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The basement of the Beckford Historical Museum was a surprisingly clean and neat wide-open space with a sandwich board sign in its center that displayed factoids about the factory town’s history.

You want some history? Shaw thought as he glanced at the board then down at the SAT phone in his hand. How about some military history? The final decisive battle of Podunk, Connecticut, coming up.

And boy, was it going to be an extremely bloody one, he thought.

It was ambush time now. “J Lo,” their contact on the inside, had called twenty minutes before and Shaw had passed along the counter offer of two million dollars in bitcoin from the client.

Half of it was successfully sent into a wallet she had provided while they were still on the phone with the other half to be paid when she delivered up the others.

At that point, she had told Shaw that there were seven people all together. The two women, her boss, two construction workers and a vacationing fisherman who was apparently a retired New York City cop.

The cop was the pain in the ass. He was now in the lead of defending the group. After the explosion, it was his idea that they retreat into the old factory building and to strip his fallen men of their weapons.

But that didn’t matter now.

Because it was all about to be game over and out.

J Lo had told them about the tunnel and their plan to escape through it and four minutes before as Shaw had arrived at the museum with the other new SWAT officers, she had texted that they were in the tunnel right this very minute on their way.

The entry of the underground tunnel to the factory was behind a small door in the brick wall opposite the sandwich board and now to the left and right of this door, Shaw, along with Don Minton and three other tactical SWAT officers, stood wearing ominous black balaclavas, their gloved fingers hovering over the triggers of their MP5s.

Five , Shaw thought as he stood there staring at the door. Four. Three.

Shaw and the rest of them twitched as if at a small electric shock when they heard the sudden knock on the closed tunnel door.

“It’s me. It’s J Lo. Open up quick,” said a voice.

Shaw nodded and Minton hit the lights and they all pulled down their night vision goggles as the officer beside Minton pulled the door.

The short bespectacled pudgy woman standing there shrieked in fright and her glasses went flying as Shaw reached out and seized her.

“Jodi Cushing is in the tunnel?” Shaw whispered in her ear as he pulled her to the side with a gloved hand over her mouth.

He took away his hand.

“Right behind me,” she said after a gasp for breath.

“How many all together?” he whispered.

“Four. Cushing, the New York woman, the cop and my boss.”

“They have guns?”

She nodded.

Shaw looked at her face as she said this. Even in the green light of the night vision optics, he could tell that her fear and seriousness were real. She wasn’t playing games.

Shaw turned and nodded to Minton. Minton peeked into the opening and then he entered with his men at his back.

Minton’s orders were simple.

Shoot everyone on sight.

“Okay, good. Go upstairs,” Shaw said, releasing the woman.

“I need my glasses,” she said.

Shaw searched the ground and handed them back to her.

“And the rest of my money,” she said.

Shaw looked at her again, the conniving eyes behind her glasses. He actually admired her. She knew how to put the bite on when opportunity knocked, didn’t she?

“As soon as we’re done,” Shaw said.

“Which way do I go?” she said.

Shaw flicked on his MP5’s undermounted flashlight and pointed its beam across the sandwich board at the stairwell.

“Past the board,” he said.

She did as instructed and was coming past the sandwich board when Shaw’s silenced gun went click-clack. As the two rounds of 9mm Parabellum hit her in the side of the head just behind her right ear, she toppled forward like a sack of potatoes, her glasses shattering as she face-planted off the concrete.

Sometimes getting the money was the easy part, wasn’t it? Shaw thought as he hurried over and grabbed her ankles and dragged her into a broom closet under the stairs.

Staying alive to spend it , Shaw thought as he closed the door and scooped his brass and ran for the mouth of the tunnel.

Now, that was the real bitch.