He hung up, feeling relieved that he’d fulfilled his end of the bargain with Cantrell. She was officially off the hook if things went sour. He’d been tempted to ask his dad how the CIA skirted the issue of conducting covert operations on U.S. soil, but he already knew the answer. They hadn’t. And tonight’s operation would never be revealed—especially to Congress—unless it blew up in all their faces. Not a nice thought. Regardless of his political leaning, he had no desire to see the current administration mired in scandal. When the president looked bad, the entire nation looked bad.

“Let’s get going,” Nathan said. They climbed into Harv’s Mercedes and headed for the I-405 south. With Julio in the backseat, Nathan spoke to Harv in Russian. “Cantrell told me she has a green light to eliminate us.”

“Are you serious?” Harv answered, also in Russian.

“Yes.”

“Is she going to do it?”

“She said she’d resign first.”
“I hate to admit this, but I like her,” Harv said.

“Yeah, me too.” They drove in silence for a few minutes. Still in Russian, Nathan asked, “What could Montez possibly know that’s so dangerous? And what could’ve gotten so personal between him and Kramer? Certainly more than just a clean coal negotiation?”

“All good questions, Nate, but until we grab Montez, we’ll probably never know. Right now we need to be more concerned for Nichole Dalton’s girls. They could be in the safe house, probably are. We need to be extra careful. We have to worry about friendly fire penetrating walls and a potential hostage situation.”

“Like you said, we’ll just have to be extra careful.”

***

They arrived on the outskirts of San Diego after midnight. Sparse traffic enabled Harv to drive eighty miles per hour most of the way. Not much discussion took place. Nathan knew they’d be facing another dangerous set of unknowns. Except to its occupants, a safe house was anything but. All safe houses—by definition—survived on anonymity, and many of them employed secondary measures when their locations were blown. Booby traps. Fortifications. Secret escape tunnels. You name it.

He’d heard Montez’s voice on the other end of the call Julio made from the warehouse. Montez ordered Julio to kill Nichole Dalton, and if he was willing to be that cold-blooded, he probably planned on killing her daughters as well. He hoped they weren’t already dead.

By now, Cantrell’s people would be crawling all over the warehouse and questioning the two wounded mercenaries. If either of them knew the location of the safe house, all bets were off. They might arrive at a raided location with the CIA crawling all over the—

“Damn it.” Nathan spoke in English now.

“What’s wrong?” Harv asked, following suit.

“Our vehicle. Montez won’t be expecting his man to arrive in it.”

“We should’ve thought of that.”

“Options?”