Page 74 of Bound By Valor

I laughed and hugged her close, “I love you too, Leora ‘Doc’ Mateez.”

I kissed her temple and we both slowly drifted off to sleep with our arms wrapped around each other.

???

“How about—” Amelia started.

“Wouldn’t work, dammit!” Kabir raised his voice and Amelia uncharacteristically flinched.

“Stand down, Kabir,” I glared at him.

The team was gathered in the command center conference room. We had spent almost two hours detailing the schematics and assuming Jerome had full-scale security, we hadn’t figured out a way to penetrate the warehouse undetected.

The rectangular structure, spanning two blocks, had four large entry gates on each side and eight loading docks on the east wall. We were going to wait 12 hours for all the shipments to be secured in the warehouse.

“There has to be a way to sneak in without alarming the external guards,” Sebastian mumbled.

Leora was no longer looking at the schematics projected on the wall. She had her head down and was staring at the tablet in front of her, lazily tapping away.

“I have a feeling that we may need to take the abrupt approach,” I started, “How about we land on the roof and enter? Zane can take us on the bird.”

“The roof…” Leora muttered under her breath and then aggressively tapped on the tablet.

“That could work. But we would just alarm their team. Who is to say they’re not using RPGs to protecttheir grounds?” Zane responded.

“And I won’t have a safe sneaky place to operate my drones from,” Amelia added.

Sebastian rounded the corner of the table and said, “We surely can’t extract Jerome this way.”

Leora finally let the tablet go and sank back into her chair, her arms crossed. She had a small smile on her face and looked awfully pleased.

“Spit it out, Leo,” Logan said.

She connected her tablet to the projector and pulled a map of something I couldn’t fully understand. She zoomed in on an area that was labeled ‘Channel 415’ and the blank space above it was labeled ‘East River’.

“So this,” she declared, “Is the map of underground tunnels that were closed off in 1961. A few entries and exits span throughout the Port, that some warehouses now use for secondary storage. There’s a manhole in Warehouse 67. We just need to find a way to enter from it. Sneakily.”

“Damn!” Logan whispered.

“Thank fuck,” Kabir ran his fingers through his hair.

“Zane,” Sebastian commanded.

“Yeah, I’m checking which ones are closest and whether they’re obstructed or not,” he tapped away, “Got it. There’s one entrance approximately a mile from the warehouse. We can trek through and enter Warehouse 67…” he tapped some more, “From the manhole situated near the south wall.”

“Good work, Doc,” I said and kissed Leora on the cheek.

“So, now we know how to enter the warehouse,” Booth started, “Which walls and pillars we need toplace the demolition charges on, and how we’re splitting the team. Any progress on locating where Jerome could be?”

“He could be,” Zane responded, “Wait, let me pull the schematics again,” he tapped away, “Here we go. He could be in the offices situated on the west wall, one floor up. Or he could be on patrol. The biggest office according to this map is Room 4. Looks like a conference room. I could be wrong.”

I studied the schematics, “It’s right next to the stairs. Should make things easier.”

“Zane, load this into our VR locomotive. I need at least 5 different guard rotation scenarios,” Sebastian demanded, “and plan surprise attacks.”

“On it, bossman!”

“And go get a shower, Zane,” Sebastian added as he walked out the door.

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