Shane took a moment to gather himself before he turned on the computer. He was out of breath and his entire body was cramping from the effort, but he knew they could not dally. At any moment, someone might discover the tampered cameras or alarm system.

A tiny voice in the back of his head said this was idiocy, but Shane ignored it. He had to do this. This was the only way to find out what the ISA knew about Lawrence.

He wiped the sweat from his brow and nodded when John asked for about the tenth time if he was okay. He was as okay as he could be. Between raiding the motel room and infiltrating the office, Shane was drained, but he had been tired before on missions. He knew how to function even when not at peak condition.

Allowing no further delay, Shane turned on the computer and waited for it to boot up. Once it had, the screen asked for a username and passcode. Shane typed the codes he was given by Benson and waited as they were processed.

***Access Granted***

"We're in," he said. John and Steve both crowded around him.

"So what are we looking for?" John asked.

Shane had opened up the root directory. "The Alamain directory should be in here." And there it was, in the North American subdirectory where it had been when Shane was still in charge of the investigation. "Get the disks out of the bag," he told John. A minute later, a stack of 3.5 inch floppy disks was placed on the desk in front of him.

Scanning the list of files, Shane found the main summary of the investigation. He set it to copy and then began skimming through the reports. As he did, he read off a list of cross-referenced file that John wrote down. They would have to copy those too.

The most recent information in the summary held little that they did not already know from John's and Steve's contacts. Lawrence had been in Mauritius and had destroyed the compound a few days earlier. Reading down, however, Shane caught some new information.

"The ISA got someone into the Mauritius facility," Shane said. "Looks like she smuggled out some videotapes and planted some bugs, but they lost contact with her a few weeks ago."

Neither John nor Steve needed further explanation. They both knew what that meant.

"Son of a bitch," Steve muttered angrily.

John punched the desk once, but stopped himself from doing it a second time. "Are the recordings on file?"

"I think so," Shane said. "At least the audio files. They probably would have just copied the videotapes."

Steve nodded. "We'll look around." He and John proceeded to start rifling through the field director's file cabinets.

Meanwhile, Shane continued to copy the files. He focused on the ones with recent dates and the ones with the numbers John had written down.

"Well, lookey here at what I've found," Steve announced. Shane looked up to see Steve holding a file folder. "Everything you might want to know about John Black's activities since the return of Roman Brady." He held it out to John, who reached for it and then shook his head.

"We don't have time for that," John said, his voice tinged with regret. "Our focus is on Alamain."

Shane felt for his friend. He knew John wanted desperately to know what the ISA was doing to keep tabs on him, but John would not let that be a distraction from the mission at hand.

Switching disks, Shane began copying a number of files that appeared to be audio recordings. "I think I found what the ISA got from its bugs." Unfortunately, the 15 audio files were large and just a few of them would exhaust the capacity of the disks they had brought.

Even more frustrating, Shane could not spot anything that looked to be transcripts of the recordings. Those were probably sitting in a backlog at the ISA's word processing center in D.C.

"Time?" he asked.

Steve stopped rummaging through the file cabinets and glanced at his watch. "Sixteen minutes and 38 seconds," he reported.

Time was running short. Shane had set an outside limit of 25 minutes before someone walked through the exterior hall and spotted the tampered cameras. And even that was pushing it.

Without any time to go through the audio files to determine which were the most useful to copy, Shane had to guess. He randomly selected a few files from each of the available dates, taking a couple of extras from the final dates listed. From the directory, he got the sense that the bugs were only in place for a few days before the ISA operative had been discovered.

"No tapes," Steve said.

John confirmed it. "I don't see any."

"We'll have to live without them." Shane motioned to the filled disks. "Let's start packing up."

John began stuffing the disks into the black bag. A minute later, the final files finished copying.

Let's hope we got something useful, Shane said to himself. The would not know for sure until they reviewed the files at his house. He ejected the last disk, handed it to John, and shut down the computer.

Standing was a challenge. Even in the few minutes he had been sitting, his muscles had tightened. He found himself leaning on John while he made sure that his legs would function.

"You sure you're okay, partner?" John asked.

Shane nodded. "I'll be okay." He would. The adrenaline would kick in again as soon as they reached the doors. That would be enough to carry him to the car. He just had to hope there would be no problems getting out of the building.

They turned off the lights and pulled the ski masks back down over their faces. Steve led the way, first through the ante-chamber and then back into the hallway. Shane did his best to keep up, but adrenaline was only carrying him so far. His legs felt like weights. As they reached the first corner, John wrapped an arm around Shane's waist.

"Don't argue with me," he said.

Shane decided instead to conserve his strength for getting out of the building. Steve gave them the all-clear sign and they rounded the corner and began sprinting for the door to the back exit. They had nearly made it when they heard a shout.

"Hey!"

Shane did not look down the hallway where the voice had come from, but he prayed it was an analyst, not an armed security guard.

"Keep going," John said. He was pretty much dragging Shane down the corridor.

Steve reached the door to the exit hallway first and shoved it open. "Forget the cameras," he barked. "Give me the keys. I'll get the car going." John tossed the car keys to Steve, who disappeared from sight.

Behind him, Shane could hear running feet. Too many feet for John to fight off. Shane willed himself to keep going, to give John that extra strength and they moved faster, finally reaching the hallway to the exit. The back door was only 10 feet away.

"Come on," John urged, though it was little more than a grunt.

They ducked down through the door just as a shot rang out. Shane heard the bullet ricochet off the door that slammed shut behind them.

Moving as fast as they could, they raced toward the far door. They could hear the door behind them opening.

We'll never make it, Shane thought, but John surged forward and crashed through the back door into the cold night air.

Tires screeched and they were nearly blinded by the headlights from the car.

"Get in," Steve shouted.

John jerked the door open, shoved Shane inside, and leaped in after him. Steve did not wait for the door to close to punch the accelerator, as the car jerked forward, jumped the sidewalk, and screeched out of the lot. Steve turned the car hard to the right, sending Shane and John slammed into each other in the back seat. The car threatened to fishtail as it hit the icy road, but Steve managed to keep it under control. Keeping the engine gunning, the car sped away from the office and into the night.

From the front seat, Steve called out to them. "You okay back there?"

Shane did not have any strength to respond, but John answered for him. "Yeah, we're fine."

"Good," Steve said. "Hey, if Kayla ever asks . . . just tell her we've been 'running errands.'"