Chapter 57
Miss Watson hated being right. That it was a skill that had kept her alive all these decades didn’t make her feel any better at the moment.
After capturing the truck from three buildings over, she’d parked close by the building she’d been incarcerated in. The low sun, having cleared most of the roof line, would stop people from looking her way or seeing into the hard shadows cast over the vehicle.
Unless they found its driver where she’d left him tied up and knocked out sooner than she expected, everyone would assume this vehicle was hers.
The most basic place to hide, in plain sight.
Wearing a military parka over a plain clothes suit inside the base’s security perimeter also marked her as a person worth avoiding.
She could do with a little less attention for a while.
Well, at least that meant, if Dilya was indeed here, she wasn’t alone. Emily Beale or her people must be here as well. No, Emily would see to Dilya’s safety personally; the colonel was here as well.
Dogs were out on ground patrols, but they didn’t worry her.
They’d be explosive sniffers, and she had none on her to attract their attention.
As long as she didn’t run, she wouldn’t do so either.
People-tracking dogs were far rarer. If there were even any on base, they were unlikely to be trained to hunt a specific human, most of those were body-finders rather than trackers.
However, that meant the alerts were out and she wouldn’t be slipping out the front gate to stroll the English countryside any time soon.
But Zackie had always been trained in finding people, not explosives or drugs.
And she wouldn’t need a sample scent. That dog, like its owner, was too smart.
If they’d found the Digestives, and she had little doubt Zackie would, they’d continue hot on her trail.
Her chalk handiwork had been completely futile.
“Getting old, girl.” She realized that her message was not only futile, but would intensify Dilya’s search.
So, Dilya and a rescue team were coming.
Except she couldn’t risk that, because she’d been right. Dilya’s greatest asset at this time in her career was in so few recognizing her skills. Unlike herself, the girl remained an unknown.
The proof of danger to her protégé raced over the perimeter fence.
A pair of Dauphin helicopters caught the eastern sunrise until they glowed like a pair of shivs right before someone slid them between your ribs.
If they’d been Army Air Corps blue-and-white or UK Ministry of Defence white-with-red-stripe livery, she’d have been less worried.
At the worst, those would deliver a half dozen SAS warriors each.
There were straightforward ways of dealing with the British equivalent of Delta Force.
Instead, these birds wore plain white along with their tail number.
She pulled the IDs out of her pocket; the ones she hadn’t had time to look at since she’d taken them off the dead bodies.
Face, name, scannable code, and the coat of arms. No need of a flashy title like MI6 or Secret Intelligence Service splashed across the front.
The coat of arms with an English lion and Scottish unicorn rampant said more than enough.
They were the ones after her and they were going to be very upset that she’d killed one of their agents in the US and three more less than an hour ago.
Those weren’t the sort of reports that the PM wanted during her daily briefings.
Which, she glanced at the low sun, would be happening within another hour.
MI6 had sent in a double flight of black ops agents to get this, her existence, “resolved” before they had to report it.
She too wanted to resolve this quickly—before Dilya landed in their sights.
But how?