“I’m tracing it now. Not the police, though. I’m guessing it’s an internal team.”

“Eyes on it. If you see anything, I need to know. Out.”

A carpeted corridor extended back from the reception, with the conference rooms on either side. The walls were glazed, and the light reflected back at her as she swung it left and right. There was no one there.

Downstairs would be different.

She found the door to the stairs and opened it as carefully as she could. The hinges were in good shape, and it was silent. Small mercies.

The stairs ended with a door. There was an emergency light at the bottom, casting an eerie green glow into the space.

She crept down the steps, her joints aching with each step.

She reached the bottom and moved to the door. It was wooden, with no window.

She could hear movement inside.

She heard a voice.

Muffled: “. . . so you tell me.”

A reply: “Brownout. Wouldn’t be the first.”

“Like a third-world country.”

“Not like. It is a third-world country.”

“Thought we told them to make sure that didn’t happen anymore around here.”

Beatrix rested her fingertips against the door and gave it the tiniest push. It opened a fraction. It wasn’t locked.

“It’s Iraq, bro.”

She wedged the Sig in her left armpit and took one of the M84 flash-bangs from the canteen pouch. She transferred it to her left hand.

“What the fuck you expect?”

She stood, her joints flashing with pain, and addressed the door. She pushed it open quietly, pulled the pin and rolled the grenade into the room beyond.

She turned her face away, her hand coming up in a smooth and continuous motion from the throw. She gripped the pistol, hooking her index finger through the trigger guard and sliding it so that the trigger nestled against the top joint.

The magnesium and ammonium nitrate mix detonated with an ear-splitting crack and a sunburst flash that glowed with coruscating brightness, flooding through the crack in the door.

Beatrix kicked the door all the way open and went through, shouldering it aside as it bounced back against her.

She assessed.

A medium-sized room, twenty feet by twenty feet. Two rooms off it. Substantial doors in the way. Cells, perhaps.

Two men.

They had been close to the grenade. One was on his knees, his hands pressed to his eyes. Flash blind.

The second was up against the wall, one arm braced against it while his free hand was clapped up against his left ear.