“It’s too early,” Iago groaned, covering his head with his comforter. “Wake me when the sun’s come out.”
“Can’t,” Drake said. “Cause there’s a schedule and I’m on the hook for a long day and that day only gets longer the more you bitch and moan and stall. Now put on pants or I’m teleporting you into a women’s studies class in your tighty whities.”
“Not cool.”
“That’s on you; you’re the one in charge of bringing the cool.”
“That was embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for you.”
“Yeah,” Drake said pushing a pair of jeans into Iago’s chest, “be embarrassed walking.”
Iago dropped to a cold concrete parking lot as the wind bit into the skin of his exposed legs. “Damnit,” he muttered, jamming his legs into his pants. “What if they see us?”
“That’s the point of getting up at 4 AM to do this.”
“And their cameras?” he asked, pointing at closed circuit camera mounted to the corner of the building.
“Ryan recorded yesterday’s feed, and will loop those over today. Now the sooner you do your thing, the sooner you can get into a hot bath, or back in bed.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Iago crawled under the nearest ICE vehicle. “How much do you know about engines?”
“They make the wheels on the bus go round and round?”
“I’m not sure how plausibly deniable this is going to be if we just freeze the entire block solid.”
“I think the point is just for it to be deniable enough that they can’t make the case that we fired the first shot.”
“Okay.” He put his hands to either side of the engine, dropping the temperature precipitously. Frost began to form on the metal pieces, then on the plastic pieces. He pushed harder, forcing moisture from his own fingertips that gathered as ice on the exposed components. When he was done the engine was a solid block. “Took a lot of out me,” he said. “D’you bring-”
Drake handed him a sports drink. “And I’ve got a stack of them in the fridge, if you go through that one.”
“I will,” he said. “Takes more moisture to freeze an engine than I would have guessed.” He stopped. “Won’t they know this wasn’t natural?”
“Freeze the ground and their windows. Who are they going to believe? Meteorologists? Or their own eyes.”