Page 54 of Baby One Last Time
The bile burned my throat again. “But you haven’t cracked it. Okay, let’s not panic,” I repeated, but the high-pitched whine in my voice indicated that I might, in fact, be panicking. “Wait, is that the SUV just a few feet inside the gate?”
Jensen and I both snapped on night-vision goggles.
“It is,” he said. “That makes sense, given the layout of the driveway we’ve seen on aerial shots.”
“I see two people. The driver and the sidekick. They don’t have Mai with them, and they don’t seem in a rush to alert the troops about an intruder.” The good news washed over me in a wave of cool relief.
Jensen snatched up his laptop and tapped keys. “Let’s find out for sure that she’s okay. I’m going to increase our comms signal a little at a time, see if we can get enough strength to reach her without attracting their security team.”
The thirty seconds it took for him to make the adjustments were agonizing, but when static turned to breathing, I nearly kissed him.
“Mai, is that you?” I said. “If you can hear me, let us know. If you can’t talk, tap twice.”
Immediately, two taps on the mic pounded our eardrums. We winced, but laughed with joy.
“Stay calm,” I said, “but you’re not at the second warehouse. Those two goons drove back to La Parisienne. They’re walking toward the house now. They’re about twenty feet away from you. Is there anyone else in the vehicle?”
“Shit,” she whispered into the comms. “No one else in here, at least. Let me know when they go inside and I’ll sneak out of here.”
“Not so fast,” Jensen said. I closed my eyes as he broke the news to Mai. “It’s a good news, bad news story. The good news is we’ve been monitoring Beecher’s security since we got into town. There are a few holes we might be able to exploit. But I can’t turn off that perimeter security system, and we don’t know how many armed assholes might be patrolling the grounds, or where they are at any given time. With no one in there to have your back...”
“Well, hell, Jensen, that sounds like all bad news,” I snapped at him.
“Guys, you need to argue later because the window’s closing,” Mai said. “Thug one and thug two are meeting back here in half an hour to load up the back of this thing with Uzis. They have an early morning meeting somewhere to show product to another lowlife. You know, if I can get out of here, we can follow—”
“Eye on the prize, Mai,” I said. “The only directive we have right now is getting you from one side of the very high, very protected wall to the other.” There was a solution. There had to be. The alternative was unacceptable. My mind churned through scenarios. “If I can get to the top of the wall, I can provide cover for Mai while she makes a run for it.”
“I didn’t pack my climbing gear,” she said. “Did you?”
We’d moved fast, taking only the bare minimum gear in case any other team members spotted us leaving. Since the only task on our agenda had been the quick recon of a one-story warehouse, climbing gear had seemed like overkill, not to mention it would have attracted attention if we’d run into any teammates on our way to the van. Now I couldn’t believe we’d been so stupid and unprepared.
“It’s a bad plan anyway,” Jensen said. “I can’t prove that brick wall is alarmed, but I’d bet my favorite air gapped computer on it. I’m not getting a read from here, so it’s probably not wireless. I’d guess a wire runs under the bricks along the top.”
“We’d have to be fast,” I said.
“And have eyes in the back of your head,” Jensen said, “because you’ll have to be lying flat to avoid being a target when the bad guys come running, which means you won’t have much of a visual field.”
“Jesus, I forgot how much I hate working with you,” I muttered.
“You love it,” he said, and he was right, because his clear thinking was saving both my bacon and Mai’s.
I had to get my mind straight. Step back and assess this like a leader. Like a good tactician. Like a good team player. I glanced at the GPS. “How far are we from the resort?”
“Closer than we were from the warehouse,” Jensen said. “Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”
I pulled out my phone.
“What are you doing?” Jensen asked, not looking up from his computer.
“Getting eyes in the back of my head,” I answered.
“The team can’t mobilize that fast,” Mai said. “Plus, they’d blow the whole operation if they storm troopered in here.”
“You’re right about the team, but that’s not what I had in mind.” I pointed to my ear to signal to Jensen. “Mai, we’re going to mute on our end to make this call. If you need us, we can still hear you.”
“Wait, why—”
“Don’t force me to make this a two-way mute,” I said.
