the United States.
Noboru swallowed. He reached for the door handle, saw himself leaping from the car, rolling down the ditch, then coming around to bring his pistol to bear on the car. He would kill them. The nightmare would end tonight.
But what if he were wrong? What if these men had been hired by Kovac or even Fisher himself? If Noboru were to confront them, he’d be doing the very thing he had just advised Hansen against: tipping his hand to the enemy.
But to remain silent, in place, knowing that they could be back there, would take inhuman reserve. He could barely breathe and the bile was building in his throat.
“Moreau?” Hansen called. “We’re not reacting.”
They drove on, all the way back to the hotel, with Moreau finally telling them that the Range Rover had pulled into a parking garage about five blocks away.
As they parked in their own garage, Moreau continued to feed them reports. Still no sign of the drivers.
“Ben, I suggest we search our cars,” said Noboru.
“Good idea.”
And within five minutes they found a pair of GPS tracking devices, both placed within the back sides of the cars’ rear bumpers.
“Those are British made,” said Moreau. “Interesting. Excellent encryption. They’re not amateurs.”
“Let me shadow them,” said Noboru. “Let me go alone.”
“I’d advise against that,” said Moreau.
“Sir, are you telling me how to run my team?” asked Hansen. “Is that within the purview of operations management?”
“Young man, I’d like a word in private. Come on up here, ASAP.”
“Tell him you’ll wear your sexy bathrobe,” said Ames with a wink.
“I heard that,” cried Moreau.
Hansen looked at Gillespie and Valentina, who were holding the tracking devices. “Stick them on two other cars. We’ll have a little fun with our tails.”
The women smiled and got to work.
Back up in Moreau’s hotel room, Hansen stood before the man and lifted his shoulders. “Time for answers.”
Moreau turned away from his computer, sat back in the chair, and pillowed his head in his hands. “You’re getting ahead of me, cowboy. I haven’t asked any questions yet.”
“I’m asking the questions. First and most obvious: What the hell are we doing here?”
“I’m about to tear you a new one for your insubordination,” answered Moreau. “After that, we can order ice cream.”
Hansen spaced his words for effect: “You know what I mean.”
“Mr. Hansen, we are in the middle of an operation to bring in a rogue agent. You didn’t get the memo?”
“Don’t give me that BS. Geeks forgot to pack the goggles? Now we got a tail?”
“What’re you suggesting?”
“You don’t want us to capture Fisher.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“He’s working with Grim. He’s up to something. And we’re running defense. We’re the screen. And Kovac’s beginning to figure that out, and he’s got people all over us.”
“Your job is not to stand and speculate on what-ifs and maybes and,
“The part where you lied to us.”
Hansen took a step forward and riveted his gaze on Moreau.
Standoff.
19
While Hansen was meeting with Moreau, Noboru was already three blocks down the street and heading toward the garage where the Range Rover was parked. The others thought he’d gone down to a little all-night cafe on the corner to bring back some fresh-brewed decaf.
With a woolen cap pulled tightly over his head and the collar of his trench coat turned up, Noboru entered the five- level parking garage and kept low behind the first row of cars. The attendant booth was empty, tickets and payment being issued by an automatic system.
Noboru stole his way up to the first level, eyes probing with an almost mechanical precision. He dashed from car to car and ventured up to the second level, squinting once more at every dark vehicle he spotted.
By the time he reached the third level, he was growing frustrated and breathless. There were plenty of open parking spaces within the garage, yet the Range Rover was not there.
Again, no luck on the fourth level. In fact, there were even fewer cars parked this high up.
He took himself all the way to the edge of a wall beside which stood the rooftop parking area. If the Rover had been parked there, Moreau would have picked it up via satellite. Noboru checked the lot anyway. No Range Rover.
He began to panic. Wrong garage? Had the car pulled out while he’d been on his way there?
Sweating profusely now, he sprinted all the way down to the first level and once more took up a position behind a small sedan.
And then he saw it, a bank of garage doors located along the rear wall of the garage. A sign indicated that these were secured garages for rent.
The bad news: There were six garage doors, and the Range Rover could be behind any one of them.
Noboru had tools but not much time.
He reached the first door, then opened his coat, removed his lock-picking set, and used one of the handles to open up a small gap in the first door, where the rubber base met the concrete floor. Through that gap he inserted the end of a flexicam, activated the base unit, set it for night vision, and slid the probe up to examine the car. No car. Empty garage.
On to the next one.
A Renault. And the next one. Empty. And as he was about to check the next one, headlights flashed behind him. He dove for cover beside the nearest car and waited there.
What the hell? It was the black Range Rover.
No. He blinked hard. It was a black SUV but not a Range Rover.
Noboru swallowed. Tried to calm himself. The SUV pulled into a spot near the exit, and a young couple exited, giggling. The man grabbed his partner’s ass as they ventured across the street, toward a row of small hotels.
Back to work.
And as fate, luck, and a cruel and merciless universe would have it, Noboru had to check all six garages before finding the Range Rover parked inside the last one.
The doors were opened by remote control, with rolling codes, and Noboru waited while his CBT Code-Scan, a Third Echelon-engineered magic box, got to work. It took another five minutes for the CBT to cast its spell, and the door finally cycled open. Noboru entered, then shut the door behind him.
He flicked on his penlight and took a deep breath. Picking the lock on the Range Rover still wouldn’t disable the vehicle’s alarm system, but if you had a key fob — or a device that could precisely mimic one, like the CBT — then you could simply press a button, resynchronize the forty-bit random codes, and gain access. Noboru
