Gin
“I do too,” Marcus said.
“You do not. You would have needed a book of kings and one of threes, and since I have the last king and the last three in my hand, you either didn’t count right, or you pulled them from another deck.
” He scowled at Marcus grumpily from under his lashes.
“I could have been sleeping if you were going to cheat.”
Marcus grunted. “I was bored ,” he confessed. “And losing. I wanted to see how alert you were.”
“How alert was I?” Dean asked, wondering if he should wrap his scarf around his face again and just give it up and sleep. The heat was making him somnolent—but the boredom was making them both itchy.
“You can still keep track of a deck with your eyes closed,” Marcus said in disgust, throwing down his cards.
Casually, he leaned back and took a gander through their vent to the outside world and saw the usual stand of nothing.
Birdie had been gone for about sixteen hours, and if the compound got supplies every day, those trucks should be back soon, although that didn’t mean Birdie would be.
Either way it was late, late afternoon, and the heat was unbearable under the shade of the parachute and unlivable outside of it.
They’d been on uncomfortable stakeouts before, but the tension of knowing what they had planned at the end of this one was making them both fratricidal.
Dean didn’t deign to answer, and the ensuing silence sat thickly on the two of them. So thickly, in fact, it was almost like a noise.
In fact….
Dean’s eyes shot open, and he and Marcus both scrambled to a squat. There was no “Did you hear that?” because if they hadn’t both heard that, they wouldn’t both be staring at the opaque sides of their little shelter, wondering if they weren’t both about to be taken out by an armed drone.
“It’s small,” Dean breathed, and Marcus gave a short nod.
By now the buzzing was close enough that they had an idea of how big the thing was, as they hunkered down behind a flimsy piece of cloth, and the idea that the drone was too small to carry a weapon might be the most comforting last thought either of them ever had.
At that moment there was a zoom and a rustle at the side vent of the tent, and a dinner-plate sized object hurtled in and fell at their feet. The giant bumblebee sound stopped abruptly, and Dean went to their lookout portal while Marcus bent closer to check out the drone for explosives.
As he pulled his helmet goggles on for an enhanced view, he caught his breath. Way out— way out on the road connecting the compound and the town—was a supply caravan, heading toward Sangrino del Corazón.
Rising up from the corner of the last truck, barely discernible at this distance even with the goggles, was a wire-thin antenna where most antennae wouldn’t be.
As Dean watched, the antenna retracted, disappeared, and the last truck in the caravan was the same sand-covered canvas as the rest of the caravan, with the exception of the stowaway in a hastily soldered hidden compartment underneath.
Or so Dean surmised as he adjusted the goggles to their maximum and studied the last truck with increasing desperation.
There it was. The antenna that had steered the drone made one last retraction into the undercarriage and the betraying shadow of Birdie’s hastily improvised compartment.
“Holy moly,” Marcus swore by their tent’s entrance, pulling Dean’s attention.
“What?”
“There’s a message attached to this drone—paper.”
“Holy moly?” Dean sniped, pulling the goggles off before his head threatened to split open. “What are we, six?”
“Okay, then. Holy fuck , Dean,” Marcus retorted. “If that would help, then holy fuck .” He held up a strip of electrical tape that had obviously been peeled from their new drone. Underneath was some basic note paper, scribbled on with what was probably a ballpoint pen.
“I had no idea Bird was so hi-tech,” Dean said with no inflection whatsoever, and Marcus let out a strangled yelp of a laugh before handing the packet over.
Dean pulled out the Leatherman tool that no op would be complete without and released the blade so he could work diligently on extricating the notebook paper from the tape without tearing it.
When he was done, he spread out the pieces so Marcus could see too.
There were two pieces of paper—the first one had a series of bullet points.
· Bike’s at Gonzalez Wreckers. 3 days before it gets wrecked.
· Family SW corner
· AAG NE—Win!
· Door by N entrance 3 a.m.
· FUCKING QUIET
Dean raised his eyebrows as he stared at the combination of intel and instructions. Next to him he heard Marcus let out a low whistle.
“What?”
“Just glad Bird doesn’t want our jobs is all,” Marcus said. “How in the hell did Bird learn all that?”
“Probably hid in a corner and listened,” Dean said.
Birdie’s age and gender weren’t the only thing obscured by clothes, haircut, and a ballcap.
After time out in the sun and the desert, Birdie’s ethnicity was anybody’s guess.
A hunch of the shoulders, a hitch in the walk, and Birdie could be anybody’s wizened abuela, limping in obscurity from store to store.
But that didn’t mean this wasn’t a stunning piece of intel.
“The family and the antiaircraft guns are in the exact opposite ends of the compound,” Marcus said, to make sure they were both on the same page.
“Yes, they are.”
“Bird can let us in by the antiaircraft guns,” Marcus extrapolated.
“Yes, Bird can.”
“You and me have the explosives.”
“We do.”
“What else do we need?”
Dean looked at Marcus with a measured glance. “We need to know the Russians are going to blow up too.”
Marcus grunted. “God, must you ask the impossible?”
Dean shook his head. “Not impossible. In fact, logical. Our assassins just knocked off their double agent. If they’re in bed with Corazones—”
“And they are,” Marcus supplied.
“And they are,” Dean agreed. “So they executed a major action, and they’re trying to suck up to Gael Barrera.
Bird saw planes landing after ours got shot down—it’s probably why our plane was targeted in the first place.
They were expecting important people, and we weren’t them.
The problem is making sure our bloodthirsty Bratvas are in the place we want to make boom. ”
Marcus grunted. “God, Dean. It’s got to be a hornet’s nest in there. They shot down our plane. Bratva fucked up and is looking for a witness. Are you sure Bird’s going to be able to let us in?”
“Bird letting us in? Yes,” Dean said thoughtfully. “But being able to gather enough intel to blow the place up in good conscience? That’s gonna be rough.”
Marcus grunted. “So that’s our plan? Run around and gather intel, then meet when we know what to do with it?”
Dean nodded slowly. “Yeah. But don’t get too discouraged. That’s only one of the pages Bird sent us.”
Marcus perked up. “And the other one is….”
“The layout of the compound.” Dean flattened the other piece of paper, holding the first one with the list behind it. “And now we know something about Bird that we didn’t before.”
“Scary smart?” Marcus breathed.
“Yes, but also probably an engineer before a pilot,” Dean surmised, glancing at the exacting block printing that matched that of the first page of the missive. The sketch was rough but precise, with every building labeled and every potential need outlined.
“So that’s more like it.” Marcus set the drone down carefully and, after checking for vermin, sat down next to it. “Pull up a seat, partner. Let’s make a real plan.”
Dean nodded, and Marcus produced a very clever little pen from his pocket, and together they started to outline in earnest.
AT MIDNIGHT, they gathered their supplies and bungee corded them to the trailer, covering the neat bundles with their friend the parachute/tent.
They walked the bike a good 200 yards from their modest little cliff face so the sound didn’t echo before Marcus got on in front and Dean grabbed his waist and they took off for the compound.
Dean closed his eyes for some of it, not sleeping, of course, but relaxing, because if Marcus was driving, he’d be on the alert.
He let Bailey fill his thoughts: That shy, adorable smile, the freckled and peeling nose, the surprising insights into people, whether they were movie or TV people, the way he seemed to yearn for the things in the pictures in his apartment—hiking, exploring, going to museums and such—but had allowed his life to become his cat and his job with not much else in between.
Dean wanted to be spooning Bailey right now. Dean wanted to tell him about hiking in the foothills in the spring, or having a picnic at his parents’ in early summer. Wanted to take him to Grass Valley to show him Dean’s brother’s antique store, and let Laure fix him a home-cooked meal.
Dean wanted to see his shy doctor live .
But first he had to make sure he wasn’t assassinated for seeing too much.
Soon enough the compound loomed up in front of them, although it was facing the northeast road to town.
Marcus shut off the engine a mile before the gates, and after strapping on their service weapons and filling their collapsible water bottles—and making sure their enhanced-vision goggles were firmly attached to their heads for when they were needed—they set off toward the northbound door.
It was a small service door, set between massive cooling towers, and Dean could see that Birdie’s plan wasn’t so featherbrained after all.
If this part of the compound was the service/ventilation part of the place, it would be damned hot in and around it. Nobody who didn’t have to would willingly stand in 100 degree heat at two in the morning, even to cop a smoke or see the stars.
They were sweating by the time they made their way through the thundering hum of the towers toward Birdie’s ushering hands.