“How are the Chinese not seeing this?” Jed asked, looking at the confederate playing Dr. Weider.

“Same way the magician saws a woman in half or elevates someone onstage. The mirrors in place on the open panels give the illusion that they are looking at the space between ambulances. Trust me—we’ve done this before.” The man’s thick Texas accent now replaced his German accent. The man looked fifteen years younger in the blink of an eye. Jed chuckled and shook his head.

Spooks . . .

“What do you want us to do with the Chinese security agent?” Bex asked, pulling his attention back to the narrow passage where she looked through the rectangular hole expectantly.

“What’s his status?” Jed asked.

“Alive, but unconscious,” she replied. “I was able to dose him with ketamine and then etomidate. He’ll be out for an hour or more.”

“Leave him,” Jed said.

Moments later, the Chinese medic who had been driving their ambulance traded places with Bex, who rolled smoothly through the opening and into Jed’s ambulance. Hyeon closed the secret panel, gave Bex a high five, then crawled through the cab opening to assume the driver’s seat. With the personnel transfer complete, the ambulances could now diverge.

Jed watched Bex place oxygen tubing and a nasal cannula around Zhao’s nose and attach EKG leads to his chest.

“Is he okay?” he asked, trying to stay out of her way.

“Completely stable,” she said with a nod.

“How long will he be out?”

She pursed her lips and shrugged. “A good while, I think. They said to expect hours for the drug to metabolize and his condition to resolve.”

The acceleration picked up and Jed held on to the bench as Bex shifted to the swivel chair mounted at the head of the stretcher. His stomach rose as they descended the steep, right-hand spiral down from the park to the main road. Moments later, they sped west and Jed glanced up front to see the heavy traffic parting like the Red Sea as Hyeon sped down the center lane, lights and sirens running full blast.

“How’s our six, Actual?”

“You’re clear for now,” Nisha said, her voice tense. This was the key part of the exfil. Somehow they needed to lose themselves in the dense traffic of Hong Kong before the Chinese security team picked them up. In theory, the Chinese agents and police would follow the other ambulance, which they believed had departed the scene carrying Dr. Zhao and his Chinese minder. Hopefully they assigned low priority to the ambulance carrying the German scientist and his bodyguard.

“Kill the lights and sirens when you can,” Jed said through the open cabin door.