The whisper was heavily accented and barely audible. Smith froze, squinting into the darkness as a vague human outline appeared from behind a stack of wooden pallets. He resisted the urge to speed up, keeping his steps careful as he approached with his gun held loosely by his side. Even in what little starlight could filter between the buildings, he could see from the man’s body language that he was scared. No point in making things worse by leading with a suppressor-tipped semiautomatic.

Unfortunately, his attempt to project as much casual calm as circumstances would allow seemed to be failing. By the time he eased alongside the man, it sounded like he was starting to hyperventilate. On the bright side, no discussion was necessary and the briefcase exchanged hands without problems—other than the fact that it was probably twice as heavy as Smith had been told. A rare error in detail by Fred Klein.

“Are you all right to get out of here on your own?” Smith said quietly.

The man nodded as a gust of wind kicked up. The old buildings around them protested, but there was something about the sound that didn’t seem to follow the pattern it had before. Something out of place.

Smith grabbed the man by the front of the shirt and tried to jerk him back behind the pallets, but he panicked and resisted. A moment later there was a dull thunk followed by the man’s legs collapsing.

Smith followed his injured contact to the ground and dragged him behind cover. The man was still breathing, but there was a wet sucking sound to it that Smith had heard too many times in his years as a combat doctor. A crude examination—while he was trying to watch both directions for people moving in on their position—turned up a crossbow bolt sunk to the fletching between two ribs. The man started to choke on his own blood, and Smith felt a rare moment of hesitation. The physician in him was finding it impossible to just abandon the man despite the fact that there was nothing he or anyone else could do to save him. The covert operative in him was screaming that he was being boxed in and if he didn’t get out soon, he wasn’t going to fare any better than the man fighting for breath on the ground in front of him.

Knowing in excruciating detail what the remaining minutes of the man’s life would be like, Smith pressed his suppressor against the man’s chest and fired a single round into his heart. The muffled crack of the round was followed by a now familiar thunk from the opposite direction of the first. Smith threw himself backward and slammed into the weathered boards behind him as a crossbow bolt hissed past his face.