Without Sanction

Back at the team’s warehouse-headquarters in Haifa, Quinn’s briefcase is opened: within it, the laptop containing CS:Heimdall’s financial information, a special smartphone, and new identities for the team as employees of the Global Wildlife Conservation Council.

DDO Hamilton Riggs calls the team, and knows more than he had previously let on about what they’ve been up to; he wants to observe the interrogation of the heavily-injured Heimdall remotely. Mahoney conducts the interrogation, and Heimdall reveals all, including personal details on the team, Operation: Klendathu Black Shadow (which preceded their own Syria operation), and the the cargo aboard M/V Pegasi, a Russian bioweapons scientist.

Afterward, Reilly speaks privately to Riggs about his involvement in Opn:KBS, and Riggs puts the pieces together for the team: CS:Loki, the Russian scientist Reilly helped extract; CS:Odin, whom they formerly knew as CS:Rook; and CS:Frigga, AKA Jennifer Harrington of their own company, involved with CS:Odin and probable source of the unsanctioned operation—ConsOps is clearly compromised. Now, with breaking news of Quinn’s reported death in surgery, Riggs declares a “Shadow Directive”—the team is to continue their mission without any support or sanction from ConsOps.

The team immediately destroys all intel at the warehouse and makes for the Haifa airport. On the way, Heimdall is dropped off for the local Israeli police to find. The team’s new cover-company has a seaplane awaiting them at the airport. They immediately fly to Cairo, Egypt, where CS:Bragi and Baldr (now dead) were known to operate.

In Cairo, the team uses Heimdall’s cell-phone to get Bragi’s number, and the Q-phone to ping Bragi’s phone’s GPS: it is located at the Sofitel Cairo El Gezirah. With funds generously and unwittingly provided by Heimdall’s seized accounts, the team splits: Vega and Reilly waiting in one rented car some distance from the hotel, while Mahoney and Baum take another rented car to the hotel itself. Mahoney enters the lobby to try to discover Bragi’s room number, but instead spots their target leaving the lobby, being assaulted outside, and being stuffed into another vehicle, which speeds away. The team shadows the strangers, communicating by radio to hand off pursuit from one vehicle to the other, managing to apparently remain unnoticed as they track it to a downtown warehouse.