Page 118 of Spymaster

“Yeah, I’m not a very good reader.”

“Me neither,” said Haney. “Especially at night.”

“How about patrol boats?” said Barton. “Did you see any? Either Russian or Polish?”

“There’s no visible presence from either out on the lake, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The Polish Border Patrol has a lot of cameras, though, so I imagine they’re keeping an eye on the water. But the Russians? Everything I could see looked pretty low-tech.”

“Did you get pictures?”

Haney smiled and patted his camera. “Tons. We’ll put them on my laptop and I can show you up in the room.”

“Great,” Barton replied, as the waitress set down Haney’s beer and went to take another table’s order. Once she was out of earshot, he continued. “As soon as it gets dark, we can start moving the equipment into place. Monika, you’ll come with me.”

“As a linguist only,” Jasinski replied. “I don’t have any jurisdiction over the border.”

“I’m sure if you had to, you could be pretty persuasive,” said Barton.

Haney shook his head. Barton would never need Viagra because his erection was permanent. The guy was a walking hard-on, and he’d been eyeing her since they first met.

“What about my idea for a distraction?” Haney asked, bringing the conversation back to the operation.

“For the record,” she stated, “I’m against any destruction of Polish equipment or property.”

“Duly noted. How about off the record?”

“Off the record, you’d have to be sure to take out any of their backups, or else what’s the point?”

Haney nodded and raised his glass. “So, it’s settled, then. You and Barton handle the equipment. I’ll be the official pain in everyone’s ass and handle the sabotage.”

Raising their drinks, Jasinski and Barton clinked glasses with Haney. If everything went well, they’d be back in twelve hours with the rest of the team, doing the exact same thing.

But when it came to complicated assignments, especially one this complicated, things rarely went according to plan.

CHAPTER 71

KALININGRAD

When his next communications window opened, Harvath downloaded Lydia Ryan’s message. To her credit, she had kept it short, sweet, and to the point.

Per his request, the pickup location and the time had been changed. All they needed to do was to stay out of sight until then.

That was going to be no problem. With Sloane covering him once more, he took down the antenna and brought everything back inside the car wash.

Staelin, who served as the team’s de facto medic, had been examining Tretyakov. “I think you’re right,” he said when Harvath came back in. “I think his jaw is broken. He’s not going to be able to exfil with a broken jaw.”

“Don’t worry about the exfil,” said Harvath. “I’ve got it all taken care of. Everything’s going to be fine.”

As team leader, it was his job to reassure and to instill confidence in his troops. Privately, though, his concern was growing. Twice in the last two hours, a police vehicle had done a sweep through the truck stop.

The first time it was just a slow roll. The second time, they stopped, got out and looked in the Dumpsters.

For their protection, Tretyakov had been carefully duct-taped at the mouth and bound even tighter. They couldn’t risk his giving them away.

Harvath decided to double the guard, posting someone at each end of the car wash, even though only one of the roll-up doors had a gap big enough to see through. They might be blind at one of their entry points, but they didn’t have to be deaf.

As he had expected, the alert appeared to have gone out. Since their vehicles had been spotted barreling west out of the city, it wasn’t a surprise that the authorities were checking this truck stop. They were likely checking all truck stops, as well as rest stops, bus depots, and train stations, in addition to countless other locations.

All Harvath and his team could do right now was to sit tight. Though it felt like an eternity, very soon they’d be on their way and one step closer to home.