“Any luck with the trackers?” asked Daly.
“No. They’ve had at least one watcher in each parking lot. It would have been too risky,” said Farrington. “It doesn’t really matter. We’ve ID’d three of their vehicles. Two with Tennessee plates. One from Kentucky. I’m sensing a trend. I don’t expect we’ll have any trouble picking out the rest of them tonight.”
“What about Young’s Jeep?” asked Daly, glancing over his shoulder at Gupta.
“Bugged up like a motherfucker,” said Gupta. “Three trackers in total. Two standard types transmitting every fifteen seconds. One dormant that I had to actively ping to get a response. My guess is it transmits less frequently.”
“Yeah. They’ve upped their game a little. Gray managed to ditch this crew after detecting and removing two standard trackers,” said Farrington.
“Did he check for the other type?” asked Daly.
“He ditched that car entirely and ran an SDR with a vehicle his mother had prestaged for him,” said Farrington. “Prior to that, he also executed two ninety-minute washouts to determine if anyone had somehow tracked him.”
A lengthy washout like that could theoretically entice a team tracking Devin by GPS signal into thinking he had stopped to meet with a contact. From a concealed location nearby, Devin could confirm he was under surveillance and ID a few more of his tails. It was a time-consuming process, but well worth the effort—and the mark of a true professional.
“Sounds like he knows what he’s doing,” said Daly.
“He better. He does this for a living,” said Farrington. “Anish. Anything else I should pass along?”
“No. But I think I found something that could be very useful later,” said Gupta.
Silence ensued, which he knew was intentional. Gupta could be intolerable on occasion. But you tolerated the best in the business, which was why Gupta had been an essential part of his crew for fifteen years. Fifteen very long years when he considered moments like these. After about a half minute, Gupta gave in—like always.
“Do you want to know what I found?” asked Gupta.
“Not unless I need to pass it along to Berg,” said Farrington, giving him a dose of his own medicine.
A shorter silence this time.
“You’re getting harder to crack as you age,” said Gupta.
“And you’re getting more and more predictable.”
“More like a one-trick pony,” said Daly.
“I could always revive my gangsta phase,” said Gupta. “We’ll be chillin’ like villains for the rest of this op-er-ay-sheeun! Sippin’ on gin and juice!”
“Okay. Okay,” said Farrington. “You win. What did you find?”
“Push-to-talk satellite communications corresponding to the Dodge Durango at two points during their transit down Broad Street toward Whole Foods. Short but sustained radio frequency bursts around 1620 megahertz. A little frequency hopping between bursts, but well inside the Iridium satellite phone frequency range. I didn’t detect a back-and-forth conversation during the first set of bursts. There was a long enough pause between each burst to indicate I didn’t detect the responder’s emission.”
“In layman’s terms, please?”
“The other satellite phone user was not in our line of sight yet, like the Durango’s,” said Gupta.
“Yet,” stated Farrington.
“They joined in for the second set of bursts. Back-to-back radio frequency traffic in the same 1620 megahertz range,” said Gupta. “Which corresponded with the Durango’s little loop through the Whole Foods parking lot. My guess is they were talking to the Outback’s driver. There was another back-and-forth a few minutes after all three of the cars departed south on Broad Street, probably coordinating surveillance after Young turned home.”
“The Outback appeared out of nowhere,” said Farrington. “Especially in the context of the radio frequency analysis. It pulled in front of the Durango at some point after the first call and before they reached Whole Foods. I just don’t remember when.”
“I can tell you,” said Gupta. “I had our camera tracking the Durango the entire time. Give me a minute.”
Part of the Suburban’s retrofit had included the installation of two high-definition, 30X-zoom, controllable block cameras, one mounted to the ceiling next to the rearview mirror, flush with the windshield to prevent optical glare. The second was similarly mounted against the rear cargo hatch window. It didn’t take Gupta long to locate the segment of video.