Behind us, the stocky guy checked the money and then handed over the file. And then—

It happened so fast. The bearded guy stepped close to the seller and made a sudden, quick movement: at first, I thought he’d punched him in the chest. But then the seller was collapsing to the floor, clutching at his stomach as blood welled between his fingers.

“Oh, shit!” hissed Gabriel. We all looked at each other in horror. We’d just witnessed a murder and the guy we were supposed to grab was dead. I stared at the man with the silver beard. He tossed the knife beside the body, then looked down at his suit, inspecting it for any trace of blood.

“Okay, everybody just sit tight,” whispered JD. “We’ll wait until he’s gone, then leave. Let the CIA figure out what the hell this was.”

There was a knock on the window, about an inch from my head. I jerked around in panic and stared right into the face of a gray-haired man in a security uniform. I gawped at him. How is he there? How did he get right up beside us without me seeing?

Because I’d been too busy watching what was going on behind us, when I should have been doing my job.

The guy asked me a question in German. I waved frantically for him to shut up, before the murderer behind us heard him. But it was too late.

In my mirror, I saw the bearded guy spot the security guard and pull a gun. I opened my mouth to shout a warning but then the shot rang out and the guard fell to the floor. I stared down at him in shock. Just a sweet old guy working the graveyard shift, he’d wandered over to ask what we were doing there and now he was dead.

And now the murderer knew someone was in the van. He started shooting and we all ducked down as bullets sprayed through the van. We could hear him snapping out orders into a radio, his voice calm and clinically efficient.

“Get us out of here!” JD yelled.

I started the engine…but it wouldn’t turn over. One of the bullets must have hit something vital in the engine..

“Got another SUV coming in fast,” reported Cal over the radio. Shit. The guy had called in backup.

“Out the back!” yelled JD. We scrambled out of the rear doors of the van but gunfire chased us, forcing us to duck behind a parked car. Whoever he was, this guy was a good shot.

Bradan had a radio tuned to the police frequency and it suddenly squawked. He listened to it for a second. “Someone just called in shots fired,” he said. “Police’ll be here in five.”