the building Kost was in.
At the corner, they turned right again heading west. The traffic on the street was going in the opposite direction, which meant the Sonata couldn’t follow them. The men on foot, though, could and did.
There was an alley coming up. That was their destination. Marco’s grandfather encouraged him to move a little faster. He didn’t know what was going on, but he could sense the tension in the adults. Coupled with the abrupt departure from the playground, he was starting to get frightened.
Preisler scooped the boy up and hurried their party forward while Johnson kept an eye on their six.
Once they ducked into the alley, Preisler found them cover and stayed with them while Johnson took up a concealed position out on the street from which to engage.
“Gun,” said Kost, over the radio. “The pair of tangos coming up your side of the street. Looks like pistols.”
“You’re sure?” asked Preisler.
“Positive.”
“Splash them,” Johnson interjected. “I have my eye on the third tango coming up the other side of the street. Do it now.”
“I can’t see the third tango,” said Kost. “He’s under my window.”
“Don’t worry about him,” said Preisler. “Get the two you’ve got in your sights. You’re cleared hot.”
“Roger that.”
Moments later, there were two muffled cracks from outside on the street followed by a SITREP. “Tangos down,” said Kost. “I repeat, tangos down.”
“Blue Sonata inbound hot,” Johnson warned from his vantage point out on the street. The driver had already looped around and was trying to get to their location. “Fifty meters out.”
“Good copy,” said Kost, as he leaned out the window and looked for Shanty Irish, as well as the vehicle. “Blue Sonata. I see it.”
There was suddenly the sound of gunfire from down on the street.
“Tango down,” said Johnson, who had killed the third man on foot.
When the blue Sonata was in range of his Honey Badger, Kost fired multiple rounds into the windshield. The vehicle swerved wildly, bashing into parked cars on both sides of the narrow street.
Johnson drilled a racing stripe down the side as it passed. The heavy 45 ACP rounds from his Kriss Vector tore through both the door and the driver.
The Sonata, its driver dead, began to slow, but didn’t stop. Rolling through the red light at the intersection, it was T-boned by a Chevy Suburban, ironically plastered with Boston Celtics and “Luck of the Irish” stickers.
After helping Lara’s parents to their feet, Preisler once again scooped Marco into his arms. “Time to go,” he said.
CHAPTER 37
LOMBARDY REGION
NORTHERN ITALY
The transport plane, per Admiral Proctor’s promise, had been fueled and waiting for them when they arrived at Šiauliai.
After swinging by Sølvi’s vehicle to grab her gear, they had hit the road in Harvath’s Land Cruiser. With all of the texts and emails that he had to deal with, she had graciously offered to drive. There was no classic rock and Rolling Stones for him on this return leg.
Nicholas had been quick to get to two pieces of bad news. The first was a rundown of what had happened in Boston.
They didn’t know who was responsible, although they had plenty of photos of the perpetrators. One of the men was apparently off-the-boat Irish, and two others had extensive police records tied to Irish organized crime in Boston. The fourth perpetrator, the team’s driver, had an Irish surname and a rap sheet filled with petty crimes. The working theory was that he was either a low-level initiate or had been hired just for this job.
The fact that the attack had been foiled, and all of the offenders were dead, was a testament to the skill of the team that Harvath had sent in. They had done exactly what he had assigned them to do. Marco and Lara’s parents were safe. And now that they had been confirmed as active targets, he was having them moved to a new location.
While there were four fewer bad guys in the world, the flip side of all of the offenders being dead was that there was nobody to interrogate. It was a price he was willing to pay.
After filling in a couple more details, Nicholas then moved on to his second piece of bad news.
The deepfake software was turning out to be impossible to work with. Unless you had a subject sitting still and speaking directly to the camera, the superimposing of another face just wasn’t convincing. You couldn’t yet take a random person walking through an airport, bus, or train station and make it look