Half past 6 (6:30 p.m.) , Union City, New Jersey
We found a small bar near the Hudson river. By now, I assumed that the police had set a perimeter around Jersey after the incident. Escaping would prove to be difficult. I sat on a wooden chair and looked out into the river. I pulled the throwing knife out of my sock. I then tore a string of cloth from my shirt to stop the bleeding. After tying the cloth above the bullet wound, I applied alcohol to the wound and to the knife to sterilise it. I repeatedly stabbed myself at the wound to remove the bullet. Grunting with pain, I pulled out the bullet. The profused bleeding stopped.
As I got up, one of the assassins asked, "So, what's your way out of this one?"
I replied, "I'm sorry, but what's your name again?"
The other assassin interrupted the conversation. "His name's Tom and mine's Andrew. Don't get us wrong, but we need to know what you're about to do before we're on board with your ideas."
I started walking outside the bar. I looked back and said, "By river. We go by river."
We grabbed a taxi to Newark passing through Jersey City. We reached Newark Port in 30 minutes. On reaching at the port, we bribed our way through a couple sailors. We were now travelling through the Newark Bay. After reaching the Arthur Kill located at the New York and New Jersey boundaries, we stopped in between the voyage and exited the water. On reaching land, we headed in a taxi and continued our path on the interstate 95. Now the only hurdle was crossing through from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.
We decided to exit the interstate 95 and enter the town of New Hope. Through the town, we swam across a river branch and reached the shore of Pennsylvania. From there on, reaching Philadelphia took an hour by a taxi.
Completely drenched in the river water, we had ruined the seat of the driver's car. I paid him a lump sum amount as we reached our destination.
It was 8:00 p.m. by the time we reached. We had no form of communication with the second group. In such situations we were trained to consider our colleagues KIA and progress forward.
Tom had a credit card with which all three of us spent our nights in a 5 star hotel. We booked three suites.
We were instructed to meet at Philadelphia as the meeting point. Here we would be contacted by the P.O.S.A. and would be ordered to report the details of our mission. Secondly, we would also be awarded according to the work done. However, we were 12 hours early to the deadline.
I held a conference in my room an hour later. Both Tom and Andrew had bought new clothes from a shop across the hotel while I was busy planning backup plans and blind spots across Philadelphia. We talked about the possible meeting points and prepared emergency pathways and routes in case our location was compromised. We then set up a uniform database to access the P.O.S.A. and contacts to their members with the help of the hotel computers. I temporarily deactivated half the servers and hacked through the firewall of the hotel. Any details of this specific computer were wiped from the hotel's software. After developing a stable mode of communication, we memorised the map of the city.
Our conference ended 90 minutes later. Tom and Andrew exited my room. With relief, I sat aback and watched TV for quite some time before I fell asleep.
Author's Notes:
1. To deal with any confusion regarding the regions referred to, use a map.
2.P.O.S.A. : Patriotic Order of Sons of America. (The organisation the protagonist is currently working for).