Free The Heist by Janet Evanovich Page A

hiding out in Ouranoupoli, and they’ll send agents there to meet us. In the meantime, we’ll leave Athos for Ouranoupoli on the same ferry that the other authorized visitors do, except that Nick will be doing so at gunpoint and wearing handcuffs under his robes.”
    “He’ll be wearing robes?”
    “Isn’t that what monks and hermits wear? It’s not like they have a Tommy Bahama outlet up there.”
    “This is a terrible plan,” Jake said. “There are a hundred ways it could fail.”
    Kate shrugged. “So I’ll have to do it the one way it can go right.”
    “We will,” he said.
    “No way,” Kate said. “You’re retired and in your sixties.”
    “I’m not talking about jumping out of the plane and tracking Fox. I
am
too old for that. I’ll go to Greece with you and coordinate the op.”
    “I can do this on my own,” she said.
    “No, you can’t.”
    “I’m an ex–Navy SEAL, a crack FBI special agent, and Jake O’Hare’s daughter. I can handle myself.”
    “I’m sure you can. But that’s only one small part of the mission. Logistics and resources are the key. The people you’ll need to pull this off are mercenaries and criminals who will participate because they owe me something. They won’t help you without me. Besides, I know a few things about extraordinary rendition.”
    “You mean kidnapping,” she said.
    He ignored the comment. “You’ll parachute in on a moonlit night, and if you succeed in capturing Fox, instead of calling Interpol or taking the ferry, you’ll call me and make your way to a prearranged extraction point on Athos, where I will pick you up by chopper. We’ll go back to Thessaloniki, where we will stash Fox someplace remote and abandoned. That’s when you will call Interpol with an anonymous tip that will lead them to Fox, who will be gift-wrapped for them.”
    “But I won’t get any credit for the arrest that way.”
    “Oh, forgive me. I was working under the assumption that you wanted to keep your job and stay out of prison yourself.”
    He had a good point. Her bosses at the FBI were unlikely to be pleased that she’d captured Nick Fox after she’d been thrown off the case, or that she’d engaged in an unsanctioned apprehension on foreign soil where she had absolutely no jurisdiction, or that she’d failed to notify the FBI or local law enforcement of herintentions. And there was the little matter of kidnapping Nick, which was technically a criminal offense in Greece, whether he was a fugitive or not.
    Kate sighed with resignation. “Okay, fine, I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied knowing that I was the one that got him.”
    “Welcome to my life. Most of my career was made up of missions like that. To this day, very few people know what I’ve done.”
    She opened a beer and took a sip. “You’d really go all the way to Greece, and run a covert operation again, just so I can have the satisfaction of capturing Nick Fox?”
    “Sure,” he said. “We don’t get nearly enough quality father-daughter time.”

The Greek smuggler’s 1978 Cessna 182 Skylane had three seats salvaged from an old Volvo, an instrument panel held together with duct tape, and a single propeller on its rusty nose. The smuggler’s name was Spiro. No last name given. He was a crusty old man in a moth-eaten sweater, a worn-out leather bomber jacket, and stained cargo shorts. Jake and Kate kept him company at dinner, during which time Spiro had barely touched the platter of salted fish, olives, hard-boiled eggs, feta cheese, and pita that he’d laid out in his drafty hangar. The hangar doubled as Spiro’s home and barn and was located on a private airfield outside of Thessaloniki. Jake had enlisted Spiro to fly them to Mount Athos, and in preparation for the hundred-mile flight, Spiro had chosen to forsake the food and instead guzzle an entire bottle of ouzo.
    “We have to scrub the mission,” Kate said to her father when Spiro stepped out to relieve himself on the side of