Girl Under Fire (A Sam Hemming FBI Thriller Prequel)

to the techie working the drone control console. Mac's Crossing over from Park to Union Park East and heading south without breaking his rhythm. We are on time, and for an op that was this hastily thrown together, we seem to be doing well, I think.
"Hang on a minute; they are patching the feed to your HUD," Harold advises. The techs at the Bureau are recruited from some of the best programs in the country. Doug – the kid at the console, was a whiz kid from Stanford. At fourteen out with a Ph.D. in software and hardware engineering by nineteen. Some say that he was the guy behind Bitcoin. He is supposed to be Satoshi Nakamoto. That would mean he developed Bitcoin – the cornerstone of all cryptocurrencies, at the age of twelve.
I wait impatiently for the feed to show up on my Heads-Up Display mounted on the goggles I am wearing. In the course of a normal sting, all this would have already been done and ready for us. Not on the fly while we are in the process of executing the take-down. I still believe they should have taken Nyke down at the airport. But whatever.
"Okay, here it is," Harold says as I see some static flutter across my goggles and the upper right-hand corner comes alive.
"Who is that?" I start to wonder as I see the guy Harold mentioned. He was not on Nyke's list of known associates, and he was not supposed to be at this evening's meeting. "Who is that?" I repeat, a little louder this time directing my question to Harold.
"I am running his image through facial recognition protocols. Give me a minute."
"We are still a 'go,' right?" I ask.
"Yeah, it is definitely a 'go.' Nyke just arrived. But something tells me that it's going to be one hell of a short meeting," Harold says. I detect a dose of premonition in his timbre. If I've learned one thing in the time, I've been at the FBI, and it's that instincts go a long way in law enforcement. None of that would hold up in a court of law, but intuition certainly comes in handy when one is flying blind like we are tonight.
"The full complement has now arrived," Harold announced as I pondered the meaning of it all. The location, the new mystery guest, the way he got into the country. It was all just too chaotic and made me feel like I was pushed into it. It likely was what was stirring my trepidation. But we had just crossed another hurdle. Everyone that was supposed to be at that meeting, plus one, was now there.
It was my cue to get the guys ready for the assault. "Alright, boys, let's look alive," I said, watching the mission panel on the dash—only thirty seconds to rendezvous based on the clock that was measuring our speed and distance. "Night goggles armed. Shooters, remember, no one hits Nyke. He's mine. You are free to shoot anyone else. No explosives if possible, and keep your body cams on."
I turn my thoughts to Nyke in the few seconds I have before my game face comes on. He is one slick perp. Twenty years since his first appearance on the global scene of villains, he had only been brought in twice. Both were inside jobs. The first was a man Interpol got close to. They used a combination of threats and incentives to get him to turn on his boss.
Interpol arrested Nyke in Cyprus but could not make the charges stick. He managed to use a series of high-profile lawyers and bribed a couple of key witnesses to take the fall for his misdeeds. The rumor was that he made a deal with the star witness to set his family up for life if he cooperated. The alternative was unacceptable. Nyke promised him that his family would be sliced, diced, and fed to the sharks if he sang in the witness box. I remember the look on the prosecutor's face as the witness recanted the testimony in court. The case was thrown out by the first afternoon.
Then it was Scotland Yard's turn two years later. They had built a solid case. Nyke had crushed the British Pound in a move that almost bankrupted Britain and dragged the E.U. with it. Scotland Yard's Financial Crimes Division built a strong case and nabbed him as he landed at London's City Airport. Nyke made bail the same day, showed up in court, and, just like the first time, the witnesses recanted her testimony. He was out by lunch.
This time, the Feds didn't want to make the same mistake as the other law enforcement agencies. They tried to catch him red-handed in the act. No more witnesses he could manipulate, and no more technicalities he could wiggle through. At the tip of that spear, the Bureau had placed me. Well...technically, it was Harold. But it was me on the ground.
But that nagging feeling keeps bugging me.
"Bravo Three in position on Lafayette," I heard a voice say, just as I was about to get a status check.
"Bravo Two ready on Broadway," the second group's team leader announced, following his comrade, who made the first SitRep seconds earlier.
"Bravo One is approaching Crosby from the south," Krebs, Bravo-One's team leader called out.
I was coming up at the intersection one block east of the rendezvous.
"Final com check. We have eighteen seconds on the clock," I announce on the radio.
In rapid succession, the com check responses rolled in as I exited the Humvee and took a last look at the clock.
"Eight seconds," I tell the team as Harold comes on in my ear. "We've identified our mystery guest, and you are not going to believe it…"
I suddenly begin to hear gunfire. It's confusing. I am hearing the gunfire in my earpiece but not around me.