Hard Target (30 page)

Uzi reserved judgment on that statement, but let it drop. “What’s your gut say? On ARM.”

Garza turned back to the window. He seemed to be giving the question some serious thought. Or maybe he was deciding whether or not he wanted to share his opinions with Uzi.

“I think they’re involved. If there was a way to get at them, I’d be all over their case.”

Uzi pushed off the desk. He had not gotten what he had come for; however, though he still had no hard evidence against an ARM-NFA alliance, he at least had another supporting opinion from someone with knowledge and experience in dealing with these groups. And that was more than he’d had only a few hours ago.

1:19 PM

96 hours 41 minutes remaining

Uzi answered his cell phone as he entered the Hoover Building’s elevator, headed toward the parking garage.

“I found something,” Tim Meadows said.

“Cool. What do you got?” Uzi pressed the elevator button to stop the car at the next floor. If Meadows had something significant, he could be there in a couple of minutes.

“After you left, I ran those brass casings through the spectrometer. Turned up some really interesting readings. So I took it upon myself to do some more digging.”

“That’s what I like about you, Tim. Always going the extra mile.”

“Yeah, that’s what the section chief says. He loves my work ethic.”

“Least you could do after twisting my arm over dinner.”

“Well, I think by the time I’m done with this case, I’ll have made it worth your while.”

The elevator stopped at the next floor. “I’m listening.”

“Come by. I’ll show you.”

Uzi pressed the floor button for the lab. “I’m headed up now. I’m in the building.”

“That makes one of us. I’m supposed to be off today, remember? I went home. Come by my house.”

“You’re working at home? On your day off?”

“That’s what the section chief loves about me. My work ethic.”

“You said that already.”

Meadows chuckled. “He really means it.”

AFTER JOTTING DOWN THE DIRECTIONS to Meadows’s house in Arlington, Uzi called DeSantos and invited him along for the ride. They arrived at the small two-story colonial residence half an hour later. A tattered American flag hung on a brass flagpole cemented into the front corner of the brown lawn that was dotted with hearty green weeds. Uzi found the doorbell and rang it.

Meadows’s voice came from nowhere. “Who is it?”

“Uzi. And my partner.”

A buzzer sounded. “Come in and go directly down the stairs to your left.”

“Nice setup,” DeSantos said to Uzi.

“Thank you,” Meadows responded through the hidden speaker.

As they descended the staircase, the scent of mildew poked at Uzi’s nose. “Jeez, Tim, you should do a little disinfecting.”

“You talking about bugs, or bugs?” Meadows asked from somewhere behind a line of free-standing, floor-to-ceiling metal shelves.

“The mildew kind.”

The basement was unfinished. Curtained windows poked through the tops of the cement walls at ten-foot intervals. Spider cracks in the concrete extended in several directions, like tree roots branching out in search of water.

Their heels clicked against the brown tile flooring as they strolled down one of the rows, taking in dozens of half-finished projects that lay in various stages of completion.

“What is all this stuff?” DeSantos asked.

“I dabble in my free time,” Meadows said. He squinted at DeSantos. “You are?”

“Sorry,” Uzi said. “Hector DeSantos, DOD. He’s on the Marine Two task force, coordinating with JTTF.”

Meadows cocked his head, sizing up DeSantos. “DOD, huh?” He extended a hand, and DeSantos took it.

“Uzi said you found something.”

“Yes, yes,” Meadows said, then motioned them to follow him across the room.

As they passed a six-foot-tall black lacquer safe, Uzi said, “You in the banking business?”

“More like munitions,” DeSantos said. “This is a gun safe. A big gun safe.”

“I keep my projects in there. And my backup data. Media’s kept in a smaller compartment, though. Had to build it myself. Tolerance to one hundred twenty-five degrees. Otherwise the SSD drives melt.”

“SSD?” DeSantos asked.

Uzi said, “Solid State Disc drives. Flash memory. Safer and more stable than a regular hard drive, which is an electrical-mechanical device that’s destined to fail.”

DeSantos tilted his head back and looked at Uzi through the lower half of his glasses. “I knew that.”

“Yeah,” Uzi said. “Of course you did.”

“And yes, before you ask, I’ve also got cloud backup.” Meadows moved a few paces to his right, where an LCD monitor stood on a makeshift table that consisted of a plywood board resting on two beat-up sawhorses.

They followed Meadows and stopped behind him, then watched as he tapped at the keys. “After you left, I did some more digging on those large-caliber rounds.”

Uzi turned to DeSantos and explained what they had learned about the Russian SV-98 sniper rifle and the spent brass casing they’d recovered from the scene.

“I found an unusual residue on the inside of the casing.”

“How unusual?” Uzi asked.

“Unusual enough to be able to give you a specific location of manufacture. Like the former Eastern bloc. Czech Republic.”

DeSantos nodded. “That goes with the weapon. And begs the question of who these people are, who they’re affiliated with. This is all good stuff. We need to get this info over to the Agency, have them start working it up.”

“I’ll give it to Leila. She’s now on the M2TF, liaison to JTTF.”

DeSantos leaned back. “Is that right.”

“Don’t give me any shit. I had nothing to do with it. Shepard’s idea.”

“Uh huh.”

A series of long, shrill beeps emanated from across the oblong room. Meadows’s fingers played across the keyboard and a three-dimensional diagram filled the screen. He leaned closer to the monitor and studied it, as if trying to locate a small side street on a city map. He struck another key and the beeping stopped. “Sorry about that.”

“What was that?” Uzi asked.

“‘That’ was
that
.” He swiveled in his chair to indicate a ten-foot-long table on the other side of the room, barely visible behind one of the rows of shelving. “My crown jewel.”

“Part of your dabbling?” Uzi asked.

“I’ve got twenty-three patents already.”

DeSantos raised an eyebrow. “Any of them worth anything?”

“Not a dime. Yet. But I don’t do it for money, Mr. DeSantos, I do it for the challenge.”

“And what kind of a challenge is your crown jewel?” DeSantos asked.

“Come, I’ll show you.” He rose from his chair and led the way. He stopped in front of the long table. Old-fashioned vacuum tubes projected from wood and metal boards, which were crisscrossed several times with multicolored wires bundled at regular intervals with plastic lock-ties.

“What does it do?”

“It’s a new kind of sensor that can detect all kinds of nasty stuff.”

“‘Nasty stuff’?”

“Bombs, guns, knives, trigger mechanisms, you name it. If it can be made into a weapon, this thing will find it.”

“Even plastic resin or carbon fiber composites?” DeSantos asked.

“Yup.”

“Don’t we already have something like that?”

“Yes and no. We’ve got all kinds of fancy sensors, most of them developed after 9/11. But they can’t do all the things this can do. Most check for metal or metal alloys. Some sniff for explosive materials. Some can detect certain kinds of resin composites. But this thing can find it all. Along with the software I’m writing for it. Best yet, it’ll do it for a fraction of the price these companies are charging the government for their high-tech gizmos. With an off-the-shelf Intel chip, this thing’ll only run a couple hundred bucks, assuming it’s mass produced with economies of scale.”

“Yeah, but does it really work?” Uzi asked.

“Seeing is believing. Here, I’ll show you.”

DeSantos checked his watch. “We really should get this info over to Leila—”

Meadows turned to a shelf behind him and dug into a shoebox full of parts. “It’ll only take a couple of minutes. You gotta see this.”

Before DeSantos could object, Meadows was handing Uzi a tiny square of light gray plastic. “Hide this somewhere.”

Uzi did as instructed, dropping it into his left jacket pocket. Meadows lifted the screen of a nearby laptop and hit a button that woke it from sleep. He poked another key, then grabbed a thick, brushed stainless steel wand fitted with blue LEDs. “It’s all wireless,” he said proudly.

Meadows started at Uzi’s head and brought the wand down slowly. The device was silent, until the same shrill beep they had heard moments ago blared from a console on the table.

“Hmm,” Uzi said. “Impressive.”

But Meadows’s gaze was still directed at the wand. He continued to wave it over Uzi’s coat, two LEDs flashing blue, then three, then four. And then the wand began vibrating.

“Take it off for a sec,” Meadows said.

“This is all fun stuff, I’m sure,” DeSantos said, “but we really should go.”

But Meadows had already grabbed the collar of the coat and was peeling it off Uzi’s body.

“What’s the problem?” Uzi asked as he pulled his hand through the sleeve.

Meadows turned the jacket around and continued to wand the inside lining, watching the LED patterns change. “What have you got in here?”

“Just my phone.”

“No, it’s not your phone. See, this is your phone here.” He wanded the right pocket and the pitch of the alarm changed. “And this is the resin block I gave you.” Again, the sound changed. “Here,” Meadows said as he glanced over his shoulder at the laptop, “is something else.”

“Something else?”

Meadows pulled a Leatherman from his pocket and opened the knife.

“Whoa,” Uzi said, “wait a minute. What are you doing?”

Meadows sliced through the lining of the jacket, along the lower seam.

“Jesus, Tim, that jacket cost me five hundred bucks—”

“Here, look.” Meadows prodded and poked at the silk lining with his fingers and produced a plastic disc the size and thickness of a dime. He held it up between thumb and forefinger, then brought it close to the wand. The shrill beep sounded, the wand vibrated strongly, and the lights flickered and flashed as if it were a Geiger counter passing over uranium.

Uzi squinted at the small device.
What the hell is that?

Meadows contorted his brow. “Jesus, Uzi, you didn’t tell me you had a spare phone battery in your pocket.” He put his index finger to his lips, then nodded across the room where his PC sat.

Clearly, Meadows felt the small device was a bug, and until he proved or disproved his theory, they had to operate as if it was. “My Nokia sometimes goes into roam and drains the battery in forty-five minutes,” Uzi said, hoping to make the conversation seem realistic. “Hasn’t happened in a while. Sorry. Forgot I had it in my pocket.”
Why didn’t my own sensor pick up the bug?

Uzi and DeSantos watched as Meadows pulled a microscope from the shelf below the computer and plugged it into the PC’s USB port.

“Not a problem,” Meadows said. “But I told you this thing worked.”

“When do you apply for a patent?”

“Already applied for.” Meadows turned the knob on the microscope and an image appeared on the screen. “Takes a while to get a number. That’s why you always see ‘Patent Pending’ on products. But I think it’s too sensitive.” Meadows found the area of the device he was looking for, then pointed at the monitor. “I need to make some refinements in the design. Mind if I take down a few notes? Only take me a minute.”

“Go ahead,” DeSantos said, squinting at the hyper-enlarged image.

Uzi pulled out his smartphone and pressed a couple of buttons, then moved it over the device Meadows was examining. Nothing.

Meadows double-clicked the Word icon on his desktop. He typed at the cursor:

This is a very sophisticated listening device. It contains no magnetic parts. Its components appear to be resin and gold. Nothing that would be detected by conventional sensing equipment.

Yeah, no kidding
. Uzi moved in front of the keyboard and typed:

I’ll bring it by the lab in the morning. We can’t disable it or we’ll tip them off. Can you examine it without destroying it?

Meadows:

Yes.

Uzi leaned over the keyboard:

There could be others. Does the Bureau have anything that can detect these things?

DeSantos nudged Uzi aside and typed:

NSA’s got a handheld unit, the NX-590. I can make a call, have one waiting for us by the time we get there.

DeSantos rooted out his BlackBerry and moved off to the far corner of the room.

Meadows said, “Almost done with these notes. Give me another minute,” as he typed to Uzi:

I know that unit. Not as good as mine, but it can pick up gold and other weak metallic conductors.

Uzi tapped out:

We should let NSA take a crack at this thing, see what they can figure out.

He clapped Meadows on the back. “We’ve really gotta go, Tim. Always a pleasure.” Uzi winked. “If you find anything more on that ammo, let me know.”

Meadows removed the listening device from the microscope and handed it to Uzi, who dropped it into his intact jacket pocket.

“Wish I could’ve done more.”

“Hey,” Uzi said, “you earned yourself an appetizer.”

Meadows’s face brightened considerably. “Oysters?”

Uzi threw a protective hand over his wallet. “You’re killing me, Tim.”

Meadows indicated Uzi’s jacket pocket and said, “I think that may be someone else’s job.”

4:03 PM

93 hours 57 minutes remaining

The drive to Annapolis, Maryland, was strained. Uzi had removed his bugged coat and placed it in the rear compartment, then turned on the stereo and faded it to the back of the SUV as a cover.

“I’ve never been here,” Uzi said. “Tell me about the NSA. Behind the scenes stuff.” He turned onto the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and accelerated. Noting his partner’s questioning eyes, Uzi explained: “We’ve got at least another half hour to kill.”