Rich nodded. “I entirely respect your decisions.”
“Me too. For what it’s worth. This possibility factored heavily into my decision to bring Rich’s crew on board,” said Berg, glancing at the operative. “No offense.”
“None taken,” said Rich. “I’m going to have the two of you walk back the way we came. Keep your radio on, and one of the vehicles will pick you up and shuttle you back to the motel. I don’t know how long this is going to take, but I suggest you get some rest. We’ll pack up and bolt as soon as we’re finished here. Good?”
“Yep,” said Devin.
Marnie nodded. He guided them around the other end of the pool table, where they wouldn’t have to look at the two people they’d just condemned to an agonizing end. Barber and Jeffries turned their heads to see where they were going, but their guards brutally yanked their heads forward by the hair, beginning the process that Devin hoped would end quickly and mercifully for them.
Devin’s radio crackled no more than twenty minutes later, while they knelt in the trees next to the pickup point, waiting on Graves to retrieve the drone from a different church parking lot.
“We’re done at the house. Tim. Hold off on the shuttle run,” said Rich. “Back to a full team, coordinated extract. No extra passengers. Will advise when we’re ready for pickup.”
“Copy that,” said Graves. “I just packed away the drone. Headed to the primary staging point.”
“On my way to the staging point,” said Jared.
Devin transmitted. “Everything’s quiet on our end.”
“We got the location. Mincy Conservation Area just north of the Missouri-Arkansas border,” said Rich. “It’s still going to be a bit of a nightmare finding the camp. The conservation land is nearly six thousand acres. But I think we got more than enough out of them to figure out where they were dropped off every summer. I’ll explain later. We should be at your location in ten minutes.”
“Understood. We’ll hold down the fort,” said Devin, ending the back-and-forth before Rich used the words clean up.
“How bad do you think it got in there?” asked Marnie, softly.
“It didn’t last long,” said Devin. “That’s all I can say.”
“I guess that’s good enough,” she said, sitting against the tree next to them.
He joined her on the ground, the two of them leaning into each other—neither of them wanting to say another word about what had just taken place in that basement.
CHAPTER 40
Felix Orlov accessed the dark web site assigned to him for the operation and started to read the update while the team gathered in the RV. He’d received the text message alert less than a minute ago, while stoking the red-hot charcoal at their campsite grill. Oleg had just returned from a shopping run with several thick cuts of preseasoned steak and two shopping bags filled with American picnic foods like potato salad, coleslaw, and chips. A treat to tide them over at this dump of a campground while they impatiently waited for orders. He turned to Oleg, who stood in the kitchen area next to the bags of food.
“We’ll have to put the picnic on hold,” said Felix. “We need to be at the Allegheny County Airport in less than two hours to hop on a privately chartered jet. We’re headed to Branson, Missouri.”
“How far away is the airport?” asked Oleg.
“An hour and twenty minutes,” said Felix.
“Leaves us enough time to cook the steaks and eat them on the way,” said Valerie. “Right?”
“Where the fuck is Branson, Missouri?” asked Oksana, getting a quick laugh out of most of them.
“Branson, Missouri, is in Missouri,” said Felix. “And the joke’s on all of you, because we have to break down and repack all of the gear into duffel bags for the flight—within the next twenty minutes. I’m leaving us a twenty-minute buffer for traffic. We’re leaving the RVs here. I’ll make arrangements to extend our reservation at these campsites while you jump through Oksana’s ass to get this done.”
She winked and cursed at him in Russian.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” said Felix before tapping his watch. “Hurry along now. Start with the other RV.”
When the team had cleared out, he called Oleg over to the table to take a look at the mission update. He gave him a minute to read through it, so they could compare notes.
“Not what I was expecting,” said Oleg. “Why not just ferry us to the site ahead of time, if this is a counterassault mission?”