Page 39 of Code Name: Grit

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GRIT

The helicopter carrying us from Canada Lake to the city cut through the morning fog, white noise from the propellers drowning out everything else except my thoughts of the woman seated beside me. Lumi’s eyes were fixed on the approaching Manhattan skyline, her expression distant. Despite the closeness we’d shared after our conversation by the lake yesterday, we’d barely spoken since receiving the mission brief this morning. Professional boundaries slid firmly back in place as if we’d both silently agreed that last night’s vulnerability was a temporary reprieve.

The hasty return to our mission came after Dragon picked up chatter late yesterday about a meeting Marco Venutti had scheduled for this morning at a café in Greenwich Village. Since the Belcastros had abruptly halted their shipping-terminal operations and gone dark, we couldn’t afford to miss this opportunity to understand what they were planning. By zero six hundred, we were already airborne.

“Five minutes to landing,” the pilot announced over the headset.

Lumi nodded, adjusting the pack at her feet. “Is there a ground team in position?”

“Admiral deployed the local K19 contract operatives,” I replied, keeping my voice steady. “And there’s an SUV waiting at the heliport.”

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop my gaze from drifting to her profile—the determined set of her jaw, the subtle shadows beneath her eyes, suggesting she’d slept as poorly as I had since our confrontation.

Our temporary safehouse was a high-rise apartment in Tribeca with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Hudson. The space was minimalist and impersonal but exactly what we needed. I dropped my bag in the living room while Lumi disappeared into the bedroom.

Happy to see the apartment had been stocked with surveillance systems linked to K19’s network, I methodically tested the connections, focusing on the equipment rather than the closed bedroom door Lumi had disappeared behind. “We’ll test the comms at zero nine hundred,” I called out.

When she emerged several minutes later, I almost dropped the monitoring device I’d been calibrating. She’d changed into a form-fitting black catsuit that hugged every curve while remaining practical for fieldwork. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, and a slim weapons harness was at her side.

“What?” she asked, catching my stare.

I cleared my throat. “Nothing. You look”—I paused, searching for the right word—“ready.”

Her brow arched. “Dragon said Marco was scheduled to arrive at the café by ten hundred hours. We should go.”

Manhattan’s streets were crowded with morning traffic as we made our way downtown. I parked as close as I could get to the designated surveillance location.

Once we were in the empty apartment in the building almost directly across from the café, I proceeded to set up for our stakeout.

I unpacked the surveillance gear we’d need—the same high-powered spotting scope we’d used at the restaurant stakeout, the digital SLR camera with the telephoto lens for documentation, and a laser listening device that could potentially pick up vibrations on the café’s windows and convert them back to audio. Lumi helped position our equipment, calibrating the gear I hadn’t gotten to with more confidence than she’d shown during our first stakeout. While she had little to no actual field training other than what she’d learned from the type of life she led for the last two decades, her extraordinary intelligence lent itself to the ease with which she figured out what needed to be done, and learned how to do it.

“Perfect view,” she murmured, adjusting the spotting scope. The café occupied a corner location, with large windows offering clear visibility from multiple angles, making our current position two stories up ideal. Two K19 operatives who’d blended into the morning crowd—one at a bench with a newspaper, another working on a laptop across the street—confirmed contact through the comms.

“Ten o’clock,” Lumi murmured, raising her coffee cup to her lips.

Marco Venutti approached, flanked by a single guard. My muscles tensed involuntarily. When we’d previously surveilled him, he was never with fewer than three men. What had changed? He entered, nodded to the owner, who clearly knew him, and settled at a corner table close enough to the front window for us to have a clear view.

“Who’s he waiting for?” I said, noting the rigid line of his shoulders as I watched through the scope, its powerful magnification revealing details invisible to the naked eye. I pressed the camera shutter, capturing a series of images.

A few minutes later, a well-dressed man I recognized as Carlo Moretti, one of the Belcastro family’s lieutenants, was escorted to Marco’s table. They spoke intensely, Carlo’s hands moving emphatically as Marco remained mostly still, occasionally nodding.

I activated the laser listening device, aiming it at the window nearest to their table, hoping to pick up the vibrations of their conversation.

“Signal’s jammed,” I muttered. “They’ve got countersurveillance equipment.”

“Their body language tells enough,” Lumi observed, taking over the spotting scope. “Marco keeps pointing north. Carlo seems concerned.”

When, fifteen tense minutes later, both men exited and returned to their vehicles, I called Tank. “Targets mobile. We’re following but maintaining distance. The backup team is better positioned to tail them until we can catch up.”

My phone buzzed with a message from one of the Shadow Ops guys who was positioned at a neutral coffee shop in Queens—a location known to be frequented by both Belcastro and Patriarca associates.

Cassio was here yesterday morning,came the update.Rafael Patriarca arrived two hours after he left.

The timing couldn’t be a coincidence—both family heads at the same location on the same day, but intentionally avoiding direct contact. They were communicating through intermediaries, maintaining plausible deniability while coordinating something significant.

I shoved my phone in my pocket, quickly packed the equipment into specially designed cases, and headed out. After spotting both vehicles, we followed as they headed north along the West Side Highway.

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