I did not care.At home, backed by the power and support of my own agency, I would have waited and planned out an assault that hit all the appropriate entrances while minimizing the risk to everyone involved.The problem was that I was on foreign soil, the people I was working with didn’t realize how powerless they were, and the bomb squad was intelligently tentative but insanely slow. I could read the writing on the wall for this one, and I predicted that Mr. Ski Mask and his crazy cohorts were going to have plenty of time to wake up to a nice, leisurely breakfast of bacon and beans—in North London, if they were so disposed, with enough time to wander back and take a luxuriant afternoon nap followed by a late dinner downtown before the boys in blue were comfortable with moving.It wasn’t like I could blame them; they’d lost their sniper teams to explosives they hadn’t even seen. Being cautious was prudent.As I went crashing through the spray-painted windows at the top of the warehouse, I had to concede that prudence was a suit I was extremely short in.I didn’t land on the concrete floor, figuring I’d be safer not wandering anywhere Antonio Ruelle might have placed a tripwire.
