“A few more seconds.”
“Fuck, Mia, get out of there now!” Ben was going crazy beside me, and I couldn’t even judge him.
“I got it.”
“Damn it. They’re going inside. Hide.”
“Shit.”
Ben cursed. “I’m going to kill her. We need to go to her.”
“We need to reassess. If we get in guns blazing, we’ll all be dead, or worse. There aren’t a lot of them, but it’s way more than the three of us.” We watched with dread as the men walked into the conference room and closed the door. “We can’t leave her alone with them. And we won’t. I’m saying we need to be smart and strategic about it.”
“Fuck strategy—”
“Shh.” We froze at Mia’s scolding.
I tried to tune in to what we were hearing from her side, but all I could identify were unintelligible background voices and her breathing. No one was screaming, so I tried to calm myself thinking she hadn’t been spotted yet. Still, Ben and I approached surreptitiously, our black tactical gear helping us be camouflaged by the shadow of the night.
We were getting closer to the wing she was supposed to check when things took a turn for worse.
“Joder!” one of the men cursed, followed by a loud thud. “Hijo de puta.” Thankfully, whoever said that hadn’t realized they were dealing with a woman. Despite being way shorter than any of us, the gear seemed to be doing its job and disguising our identity. Which was a good thing, since our presence was then known.
“Mia, hang tight, we’re coming to you.” Ben and I threw caution to the wind and ran at full speed.
More noises came from the radio, mixed with Mia’s curses. We watched as some of the men outside noticed there was a disturbance and headed to the conference room.
Ben was already pulling his gun out, ready to shoot, taking advantage of us not being spotted yet, when we saw movement from the window outside the room Mia was in.
“I’m out. Run.”
We closed our distance, and the three of us raced away from the base. We climbed out of the wall and jumped on the other side with athud. I checked their security feeds again and saw we’d made good time despite our recent scare.
Without wasting any time, we sped back to our car as I guided the drone back to us. Ben jumped into the car through the driver’s door as Mia went to the back seat, leaving me in the passenger seat so I wouldn’t be crumpled.
“I cannotbelieve how irresponsible you were.” Ben was trembling beside me, his voice strained but a look of undeniable fear in his eyes. He started the car and sped away.
“I did what had to be done.”
“That wasn’t what we agreed to. We were supposed to get in, peruse, and get out. Now they know someone was there.”
“I had to make a choice. Either waste our night with a whole lot of nothing or gather the intel we were there to collect. It seemed like a sensible decision,” she rebutted, keeping her annoyance at bay.
“What happened in there anyway?” I turned back so I could watch her.
She sighed and started rubbing her left hand. “I was able to hide, but they didn’t seem to be leaving the room anytime soon. I knew we were tight on time, so I had to do something.”
“What you had to do was not get into the fucking room to begin with,” Ben snapped.
Her glare matched Ben’s bad mood, but she chose to let it slide. “I attacked one of them from behind. Left him unconscious. By then, the other one had seen me, so I grabbed him by his neck until he passed out. Then I got out from the window.”
“Anything good?”
“I think lots of things. I stole what files I could get, a couple of external hard drives, and some notes lying around. I also took pictures. You?”
I nodded, not ready yet to disclose what I saw. “We’ll talk about it at the company.”
I expected some resistance from her. She was always energized after a mission and couldn’t stop talking about it. One would think it was annoying, but every time we worked together, since our time at the DEA, her reaction post assignment was always contagious. She used to be so pumped, we all believed we could conquer the world.