Page 56 of Surge

Garrett chuckled. “Yeah, you too, you underwear-stealing mutt.”

He and Zim shoved out of the SUV and bounded into the building to find neat stacks of shipping containers, some full size, some LD3 size that were sixty by thirty. He circled a finger in the air, and Zim nodded, jogged off to search the building.

Keying his comms, Garrett hoofed it in the opposite direction. “Eagle Three, what do you have?”

The spook was set up for oversight at their Jakarta safe house. “I’ve got eyes on the exterior of the building and access to local security feeds. Execs are outside on the other side of the building, waiting for rides. Pilots have already left.”

That meeting he’d led last night had apparently focused the team. Garrett had to admit things were changing, maybe for the better. Caldwell wasn’t even close to caustic at the moment, and Delaney was workingwithhim, not against him. His mind ricocheted back to the safe house, that moment on the couch when their faces had been inches apart . . .

Shoot, he was starting to like her. That was dangerous.

Mind on the mission, Walker.

He and Zim met halfway around the cargo building. “Find anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Me either.” He signaled to the front, and they worked their way toward it as he called Caldwell. “Eagle Three, what’s the twenty on the building manager?”

“Upstairs, in his office.”

“Come on in, Rogue,” Garrett comm’d. Maybe Surge’s nose would find the chems.

He and Zim reached the front just as Delaney and Surge jogged into the building. When she gave him that little smile of hers, he couldn’t help returning the smile. Then cleared his throat. “Ready?”

“We are.”

She took the baggie of vials from her pocket. When she opened it, she smiled at Surge, whose tail started wagging. She let him sniff it, and the wag grew sharper, more focused. Ears alert. Body alert.

Garrett eased back from the entry to give Surge the room to work.

After returning the baggie to her pocket, Delaney nodded to the sleek black Malinois. “Seek-seek-seek!”

The fur-missile roved through the cargo building, sniffing the air, the containers as Delaney trailed him, doing her best not to influence his search with guiding.

But he didn’t hit on anything.

Garrett stood in the doorway, hands on hips, surveying the room. Neither had he nor Zim. No boxes marked with the Sachaai S mark. What was going on?

On the long leash, Surge trotted past him, loped up the ramp into the belly of the cargo plane, sniffed in the air, reared on his hind legs, then lowered himself and plunked down on the ramp.

“Good job, Surge.” Delaney looked up into the cave-like darkness of the entry to the plane, then back at Garrett. “I thought the cargo was all unloaded.”

Having recognized the signal for a hit, he stalked up past them. “So did we.”

Zim scratched his head. “Did they have time to drop a load somewhere else before landing here? Is the manifest wrong? Or maybe the building manager is?”

On his rear, Surge scooted closer to the plane’s open bay door and gave a bark, his ears pointed straight into the plane.

Delaney tilted her head, frowned. “He’s serious about this.”

“Eagle Three, where are the passengers?”

“Uh, last one left about a minute ago.”

“And the manager?”

“Still in his office.”

---