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Authors: Russell Blake
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was that he wasn’t sure what plan B should be. There was a limit to how much he could get the local police involved. Pulling a few strings to have them accompany his team while they searched a house was one thing, but doing a nationwide manhunt for a camera thief wasn’t practical. And if he stretched the truth and accused the cook of something appropriately serious to get the cops mobilized it would invite undesired attention. Sam tried to think like a petty crook. What would he do?
Probably sell the camera.
Which would introduce yet another layer of complexity. It was clear that Langley wanted exposure limited to as tight a circle as possible. And of course, it would mean yet more people to track down. It wasn’t as though Sam had an unlimited team to follow up every lead. Panama wasn’t exactly a hot zone, and he only had four men for field work under his command. He’d requested additional manpower and been assured it would be forthcoming within a day, but that didn’t do much for him right now. And as he’d learned in the classroom, as well as from CSI Miami , the more time that passed after the commission of a crime, the longer the odds of catching the perp.
Hardly consistent with his desire for a meteoric rise within the service.
Sam understood he had a problem, all right. But the part where he came up with a brilliant complementary strategy for closing the box and catching his man was proving more difficult than he’d hoped. If he were in the U.S. he could have commandeered traffic camera footage from the time the cook had left the villa – assuming the NSA played ball. But in Panama there was no technology to work with, unless you considered mud huts high tech. So he was out of luck – and ideas.
Except for the phone.
He’d put in a demand for the cook’s cell phone, and was still waiting for the info. The data they’d had on file was out of date; the number he’d given them long disconnected and moved to a new owner. But Sam had headquarters working through channels with the phone company to see if they had a new cell on record. If so, once they got the data, they could use NSA – even in Panama – to track the clipper chip in the device and locate the cook to within a few meters.
That would be a game changer – leading to a simple snatch operation. Find him, grab him, and pray he hadn’t sold the camera. His men were standing by but, unfortunately, nothing moved quickly in the boonies.
Frustration mounting, he opened a bottle of Maalox and chugged it. The acid from tension was eating away at his ulcer, increasing his discomfort. Why the hell had this, whatever this was, happened on his watch? He only had three lousy months left, and now a stolen camera conspired to make the agency look inept in his backyard?
The worst part of it all was that he didn’t know why the damned thing was worth so much effort and concern. Nobody was telling him anything other than ‘find the camera’, which didn’t speak too highly of Langley’s faith in his abilities. And soon he’d have some stuffed shirt looking over his shoulder from headquarters, no doubt taking all the credit for any success and blaming any failures on Sam. He knew the way things worked and could see that this was going down the bad road.
Sam rubbed his face, tired from being there since 3:30 that morning. He paced around his office, trying to get the blood flowing so he would stay alert. His computer beeped, and he moved the mouse, activating the screen.
They’d gotten a match on the cook’s number.
Maybe things were looking up after all.
Chapter 9
Ernesto fiddled with his drink coaster, glancing around the room every few minutes. The waiting had made him edgy, and the parade of scantily-clad young Latinas had grown stale after a few hours. Adrenaline from the day’s events had faded, replaced by a crash, and it was all he could do to keep his eyes open.
The stream of clients in the brothel had increased to
Probably sell the camera.
Which would introduce yet another layer of complexity. It was clear that Langley wanted exposure limited to as tight a circle as possible. And of course, it would mean yet more people to track down. It wasn’t as though Sam had an unlimited team to follow up every lead. Panama wasn’t exactly a hot zone, and he only had four men for field work under his command. He’d requested additional manpower and been assured it would be forthcoming within a day, but that didn’t do much for him right now. And as he’d learned in the classroom, as well as from CSI Miami , the more time that passed after the commission of a crime, the longer the odds of catching the perp.
Hardly consistent with his desire for a meteoric rise within the service.
Sam understood he had a problem, all right. But the part where he came up with a brilliant complementary strategy for closing the box and catching his man was proving more difficult than he’d hoped. If he were in the U.S. he could have commandeered traffic camera footage from the time the cook had left the villa – assuming the NSA played ball. But in Panama there was no technology to work with, unless you considered mud huts high tech. So he was out of luck – and ideas.
Except for the phone.
He’d put in a demand for the cook’s cell phone, and was still waiting for the info. The data they’d had on file was out of date; the number he’d given them long disconnected and moved to a new owner. But Sam had headquarters working through channels with the phone company to see if they had a new cell on record. If so, once they got the data, they could use NSA – even in Panama – to track the clipper chip in the device and locate the cook to within a few meters.
That would be a game changer – leading to a simple snatch operation. Find him, grab him, and pray he hadn’t sold the camera. His men were standing by but, unfortunately, nothing moved quickly in the boonies.
Frustration mounting, he opened a bottle of Maalox and chugged it. The acid from tension was eating away at his ulcer, increasing his discomfort. Why the hell had this, whatever this was, happened on his watch? He only had three lousy months left, and now a stolen camera conspired to make the agency look inept in his backyard?
The worst part of it all was that he didn’t know why the damned thing was worth so much effort and concern. Nobody was telling him anything other than ‘find the camera’, which didn’t speak too highly of Langley’s faith in his abilities. And soon he’d have some stuffed shirt looking over his shoulder from headquarters, no doubt taking all the credit for any success and blaming any failures on Sam. He knew the way things worked and could see that this was going down the bad road.
Sam rubbed his face, tired from being there since 3:30 that morning. He paced around his office, trying to get the blood flowing so he would stay alert. His computer beeped, and he moved the mouse, activating the screen.
They’d gotten a match on the cook’s number.
Maybe things were looking up after all.
Chapter 9
Ernesto fiddled with his drink coaster, glancing around the room every few minutes. The waiting had made him edgy, and the parade of scantily-clad young Latinas had grown stale after a few hours. Adrenaline from the day’s events had faded, replaced by a crash, and it was all he could do to keep his eyes open.
The stream of clients in the brothel had increased to
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