15
Guns ran down the hill and jumped into the car. He fumbled with his backpack, finally locating the audio bug’s receiving unit in a case at the very bottom. He had to squint to see the directional arrow in the screen.
Then they were gone. The bugs worked with line of sight radio waves, which would limit their range in this terrain.
At least he had the advantage of knowing which way the truck had come from. He eased down the dirt road toward the highway and waited for it to go by.
Five minutes passed before he realized his assumption was wrong; the truck had to have left by now and must be going the other way. Sure enough, he got the signal back as soon as he passed the waste facility.
It was weak; the truck was more than a mile beyond him, possibly close to the outside limits of the bug’s range. He stepped on the gas.
“Going east,” he told Ferguson. “He came from the west.”
“Just follow him until he gets somewhere. Check in later. We’ll meet you at the park.”
Guns had to slow down to take a series of curves as the road descended, braking so sharply that the receiving unit fell off the car seat. He grabbed for it, then lost it again as the road jerked right in front of him. Cursing at himself, he waited until he came to a straightaway, then reached down and grabbed the unit, holding it in front of the Hyundai’s dash.
They were straight ahead, about a half mile away.
Guns decided to trying ramping the volume on the unit, but the only thing he heard was a
Five minutes later, Guns came to a north-south intersection. As he started across, he saw that the directional indicator had swung to the right. He veered across the shoulder and opposite lane of the deserted highway, scraping the muffler on the median curb. The car’s exhaust rumbled a bit louder as he got into the right lane, but at least he was going in the right direction.
While the immediate area was deserted, the truck would soon reach a built-up area where there were lots of intersections and turnoffs. Guns decided to close the gap. Within a few minutes the meter showed he was steadily gaining on the truck, and he started looking ahead for taillights, expecting them to appear at any second. Every so often he glanced at the receiver; his target was dead ahead.
And then suddenly it wasn’t.
The strength needle began backing off, and he lost the directional compass. Guns realized he’d somehow passed the truck.
He spun into a quick a U-turn. The strength gauge climbed again, showing the bug was dead ahead.
And then behind him.
He cursed, realizing the bug had fallen off the truck onto the road.
16
It took Ferguson and Rankin nearly three hours to hike out of the waste plant property and down through the nearby park. Guns was leaning against the car near the fence, waiting for them, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. Ferguson laughed, then slapped him on the back and told him not to take it so hard.
“I’m sorry I messed up, Ferg.”
“The bug fell off the truck. What are you going to do?”
“I shoulda been closer.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Rankin, tossing his gear in the trunk, couldn’t help thinking that Ferguson would have ridden his butt if it had been him rather than Guns who’d lost the truck.
“I checked the area out. Couldn’t find anything,” said Guns as they got in the car. “I took a picture of the truck coming into the plant. Maybe we can use that.”
“Maybe,” said Ferguson.
“Probably getting around some no-dumping law,” said Rankin.
Ferguson plopped into the front seat of the car. He’d hurt his right knee getting down off the roof, and he grimaced as he pulled it in.
“What’d ja do?” asked Guns.
“Roof was a little higher than I thought it was,” Ferguson told him. “I tried sliding down the ribs, but it didn’t work too well. Nothing a good belt of Irish whiskey wouldn’t cure,” he added.
Rankin snorted from the back.
“They have Irish whiskey in Korea?” asked Guns.
“Guns, they have Irish whiskey everywhere,” said Ferguson. He dug into his pocket and took out the sensors, examining them. Only one had gone red, the one that had been on the barrel. It had been positioned near the tracks to the permanent low-level waste area, right next to the route the truck had taken.
“Gonna be a nice day for a change,” said Rankin, looking out the window. The sun had just started to peek over the horizon.
Ferguson repacked the tags in an envelope, then sealed everything in a large carrying case. He snapped the lock closed, then reset the digital lock.
“Give this to Van and tell him to send it back ASAP,” he told Rankin, handing it back to him. “I’ll let Corrigan know it’s coming.”
“I thought we were all going to shadow Thera,” said Guns.
“This is more interesting,” said Ferguson. “Besides, Skippy likes to be alone with the Delta boys. They stay up late and talk all that blanket-hugger stuff while they roast MREs over the fire.”
“You’re a laugh a minute, Ferg,” said Rankin. “You oughta go on Jay Leno.”
“Keep working on it, Rankin. There’s a comeback in there somewhere,” said Ferguson.
17
Corrine Alston got out of the elevator and walked down the narrow hallway to a stairwell guarded by two CIA security officers. The men stared straight ahead as she approached, doing their best to pretend that they didn’t notice her. She descended one level — the stairwells and elevators were separated to prevent a smart bomb from flying all the way down — and walked through a well-lit hallway The walls had recently been painted a soft blue on the advice of an industrial psychologist to add an air of calm, but it was a futile gesture. So much went on here that it was difficult for anyone to be calm.
Corrine put her thumb on a small panel next to the first doorway on the right. After a second’s delay, the doors swung apart, and she entered a vestibule leading to a small, secure conference room. In contrast to the rest of the building, the room was bereft of high-tech gadgetry. There was a whiteboard at the front and an old- fashioned slide projector on the table. The table and chairs were at least thirty years old, having been salvaged from another building.
Daniel Slott, the CIA’s deputy director of operations and the head of the agency’s covert operations division, sat alone at the table, fiddling with a plastic Papermate mechanical pencil. He looked up when Corrine entered, nodded, then went back to staring at his pencil.
