8 FINANCE STREET

CENTRAL, HONG KONG, CHINA

1047 HOURS LOCAL

Gayle pursed her lips, hating the role she was being forced to play. She felt frustrated, alone, and her nerves were making her neurotic.

Congratulations—you’re a spy, her inner comedian chimed in.

She shifted the phone from her left ear to her right.

“There’s nothing else you can share?” Nisha asked on the heavily encrypted line.

“Not at present,” Gayle said into the receiver. “But we have eyes up. Are you streaming?”

“Yeah,” Nisha said. “We’re monitoring what you’re sharing—satellite feed from the looks of it—but we can’t reposition, zoom in or out, or toggle between optical and thermal. You have us limited to about a square mile around the op site.”

“I know and I’m sorry about that, but I can’t transfer control,” Gayle said and meant it. “I’ll start mixing things up, but tell me what you need to see, and I’ll make it happen on the exfil.”

“Yep,” Nisha said, not happy with the answer from the tone of her voice. “Our team is moving in now to the meeting, so we’re looking at an hour at least—probably more—before they move.”

Gayle knew Trinity had staffed the op through one of the IC’s myriad of special task force units, but even Steve hadn’t been able to determine which one. She had a sketch from Nisha and Jed on how they intended to move the “package” but no idea how they planned to secure it.

“I’m going to hang up now unless you’re offering something,” Nisha said, ready to shut down this sidebar conversation, which was taking place off the party line from the rest of the team.

“Nothing at the moment.”

“Roger that,” Nisha said and the line went dead.

Gayle didn’t know which of the supersecret task forces Nisha used to work for, but the way the woman was managing the op so far definitely made a statement: “We have no expectation of getting help from the CIA, nor do we need it.” Perhaps, in Nisha’s previous life, she’d been burned by the rice bowl politics, a practice still prevalent in the intelligence community—especially the CIA.

And if it’s not that, then maybe it’s because I’m over here asking for updates with a nice safe offset and plausible deniability while she takes all the risk.