The first private audience will be for “Mexico City University”. This is you, said a note. Keep your minds as blank as possible and wait until they’re talking to open fire, to catch them off-guard. Don’t hesitate. The Twelve have extremely strong psychic abilities, though we don’t know whether these extend to humans. It’s essential that they’re dispatched without ever letting them get the upper hand – or else your team will be summarily executed and humanity will not stand a chance.

Alex tapped his thumb against his mouth as he read, frowning slightly as he pictured the scene. If Wesley’s arm wasn’t healed by then, there would be six of them against the Twelve. The target practice they’d done earlier had focused on that – all of them standing in a line, each going for their own particular two targets. The team was proficient enough by now that this slight variation on their skills hadn’t fazed them; they’d all been performing at well over ninety per cent by the time he’d finally called a halt. Hopefully Wesley would be okay, though – they could really use a clean-up man standing over to the side, to shoot any angel that the others might have missed. If Wesley was still injured, then Alex would have to fill that role himself, nailing his two angels quickly and then going after any others.

Earlier, he’d brought the paper file that Willow had given him in here too, and now he leaned forward to the coffee table and flipped it open again. Neither he nor Kara could read Spanish nearly as well as they spoke it, but he could make out enough to see that most of the details were the same as on the memory stick. The only discrepancy was to do with one of the hallways. The computer file said they should exit by that route to reach the elevators quickly – the paper file said there were renovations going on and the doorway at that end was blocked. But the computer file was clearly more up-to-date; the work must have been completed by now.

As he glanced at the laptop again, Alex suddenly remembered what Sophie had said about some kind of proposal for him. On the main menu screen, he found a file he hadn’t noticed before: Nevada.

He clicked it open, and discovered plans showing an underground camp in the desert – a huge, sprawling bunker of a place, sleek and modern. As he read, he learned that it had been used for some kind of military training and was now in the hands of the CIA, who apparently had been considering moving his dad’s camp up there.