officials. From Istanbul, the passport and 1,400 Turkish lira had bought him a seat on Alitalia Flight 386 to Frankfurt, and from there, it was another hour in the air to Paris.
The only luggage he carried was a black Coach messenger bag, which contained a change of clothes and basic toiletries. His numerous false passports were concealed on his person. Stepping into a bathroom, Vanderveen relieved himself and stopped to wash his hands. Looking into the mirror, he was pleased with the face he saw, although it was not his own. As Nicolas Valery, senior lecturer in Greek studies at the Sorbonne, his brown hair was cut short and streaked with gray, as was his three-day growth of stubble. His eyes were still green but were subdued by a pair of clear-vision contacts. He wore a pair of fashionable wire-rimmed spectacles as well as a fawn-colored corduroy sport coat, vintage jeans, and frayed suede loafers. The completed ensemble gave him the air of an aging academic, which suited him fine. His current persona was not entirely random; Vanderveen could discuss the trials of Heracles and Homer’s Iliad for hours if the need arose, although he did not expect that it would.
After passing through the main building, he stepped out into the cool air and joined the taxi queue. He didn’t have to wait long, but he cursed his luck as soon as he climbed into the backseat of the Renault wagon. The driver stank of liquor. As Vanderveen shrugged off his sport coat and set it aside, he caught a quick glimpse of the man’s glassy eyes in the rearview mirror. The vehicle rolled away from the curb, and soon they were streaking south on the A1 toward the city center.
Ten minutes passed in strained silence. Despite the fact that traffic was light, they were driving much too fast, tires squealing on the slightest curves in the road. Glancing at the mirror once more, Vanderveen saw beads of sweat pooling on the driver’s broad forehead, a nose full of broken capillaries over unkempt facial hair… all the telltale signs of a raging, lifelong alcoholic. He thought about the thick bundle of notes tucked into the pages of his false passport, glanced at his watch, and made a decision.
“Monsieur Grenet?”
“Yes?” The man’s bloodshot eyes moved up to the mirror, appraising his passenger. There was a brief, uncertain pause. “How do you…?”
“Il est sur le tableau de bord,” Vanderveen said, responding to the unasked question.
“Yes, of course,” the driver muttered. He glanced down at the dash, where his name was prominently displayed, along with his license number. “I’m sorry. You had a question…?”
“When does your shift end?”
“It just began.” The driver swept a filthy sleeve over his damp face. “I have until six in the morning.”
He made it sound like a death sentence, an interminably long period of time. Vanderveen leaned forward, close enough to inhale the man’s rank odor. “Undoubtedly, there are things you’d rather be doing,” he murmured. “There are several good bars just north of the Pont Neuf. I’m sure you know them well.”
The driver hesitated, unsure of where this was going, unwilling to disagree. There was something about this passenger that frightened him more than the thought of another ten hours without a drink. The man’s observations were blatantly offensive; he knew he should say something to that effect, but he couldn’t quite summon up the courage to object.
“Grenet, I have a proposition for you.”
In the CP on Duke Street in Alexandria, the tension was mounting slowly but steadily. Most of the junior agents had been sent outside to keep the radio chatter audible, but dozens of tense conversations still clouded the air. As an outsider whose presence was barely tolerated, Ryan Kealey had been pushed to the back of the group, along with Jonathan Harper. Although he was clearly removed from the proceedings, Kealey didn’t mind in the least; he was fairly sure he wanted no part of what was about to happen.
From where he was standing, his view was limited to the shiny bald dome of Dennis Quinn, the D.C. SWAT commander. At this point, the man’s job was all but finished; once the teams crossed “phase line yellow,” the last point of cover and concealment, all commands from that point on would be relayed by the assault team leaders, the ranking men on the ground.
“Control, this is Alpha One. We’re in position, requesting permission to advance, over.”
All noise in the CP abruptly ceased. Quinn keyed his radio and said, “Alpha One, this is Control. I copy you five by five… Bravo One, what’s your status?”
A brief hiss of static, then, “Control, this is Bravo One. We’re ready to roll, over.”
“Roger that. Standby.”
Quinn ran an uncertain hand over his glistening scalp, then turned and scanned the crowd. “Schettini, where do we stand?”
The young woman broke off from her cell. “The techs are on channel nine, sir. Wilson’s running the show. He’s waiting to hear from you.”
Quinn punched in the appropriate frequency and repeated the question.
The disembodied voice came back right away, reedy and high. “We’re good to go, sir. Power is off the board.”
The SWAT commander confirmed the report, then switched channels once more. “Team leaders, this is Control. You are clear to advance.”
Kealey suddenly pictured ragged sections of chain-link fence being torn aside, the assaulters moving fast through the narrow gaps. As if reading his mind, the first of several black-clad men appeared on the first monitor, which provided a view of the west side of the warehouse.
“There they are,” someone murmured. Moments later, the second team appeared on the third screen, five men spaced in even intervals, cutting a straight path toward the target building.
The office was unusually large in comparison to the overall size of the building, enclosed by four-foot cement walls, which were topped by panes of glass. The exposed concrete of the west wall was lined by a pair of cheap wooden foldout tables, which bowed under the weight of six monitors and a computer tower. Pausing in the open doorway, Mason cursed under his breath as he studied the makeshift desks, which were strewn with heaps of paperwork and fast-food debris. The search for the keys could take some time, he knew. The office doubled as his living space and was littered with his personal effects. He’d purchased the building three months earlier through an Illinois-based holding company, which in turn was owned and managed by a half-dozen fictitious individuals.
Mason spent most of his waking hours inside the warehouse. It was one of the few places he felt comfortable, as he had no reason to doubt its security. Very few of his clients had the time or desire to track down his base of operations, and he had little cause to distrust them; after all, he was doing more for them than they could ever do in return.
Pushing a stack of paperwork off the desk, Mason began his search, then stopped when the overhead lights went off. He instantly looked up at the bank of monitors and froze in disbelief.
The FBI techs had done their job as instructed. The power to the building had been cut, but what the technicians hadn’t known — what no one knew — was that Mason’s security system was run by a PoE (Power over Ethernet) connection. The eyes of the system consisted of twelve IP cameras, all of which monitored the exterior of the building. The cameras were connected by Ethernet cable to a twelve-port midspan, which was similar in function to a server. The midspan, in turn, was linked to a switch, which ran directly to the tower. The computer was set to automatically switch to a backup battery in the event of a power disruption. The battery wouldn’t last more than a few minutes, as it was supporting too many end terminals, but it did provide a crucial window during which time the system would stay online. As Mason stared at the screens with escalating panic, another team moved in from the east, making its way to the second steel door.
Swearing viciously, he turned and took a few quick steps to his foldout cot, where he pulled back the coarse woolen blanket to reveal a Dell laptop computer and a Heckler amp; Koch G36 assault rifle. A 30-round magazine was already in place, the first round chambered. After grabbing two spare, fully loaded magazines, Mason ran out of the office and back to the stairwell.
Benjamin Tate, the lead assaulter on the team moving in from the west, was a wiry eight-year veteran who’d spent half his career serving on SWAT teams in numerous cities, including Houston, Atlanta, and New York. During that time he had served dozens of high-risk arrest warrants, many of which had involved this same type of tactical entry. But that was the smallest part of his job; he was also a fraud investigator with an MBA from Cornell and a heavy caseload. As such, he’d been among the first to suggest that the HRT take over in Alexandria. When his request had been shot down, however, he’d left it at that; over the course of his career with the Bureau, Tate had learned that you could make the suggestion once, but then, regardless of the result, you did as you were told.
