“Not really,” said Graves. “What are we looking at here? They shoved me behind the wheel of a car a few minutes after I showed up and parked me on Glover Street with the least talkative operative I’ve ever met.”
“Miralles? Yeah. She’s all business, and good at it, too,” said Gupta. “All right. So here’s what we’ve got for coverage. Two low-light-capable, high-def block cameras placed on the town house adjacent to the target house, giving us a good enough view up and down Glover Street. The trees kind of mess with the view at certain distances, but we have a good overall picture of the street. I have that on a split screen here. I’m running the feeds through motion-detection software, so it’ll draw our attention to anything larger than a dog.”
Gupta leaned forward and tapped the space bar on the laptop sitting on the Suburban’s wide front-seat armrest, activating the screen. Graves saw what he meant about the trees. Not ideal but not bad. The motion-detection software would overcome that issue.
“We also have a basic fish-eye dome camera set up on the fence behind the town house, off the alley. One-hundred-and-eighty-degree coverage. Motion activated. It’ll pop up as a window in the bottom-right corner of the screen if it’s triggered, or you can click on the rightmost tab to open the feed at any time. We both have the same access on our laptops, in case we need to split our attention between the front and back of the town house. I anticipate doing that during the pickup.”
Graves clicked the tab and liked what he saw. The concrete alley was well lit.
“Other than that, I have a multiband antenna on one of our vehicles on Glover Street, plus one on each adjacent street—attached as high up in the trees as we could manage. They have a very limited power supply. Our Russian friends have mainly used encrypted push-to-talk satellite communications. We should be able to map them out as they move into position.”
He handed Graves one of the laptops on the seat between them and took the other for himself.
“There’s no difference between either of these laptops, for redundancy reasons,” he said, flipping the screen up. “I figured I’d analyze the frequencies and sensors, while you maintained the bigger picture and communicated with the teams?”
“Sounds like a plan. Same comms arrangement?” asked Graves.
Gupta reached behind the seat and retrieved a headphone set attached to a heavy-duty-looking coiled cord. He handed them over to Graves.
“Same. Same,” said Gupta. “Right ear is the primary communications channel. We’re using one channel. Left ear is whatever you want. I currently have it tuned to the local police frequency. You can change it through the computer interface. If for some reason we need to leave the vehicle, there’s a handheld radio preset with the same frequencies and an earbud headset in the seat pocket directly in front of you.”
Graves didn’t like the sound of that at all, but it came with the job, along with a wide variety of other possible unpleasantries—like getting shot in the leg and walking with a slight limp for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, things like that didn’t go away like tensed shoulders. He knew that from experience, which led to his next question.
“What’s our security situation?”
“Rich and Scott will be across the street until the extraction,” said Gupta. “Other than that, there’s a loaded Sig Sauer compact pistol with two spare magazines in each door pocket.”
“Wonderful,” said Graves.
“Back into the frying pan, man,” said Gupta. “Just like old times.”
“It wasn’t that long ago,” said Graves, suddenly remembering just how much he didn’t miss this.
CHAPTER 26
Devin Gray drove up and down the streets east of the town house for close to twenty minutes before a parking space opened on South Belmore Avenue. He spent the next few minutes trying to squeeze his car into the opening left by a Prius. The end result wasn’t pretty—the back end of his car protruded about a foot into the street—but it would have to do. Berg’s people were anxious to offload their gear and get started. From what he had gathered, most of them would remain at the town house overnight, while the team leaders joined Devin and Berg at Helen’s apartment to examine the evidence.
Before they set off down the street, Berg grabbed his arm. “Are you sure there’s no way to convince Marnie to leave the keys in the mailbox and get out of there? Right now. Her insistence on staying at the town house isn’t sitting well with the crew. I don’t want to give them any reason to back out of this.”