33. High-stakes Hide and Seek
CHAPTER 33
HIGH-STAKES HIDE AND SEEK
LEDGER
M iles , Jace , and I drive to the airport together. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but there’s more of a buzz of excitement in the air when leaving on a trip while it’s still dark. Maybe it’s because most of the rest of the world is still asleep, so it feels more like something big and secret is about to go down.
Not that any of our missions aren’t a secret.
Like the other operatives, we step onto the plane thirty minutes early. “ If you’re not early, you’re late” is pretty much the motto of every intelligence agency. I’ve never done a big operation like this with the CIA , so this is my first time on a CIA jet. It’s not the luxury jet of the ambassador’s that we flew to Dublin on but it’s not exactly coach, either. It’s more what I imagine professional sports teams fly to games in. Not that I have any idea what kind of jets sports teams fly on. But the seats are bigger, and so are the aisles and storage space .
I stow my gear and start chatting with the eight operatives on the extraction team and the six on the distraction team as they are doing the same. We might not be working directly together, but we’re all working the same mission. What we do will directly affect one another, so it’s good to get to know each other. Besides , you never know when you might cross paths again. It’s good to have friends everywhere. I make friends with the crew of the plane, too.
I had hoped to talk to Zoe before takeoff. She is here, but somehow in this small space, I can’t seem to cross paths with her, strange as it seems. Everyone starts taking their seats while I’m distracted by a conversation with someone from the (aptly named) distraction team about the best way to create diversions, which means that I don’t get a chance to sit right next to Zoe . We are on the same row, at least, but there is an aisle and another operative separating us. We barely get a chance to say “ Hi ” before the flight attendant gets on the intercom.
She’s dressed in a pantsuit, and says, “ Good morning and welcome aboard this flight to Montenegro . If we let you on the plane, then, well, you’re on the right flight. Fasten your seatbelts and use this time to review your mission briefings, which should be hitting your in-boxes right about now.”
I pull out my tablet, connect to the wifi, and sure enough, the mission briefing is waiting for me. It mostly has information about the Fortress of Dormitor that is public knowledge, along with a detailed list of our objectives. Nothing too exciting yet .
I keep hoping to get a moment to chat with Zoe across the aisle, but she sleeps when everyone else sleeps and looks out the window, deep in thought, when she isn’t.
Sleep doesn’t come easy, but on a ten-hour flight when the people around you sleep, there aren’t a lot of other things to do. By the time we land, I’m awake, alert, and ready to get this party started.
As we step off the plane, a new briefing package lands in our in-boxes with information that the surveillance team on the ground here sent to the analysts back home. This one contains things like schematics, where the entrances to the fortress are, which ones are most feasible for entry, where guards are stationed, and guard movements.
The guys already on the ground here got us four SUVs — silver, white, and dark blue ones, not FBI black, thank heavens. My team got a silver one, and I joke that they should’ve given us gold because we are going to do a gold-medal job on this operation. The drivers are all part of the surveillance team, too, which means that not only do they know the way from here to the forest and from the forest to the staging area near the fortress, but they know about all the obstacles along the way.
I take a seat right next to Zoe in the SUV . She smells and looks great, even after traveling so many hours. I want to tell her how amazing she is, how much I love every second I’m around her, and how much I love her. I want to cup her face with my hands and kiss her until both of us are gasping for air. All of which would probably be pretty inappropriate right now.
Okay , it would definitely be inappropriate. And ever since she ran out of my apartment, I haven’t been able to get a good sense of how she feels about us. I really want to talk to her and find out how she’s doing. I know my mom went to her apartment yesterday, but when I asked, all my mom told me was, “ We just talked.” So I’m still every bit as clueless as I have been since I gave Zoe her repaired necklace with its extra pendant.
We all go through our expanded briefing memos as we travel, and our driver, Andre , is throwing in lots of helpful details. So we figure out which entrance we should sneak into the fortress through and which direction each of us is going to head as we place our portable surveillance devices that will map out the fortress for the extraction team and give our handlers eyes everywhere.
We also figure out which of the four of us is going to disable the radio transmitters, the satellite uplinks, the internet routers, and the internal communication networks, and what needs to happen when Zoe gets to their command center. The entire drive ends up being about planning the mission. Which fair enough, should be all about the mission.
And normally, I’d be all about focusing on the op. I’m just having a hard time not focusing on Zoe . Trying to read all of her facial expressions. Wishing I understood as much about body language as she does.
Once we arrive at the staging area, we check our backpacks again to make sure we have all the equipment we need and load our cargo pockets up with everything we might have to access quickly. Then we begin the hike. The other teams are hiking in, too, taking different routes to better avoid detection. Each team is using dedicated frequencies for communication with encrypted channels so the enemy can’t easily take them out.
It’s a little chilly out, but with our gear and the hiking, it’s the temperature I’d pick. The night is clear, and we’re far enough away from civilization that there’s no light pollution at all, and the sky is incredible. Even the Milky Way is visible from here. I glance at Zoe , wondering if when she looks at the stars, she also thinks about lying against my chest in the canoe on the lake as we both looked up at the night sky.
The forest is beautiful, too. We each have lights strapped to our foreheads so we can hike to the fortress in the dark, but they’re pretty dim so we won’t be seen from a distance. We keep our voices quiet, too, so they won’t travel. Not that they really could in the dense part we’re in right now, or over the sounds of the forest. Besides the cacophony of insects doing their thing, we’ve heard the howling of wolves and a few yowls that we think might be lynxes.
“ How’s your leg?” I ask Zoe as we hike.
“ It’s not one hundred percent,” she says. “ That’s become abundantly clear. But I’ve had worse. I’ll be fine.”
I nod and fight the urge to offer to give her a piggyback ride because I know Zoe wouldn’t go for that in a million years.
We reach a clearing and can see the fortress on the other side of it. The picture we saw yesterday in the briefing room didn’t do it justice at all. The thing is majestic. It’s built right into the mountain, and it’s as if you can feel how ancient it is. How many people have come here before. The stone is weathered, and moss and ivy are creeping up the sides in some places, and honestly, it kind of makes it feel mystical.
There is a narrow, winding path I’m pretty sure was made by animals that cuts through the trees, shrubs, and rocky terrain and looks like it emerges near the fortress, so we take that. Once we get close, we stick to the forest but head in the direction of an entrance on the side instead of toward the main entrance with the massive wooden and iron gate that’s flanked by guard towers. That’s near where the distraction team will do their magic.
We stay hidden in the trees, not far from the small door inset in the fortress that, if I hadn’t known it was there, would be invisible to me. I’m glad the surveillance team did their job well. We all put in our earpieces and make sure our cameras are on and strapped to the fronts of our vests. Then we each take turns saying “testing” in a low voice to make sure they’re working. Through my earpiece, I can hear Zoe , Jace , and Miles here, and Charlie , Kella , and Packston back home.
“ Abraham is here, too,” Charlie says. “ He told me to tell you all ‘ Good luck, have fun, and don’t die.’”
“ Will do,” I say.
Our handlers are coordinating with the other three teams and their handlers so we don’t have to have everyone in our ears. We sit back and wait silently for the go-ahead once the distraction is in play.
It’s nearly two-thirty in the morning, local time, when we hear an explosion. Based on the way it lights up the whole area without causing the ground to shake as much as I’d expect with an explosion that size, I suspect that the distraction guys might have added some fireworks to the mix. Some of those booming loud ones. The guys are all making quite the ruckus themselves, too.
It does what it’s supposed to, and moments later, we see ten guards running out of the fortress, armed, ready to take on whatever threat has presented itself. If only they knew that the threat was here to arrest them.
“ You are cleared for entry,” Kella says.
“ Go , go, go!” Packston adds. Like we need the extra prodding. I’ve been bouncing on my toes for a good fifty minutes.
Jace , Miles , Zoe , and I quietly run the rest of the distance across the rocky ground from the trees we were taking cover under to the side door. It has a modern electronic lock, and Jace places the disruptor device on it. A moment later, it clicks, and we all hold our dart guns at the ready and go inside.
We figure that most of the people were drawn out of the fortress by the distraction team, but we will likely run into a few more. We’re only here to arrest people, and we can’t exactly have sounds of a fight carrying through the fortress walls if we’re going to stay stealthy and get the information on that server.
A long hallway runs parallel to the fortress wall, so Jace and Miles go right, and Zoe and I go left. The hallways have cold stone walls and flagstone floors worn smooth by centuries of use. The air’s a bit musty-smelling, which fits.
There are torch sconces on the walls, but they aren’t in use— instead, the corridors are lit by LED lights strung along the walls. The guys who set up base here didn’t make the installation of the modern lights pretty, or even permanent-looking, which tells me that they probably haven’t been here for long. And they’re emitting kind of a bluish light, which doesn’t go with the fortress at all.
At the end of the hallway, just before it makes a right turn, Zoe places one of the surveillance devices just below the wall torch sconce, hidden in its shadow. It’ll scan the area and send live video feed back to our base and on to our handlers. The device also contains signal boosters that will amplify our communications as we take out theirs. I can see that Jace is doing the same thing at the opposite end of the hallway.
The next hallway is short before it splits into two. As I’m placing the surveillance device at the corner, Zoe says, “ I guess this is where we split up.”
I know we are in the most active part of an active mission, and now is not the time to bring up anything relationship-related. I also know that the camera and the comms are going to catch every bit of this, but still, I reach for Zoe’s hand. She meets me halfway, and I give it a squeeze. In the bluish light, I scan her eyes for a moment, wishing I could tell her everything I want her to know. Instead , in a voice that betrays the emotions I’m feeling, I simply say, “ Let’s go make history. ”
She nods, seeming to not want to pull her eyes or her hand away from mine, either, and says, her own voice affected by emotion, “ I’ll bring the pen.”
“ Splitting off,” I hear Miles say through my earpiece.
“ Us , too,” I reply as I let go of Zoe’s hand and head down the corridor away from her.
I quickly make my way through the dimly-lit corridors, dart gun raised, placing surveillance trackers at every corner and in every room I find, confirming into my comms as I place each surveillance device. Every room I’ve come across so far has been small and feels like it hasn’t had a human inside it in decades. As I go, I hear everyone sounding off in low voices about their progress.
“ I just found a big storage area,” Miles says.
“ Tagged the entrance hall,” Jace says. “ I’m going to find a way around the backside to avoid walking through it.”
“ Oh ,” I hear Zoe say. “ I think this is a chapel. It has stained glass windows and benches. Tagged .”
All three handlers are giving instructions, too, updating us as to how things are going outside.
“ I just found the base of the left observation tower,” Miles says. “ I took out a guard, tagged it, and am heading up.”
A moment later, Jace says, “ And I just took out a guard at the base of the right tower. Heading up.”
Each of my brothers take out a second guard up on the observation deck. Miles fries the electronics in his tower, and after taking out a guard on his side, Jace disables the radio equipment they were using in that tower. Then he heads onto the roof as Miles heads back down to the main level. We hear Jace through the comms as he uses a jammer and a pair of cable cutters to take out the satellite uplinks and communication antennas on the roof.
“ I just found the barracks,” I tell the team. “ No surprise that no one is here sleeping, still. Tagged .”
“ I found the armory,” Zoe said. “ Not a single guard here.”
Miles says he found the stairs leading down to the holding cells and tagged it, but is still heading toward the center of this level. I peek around the next door opening to find the command center, which houses all of the high-tech equipment, computer terminals and servers, screens showing surveillance feeds, and maps. And two guards, trying to figure out why their cameras went out. I use my dart gun on both of them, and they fall to the ground.
“ Found the command center. Zoe , how close are you?” This is exactly where she needs to be to download all their data, then upload a virus to take out their system, and I’d like to hang around to watch her back while she does. Especially because while she does it, she’ll be using a localized jammer to disrupt radio frequencies. It’ll disrupt the rest of their communications, but it’ll also disrupt hers, and I’m not a fan of not knowing what’s going on while she’s in there.
I hear some grunting, then she says, “ I just found the tactical planning room. Three guards. One jumped me.” My heart leaps into my throat in the breath between that sentence and her next, “ All three are now down.”
I grin. Of course they are.
Charlie says, “ Zoe , the command center is not far from your current position. When you get your surveillance device planted, just head into the south corridor. That should lead you toward Ledger .”
While she’s still in the tactical planning room, I head out into the corridor to watch for her. In my comms, Kella shouts, “ Ledger ! Behind you!”
But I don’t have time to turn before two men grab me.