didn’t think from home to Costa Rica … her kind didn’t have a home. Homes are a luxury for noncombatants.
She had two hours to kill before the meet. She ordered white wine that she ignored, sat and watched the street for forty minutes. Whenever someone walked past her, she held her inert mobile phone to her ear and said, “Um-hm … yes…”
She saw nothing outside in the crowded street that made her nervous. Most of midtown was festooned in red and green, with holly and elves and silver bells and all the rest of the retail kitsch that annually invades every city in America like festive kudzu. The sun etched the sky, white with pollution.
Dee Jean D’Arc …
Daria, you are burned.
It seemed someone was watching her. And someone else was watching out for her.
In both cases, she didn’t know who.
She unfolded her Manhattan map again, studied it for a few moments, then left the bar and returned to the concierge. She pointed to a spot on the map. He grimaced. “Very bad traffic, ma’am. Avoid it if you can.”
She thanked him kindly and asked if there was a computer she might use. He pointed her to the hotel’s business center. There, she did a MapQuest search of the coordinates she had shown the concierge.
Daria found an X, where Broadway intersects Seventy-second Street on the Upper West Side. There was a small park and a subway stop. In the vicinity was a sandwich shop, a chain bookstore that also housed a coffee shop, a bank, a women’s clothing store, and a photocopy shop.
Perfect. She returned to the second-floor window of the hotel and activated her cell phone.
* * *
Most CIA operations can be run from high-tech, high-def wired operations rooms burrowed deep in the bowels of the headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The ops rooms are known as Shark Tanks. Each operations room was as secure as Fort Knox, featuring more high-definition wiring than a Super Bowl game.
But when an operation comes together too quickly for a traditional setup, mobile command centers become the focal point of the operation. There were few enemies of America who could hope to outmaneuver the sheer calculating power and communication technology of a CIA command vehicle.
Such vehicles—long truck-and-trailer rigs—are prepositioned around the globe. Each serves as a mobile ops room, complete with the latest in wireless surveillance equipment, GPS-fed monitoring stations, real-time data feeds to Langley, and enough weaponry and defensive technology to face off against a small army.
Such command vehicles are rarely used within the borders of the United States because, as any intelligence analyst, lawmaker, or journalist can tell you, the CIA does not operate domestically.
At least, not officially.
* * *
Owen Cain Thorson and two tech-savvy agents occupied one of these long, white trucks, marked on the outside with the stylized logo of a Hollywood film crew. They had parked on Forty-second Street, a half block from the meet. Earlier in the day, Thorson’s techs had positioned eight cameras, no larger than lipsticks, at strategic locations on every side of the block, both at ground level and on upper floors of the surrounding buildings. Eight small monitors in the truck were being fed live images.
Thorson removed his ear jack and voice wand, and reached for a walkie-talkie. “Goddard? What was Batsman wearing when you lost her? Over.”
“Ah, black leather jacket, jeans, flats, red button-down blouse. Oh, and her hair is longer than in the briefing photos. Shoulder-length. Straight. Over.”
Thorson acknowledged the transmission. One of the agents in the truck grumbled, “I can’t believe Goddard’s team lost her at JFK.”
“We weren’t there.” Thorson turned his eyes back to the monitors, which showed strategic intersections and sidewalks within a two-block-by-two-block radius. “Don’t second-guess his team. She’s a trained spook. Maybe she made them. Maybe she assumes
She had two hours to kill before the meet. She ordered white wine that she ignored, sat and watched the street for forty minutes. Whenever someone walked past her, she held her inert mobile phone to her ear and said, “Um-hm … yes…”
She saw nothing outside in the crowded street that made her nervous. Most of midtown was festooned in red and green, with holly and elves and silver bells and all the rest of the retail kitsch that annually invades every city in America like festive kudzu. The sun etched the sky, white with pollution.
Dee Jean D’Arc …
Daria, you are burned.
It seemed someone was watching her. And someone else was watching out for her.
In both cases, she didn’t know who.
She unfolded her Manhattan map again, studied it for a few moments, then left the bar and returned to the concierge. She pointed to a spot on the map. He grimaced. “Very bad traffic, ma’am. Avoid it if you can.”
She thanked him kindly and asked if there was a computer she might use. He pointed her to the hotel’s business center. There, she did a MapQuest search of the coordinates she had shown the concierge.
Daria found an X, where Broadway intersects Seventy-second Street on the Upper West Side. There was a small park and a subway stop. In the vicinity was a sandwich shop, a chain bookstore that also housed a coffee shop, a bank, a women’s clothing store, and a photocopy shop.
Perfect. She returned to the second-floor window of the hotel and activated her cell phone.
* * *
Most CIA operations can be run from high-tech, high-def wired operations rooms burrowed deep in the bowels of the headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The ops rooms are known as Shark Tanks. Each operations room was as secure as Fort Knox, featuring more high-definition wiring than a Super Bowl game.
But when an operation comes together too quickly for a traditional setup, mobile command centers become the focal point of the operation. There were few enemies of America who could hope to outmaneuver the sheer calculating power and communication technology of a CIA command vehicle.
Such vehicles—long truck-and-trailer rigs—are prepositioned around the globe. Each serves as a mobile ops room, complete with the latest in wireless surveillance equipment, GPS-fed monitoring stations, real-time data feeds to Langley, and enough weaponry and defensive technology to face off against a small army.
Such command vehicles are rarely used within the borders of the United States because, as any intelligence analyst, lawmaker, or journalist can tell you, the CIA does not operate domestically.
At least, not officially.
* * *
Owen Cain Thorson and two tech-savvy agents occupied one of these long, white trucks, marked on the outside with the stylized logo of a Hollywood film crew. They had parked on Forty-second Street, a half block from the meet. Earlier in the day, Thorson’s techs had positioned eight cameras, no larger than lipsticks, at strategic locations on every side of the block, both at ground level and on upper floors of the surrounding buildings. Eight small monitors in the truck were being fed live images.
Thorson removed his ear jack and voice wand, and reached for a walkie-talkie. “Goddard? What was Batsman wearing when you lost her? Over.”
“Ah, black leather jacket, jeans, flats, red button-down blouse. Oh, and her hair is longer than in the briefing photos. Shoulder-length. Straight. Over.”
Thorson acknowledged the transmission. One of the agents in the truck grumbled, “I can’t believe Goddard’s team lost her at JFK.”
“We weren’t there.” Thorson turned his eyes back to the monitors, which showed strategic intersections and sidewalks within a two-block-by-two-block radius. “Don’t second-guess his team. She’s a trained spook. Maybe she made them. Maybe she assumes
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