It was a lone house.
There was nothing special or distinguished about it. That was why they used it. Just another suburban neighborhood home.
I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I didn’t want anyone to die. But when you send in a team to take over eight agents, I knew there was a high risk of someone getting a bullet in their body. Setting this up, thinking over everything, from every angle, I used what we had to use.
Me.
“All clear.” A voice came over our coms, and that was the signal. “I have control of their system. You are good to enter the east door. We have three minutes before they realize they’re not in control.”
That meant all clear for us.
My team was made up of the best of the best. They moved inon the house as if they were a part of the shadows. They were approaching without sound, leaving no trace, and unless someone was watching us, they were ghosts.
We were ghosts.
There was a small team of three in front of me, and a team of four behind me. There were more approaching from the other side of the house. We came in from over the neighboring dividing fences.
A door was unlocked.
We slipped inside.
The men before me spread through the side of the house.
“Heat signatures have two at the front. Two at the back. Two upstairs. One in the kitchen. Two in the basement,” came from our coms.
We’d gone over the blueprints. There was no easy entrance. “There’s no way they’d keep him in the basement. If they’re attacked, they’d want at least two escape routes,” Harden argued. He pointed at the plans, his finger digging into them. “If there are heat signatures in the basement, I guarantee you that it’s a decoy. He won’t be kept there. My guess is that if there’s a heat signature upstairs, that’s him. They can take him over a balcony or climb onto the roof. Two ways to escape, other than the obvious.”
Harden spoke with confidence, but it didn’t feel right to me.
Now we were moving to the kitchen.
We were supposed to draw one guard out at a time. I was the decoy for that trap, but it didn’t feel right. None of this felt right.
Two at the front. Two at the back. Two upstairs. One in the kitchen. Two in the basement.
We were in the east side of the house, so we had three options: front, back, kitchen.
The front would be too vulnerable to a frontal assault. The same with the back end of the house. But the kitchen… I wished I had Bailey’s memory. I tapped Harden’s shoulder in front of me. He held his hand up. The rest of our group paused.
I typed out my thoughts on my phone and held up the screen. It was turned on night mode and dimmed, so when he read it, none of us were worried a sudden flash of light would alert anyone else in the house.
Does the kitchen have two exits?
He frowned.
I pulled my phone back and typed again.
Two are in the back. They’re surrounding the kitchen. Above, below, behind, in front.
He knew what I was saying. My brother was the one in the kitchen, but instead of replying or making a decision, he raised my phone so the computer team would be able to read it. The camera was hooked on his night vision goggles.
A second later, we heard in our ears, “The kitchen has two exits. A door and hallway connects to the garage. There’s also a door leading to the backyard. The two heat signatures are on the back patio.”
The voice added, “You have one minute to get out. Decide and go.”
Harden made a hand motion, signaling to the rest of the team.
The four behind me moved ahead.