For obvious reasons Van Sciver had to keep the drone out of the air for as long as possible. Which meant no sky surveillance. Once Candy and M confirmed Orphan X’s precise location, they’d input it into the handheld GPS unit, an unmanned armed aerial vehicle would flash above the thick clouds, and Zeus would hurl a thunderbolt from the heavens. There’d be no collateral damage. No noncollateral damage either, if you thought about it.

If you killed the Nowhere Man, did anyone really die?

The targeted zap would get blamed on Hamas or Israel or some shit—that was up to Van Sciver to figure out. He was delighted to have a shot off U.S. soil and wasn’t going to miss his chance. One of the joys of operating OCONUS was that there was no hue and cry over ROEs and constitutional rights and court precedents. There was a guy one moment and a crater the next and then everyone standing around with their hands in their pockets, shrugging.

The GPS unit in Orphan M’s lap mapped the street and the surrounding buildings, drilling down coordinates using not degrees but minutes and seconds, which were accurate to 1/3600 of a degree, precise enough to guide a missile through a doughnut. The thing even accounted for minute tectonic crustal movement, Jaggers had informed her fetishistically. She’d told him that that sounded like a medical condition.

Candy focused again on her call with Van Sciver. “I was still hoping to have a more leisurely meal with the diner,” she said.

They’d been over this.

“The COORDINATES,” the collection of anonymous voices said. “And then DESSERT.”

The line cut out.

*   *   *

Evan sat in the bay window of the boutique hotel overlooking the crowded Zagreb city center, an open laptop resting on the cushion beside him. He had a clean sight line to the third floor of the condo building across the street where René Cassaroy was bedded down. Dex was there as well, in a connecting condo. Evan was still recovering full use of his right arm, but Dex was missing a hand, so he figured that put them no more uneven than they’d been before. At least Evan still had two opposable thumbs. He hoped to put them to good use.

He’d have to be extremely cautious in his approach to ensure that no communication went out to the men watching Despi. The slightest misstep could trigger a text or a call, and she’d be dispensed of as proficiently as her parents and sister had been.

Evan could understand why René had chosen to hide here. Several prominent businessmen and ministers lived in the complex, which was riddled with security cameras.