Harry had something in his right hand and, as he barged ahead through the sliding pools of light in the smoky darkness, Stoke and Luis saw that it was, in fact, a small human being. The fact that Brock had another guy with him bothered Stoke only because it wasn’t part of the plan. A plan that started wrong usually ended wrong was his experience both on the football field and in and out of combat in the navy. Now, working a lot with Harry Brock? You had to learn to anticipate a problem before it happened. Brock was a badass with baggage, basically. Harry was one of the legendary misfits in the intelligence community. How he’d survived so long as a CIA field officer was a mystery. But as Stoke would often say, “What can you expect? How can you ever really trust somebody who grew up in some gated community in Southern California? Who grows up like that?” Stoke saw Harry had one arm cinched around the little guy, the other one stuck up against him hard, like Brock maybe had his snub-nosed .38 in the man’s ribs.
