Carmody shot out of the highway exit, taking Thirty-Second Avenue east in light neighborhood traffic. He rode on for several blocks, then saw the corner of Meadows Court straight ahead to his left, perpendicular to the avenue. As he continued past the cul-de-sac’s inlet, he glanced over his shoulder at the tree-lined residential street.

Musil’s car was there. Parked at the dead end.

He slowed down, turned right off the avenue at the next corner, took another right and then hung a third to put himself back on Meadows Court a block south of the inlet. There was no one ahead of him, no one behind him. The only person out was a mail carrier pushing his delivery cart up the sidewalk.

Halfway down the block, Carmody pulled alongside a parked car, stopped and waited. He sat with his hands loose around his grips, the bike purring softly as a kitten underneath him. Its electronic injection system kept the two-stroke sipping fuel, so there was no need to blip the throttle.

He waited. After a minute his head-up gave him an aerial of Musil exiting the Acura, Little Wing’s livestream providing a close-in view. He saw him walk from the dead-end area to the driveway on his left. Saw him turn into it and continue up toward the garage. With the drone hovering almost directly above the garage roof, Carmody did not have an angle of the door rising open. But he saw Musil briefly pause in front, step forward and disappear inside.

This was it—almost.

“Spotter up,” he said into his mic.

“Roger,” Lucas answered up above.

Carmody waited in the motorcycle’s saddle, everything around him still and quiet.

Calm before the storm, he thought.

In Dragonfly’s passenger compartment, Dixon popped the right-hand door latch and slid open the door, feeling an immediate rush of wind on his cheeks. He mounted his sling in ninety seconds, attaching its vertical straps to the cargo hooks, then adjusting the D-rings on its horizontal line.

His .300 Winchester Magnum rifle was on the floor in its hard case, the Leupold optic already affixed, a five-round magazine pushed into the well. For ammo he was using Hornady 150-grain SST Interlocks hand-loaded with Hodgdon’s blue, liking the flake’s slow burn for long-range velocity.

He turned, crossed the cabin and removed the bottom cushion from one of the vacant seats. He carried it over to the door and set it down. Then he lifted the WinMag out of the case, got as comfortable as possible on the seat cushion and secured the rifle in the rig.

“Ready back here,” he said into his headset.

“OK, I’m moving into position.” This was from Lucas up in the cockpit. “When this bird drops, it drops fast, so do your best not to fall out.”

Dixon glanced down the aisle through the open cockpit door at Lucas’s back.

“Thanks for the advice,” he said.