Airports were great for taking targets unaware if the targets weren’t smart enough to see you coming, but were damn shitty places for quick, quiet elimination of those who did. There were too many witnesses. Too many cameras documenting what needed to remain unseen.

If they couldn’t get him clean in the international zone, they’d have to nab him on the other side, and getting to him clean in here meant getting up close, and that wasn’t gonna happen now.

They’d have been better off if they’d arranged to have German intelligence on-site, already briefed and ready to assist before the flight landed. Even if they had missed him on deplaning, they’d have been able to grab him at any of the exit-slash-choke points, but he wasn’t that kind of target, and this wasn’t that kind of assignment. Heck, they were on the outer end of normal even for a black op.

They’d known what their target was but not who he was.

They’d had his flight number, moderate confidence he’d be in first or business class, and that was all. No name, no nationality, no description or history or prior connections. Not even age or gender. Only a critical window of opportunity and the urgency of a national security threat if he boarded without them.

They’d had a couple hours to make the flight.

Headquarters had snagged Nick a seat in first.

They’d put her and Juan on opposite ends of business, which had gotten them both relatively close on deplaning. Aaron had taken the rear in coach on the chance they were wrong on target’s position within the aircraft. The cost of last-minute tickets alone must have been more than all of them made in a month combined, but the intel had been solid. Target had been seated two rows behind Nick.

Headquarters had confirmed that detail while they were over the Atlantic and that had been their first look at what they hunted. The rest of what little they had on him had been waiting when the wheels touched down.

Seat number had gotten the war room a corresponding passport.

Passport had gotten a name, age, and face.

Other than that, they were running blind.

Nick had been first off the plane, and he’d gotten ahead of target.

Kara had been first to tail him.

If she couldn’t get close enough, she’d hand him over to Juan, who waited on the other side of transfers, and if Juan couldn’t get him there, he’d hand him off to Nick at the connecting departure gate. They’d left Aaron behind in the arrival terminal to account for the possibility of target looping back, and that had left a hole at passport control, which was where target would head if, instead of continuing to the connecting flight to Berlin, he turned Frankfurt into the final destination.