on clandestine wings on soil governed by an ally, conveniences like that tended to occur.
Robie and Reel carried duffels off the jet and dumped them in a truck waiting for them on the tarmac. Reel took the wheel while Robie rode shotgun.
After their meeting with Evan Tucker they had geared up and game-planned, as much as was possible in the few hours they had to do so. They had spent the flight time going over various scenarios.
As they drove along Reel rolled down her window and let the breeze wash over her face. Neither had slept the entire trip except for a forty-five-minute catnap right before landing.
“So,” she said, breaking the silence.
Robie turned on the radio on the off chance that there was a bug somewhere in their vehicle.
“General Pak,” said Robie.
“Tucker screwed up big-time somewhere. I could see it in his sweat, the chickenshit.”
“North Korean general goes down in France. I wonder who the original target was?”
She glanced at him. “We both know that, don’t we?”
Robie looked out the window. The countryside in the south of France was beautiful much of the year. While the lavender wasn’t as vibrant right now as it was in the summer, it was still something to look at. But for Robie, it might as well have been dead cacti.
He said, “Blue Man thought it was a head of state, and Blue Man is almost always right.”
“So for North Korea that means the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un.”
“But he’s no longer the target.”
“And General Pak is,” she noted. “So what changed?”
“General Pak is the second in command over there. You think he was behind a coup orchestrated by us?”
She nodded, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as she did so. “It certainly happens. Military wants to take over. We work with them and turn an enemy into an ally.”
“Coups work when they’re a surprise. My take is something happened to blow the surprise.”
Reel said, “You think the president signed off on the hit on Pak?”
Robie nodded. “Not even Evan Tucker has the balls to authorize this alone.”
She said, “Mission got screwed, blowback could be a tsunami, and all thanks to Evan Tucker and his megalomaniac plans. And we get called in to clean up his mess. And he walks in to meet us with a smile on his face like he didn’t try to drown a confession out of us and we’re suddenly best friends. I knew the guy was an asshole. This just confirms it.”
Robie slipped the gun from his holster and examined it. The pistol was his old reliable. He’d used it in dozens of missions. It was lightweight, compact, had perfectly aligned iron sights, and fit his hand precisely. It was a beautiful piece of customized engineering.
With a ton of blood symbolically coated on its metal-and-polymer skin.
Reel glanced at him again. “Having second thoughts?”
He looked at her. “And you’re not?”
Reel didn’t respond to this. She just stared down the road and kept driving.
Robie and Reel spent the day preparing for the targeted hit, including a reconnaissance visit to the cottage Pak was renting. They ate a late lunch in their hotel room overlooking a valley steeped in the colors of fall. Reel went to the window with her cup of coffee and looked out. Robie remained at the table going over the details one more time.
He said, “You got it down?”
“Every millimeter and microsecond,” she replied. Reel added, “You ever think of living in a place like this when all is said and done?”
He rose and joined her at the window, following her gaze.
She turned to him. “Have you?”
“I told you once before, I don’t look that far down the road.”
“And I told you once before, you should start.”
He glanced over her shoulder. “Peaceful. Pretty.”
“Go to the market with your basket and get your food fresh for that day. Take walks. Ride bicycles. Sit outside at a café and just…do…nothing.”
“You sound like an ad for a travel magazine,” he said, smiling.
“Why shouldn’t I have something like that?”
“No reason in the world,” he said, turning serious at her response. “You can have it.”
She looked wistfully out the window for a few seconds more and then turned to him with a resigned smile. “The hell I can. Let’s get back to work.”
Night came. And then the deepest dark of night arrived hours later.
They set out from their hotel and made a circuitous journey to their final destination.
It was a cottage on the outskirts of a cliff-hugging village about twenty miles south of