“Give me your driver’s license.”
Vail handed it over, and DeSantos delivered it to the guard. Moments later, they were admitted into the parking lot. And moments after that, Vail was following DeSantos into the lower reaches of the Pentagon.
“No one can know what you see or hear. Are we cool?”
Vail nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.” Her head rotated in all directions. “Where are we?”
“The bowels, where I work. No sarcastic comments, please.”
He stopped at a door, placed his hand on a glass panel, and waited while a yellow light scanned his palm and a beam struck his retina. A computer voice said, “Scanning complete,” the electronic click of a lock released, and DeSantos pushed through the door.
“What’s OPSIG?” Vail asked. She thumbed a fist over her shoulder. “Sign on the door.”
“Operations Support Intelligence Group. We’re a highly covert team. And that’s all I can tell you.”
“That’s all I think I want to know,” she said.
Inside, an entire wall was subsumed by oversize LCD monitors, which displayed satellite imagery and blinking locator beacons. A worn conference table sat off to the side. An air-conditioned breeze whisked by Vail’s ears, neutralizing the intense heat radiating from the wall of screens that buzzed her face as she passed them en route to a chair.
DeSantos sat down on one of the navy seats, placed his hands on a laptop PC in front of him, and stroked the keyboard. He leaned forward and a light from an external device scanned his retina.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m logged in. Now, let’s see what I can do.” He reached over to a button on the table and pressed it. “Hey, man, can you come in here a sec?”
Vail moved to a seat beside DeSantos. “Who’s that?”
“Let’s call him Benny. My personal tech guru. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing half the time. I’m TC.” He glanced at her, must’ve seen her mind unsuccessfully processing that acronym, then said, “TC. Technologically challenged. My former partner could troll servers and penetrate secure databases like a true hacker. But me? I do Windows. That’s about it.” He struck a key. “When it involves delicate hacking, I need someone who knows how to hide our tracks.”
In walked Benny, a bear of a man with fingers so thick they reminded Vail of bratwurst. She wondered how he was going to navigate the keyboard.
“Whazzup, boss?”
“Have a seat,” DeSantos said. “We’re going fishing.”
BENNY, INDEED, HAD DIFFICULTY manipulating the computer keys—and as a result had to go slow, regularly correcting his mistyped commands. Finally, twenty minutes later, DeSantos retrieved a sheaf of papers from the LaserJet.
“Those are Sebastian’s phone logs?” Vail asked.
He splayed them across the table in front of him. “Cell, home, and work.”
“Scary that you can do that.”
DeSantos chuckled. “This ain’t nothing, my dear. You should see what we’re capable of.”
“Something tells me that if I did, you’d have to kill me.”
Benny chuckled as DeSantos regarded the papers.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” DeSantos said, “believe me.”
Based on what little she had seen thus far, Vail certainly did.
Prior to printing the document, DeSantos had Benny sort the data multiple ways. He filtered out calls that were made to known people in Sebastian’s life: his family members, girlfriend, known acquaintances, and of course, Robby. Established businesses and federal agency contacts were eliminated. And that left calls to individuals or businesses that were unidentified or suspect.
“We’ll go from here, which is a lot more manageable.” DeSantos turned to Benny. “Page three. Do a search and get me the names of all the owners of these phone numbers.”
Benny turned back to the laptop and began poking at the keys. After a moment, he leaned back in his chair, which bent precariously close to the ground. “We’ll have the results in a minute. So,” he said to Vail, “I haven’t seen you around here.”
“I’m with the behavioral analysis unit.”
Benny looked at DeSantos.
“She’s fine,” DeSantos said. “She hasn’t seen anything and even if she did, she can be trusted.”
Benny eyed her cautiously. His laptop beeped and he turned his attention back to the screen.
DeSantos rose and placed a hand on Benny’s thick shoulder. He pointed at the color-coded display. “Sort it here and here. Give me a printout. That’ll leave us with a manageable list.”
Benny did as instructed, then left the room. DeSantos handed Vail the new, streamlined printout, which contained five names and numbers. “Let’s eliminate the four non-Hispanic names. If I had to guess . . . ” He placed a finger on the paper. “That’d be our guy.”
55
Union Station was an odd place. Not the building—which was outwardly and inwardly architecturally pleasing, having been refurbished in 1988 into a modern transportation hub, shopping and restaurant destination—but the surrounding area. Located in the heart of the district and only ten football fields from the Capitol building, one might assume it sat in a premier neighborhood, the pride of the heart of U.S. government. Yet a wrong turn to the northeast landed you in a down-and-out section of D.C. that was best avoided.
And that was where DeSantos chose to meet Jose Diamante, purportedly a man who had insider information into the Cortez drug cartel, the confidential informant that DEA agent Antonio Sebastiani de Medina coddled and cultivated, paid and protected. Yardley knew the value of a high-level CI such as Diamante, which explained the resistance to providing his identity.
DeSantos foiled their plans, however, and now Diamante had agreed to meet his contact Sebastian. In another tech feat, a different OPSIG team member had cloned Sebastian’s cell phone number, enabling them to send a text message to Diamante requesting the meet. After a tense ten-minute wait, the CI responded. He would be there.
Benny then hacked the DMV server and secured a photo and physical description of Jose Diamante. Now it was a matter of executing a get-together with a high-level CI who was, no doubt, a careful and suspicious sort.
“Me or you?” Vail asked.
“You mean the attractive woman approach? You think you can show a little cleavage and get closer than I can?”
“You don’t think I can pull it off?”
DeSantos made a point of running his gaze from head to toe. “Probably best if I circle around, bring up the rear in case he runs.”
Vail dropped her jaw. “Thanks a lot.”
DeSantos broke a smile. “If he runs from you, the guy needs glasses. C’mon, let’s go.”
Leaving the car in the Union Station parking lot, they hoofed it down H Street NE. DeSantos stopped abruptly. “There used to be an Amoco station there, on the corner,” he said, nodding ahead of him. “That’s where I told him to meet us.”
Ahead of them was an empty lot, filled with sprouting weeds and partial remnants of asphalt that was spider-cracked like a sun-weathered face. At the corner of 3rd and H Street stood three battered passenger bus- size cargo containers. It appeared as if construction was due to start and the crew brought the equipment onsite prior to initiating the project.
“Maybe he figured it out and is waiting by those storage containers,” Vail said.
“Let’s hope so.”
They approached separately, DeSantos taking a detour between freshly constructed multistory brick apartment buildings, where he’d walk parallel to H, toward and across 3rd Street. He would then come up fifty yards behind the location where they hoped Diamante was waiting.
