"He's using the returns algorithm," El Codificador snarled to his boss, a man with a gold-plated AK-47. "He's sending defective packages back to the origin—but he's the package."

Marcus looked at the map. No airports. No safe corridors. The city was a maze of shantytowns, flooded streets, and cartel checkpoints.

But the cartel had a hacker too. His name was El Codificador. He was monitoring the Amazon dispatch network and noticed an anomaly: a delivery van that kept changing its license plate in the system, moving against traffic flow.

A sniper's bullet shattered the window above her head.

"I'm the decoy," he said, and sealed the door.

A burned-out logistics manager for Amazon Prime is forced to use his encyclopedic knowledge of the global delivery network to smuggle a witness out of a war-torn country, only to discover the real threat isn't the cartel—it's the algorithm. Part 1: The Prime Directive Marcus Thorne was once a legend. In his prime, he was an Interpol field agent specializing in transnational supply-chain crime—weapons hidden in shipping containers, drugs routed through fake return labels. But after a mission in Caracas went sideways, costing his partner his legs, Marcus traded his gun for a tablet. For the last five years, he’s been a "Fulfillment Optimization Manager" for Amazon Prime in a massive distribution center outside Chicago.

Marcus looked at the USB around Elena's neck. Then at his tablet. Battery: 1%.