Chapter 30 Thomas #2
My turn: “West side. Very active. Seventy-plus photographs. Heavy traffic, heavy equipment. Teams are prepping to move.”
Then Will’s voice, and something in my chest unclenched at the sound of it: “Mobile team. Hardstrasse position. Power station quiet. No activity. Moving to secondary target in fifteen.”
“Copy all,” the Baroness said. “Maintain. Next check-in at 01:30.”
I settled back into my position.
The cold had become part of me now, a companion I’d stopped fighting. My shoulder had stopped throbbing. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. My fingers were so numb I wasn’t sure I could work the camera anymore.
But I was still here, still alive and watching.
I was still gathering the evidence that might bring these bastards down.
01:15.
Forty-five minutes until the Baroness thought the teams would begin dispersing to their targets.
Forty-five minutes until the real chaos began.
At 01:23, someone stepped out of the service door and lit a cigarette.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, with the bearing of a man who expected to be obeyed.
He wore a heavy coat over what looked like a military uniform, though I couldn’t make out the insignia from this distance.
He smoked slowly, savoring it while gazing out at the night like a general surveying his domain.
Then he turned, and the loading dock’s light caught his face.
I knew him.
Not personally, but I’d seen his face before—in photographs, in intelligence briefings, and in the files we’d pulled from Sternberg AG.
I raised the camera and found him in the viewfinder, then held my breath.
Snap.
The man finished his cigarette, ground it out under his heel, then went back inside.
I was fairly sure he was one of the architects of the coup.
One photograph of the man standing outside a warehouse might be enough, but combined with the other images I’d captured? I certainly hoped our evidence would convince the world of what we’d seen.
At 01:47, the trucks started leaving. They drove away in intervals five minutes apart, each heading in a different direction, dispersing to their targets like poison through the veins of the city. I photographed each one as it passed.
The warehouse emptied slowly.
The lights went out, section by section.
By 02:30, the building was dark and silent, a shell of what it had been only hours before.
“Condor, base,” I reported. “Warehouse is clear. All units have departed. I counted nine vehicles total heading in multiple directions. Recommend mobile team adjust to intercept.”
“Copy,” the Baroness said. “Mobile team, status?”
Will’s voice: “Hardstrasse power station. We have activity. Three men, one vehicle, at the perimeter fence. Photographing now.”
The operation was working.
Both teams were getting evidence.
The pieces were coming together.
“Warehouse team, extract,” the CIA woman’s voice cut in.
“Copy,” I acknowledged.
I peeled myself out of the gap between the containers. My body protested, muscles locked with frozen joints. Worst of all, my shoulder had begun screaming again.
Moving hurt, but staying still would’ve hurt more.
I made it ten meters before I heard a voice behind me.
“Stop,” in German.
Then the click of a pistol being cocked.
I stopped and raised my hands as far above my head as my shoulder allowed.
“Turn around. Slowly.”
I turned to find a young man pointing a gun at my chest. He was in his mid-twenties, maybe, with a pale face and nervous eyes. I recognized him as one of the men from earlier, the one who had thought he’d seen something by the pallets.
He’d come back to check.
“Hands up,” he said. The pistol trembled in his grip. He was scared. He looked even more scared than I was.
That made him dangerous.
“Easy,” I said. My German was still good enough for this. “I’m not armed.”
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“I got lost.”
“Liar.” He stepped closer—close enough for me to see the sweat on his forehead despite the cold. “I saw you earlier. You have been watching.”
I didn’t answer.
My mind raced, calculating angles, distances, and odds.
He was only four meters away.
I could rush him, but the pistol was pointed at my chest, and my shoulder was in no shape for a fight.
I could try to talk my way out, but he’d already made up his mind.
That left one option.
“You’re right,” I said. “I have been watching, and I’ve seen everything. The trucks, the crates, the men. I know everything you’re doing tonight.”
His eyes widened. “Then you know too much.”
“I know enough to ask a question.” I kept my voice calm and reasonable. “Do you really want to be the one who pulls that trigger? Because once you do, there’s no going back. You’re not a soldier. You’re not a killer. You’re just a kid who’s in way over his head.”
“Shut up.”
“Put down the gun. Walk away. Pretend you never saw me. No one needs to know.”
His hand was shaking badly now.
The pistol wavered between my chest and my face.
He looked like he was trying to work up the courage to shoot, trying to convince himself it was necessary.
In another few seconds, he’d either pull the trigger or break.
I didn’t give him the chance.
I moved, but not toward him—toward the ground.
I dropped and rolled, ignoring the explosion of pain in my shoulder, putting the nearest stack of pallets between us.
A shot cracked through the air, wild, hitting concrete somewhere to my left.
I was running before the echo faded.
Behind me, the kid was shouting.
He was calling for backup and raising the alarm.
I didn’t look back, sprinting through the darkness, weaving between containers and vaulting a fence. My breath tore at my lungs. My shoulder blazed with pain.
“Shots fired,” I called through the radio. “Repeat, I’m taking fire.”
The radio crackled in my ear: “Condor, report!”
I gasped. “Heading for extraction. One hostile in pursuit, possibly more.”
“Can you make it?”
Good question. No, great question.
“Ask me in five minutes.”
Breaking free of the cover of crates, I ran.