Page 12 of Secret (Chicago Underground 6)
“Here. Let me see.” I reached for the goggles. “Come on.”
With clear reluctance, Major handed them over. I peered inside. It took me a couple of minutes to line up my eyesight correctly and then to make sense of the blue-red blobs on the screen. I checked the two upstairs first. Yup, still going at it. And nope, no way would Henri resort to something as intimate or leveling as missionary. Besides, he was an ass man.
I lowered the goggles to the second floor. First I only saw a single mass, like some sort of a shapeless amoeba. Then one separated and shrank a little—sitting down, I guessed. Another moved away—and sat. I pictured guys gathered around a break-room table, talking shit and grabbing a beer.
Henri wasn’t here. Even if their specific activities were slightly different, no man was singled out from the crowd, held away as Henri preferred to be. This was the disorganized chaos of jacks and marbles. Henri ruled the space around him with the rigidity of a chessboard.
“Not here,” I said.
“How do you know?” Major asked impatiently.
I really didn’t want to have to explain the marbles-and-chessboard thing to him. He’d just give me that frowny look and tell me I was stupid again.
“He just isn’t.”
Major looked ready to argue, but Luke cut him off with a glance. “Next.”
Two down, three to go.
Chapter Six
The middle hangar was the trickiest, because people were milling around. My heart began to race. Most likely this was it, if only because of the activity outside. I counted four men carrying machine guns. There didn’t seem to be any urgency to their movements—which meant our entry wasn’t detected—but energy crackled in the air. As if they were waiting.
This time Luke and I hung back while Major checked out the building with the goggles. “Too many to get an accurate count,” he said when he got back. “But I’m estimating twenty total.”
Twenty of them, three of us. And I probably shouldn’t even have counted myself, compared to these guys. Two and a half. Could the situation get any worse?
“There’s another problem,” Luke said. “Rico isn’t responding.”
“Shit,” Major said.
“Yeah, shit. You heard him when he got inside the fence, right? Then nothing. We’ve made it past two buildings now, and he hasn’t reported in about a single one.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
“We follow the plan,” Luke said grimly. “We’ve found the right hangar. Now we go in.”
“Redundancy.” I felt light-headed.
“Keep breathing,” he told me. Then to Major, “You stay with her. I’ll go in.”
“That wasn’t the plan.”
“Well, in the plan we had two
teams, one to keep watch outside, one to go in. Since there’s only two of us, that means one person per team.”
“Bullshit,” Major said. “She can wait outside by herself. If anyone comes close, shoot them in the fucking face. We’ll hear the shot and come get you.”
“No,” I said. “I want to confront Henri. You said I would be able to.”
“It’s not a good idea,” Major said, his voice oddly gentle, as if I might break.
Maybe I was shaking a little. “That’s why I’m here. I know I’m slowing you guys down, but it will all be for nothing if I don’t at least try. If he dies before he calls off the hit on me and Ella, we’re screwed. You know that.”
Luke looked away, the moonlight drawing long shadows over his eyes. “Okay. We all go in.”
We waited until the side of the building was clear and then crept to the back. The night air felt suddenly as thick as fog, as rich as butter. The light beaming down on us from the stars seemed blinding, even though I couldn’t quite make out anything.
