Chapter Nine
A SURVEILLANCE VAN was parked under the shade of an oak tree on Bay Shore Boulevard across from Pioneer Park. The engine was running and the air blowing through the vents made a steady hum. Repair vans and delivery trucks are everywhere in downtown Saint Pete. One more white van didn’t attract any attention.
Ezra Cook sat behind the wheel, dressed in generic workman blue, pretending to read Off Grid magazine. He was a small man with thick black hair and too much nose. He had graduated the Farm—Langley’s top-secret training facility—just six weeks ago. This was Ezra’s first field mission and right now he felt like Jason Bourne and James Bond rolled into one. Too bad he couldn’t tell any friends about this.
Over the top of the magazine, he spotted a large black man cross Demens Landing and climb aboard a wooden sailboat christened the Yeoman. The man was wearing a wrinkled linen suit and carried a book in one meaty paw.
“Head’s up,” said Ezra. “I have an African-American male, early fifties. He just boarded the target’s boat. Are you two seeing this?”
Gregory Hunt thrust his head between the seats. “He’s a black guy, Ezra. We aren’t the police. You don’t have to be politically correct. Call him a black guy. And, yeah, we see him.”
Hunt was perched on a rolling stool in the back of the van looking at a wall of surveillance equipment. A high definition monitor hooked up to a tiny camera hidden in the grill of the van was pointed at the ship.
Gwendolyn Witwicky, another recent graduate of the Farm, leaned in to the monitor and wrinkled her nose. She and Ezra had been in the same class together. Both were collecting the requisite field work before they settled down to desk jobs as analysts. It was a new program the CIA had implemented for recent graduates. The idea was for desk jockeys to get a better understanding of what covert operatives went through in the field.
Gwen had mousy brown hair, coke-bottle glasses, and bore a striking resemblance to a young Carrie Fischer, in a nerdy sort of way. None of her CIA coworkers knew it, but she had gone to several comic cons dressed as Princess Leia. It did wonders for an otherwise non-existent love life. Looking at the screen, she said, “Is that…?”
“Matthew Burke,” said Hunt. He was the team leader and the only agent in the van with any real experience. This was babysitting as far as Hunt was concerned. He had more to offer the Company than playing nursemaid to junior analysts. And the target was a washed-up operator who dropped the ball on a mission in Qatar and got drummed out of SOG. Why the Company was wasting Hunt’s time and talents keeping tabs on a burn-out like Jake Noble was a mystery. Until now, Hunt had spent the morning thinking of ways to get in Gwen’s pants.
The arrival of Burke had piqued his interest though. Maybe there was more to this than he had been led to believe.
Ezra, still pretending to read his magazine, said, “Who?”
“Colonel Matthew Burke,” Hunt supplied. “He was a Delta Force Commando before making the switch to full-time spook. He’s a Cold War dinosaur who thinks intelligence work is best done by ex-Special Forces types. He’s also second in line for the Deputy Director’s chair.”
“No love lost between the two of you,” Ezra remarked.
“None,” Hunt said.
“What is he doing here?” Gwen asked.
“We are about to find out.” Hunt pointed at the recording controls.
The van was equipped with solid-state hard drives hooked up to the audio and video surveillance monitors. Gwen dutifully pressed the record button. The microdot Hunt had planted in the cabin of Noble’s boat picked up the conversation and transmitted the audio to a receiver in the van. Hunt and Gwen listened on noise cancelling headphones while the computers recorded the dialogue to the hard drives. The conversation was brief and, when it was over, Burke disembarked, crossed Demens Landing, and walked south on Bay Shore Boulevard.
“What was that all about?” Gwen wanted to know.
Hunt shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“You hear that?” Gwen pressed the headphone against her ear. “Sounds like he ripped a sheet of paper.”
Hunt nodded. They had no video feed inside the cabin of the ship. Burke could have written a message down while he and Noble were speaking. They might have a prearranged code. The whole conversation could have been a coded exchanged for all Hunt knew.
Gwen said, “Is he burning something?”
“Sounds like it,” Hunt said. “Does he smoke?”
Gwen consulted an operation file. “No record of it.”
A moment later Noble appeared on deck.
“He just tossed a book into the water,” Ezra said.
Hunt considered telling Ezra that they had seen it on the monitors and thought better of it.
“Should we try to retrieve the book?” Ezra wanted to know.
“He burned whatever information Burke gave him,” Hunt said. “The book was a decoy.”
“What’s going on?” Gwen asked.
“Is this part of the exercise?” Ezra asked.
“This isn’t an exercise,” Hunt told them.
Noble reappeared on deck a few minutes later, dressed and clearly headed somewhere. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Burke had somehow arranged a meeting.
Hunt grabbed a navy blue blazer off the back of the passenger seat and shrugged into it. “Let’s see where he’s going.”
Gwen grabbed Hunt’s arm. Thick lenses on her glasses magnified her eyes. “This is a surveillance op.”
Hunt offered up a devil-may-care grin and patted her cheek. “Relax,” he told her. “I’m going to perform a little mobile surveillance.”
She turned scarlet.
Hunt waited until Noble was twenty meters down the road before opening the back door. It was eighty-nine degrees in the shade and ten degrees hotter in the sun. He was going to bake inside the blazer but it covered the gun in his waistband. “Keep the home fires burning,” Hunt told them. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
He closed the back door with a clomp before either analyst could protest.
Ezra turned around in the driver’s seat. “You think this is a test?”
Gwen threw both hands up. “How should I know?”
Chapter Ten
NOBLE SPOTTED the surveillance van the moment he stepped on deck. It was parked close enough for a microdot. A Jewish guy in his early twenties sat behind the wheel, dressed in work coveralls. He didn’t have the complexion of a manual laborer, more like the sallow skin of a habitual video gamer. The survival magazine he was pretending to read only called more attention to the inconsistencies. It was a sloppy cover identity thrown together without much forethought.
Noble, careful not to make eye contact, turned south on Bay Shore, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and strolled along at a leisurely pace. The average city dweller is in a hurry. It makes tailing them easy work. Even a sloppy surveillance team can blend into a crowd of business workers rushing to the next meeting. It’s harder to tail someone moving slowly. People who take their time, stop frequently and change directions unexpectedly make covert surveillance difficult.
Noble stopped to watch a gaggle of college girls trying to windsurf in South Yacht Basin. A gust caught the brightly colored sail, toppling it. The girl hit the water with a splash. Her friends laughed and applauded her failure. Noble grinned, strolled a little further, stopped again. He bent down, picked up a pebble and skipped it across the water. He used the action as an excuse to check his tail.
Twenty meters back, he spotted a man with an athlete’s build and the type of sculpted hair normally only seen in the pages of GQ magazine. He wore khaki slacks and a navy blazer over a white polo. He looked like a member of the yacht club, but his footwear was all wrong. Instead of the ubiquitous deck shoes worn by country club members the world over, he wore black lace ups with a rubber sole: the kind of shoes you wear when you’re expecting a fight, shoes with good non-slip soles and steel toes for extra protection. He was careful
not to look directly at Noble and did a better than average job of loafing along nonchalantly. He took a smart phone from his jacket pocket and thumbed a message.
Noble headed for the Dali museum. The city of Saint Petersburg had recently spent several million dollars giving the building a major facelift. It looked like a towering cube with a gigantic soap bubble clinging to one side. In the garden is an enormous fiberglass sculpture of Dali’s mustache.
Noble hauled open the heavy door and heard the low hiss of a pneumatic hinge. It felt like stepping into a walk-in freezer. Priceless works of art, oil paintings in particular, are susceptible to heat damage. Curators go to great lengths to keep the temperature inside their galleries steady. Noble purchased a ticket, passed through the first floor gift shop and ascended a spiral staircase to the second floor. As he reached the top, he caught sight of Mr. GQ entering the lobby. Noble ducked through a pair of double doors into the main exhibit.
The lighting was dim with pockets of deep shadow in the corners. Spotlights singled out the art work. Giant canvases depicted melting clocks and alien eyeballs. A large clay sculpture looked like a cockroach on its back, legs wriggling in the air. People stopped and pondered the exhibits with deep expressions on their faces, as if they possessed some special insight into the artist’s mind. A sharp, manufactured odor made Noble wrinkle his nose. Someone was wearing too much cologne and the scent lingered. He picked up the pace, looking for a bathroom or a corner where he could hide and wait for Mr. GQ to pass by. He zeroed in on a single mother with a stroller. She was young, blonde, and Noble didn’t see a ring. She kept the stroller moving back and forth while admiring a fantastical landscape of trees and more melting clocks.
Noble joined her in front of the landscape. He stood close enough that, to an outside observer, he might be mistaken as part of the family unit. Mr. GQ hadn’t rounded the corner yet. Noble paused to admire the painting and then glanced into the stroller. Inside was a baby girl, fast asleep, with a pink bow atop a head of gold curls.
There’s something disarming about a napping baby. Noble grinned. “She’s beautiful. How old?”
The mother smiled and kept the stroller moving. “Eleven months.”
“Precious,” Noble said. “My ex and I… We tried for the longest time.”
Her smile vanished, replaced by sympathy.
CIA officers are taught to quickly profile a target, figure out what they want most, and dangle it on a string. People will betray their country, even their own family, for the right incentive. Feminist doggerel not withstanding, single mothers are always on the hunt for dad. Noble offered up exactly what she was looking for: an available man who wanted kids.
It was a dirty trick. But it worked.
He hunkered down in front of the stroller, giving himself an excuse to turn his back on the crowd and changing his height in the process. “Do you live in the area?”
“Tyrone,” she said. “Over by the mall.”
“I’m just down the street at the Saint Pete 1,” he lied. It was an expensive high-rise condominium building with a view of Tampa Bay. Noble couldn’t afford to have dinner in the lounge, much less live there.
Her smile returned. She offered her name. Noble lied again.
Mr. GQ walked past with his head on a swivel. He was looking for a five foot ten man in a hurry, not a doting father. Disappearing into a crowd can be as easy as changing the number of people in a group. Mr. GQ continued to the end of the hall and turned the corner.
Noble stood, offered his hand and said, “It was nice meeting you.”
A hint of confusion flitted across her face. Better to disappoint her now than offer a fake number and leave her waiting by a phone that would never ring. Noble knew what that felt like. He said goodbye and went out the way he had come in.
He exited the exhibit, hurried down the spiral staircase and out the main doors into the baking summer heat. Sunlight reflected off the sidewalk in blinding waves. After the dimly lit exhibit, Noble had to squint. He turned south toward Albert Whitted Airport.
Burke’s message would have confused anyone unfamiliar with the area. They would wonder which hangar he was referring to. Tampa Bay has two major airports, dozens of smaller airfields, and a number of flight schools. Only a native would know that Burke meant the Hangar.
Chapter Eleven
GREGORY HUNT REACHED the end of the exhibit. The main hall looped around in a circle and deposited him back at the upstairs landing where a knot of Japanese tourists were busy snapping pictures with state-of-art digital cameras. Noble was nowhere in sight. Hunt spotted a sign for the men’s room and pushed through the door. In true Dali fashion, the urinals along the wall appeared to be melting. Hunt didn’t need to pee but if he did, he wouldn’t use one of the oddly-shaped urinals for fear he’d end up with piss all over his shoes.
Hunt bent down and spotted a pair of topsiders in the very last stall. The rest were empty. He entered the next stall over. The toilet, thankfully, was normal. He climbed on the seat and peeked over the dividing wall.
Instead of Jake Noble, he found a middle-aged man with receding hair. The guy grunted, reached for toilet paper and caught sight of Hunt. His face turned purple. “Get the hell outta here, ya’ sicko!”
A stream of curses followed Hunt out the door. He hurried through the lobby and outside into the sunshine. Noble was gone.
Hunt’s lips peeled back from clenched teeth. Usually blacklisted agents came with drinking problems and a beer gut. Frayed nerves at the very least. Hunt had been expecting a broken-down old race horse. Noble still had moves.
He closed his eyes, took a breath and then put a hand in his blazer for his cellphone. He wouldn’t underestimate Noble again, and he had a feeling their paths would cross. He dialed and put the phone to his ear.
The Deputy Director of Clandestine Services picked up on the other end. His anal-retentive voice filled the line. “This is Clark S. Foster.”
“Burke paid a visit to Noble,” Hunt said without preamble. He briefly described the meeting and the strange dialogue. “Noble left his boat right after.”
“Where is he now?”
This was the part Hunt was dreading. He cleared his throat. “He gave me the slip, sir.”
The statement was greeted by silence.
Hunt rushed to fill the void. “He ran a surveillance detection route through the Dali Museum, sir.”
Foster said, “Noble has been out of the game for five years. You graduated top of your class at the Farm. You’re telling me he gave you the slip?”
“He’s not quite as rusty as I thought, sir,” He said. “It won’t happen again.”
“Get back to the van. Noble has to go home sometime. Pick him up and stick with him. Don’t screw up this time, Mr. Hunt.”
“Yes, sir,” Hunt said, but Foster had already hung up.
He stuffed the phone in his pocket.
Burke and Noble were cut from the same cloth; both were Special Forces hot shots, recruited by the Company for their ability to pull a trigger. Real spy work is about infiltrating the enemy network and collecting usable intel, not riding in, guns blazing. They were the old guard. Noble especially. He had been kicked out of the Company shortly before Hunt joined and the stink lingered, so Hunt had heard the rumors. If Burke was sharing information, he was breaking the law. Hunt would make sure he paid the piper. Burke’s demise was long overdue anyway. Out with the old and in with the new.
Chapter Twelve
THE HANGAR is a bar and grill in Albert Whitted Airport, located on the second floor, with a view of the landing strips. Noble smelled grease and onion rings before he reached the top of the steps. Black-and-white photographs of old prop planes covered the walls. “Blue Suede Shoes” was coming from a jukebox in the corner and an wooden propeller was tacked over the bar.
Burke had squeezed his bulk into a booth by the windows. There was a half-eaten bacon cheeseburger in front of him. He tipped a barely perceptible nod to Noble, picked up a
strawberry daiquiri, sipped.
Noble scanned the rest of the patrons. No one set off alarm bells, but good surveillance wouldn’t. He slid into the booth. Leather creaked. Beyond the windows, a twin-engine Cessna taxied toward the runway. A waitress came over. Noble ordered coffee.
“French fry?” Burke motioned to a pile of thick cut potato wedges on his plate.
Noble shook his head. “I had a tail. Six foot. Blonde hair. Dressed like a member of the yacht club.”
“Gregory Hunt,” Burke said. “Foster’s new fair-haired golden boy, literally.”
“Ex-military?” Noble asked.
“That clown?” Burke snorted. “Yale. Recruited right out of college. Making a bit of a name for himself in the Company. He’s good.”
“Not good enough.”
“You gave him the slip?” Burke asked.
Noble gazed out the window at the Cessna as it geared up for take-off. “I hope you didn’t come all this way to test the new recruits.”
“We lost contact with Torres,” Burke said.
A block of ice dropped into Noble’s gut, pinning him to the seat. He had served side by side with Jesús Torres in the Green Berets. They had fought and bled together on three different continents. Torres had saved Noble’s life more than once. He leaned back in the seat and chewed the inside of one cheek. “What happened?”
“He was in Mexico City, infiltrating the Los Zetas drug cartel. Heard of it?”
Noble shrugged. “Only what I see on Fox News.”
“Then you are better informed than most.” Burke picked up his burger, took a bite and spoke around a mouthful of food. “They make the Medellin cartel of the eighties look like the JV team. They’re one of the most ruthless gangs in Mexico. Nearly half the cocaine coming across our southern border is courtesy of the Los Zetas. The guy running the show is called Machado.”
“The Axe,” Noble translated.
Burke nodded, wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “He was a foot soldier during the drug wars of the late eighties. Made a name for himself as a cutthroat killer. Likes to chop his victims up. Sort of his calling card.”
Noble Vengeance (Jake Noble Series Book 2) Page 4