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“I see him. I see him,” Darshana said over the radio.
Sanjay looked west toward the building she was on, though he couldn’t see her from where he was. “What’s he doing?” he asked.
“Talking to another man. It looks like they are walking back to the car.”
“This other man, what does he look like?”
“Tall. Maybe forty. Short hair.”
“European or Indian?”
“European.”
Sanjay frowned. Not Director Mahajan. At least they still had eyes on van Assen.
“Kusum, are you ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” she responded.
Two hours earlier, van Assen had shown up at the survival station, alone in a car. Hopefully his next stop would be NB551. Sanjay and Kusum were both waiting on motorcycles, ready to take up pursuit.
“Van Assen’s getting in the car,” Darshana said.
“The other man going with him?”
“No. He’s alone.” Several seconds, then, “He’s leaving. Turning…east.”
Kusum’s route.
“I’ll catch up,” Sanjay said. He kicked his bike to life.
The people in America had called early that morning with the request for him and his friends to prepare to create some chaos in Jaipur. Since there were only the three of them, it was understood the chaos wouldn’t be much, but they were told whatever they could do would help.
To that end, the first thing they’d done that morning was locate a fireworks factory on the edge of town, where they obtained several small barrels of powder and reels of fuses. They hid the kegs around the perimeter of the station, ganging fuses so several could be lit at the same time. Darshana was staying behind so that if the call to act came while he and Kusum were following van Assen, Darshana could light them up. The makeshift bombs wouldn’t do much damage, but they would be unnerving.
Sanjay caught up to Kusum five minutes later on the street paralleling the one van Assen was using.
“Keep on him,” he told her over the radio. “Tell me every time he turns. I am going ahead.”
“To where?”
“I have an idea. Just do not lose him.”
Sanjay twisted the accelerator and raced away. He didn’t want to share his plan with her, knowing she would try to talk him out of it, but if it worked, they might be able to provide the Americans with more than the distraction from a few barrels of gunpowder.
Using Kusum’s directional information, he tried to stay at least two blocks ahead of van Assen. One time he screwed up and fell behind, but quickly made up the distance. Finally, when it seemed the Dutchman was going in one steady direction, Sanjay increased his distance to four blocks, then five, then six.
As they neared what appeared to be a warehouse district, he thought they must be getting close to van Assen’s destination, so he decreased his speed.
Two streets down and to the left, he saw it. Thankfully, it was far enough away that the guard at the gate didn’t see him. Even if there wasn’t a guard there, he would have pegged the place for a base. The array of satellite dishes and antennas on the roof was incongruous with the rest of the buildings in the area, and while the structure itself appeared appropriately worn, he would swear it was designed to look that way.
He turned the bike around. “Where are you?” he asked.
Kusum gave him a location that was only two and a half blocks away. He moved up to the end of the street and laid his bike down in the middle of the road, making it impossible to drive around it. Then he hid in the shadows of the building on the corner.
Twenty seconds later, van Assen’s car appeared on the road. When it neared the bike, it slowed. Van Assen had two choices: get out of the car to move the bike, or back up to use a different street. Sanjay wasn’t about to leave things to chance.
A second after the car stopped, he sprinted toward it, and was only a few meters away when the driver’s door started to open.
Perfect.
Sanjay leapt forward and grabbed the door. Van Assen yelped in surprise.
“Good morning, Mr. van Assen,” Sanjay said. “So nice to see you again.”
Lalo Vega silently worked his way around the Madrid survival station, checking on each of his people.
He sure as hell hoped this wouldn’t be for nothing. Putting all his people on the line like this felt like a disaster in the making. But the Resistance leadership back in America assured him his team wouldn’t be the only ones out tonight. It was a worldwide effort, they had said. The big push.
Despite his concerns, he put on a brave face as he made sure everyone was set.
“Any time now,” he told them. “Wait for my word.”
This was going to be something to see, Raheem Bahar thought with a smile. The Cairo survival station would not know what had hit them.
During the first days of the epidemic, Rahim and his people had cleaned out five army ammo depots, moving the munitions to a centralized location for later use.
When the request from Resistance headquarters had come through, he knew the time had come.
They had to temper their initial plan for fear of harming the survivors in the detention areas, but their effort would still pack more than a simple punch. Because Rahim had no intention of only putting a scare into Project Eden personnel at the station.
He and his people would destroy them.
“You going to be all right?” Pieter Dombrovsky asked.
Megan Zhang nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
Whether she would be or not didn’t matter. The call would come soon and they would go into action, despite her nerves.
She had always known that by joining the Resistance, there was a good chance she’d be involved in a mission like this. She had done what she could to lessen the potential trauma, and had volunteered for the Guangzhou contingent so that she wouldn’t be faced with seeing the death of anyone she knew back in Hong Kong.
Then stupid Pieter had volunteered to come with her. Now she had to worry about him.
She tightened her grip on her rifle, hoping to quell her shakes.
Pieter must have noticed, because he pried one of her hands loose and put it in his. “No one will see us up here,” he told her. “We’ll set off the charges, fire off a few shots, and before you know it, it’ll be over.”
Unable to help herself, she flung her hand around the back of his head and pulled his lips to hers, kissing him for the first time ever.
“Don’t you dare die on me,” she whispered.
“I won’t if you won’t.”
“Deal.”
The choice of the location for the Tokyo survival station had been a poor one on Project Eden’s part. To be fair, it was impossible for anyone to know about all the tunnels that ran under the city, whether new or long abandoned.
It was one of the forgotten tunnels that would be the station’s downfall, at least if Toshiko Nagawa had anything to do with it. The tunnels allowed her team to get right under the facility and place remotely detonated explosives below the administration building.
Now all she had to do was press a button when the call came, then walk in and free the detainees.
As her college roommate back at Berkeley used to say: Done and done.
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