somewhere else. I suspect it is because they're waiting for someone like me to show up. And I did, which means I have a short window of time before word gets back to wherever the Secutores command center is. The two guys I saw tonight didn't recognize me, but they had noticed me. Judging from the lack of any excitement around the hospital during the time I'd been in the café, I don't think they've called in their suspicions, which meant it will go in their nightly report. A line item to establish a baseline pattern. If they spot me again, Secutores will upgrade me to active threat status.
I have to either not be seen again or be long gone by the time they find out that I'm still around. I can't take them in the hospital itself, even the parking garage is going to be tricky, but taking them after they leave the hospital opens me up to an entirely different set of risks though. Pros and cons. Every mission has them. The deciding factor, as always, comes down to which “things have gone to shit” scenario is the most recoverable. When things go awry—and they will—where do I have the best chance of survival.
And Ralph too. Short of banging him over the head and dumping him in the trunk of his car, I'm not going to be able to get rid of him. That's the cost sometimes of hooking a source. They can be hard to get rid of.
Visiting hours are going to be over in an hour or so, and I doubt the Secutores men are going to remain in the waiting area after that. Their job is to keep watch for strays like me who might come wandering in; they're not protecting any assets at the hospital. Not anymore. They're just watchers. Once there's nothing to watch, they'll call it and head back to wherever they spend the night.
“Ralph, here's the deal,” I lay it out for him. “You can wait for me, and either I'll come back in a while or there will be a sudden surge in police activity around the hospital, which will be your one and only clue that I'm not coming back.”
“Maybe I should come with you…” he tries.
See? Hooked. Can't shake him off the line. I try to push him off a bit with a simple question. “Do you want to be a material witness?”
He sits there, looking like he is actually thinking about my question.
“Mull it over from your car,” I tell him as I stand up.
“That… yes, that makes better sense,” he says.
I leave Ralph and the café, and walk back to the hospital to scout the route the mercenaries will probably take. There's a new parking structure and it's got a floor plan for maximizing parking, which leaves little in the way of places to hide and blind spots, but there are enough.
The pair exit P wing shortly after nine o'clock, heading for the parking garage. They're walking assuredly. Not excited. Not bored. They've got something on their minds, and they're looking forward to reporting in. In the last few hours, they've decided I'm worth making some noise about to their superiors.
All the more reason to act now.
I slip around the exterior of the garage and enter by one of the pedestrian access points near the back. There's a man sitting in a silver Mercedes along the back wall of the ground floor, his car pointing the opposite direction of every other vehicle. He's reading a newspaper, his window cracked slightly, and he glances up as I walk by. There's something about him that seems familiar, but I can't place it, and the setup looks like a bored town car driver waiting for his ride to finish whatever they're doing in the hospital. The guy doesn't seem interested in me, and I push him out of my mind as I stroll toward the low railing that separates the floors of the garage.
General parking starts the floor above. I check to make sure no one is watching and leap up through the narrow gap between the floors. Cars are packed along every up and down ramp—these half-floors are separated by a combination of steel wire and heavy concrete blocks. There's just enough room between them for a body to slip through. It's the sort of architectural layout that parkour aficionados love.
The mercenaries take the elevator, and I move up quickly enough to stay ahead of their ride. When