Exposure

HQN Books

Gijón, Spain

NIGEL FERRIS LOWERED his binoculars and blew out a breath. Surveillance was not his strong point. He had neither the vision nor the patience for such endeavors, and yet here he was, waiting for Alberto Salvatore to make his move.

Nigel had been stuck here on the outskirts of town for the past week, watching the arms dealer and his henchmen come and go from their portside warehouse. His instructions were to observe, but considering the amount of activity in the past twenty-four hours it was fairly obvious that something was about to go down.

Salvatore supplied weapons of all sorts to the highest bidder with no concern as to the end use of his product. A menace in general, he'd come to the attention of MI6 when rumors surfaced of a potential arms deal with a particularly militant faction of the IRA.

Although things had been quiet of late in Northern Ireland, there was always the chance of someone stirring things up, and any movement along those lines had to be carefully monitored. Nigel, unfortunately, had drawn the short straw.

Or more accurately, he'd managed to piss off Jason Hardcastle, his immediate superior, by doing an end run around the man to work with Last Chance in America. The English government, though allied with the U.S., wasn't all that keen on its agents running willy-nilly over to the colonies at the whim of a man like Cullen Pulaski.

Not that Nigel had been responding to Cullen, anyway. It went far deeper than that. And the only reason he was sitting in Spain watching the world through the window of a dingy walk-up flat as opposed to finding himself on the dole was the fact that his superior's superior knew that, push come to shove, he'd always land on the side of Britain. He'd proved that fact in spades, and the resulting betrayal had almost cost him his friends.

But in the end, he'd managed to repair the damage, which was more than he could say for Hardcastle. The man would no doubt carry the grudge for eternity — or longer. The outcome being that Nigel could count on a series of lackluster assignments for the immediate future.

He lifted the glasses again to peer out the open window at the warehouse below. His contact with Spanish intelligence was working across the street in an equally inhospitable room. Of course, at the end of a long day, Enrique had a warm bed and a willing wife to go home to.

Not that location made any difference for Nigel. Home wasn't a word that had any particular meaning. He still had his family's estate in Gloucestershire but he hadn't visited it in years, leaving the upkeep to a series of caretakers. The only time he felt any sense of place at all was when he was with Gabe and Payton.

Tragic, but true. He grinned at his own morose turn of thought and forced himself to focus on the warehouse below. The black sedan out front was Salvatore's. He'd been inside for about twenty minutes, the timing atypical. In the three weeks Nigel had been observing the warehouse, Salvatore had only shown his face a couple of times, and then he'd never deigned to leave the confines of his car, the meetings lasting less than ten minutes.

Which meant that other than his proximity to the warehouse, and the fact that with a little digging its ownership could be traced to Salvatore, there wasn't a whole lot that could be pinned on the man. All of which signaled that this latest deviation in routine might in fact substantiate Nigel's feeling that something big was about to happen.

The headset at his elbow crackled with life, and he quickly put it on.

"Ferris, you there?" Despite the static, Nigel could hear the excitement in Enrique's voice.

"I'm here. What've you got?"

"A second car."

Nigel adjusted the glasses, focusing on the gray van pulling up to an open cargo bay at the end of the warehouse nearest the dock. Three men emerged from the sliding door, the driver remaining at the wheel. From this distance it was hard to make out the identities of the new arrivals. Their plates were Spanish, but that didn't signify much of anything.

"You recognize anyone?" Nigel whispered into the mouthpiece.

"It's hard to say for sure, but the man in the middle looks a lot like the photographs I've seen of Shamus O'Reilly."

O'Reilly was the head of a militant splinter group of the IRA. With only about forty members, the group was nevertheless a dangerous one, and if they were in fact here to buy arms, it proved beyond a doubt that they were far from ready to accept a peaceful solution to the troubles in Northern Ireland.

"What about the others?" Nigel strained for a closer view, but even with his powerful field glasses the faces were simply too far away.

"Nothing for certain. The shorter man could be Patrick Roan, but it's hard to say."

"Well, I can't see a bloody thing." Nigel lowered the glasses, his mind turning over the repercussions of directly disobeying an order — again. There really wasn't a choice. At the end of the day, he simply wasn't a sit-on-his-bum kind of man. "I'm going down for a closer look."

There was a pause, as Enrique considered the idea, then a chuckle. "I'll be right behind you."

Enrique, it seemed, wasn't too keen on sitting on the sidelines, either. Just as well, as Nigel had the feeling he might have need of the Spaniard's help before all was said and done. In a matter of minutes, the two of them were outside the warehouse, crouched behind a metal garbage bin.

"There are two main rooms and three ancillary closet spaces that pass for offices," Nigel said, drawing a map in the gravel at their feet. "My bet is that Salvatore uses the one on the west wall, closest to the water. It's the largest. If we come in through the northwest door, we ought to be able to use crates for cover to reach it."

Enrique studied the crude drawing and then nodded. "What about the driver?" He tilted his head toward the man now standing outside the van smoking.

Nigel smiled. "Looks like he could use a little nap." Without waiting for agreement, Nigel slipped out from behind the trash bin and closed the distance between him and the Irishman. There was no mistaking the man's ethnicity, between his woolen sweater and his flaming red hair. His head was bent, his face averted as he tried to keep a match lit, the position giving Nigel the advantage of surprise.

Moving quickly on silent feet, he came up behind the man and, using pressure on the carotid artery, rendered the fellow unconscious in a matter of seconds.

"Well done," Enrique said, joining him at the van. "How long do you think he'll be out?"

"Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. So we'll need to move fast." Nigel pulled his Sig Sauer from the holster at his back and slipped through the open door of the warehouse, squatting down behind a couple of discarded wooden crates.

Enrique followed, settling down next to him, the two men using cracks in between planks to survey the situation. This part of the warehouse appeared to be empty, although with the number of crates stacked everywhere it was hard to be certain.

The salty tang of the sea mixed with the crisp fall air, the resulting moisture clawing at Nigel's neck, making him shiver.

"Looks deserted," Enrique said, echoing Nigel's assessment. "The office is that way, s?" He tilted his head toward the western wall, and Nigel nodded, already pushing away from the crate out into the open.

He paused for a moment, waiting for some noise signifying that...