"We watch the corner," Culvin repeated, making it sound like something a man said in a hospital waiting room. "Ansel, I'm telling you, I can see movement in that south alley from here. I've been watching it for 20 minutes. There's someone working the gap between Building 6 and 7."
"That is probably one of their surveillance operators running a cable check. Leave it alone."
"It doesn't look like a cable check."
Doss finally turned to look at him.
"Culvin, I need you to hear me. These people have been working this case since before you transferred to this district. They have eyes everywhere in that compound. If there was a problem, we would hear it on the joint channel. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"
Culvin looked out the window. His jaw moved. He said nothing.
Doss turned back to the fence line. And that was the moment, that precise window of inattention, when Culvin quietly unclipped his seat belt.
Inside Warehouse 7, Clarence Harmon had just finished slipping the secondary ledger back into the fireproof document case where he'd found it, when the sound reached him.
Not the controlled, fluid movement of a federal tactical team, which he would have recognized immediately by its silence. This was something else.
Boots hitting a metal threshold. The scrape of a door pushed open too fast, too hard, with no attempt at noise discipline. The involuntary grunt of a man who expected the door to be heavier than it was.
Harmon pressed himself against the partition wall and stayed absolutely still.
His left hand found the transmit contact point sewn into the collar of his shirt. Two short taps. The pre-arranged signal for unplanned contact.
Baines's voice was in his ear within four seconds.
"Harmon, talk to me."
"Unscheduled entry, south corridor," he said, barely a murmur. "Single individual. Sounds local. Not the extraction team."
A half second of silence that felt much longer than it was.
"Hold position. I'm pulling up the south corridor feed... I can't see you. You're in the blind spot behind the shelving unit."
"I know."
The footsteps were getting closer, moving with the specific kind of aggressive confidence that told Harmon everything he needed to know about the person making them. Someone who wanted to be heard. Who was not thinking about who else might be listening.
He stepped out from behind the shelving unit and stood in the center of the corridor.
The flashlight beam caught him squarely in the chest.
"Don't move! Police! Hands where I can see them! Do it now!"
Harmon raised both hands slowly, palms forward, fingers spread. He looked directly into the flashlight without flinching.
"Officer," he said, his voice carrying the practiced evenness of someone who had been trained for exactly this kind of chaos, "I need you to lower your weapon and listen carefully. I am an undercover federal agent. My name is Clarence Harmon. I am a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. My credentials are in my left jacket pocket."