearms, who now gestured to Ned’s bag.
Fraser stepped out of the scanner. No extra wanding for him. He picked up his backpack and raised an eyebrow at his brother.
Ned walked over to the counter, set his pack on it. Reached to unzip it before getting barked at by the security officer.
He held up his hands as the man rooted through his bag.
“What did you bring?” Fraser said, leaning over to him as he walked by him.
Ned said nothing, his brain rooting through the contents. He’d packed his gear so often as an operator, who knew what he automatically added to his pack. While the security officer pulled out some base layers as well as another T-shirt, he glanced at the clock.
Nearly midnight.
Perfect for an unexpected sneak and peek at Hansi’s flat.
Or more. Please, let Shae be there and not already vanished into the world of human slavery—
The dog barked as the officer pulled out a baggie of—
Apples. Aka foreign fruit. Oh, Mom.
Fraser didn’t bother to hide a smile as the security officer dropped them in the trash.
Then they scanned everything else in Ned’s pack, including his skivvies, wanded him thoroughly, and by the time he joined Fraser, twenty minutes later, he felt strip-searched.
“Not a word,” Ned said as they headed out to the curb for their Uber pickup. The chill in the late-October air cut through his job shirt, and he took off the Bengals cap, dropped it in a nearby trash can, and grabbed out his wool hat from a side pocket in his pack.
“Arrested for carrying contraband fruit,” Fraser said. “Your team will love that.”
Ned gave him a look, but Fraser was grinning so wide he finally exhaled.
Okay, maybe it was a little funny. And yes, Trini and Ford and the rest of Team Five might get a good laugh out of it, wherever they were. He’d been granted medical leave for six weeks after the incident in Slovenia, so he’d been out of touch with the team.
Hopefully they were about chasing down that last canister of caesium-137 that’d vanished from the stash they’d captured.
Even better, they might be chasing down the key players from the Russian mafia group who’d stolen it from a Swiss nuclear plant.
“That’s our Uber,” said Fraser and pointed to an orange Saab headed their direction, its lights shiny against the wet pavement.
“You put in Hansi’s address?”
“It’s a twenty-minute drive. Center of the city.”
Ned knew that—he’d spent a good part of the first leg studying the neighborhood, the ochre-colored apartment building, the courtyard outside the house, and a layout of the building. He knew which apartment was Hansi’s, how to infil, and even what stairs to use for his emergency exfil out of the two-bedroom apartment.
Logan had even sent in one of his overseas operatives to watch the place for the last twenty-four hours.
Apparently there was no movement, but that didn’t mean Shae wasn’t tied up inside…and that was as far as Ned let his brain travel.
They climbed in, Fraser and him both squeezing into the tiny back seat, their packs on their laps. Their driver was an older man, balding, in a leather jacket and glasses.
“Americans?” he asked. “Tourists?”
“Work,” Fraser said.
Ned looked out the window. The city rose ahead, bright lights sparking into the night, his last conversation with Shae in his head.
“What if Dana and his people weren’t…weren’t good people? What if they found out you were alone and…I don’t know, tried to kidnap you? Or rob you or…or rape you?”
