Recon

by David McCaleb

  “If we can get some direct evidence this evening, I’ll plant so many bugs Moses won’t take a crap without us knowing. Till then, we keep surveillance at arm’s length.”

  The senator was dirty, all right. But, he’d worked for the CIA before being elected to senator, so a mere chat with a Mossad agent wasn’t concrete evidence anything illegal was transpiring. However, the circumstances had become all too compelling. Moses was covering up something, Carter was certain. The man had ordered the death of his own daughter—Lori—in his efforts.

  The old man might be a skilled subversive. But Carter was patient.

  * * * *

  Steam thick as vapor rose from black coffee in an orange Hard Rock Café travel mug. Carter blew across it, then took a cautious sip. It had only taken eight hours to plant twenty of the cameras across the park. After the sixth, his nausea had subsided. Then Mather had stuck a wireless mic beneath every picnic table and bench on the grounds.

  Carter glanced around Jamison’s com room, tucked in a dark corner of the Det’s basement. The geek must’ve spent the whole day wiring every spare monitor into his cave, covering two walls halfway up with poster-sized displays. The glowing mosaic spouted so much light it made Carter wince. He squeezed temples between thumb and finger, massaging a dull ache behind his eyes. Grind sat flipping through an edition of Plane & Pilot.

  Jamison propped a lime-green hoof atop a folding chair, pounding a keyboard in his lap.

  Carter squinted. “Those ugly-ass shoes give me a migraine.”

  Jamison took a final swig from a Yoo-hoo. The empty bottle clanked into a metal trash can. He pointed to one glowing screen. “That may be him.” He clicked a mouse, and the image zoomed to a black Tahoe pulling to a halt in Greenwood’s parking lot. Moses’ unmistakable bulk loomed behind the wheel. From the high angle, only the bottom half of his head was visible below the roof, but he held a cell phone to one ear, mouth moving.

  Grind tossed his magazine on a desk and leaned back in a maroon office chair, stuffing gaping through a worn hole in its side. “If we just bent the rules a little, we’d know who he was calling.”

  Carter clenched his jaw. Grind was right, of course. But anything they gathered needed to be admissible in court. He wasn’t trying to figure out if the man was guilty, but rather laying a snare to ensure conviction. Get some evidence more concrete, then push through warrants. Spying on a three-term senator wasn’t like listening to the cell conversations of an illegal immigrant.

  Jamison pointed to a map of Greenwood Park pinned to the wall with twenty red pushpins indicating the placement of cameras, then studied an adjoining monitor. “We’ve got camera number eight as well. That should give us another angle on the truck.” The image spun like a Tilt-A-Whirl, then came to rest on the same Tahoe. Jamison dragged the cursor across the vehicle, and within a second the truck filled the screen.

  Grind huffed. “Be nice if a drone could’ve given us a bird’s eye.”

  Carter’s neck tensed. Why wouldn’t the bastard let it rest? “You saw the clouds. Ceiling’s too low. We’d run the risk of being spotted. Why all the harping on wiretapping and drones? We’re doing old-fashioned investigating. You going geek on me? Want to transfer into Jamison’s playgroup?”

  Jamison turned to gape at him, hurt creasing his face.

  Grind jerked his head toward Carter. “Screw you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Screw you. Sir.”

  Carter smiled. “That’s what I thought you said.” He pointed at a monitor. A thin man in jeans and black blazer was stepping out from a squat red-brick building near the back of the parking lot. The men’s restroom. He wiped his hands dry on white paper, tossed it in a canister, and jogged toward the Tahoe. “Where’d he come from? That the Mossad agent?” He’d expected him to arrive by car. They hadn’t monitored foot traffic. How long had the guy been in there? Had he seen Carter and his crew replacing the light sensors?

  The man opened the passenger door of the Tahoe and sat across from Moses. Carter pounded a fist on the table. “We can’t listen to them there!” Months of patient stalking, waiting for the big man to make a misstep. Now something was calling the dirty senator off his worn path, necessitating a face-to-face with Mossad, and Carter couldn’t even eavesdrop. He jumped up and waved at the wall of monitors. “We’ve got all the electrons in the universe focused on this damn Tahoe and for all we know they’re exchanging cookie recipes.”

  Maybe Grind had been right. Maybe sometimes you had to bend the rules for the greater good.

  Grind leaned closer to one of the screens. “Zoom in on the big guy’s mouth. Do the same on the other screen to his friend in black.”

  What the hell? Both men’s faces were half-hidden from the cameras. “What are you doing?”

  Grind waved him off. “Shut up.”

  Carter clenched a fist. What was the worst that could happen if he decked Grind right now? The detective supposed he could give up the whole investigation and return to “retirement,” working a lazy man’s job for New Kent County Sheriff’s Department. The thought evoked fresh air and freedom. Except Carter had no choice. He had to finish and find out who was trying to kill Red and Lori. Because in return, Red was removing evidence of Carter’s involvement in the deaths of several terror suspects during interrogation not long after nine eleven.

  Carter shook his head. He’d only executed his assignment, obeyed orders, extracted perishable intel from extremists, and saved American lives. But the media didn’t have a damn clue what it took to ensure society’s protection from scum like that. No one wanted to know the truth, that fanatics sometimes had to die in agony so that American kids could sip their Starbucks lattes without the shopping mall’s food court being ripped apart by a backpack bomb at Christmastime. It’d be best if his name was simply never mentioned in the capital hearings. So, there was no backing out of this investigation for Carter, and no return to retired life. Just stale air and Grind’s attitude.

  He breathed a sigh. “Tell me what you’re—”

  Grind lifted a flat-bladed hand to stop him. “Lipreading, Detective.” He nudged Jamison’s shoulder. “You’re recording this, right?”

  Jamison slapped both feet onto the carpet and banged on his keyboard. Red lights flashed in the corner of both displays.

  Grind studied the monitors in turn, head swinging between them as each man spoke. His own mouth moved as if trying to speak the same words. He pointed to Moses. “Money stopped…two months’ deposits. You guys not happy?” Some words he seemed to decipher right away. Others he skipped over, speaking in sporadic phrases.

  He pointed to the Mossad agent. “Story isn’t dead…still investigating your operations…damaged goods…”

  As Moses patted his chest on-screen, Grind continued his translation. “I’ll do it.”

  The man in black shook his head. “We will eliminate…”

  After another minute of Grind channeling nonsense like the Oracle of Delphi, both men in the Tahoe leaned back in their seats, lips now still. A silver Jaguar XF pulled behind the truck. Without any movement of lips, the Mossad agent slipped out and drove off in it. Moses sat for several more minutes, rubbing the back of his neck. When he finally started the Tahoe, his shoulders hunched forward. He slid down in his seat, losing a few inches of height. One monitor was still zoomed in on his face. His eyes looked swollen. He rubbed them with a thumb, then backed the SUV up and drove from the lot.

  “What the hell just happened?” Carter asked.

  Grind stood and put a hand on Jamison’s shoulder. “You got all that on film, right?”

  The geek shrugged. “Not film. But yeah, I got it.”

  He turned to Carter. “My sister’s deaf. Like, from birth. We used to play this game growing up, listening to others’ conversations by lipreading. Easier if you know what people are talking about, or if you can se
e their whole face. Here I couldn’t see any expressions or body language. So, I didn’t get much, but we can review the tapes, maybe get more. Plus, I know some guys who’re real good at this.” He scratched his bald scalp. “What do you think he meant by the story not being dead? Is Mossad blackmailing Moses?”

  “Maybe,” Carter said. “But I don’t think that’s what he was saying.”

  Grind huffed. “What, you reading lips now too?”

  “No. But I’ll bet he said Lori, not story. As in: Lori isn’t dead. So now Mossad is going to take matters into their own hands.” Carter snatched up a black handset and punched the ten digits of Red’s mobile number. He needed to reach him now, before Mossad.

  Chapter 3

  Truck Stop

  Red glanced at movement in the rearview mirror of his Ford Explorer. His eyes focused on a small set of raised hands in the seats behind him. He straightened his back and saw they belonged to Nick, their five-year-old, grinning and waving arms as they rounded another curve on Interstate 64 headed into Charleston, West Virginia. They flashed by a white-and-black sign announcing a fifty-five-mile-per-hour limit. Speedometer read seventy, so he lifted his foot from the accelerator.

  “This is like a roller coaster!” the child cried. Penny, ten, and Jackson, six, stared down at a screen with white-corded headphones in their ears, oblivious.

  Red had driven this stretch many times. The graceful curves and dips of the pavement through the lush mountain valley begged for speed, despite the uphill incline. Lori’s head leaned on the passenger window, the curved side of her neck stretched tight. That couldn’t be comfortable. Though it was now three in the afternoon, she’d been sleeping, or pretending to sleep, for two hours. He glanced at her chest slowly rising and falling. They’d booked suites along the route, a separate bedroom for the kids. He smiled. A well-rested wife always meant a better chance for sex.

  Carter had still warned him that Lori hadn’t been completely forthright regarding her work at the CIA. The detective distrusted everyone, it seemed. He’d suspected her of being a mole, leaking financial intelligence, fintel. But it turned out she’d been a part of a CIA team investigating certain fintel leaks and had only looked like a mole. Nonetheless, Carter hadn’t been convinced despite CIA reassurances and reminded Red often of his doubts. The detective’s instincts had been dead on before, but Red reassured himself the mother of their children wasn’t dirty. Still…

  He reached a hand across the console to hers. “Driving always helps clear my mind.”

  No response.

  They’d considered flying to Colorado Springs, their final destination, instead. But they hadn’t done a road trip in years. Each had taken two weeks off, so Red suggested they go by interstate.

  Outside Red’s window a rolling green ridge rushed past. The calloused brown bark of white pines dotted stands of gray-striped sugar maples and the peeling skin of red ones. Across a frontage road sprouted a clump of birch, trunks wrapped with shredded linen-paper covers. The dark, coarse texture of a lone black cherry stood out among them, its crooked limbs wrapping around encroaching branches. He glanced at his palm, half expecting to see the ghosts of calluses from endless weekends gathering and splitting logs on the farm as a child. Red’s father to this day maintained wood heat in winter. “It warms you twice,” he’d say, usually out in the forest, as Red struggled to heft a weighty log into the weathered old farm trailer. Once unloaded in a heap in front of the woodshed, the song of sledgehammers ringing against splitting wedges would mingle for hours with the hollow thunk of axes sinking into wood grain. The air fragrant with the astringent vinegar of white oak, the mellow sweetness of sugar maple.

  This labor, arduous as it was, had not been without effect. Red had built a compact strength that, throughout high school, punished many a linebacker who underestimated him due to his size. Later, climbing through special operations assignments, he’d often used that deceptive stature to his advantage.

  He cracked open a window and inhaled the jumbled resinous scent of leaves and needles. Life in these West Virginia mountains seemed to force new growth continually through the earth’s coarse skin, its fertile soil and humid air never allowing a patch of ground to lie bare.

  Lori yawned and stretched her legs. Fuel gauge read just under a quarter tank. He steered onto an exit lane where a blue sign announced Gas—This Exit. A gray Subaru Forester with New Jersey plates drove past once again. They’d traded pole position a few times over the last hour, its driver apparently oblivious to the benefits of cruise control.

  Red pulled next to a green pump and slapped his thigh. “Bathroom break!” he announced.

  Lori’s eyes opened, and she yawned. “You doing OK? Need me to drive?”

  “Nah. I’ll stretch a bit and be all right for another hour or so. You can make it up tonight.”

  Her mouth curled devilishly. He hadn’t seen her expression that intense for months. “Better get yourself one of those energy drinks, then.” She adjusted her bra, stepped out, and leaned over, touching fingertips to toes. Her blouse slipped up her back and—damn. They should’ve taken a vacation a long time ago.

  As Red grabbed the hose to fill the tank, Lori gripped the hands of their youngest two and walked across the lot under bright noonday sun, headed toward the convenience store’s door framing a faded lottery advertisement. Penny bounced ahead of them. A cool breeze lifted Lori’s blond ponytail. A skinny man with long white beard turned his head to gaze after her, stumbling as he twisted his ankle in a pothole.

  Tank full, Red replaced the nozzle and noticed a gray Subaru Forester had parked near the faded orange awning of the store. The same vehicle they’d been passing so often? A tall man with a gut like a basketball under his white polo pressed hands to hips and arched his back, grimacing. Considering the vehicle’s dark-tinted windows, Red had expected a much younger driver.

  Were they being followed? The Subaru from the interstate had New Jersey plates. A West Virginia license was bolted to this one’s bumper. Even so, he studied the man. Fair skinned, endomorph body type, feet at least size fourteen. The passenger door opened and a woman in close-fitting jeans, her tank top revealing sharp, defined arm muscles stepped out. Tight figure like a yoga instructor, long, jet-black hair fell to her bare shoulders. How did she end up with that guy? Then she turned sideways and her belly stuck out as well. Obviously pregnant, probably eight months judging by the huge baby bump. Even so, she walked easily toward the store, without the usual pregnancy waddle.

  Red popped the hood and pulled out the long, hot dipstick. It was habit, even though the vehicle burned no oil. He always took care of whatever machinery he possessed. He’d never mentioned it to anyone, but he could actually bond with certain machines, connecting on some emotional level that he theorized sprung from the passion of their maker. On a recent op, an Ohio-class submarine had actually whispered to him. Or maybe his mind had made the whole thing up in a stress-induced nightmare. For this reason, he was careful to never talk about it. His own doubts about his state of mind were enough already.

  He shut the hood as Lori and the kids wandered back, blue, red, and orange ice slushies in hand. Through the clear plastic cup, Nick’s drink was as colorful as one of his finger paintings. Which was why Red had ordered the Explorer with the leather package and black carpet. He helped strap the boy back into his child seat, a contraption that looked ridiculously like the pilot’s chair of an F-22 Raptor.

  As they sped down a gently curved acceleration lane onto the highway, Lori turned her shoulders toward him. “Do you want any more kids?”

  “No!” yelled Penny from the backseat, looking up from a gadget’s screen, scowling.

  Red put a finger in an ear, the family’s sign for a conversation meant to be just between the parents. “I thought we were done. I mean, now they’re getting older, where I can relate. Um—why? You want more?”

  She tu
rned to face forward again, studying the haze-topped mountain toward which the road was aimed. It was the only one with cloud cover, taller than the rest. “I don’t know. I just saw this pregnant lady in there and she didn’t look near as miserable as I remember it being. And, well, I always pictured us with a big family.”

  “Three isn’t big?” Memories of being woken every two hours by crying, of stumbling out of bed, to feed Nick for the first six months of his life rushed back as if fresh from this morning. The kid had been a real chowhound, sucking even in his sleep.

  “It’s a good number.” She nodded. “But so is four. Or five.”

  That could be a good sign, Red thought, that their marriage wasn’t mired as deeply as Dr. Sato had suggested. Or was this Lori’s way of subconsciously trying to fill a void he wasn’t satisfying. Even he had to admit over the last few years the effort to romance his wife had slipped. Well, in ways other than sex. Or, maybe she was a traitor, selling secrets to foreign governments, trying to reassure her duped husband while secretly planning to cut his throat as he slept, then escape to Alberta with millions stashed in a Swiss bank account. The thought swirled around his mind like a soap bubble, then popped. Nah… Carter’s intuition on Lori had to be misguided.

  So, what was the right answer here? “Can you give me a hint?” he finally said.

  “About what?”

  “What I’m supposed to say.”

  She pursed her lips, but said nothing, only scowling.

  “No, I mean, if you want more kids, then sure. Let’s have more. If not, I’m happy where we are.” He stretched a hand to cup her knee. “Either way, I enjoy the practice.”

  Another scowl.

  “But, you know—work. We’re both so busy. We’d have to be OK with hiring a nanny or something.”

  “Work doesn’t play into this,” she murmured.