A scorpion was lurking on the ground beside Tristan’s left foot. He stepped away.
“Come on,” the guy said and motioned toward the others.
Tristan followed him around bushes and rocks lit eerie green by the night-vision goggles.
As they approached, the others turned toward him, their proboscises bobbing as they appraised him.
One of them walked forward, hand outstretched. “Tristan King, I’m Magnus Jensen.”
Yep, he still had the northern European lilt to his speech.
Tristan clasped his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“May I see your surveillance of the location’s interior?”
Tristan came up with his phone and opened the app.
The glare was like holding a star in the palm of his hand.
Everyone pulled back, arms over their eyes.
Tristan tapped the screen and reduced the screen’s brightness, but even the lowest level was too bright to look at with the night-vision scopes.
Magnus had already ripped his mask off his head, so Tristan handed the phone to him so he could take off his goggles and wipe his streaming eyes.
The commandos, for that is what they were, gathered around and stood shoulder to wide shoulder, watching the screen. Faint light glowed on their chins and cheekbones.
The view was swinging wildly again as Sergey walked through the suite.
Rough black cloth filled the screen. He was probably holding the phone at his side as he walked.
With a burst of light, Jian and Anjali came into view. They were lying on the bed, back to back, with their hands tied behind them and to each other.
Magnus sighed, “Okay.”
Sergey’s voice barked orders in Russian. Several of the guys standing in the circle around the phone, including Magnus, nodded.
Another man walked into view from behind Sergey, possibly having followed him into the bedroom. He walked over to the bed and yelled something unintelligible at Jian, who didn’t respond. The man grabbed Jian’s jaw and shook him around. Something dark stained the pillow where Jian had been lying.
Tristan was going to kill those guys. He was going to take them apart with his bare hands. That asshole should not touch Jian. Even though Jian had only worked for Tristan for a few months, Tristan was responsible for him and had gotten him into this shit. The responsibility for Jian’s kidnapping swamped him again, and he was going to dismember that guy who’d touched him.
A shiver crawled down the sweat on his back. Those assholes had broken into Colleen’s apartment at exactly the same time as they’d invaded the presidential suite at The Boulders, and it had just been stupid luck that she and Tristan had been breaking and entering at GameShack instead of sleeping in her bed. The thought that it might have been Colleen that the goon had hit, that it could have been Colleen’s blood on that pillow, devastated him.
Magnus asked Tristan, “What have you learned during your surveillance?”
He gritted his teeth. “Jian and Anjali are being held in the bedroom of the suite, tied up except for bathroom breaks. Do you have a floor plan?”
“Yes.”
Magnus handed the phone back to Tristan, and he clicked it off and shoved it in his pocket. Tristan shoved the night-vision goggles over his head again. The electric green and gray world settled into view. The other commandos were putting theirs on and adjusting their straps and knobs.
Tristan said to Magnus, “Sergey, the head bad guy, seems to be keeping Jian’s phone with him most of the time.”
Magnus waited, watching him, and then nodded, the long tube between his eyes oscillating.
“There are at least four other people in the suite. All seem to be Russian and male.”
Magnus just waited, so Tristan kept talking.
“They’ve been watching TV a lot. When he walks around with the phone, it looks like some of the guys are sitting in chairs. They don’t seem to be vigilant, but it’s hard to tell. Someone might be standing and watching whilst the others sit. They seem to have semi-automatic handguns, not rifles.”
Again, Magnus waited, unspeaking.
“The several times Sergey has entered the bedroom where they’re keeping Jian and Anjali, we didn’t see anyone in there standing over them, but that’s not for sure. We just couldn’t see.” Tristan trailed off.
“Anything else?”
Tristan shrugged. “Sergey needs to eat more fiber.”
Magnus nodded. “Good. You will stay here during the operation. Our IT support technician will coordinate with you for surveillance and operational strategy.” He touched his ear and whispered, “Blaise, our contact is here.”
Blaze? Had Magnus said Blaze?
36
Hackers
Tristan
Surely there was no possible way that the IT coordinator for Rogue Security was Tristan’s Le Rosey friend and fellow member of the Scholarship Mafia, Blaze Robinson.
A person walked forward. He was tall and athletic, but his shoulders were hunched. A hoodie draped over his face despite it being over ninety degrees outside and dark.
Just considering the guy’s posture and movements, Tristan relaxed just a little. However, between the darkness and the odd coloration due to the NVGs, he couldn’t see the guy’s face. “Blaze? Is that you?”
The guy lifted his head a little. Starlight revealed a straggly pale-colored beard on whiter skin, and his chin was more pointed than Blaze Robinson’s.
“I’m Blaise Lyon,” he said, his accent a melodic amalgam of French and German that Tristan recognized as probably Swiss. “I do not know you.”
“Sorry. I thought you were a friend of mine. The name, Blaze. That would’ve been a hell of a coincidence.”
His voice was low, almost menacing. “I don’t think I am a friend of yours.”
“Blaise,” Magnus said, his tone sharp.
Tristan held his hand out. “Pleased to meet you then, Blaise.”
Blaise kept his hands in his pockets and stared at Tristan standing there with his arm outstretched, and then he slowly removed his right hand and clasped Tristan’s for one firm shake before he retracted it and stuffed it back in his pocket. The black glove he wore was thin leather.
Magnus snorted and turned away. He called out quietly because his voice carried in the warm, dry air, “Alpha Team, go-time.”
Boots crunched on crusty desert soil, and bushes rattled.
Tristan said to Blaise, “Magnus says I’m supposed to liaise with you.”
“Yes. I will need to connect your phone to my computer to view the interior of the hotel room on our monitors.”
Uh, no. “You’re not plugging anything into my phone.”
Blaise lifted his chin, glaring at Tristan with one eye from under his hood. Definitely not Blaze Robinson. “And you are not connecting to my Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.”
Another man came over, shorter compared to Tristan and the others but still north of six feet. “Hey, hackers. Figure out how to make it work.”
Blaise lowered his head so that his hood draped past his face again. “You, of all people, should know how important cybersecurity is, Aaron.”
The toss of his head and how his NVGs drew an arc in the air suggested an exaggerated eye roll. “Not every Israeli worked on Stuxnet, Blaise.”