“Skeet!”
Ham’s voice cut through the night in comms as Skeet spotted his team leader at the far end of the wharf, North and West flanking him, running hard.
“Status?”
“Volkov is in the river. Briefcase too.” The words came out hard, professional, but inside his chest, something was imploding. “Intel’s gone.”
Ham blew out a breath. Then, “Chloe?”
“Chloe’s fine.” But bile filled his throat.
Ham caught up to him then, glanced at the dark water, back at Skeet. “Okay, let’s go.”
Emergency vehicles wailed in the distance—probably Thai police responding to reports of explosions and gunfire in the warehouse district. Soon this place would be crawling with investigators and forensics teams.
They needed to get moving.
Chloe sat in the passenger seat of Ham’s SUV, her camera clutched in her lap, the window down. She looked up when Skeet approached, something that looked like desperation flickering in her blue eyes.
“Are you okay?” she started.
He walked past without stopping, sliding into the back seat beside North.
The silence that followed was thick enough to cut.
“Everyone accounted for?” Ham asked, checking his tactical watch.
“West’s doing final sweep,” North replied. “Making sure we didn’t leave any American fingerprints behind.”
They had worn masks and no one had died—just a handful of people zip-tied and waiting for the police like a gift. But they needed to bug out of Thailand ASAP.
The drive back to the Airbnb could have chilled the dead. Chloe sat silent in the front seat. Skeet looked out the window, so many words in his head he didn’t know where to start.
Finally she asked, “What did you guys see in there?”
Ham glanced at her. “Modified HVAC equipment. And plants—rows and rows of drying plants.”
“What kind of plants?”
“Purple flowers with dark berries,” North said. “They were hanging from wooden frames. And the air was sort of sickly sweet. Big fans circulating the air. I think to dry the plants.”
“There was grinding equipment too. Massive steel cylinders.”
“Grinding it,” Chloe said. “Do you think they were trying to make a powder?”
Ham glanced at her, and suddenly Skeet stopped thinking about her broken promise. He leaned up. “So it could be ingested.”
Silence.
“The local authorities are en route,” Ham said. “But we got what we came for.”
“You did?” Chloe said.
“Yeah, West grabbed samples of the nightshade compound. And he snapped some shots of the plants.”
“What about ICONSIAM?”
“We’ll give the intel to my buddy Director Logan Thorne of the Caleb Group. He has the right government channels to get it to the Thai government.”