Page 8 of Thorn

“How’d you get CCTV camera access in Brussels?” Honey asked.

“I know a guy,” Nutsbe said, cryptically. “All right then, your target is going to come through the secured area into a long hallway. Glass on your left separates you from him. A couple of supply and janitor’s closets, a bathroom, and then out into the causeway. Honey, it might be best for you to move to the corner at your one o’clock. You can watch through the windows from your height, and you’ll look less lurking down there.”

“Less lurking,” Honey grumbled, but Thorn could see Honey’s head well above the crowd as he moved his position.

“Hey,” Honey whispered as he walked toward the sliding doors and his gaze tagged a man in jeans and a ski jacket.

The ski jacketed guy let his head turn smoothly past and neither of the men gave any further sign of recognition.

“Thorn, heads up,” Honey whispered.

“Got him.” Thorn stood behind a group posing for a camera and used them to cover his own photography. “Sending.”

“That’s Billy Watts,” Gage said from above them. “What the hell’s he doing in this picture?”

“How do you know him?” Nutsbe asked.

“He used to be a Green Beret, he’s a good fighter, a good man to have on your team, though, rumor has it he’s working for Omega now.”

“Omega’s on location? Things just heated up,” Nutsbe said. Omega did the same kind of contract work that Iniquus did. They tried to fish the highly trained retiring special operatives from the same pond as Iniquus did. But Omega was involved in some really dark shit. They were in this business for the money – no holds barred. They were the group you hired when you needed black ops without a conscious or a defining creed. “Do you think another alphabet hired Omega on? Odd coincidence he’d be walking through the doors at this time, in this spot,” Nutsbe said. “Are you sure he’s with Omega?”

“Rumor,” Gage answered. “I don’t know who he’s working for now. But I know it’s not the U.S. Army anymore. Last I knew, he was recovering with a purple heart pinned to his hospital gown. Nutsbe, see if you can get intel on the goons walking with him.”

“I’m putting the images through facial recognition as we speak,” Nutsbe said. “Stay the course.”

Thorn’s gaze scanned the crowd for anyone in the area who was static.

“Heads up, gentleman,” Nutsbe said. “DuBois’s plane is wheels down, pulling up flush now. They’ll be opening their doors here in just a minute.”

Thorn pretended to check his phone as he leaned back against a support. Standing kitty corner to the pathway, which would keep him out of the exiting passenger’s line of view, he spread his awareness in a wide circumference. He was depending on Nutsbe’s skills assessing the camera feeds to help give him the precious advanced warning he needed before some action flashed. But Thorn also knew that Nutsbe was juggling his time between the three operators, their target, and his detective work on the unsubs (unidentified subjects) who came in with Billy Watts. The three new players had huddled, then they seemed to triangulate on the same stretch of corridor as Panther Force.

As far as Thorn could tell, the Billy guy hadn’t given his partners a heads up. That, in and of itself, was interesting.

The passengers exited their plane and walked forward with the cramped steps of legs packed into confined chairs for too long. Men and women of all shapes and sizes made their way forward, distracted and fatigued, checking their tickets, checking their phones.

There.

That was DuBois.

“Got him,” Thorn said. A burst of adrenaline sharpened his senses.

DuBois looked exactly like the photo on the computer screen, with the addition of a day’s growth of gray facial hair that made him look scruffy and unkept. His suit, too, looked rumpled and uncared for as if he’d been traveling in the same clothes for a while.

Behind him, just to the left was an athletic woman whose body language read nonchalance.Studiednonchalance. To an unpracticed eye, she’d look like one of the crowd. To Thorn, she had the look of someone who tried to dim her light. Her clothes were loose over what must be a killer figure. She wore no makeup to accentuate the beauty of her face. Her raven black hair was held tightly back in a bun at the nape of her neck. It was her boots that caught Thorn’s interest. They weren’t the high-heeled shiny leather kind he’d expect a European female traveler to wear. Her boots − just like his − were designed for action.

Thorn called it in as he lifted his phone and took a video. Something clearer and from eye-level, not looking down from the eaves. Something less black and white and grainy than the CCTV cameras.

“Got her. Tagging her in the computer. I’ll keep tabs of her whereabouts,” Nutsbe said softly. “I’m putting her face into the search engines now. I’ve got confirmation. Billy Watts is a yes for Omega. He’s with Norman Colburn, that’s the short guy with black hair. Colburn’s an American not welcome on U.S. soil, seems he had a thing for vigilante justice. Now, he takes private contracts, mostly in Eastern Europe.”

“Honey here. Are they pursuing Colburn? Do they have extradition papers on him?”

“Negative,” Nutsbe said. “He must have some well-positioned friends. He’s got no one looking for him, unless he tries to cross our borders. No news on the bald guy who’s with him. I’m expanding the search to include European and Eastern files. That team is tagged in my map software, and the computer will keep track of them. Right now, they’re all looking in the same direction you are. This could get interesting.”

DuBois made his way into the men’s room located on the corridor just before the passenger flow came into the main walkway.

As DuBois pivoted, the woman turned her head in the other direction, her gaze caught on someone, then she slid her eyes toward the bathroom with a slight tip of her head, a study in disinterest.

Thorn turned to see whom the woman had signaled. A man wearing a janitor’s uniform and a scowl made his way from where he’d been washing the window toward the men’s bathroom, pushing his cart but leaving chemicals dripping down the freshly spritzed swath of window.

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