Karen Vail 01 - Velocity (31 page)

Vail dropped her hand. She was not prepared for that.

DeSantos was by her side. “Look,” he said, both hands out in front of him, fingers spread, a calming gesture. “I can make some cal s. Go over your head.

Have one director talk to another director. And get that information. Or I can go to my sources and dig up who this CI is that Sebastian won’t disclose. Either way, we wil get what we want. Both ways are messy for you.” He shrugged. “Your choice.”

Yardley looked at DeSantos with a tournament-winning poker face. “Fuck you.

And you too, Agent Vail.” He turned to Sebastian. “We’re done here.”

Yardley walked to the door and flung it open. “This is a DEA investigation, Mr.

DeSantos. Interfere, and I don’t care what juice you can pour. I’l make sure it goes sour. So if it’s a pissing contest you want, have at it.”

DeSantos returned his poker face, then he and Vail started for the door—but not before Vail glanced back over her shoulder at Sebastian. He was biting his lower lip and picking at the Powerade label.

Vail had a sharp rebuke for him on the tip of her tongue, but held it. As DeSantos had implied, Sebastian abandoned Robby out of fear for his own life. But it was her fault, not his, that Robby’s life was in danger in the first place. And now it was her responsibility to find him.

Before it was too late.

53

T
hey got into the Corvette and DeSantos gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking lot. “You’re doing your best to make my life difficult, you know that, Karen?”

Vail released her grip on the dashboard. “What?”

“I played our hand and I had nothing.”

“What about ‘I’l cal the director’?”

DeSantos brought the Vette to a screeching halt. “Karen.” He licked his lips, looked off into the distance as he gathered his thoughts. “I can’t cal the FBI director every time I can’t get what I want. I don’t even work for him—he’s a . . . let’s just say I’ve got a special relationship with him. Bottom line, I bluffed. Yardley cal ed it. That’s it.”

Vail covered her eyes with a hand.
Great.
“What about working your resources?”

“My resources, my assets and CIs and everything else I use for terrorism-related intel, is valuable shit. I can’t use it for stuff like this. One life . . . I don’t want this to come out the wrong way. But I deal with threats that involve dignitaries or U.S. congressmen, thousands—sometimes
millions—
of civilians. I can’t burn though valuable assets for this. I just can’t.”

“Wait a minute. Sebastian said something . . . ” She thought a moment, then said,

“He may’ve been trying to tel us something.”

“Yeah. He and Yardley told us to go fuck ourselves.”

“No, no. He said he could
call up
his CI.”

DeSantos looked at Vail. “His phone records. If we can look through the cal s he’s made in the past, what, three months—we may have his CI.”

“We’l never get access to his records.”

“Legal y,” DeSantos said. “We’l never get his records
legally
. I’ve got other ways.”

“Ways that won’t burn your assets?”

“Exactly.” He shoved the gearshift into drive and stepped on the accelerator. Vail flew back in her seat. Only this time she didn’t mind. As far as she was concerned, the faster, the better.

54

A
t the Pentagon security booth, DeSantos spoke with the guard while Vail waited in the car. The telephone was lifted, words were exchanged, and a moment later DeSantos was climbing back into the Corvette.

“Give me your driver’s license.”

Vail handed it over, and DeSantos delivered it to the guard. Moments later, they were admitted into the parking lot. And moments after that, Vail was fol owing DeSantos into the lower reaches of the Pentagon.

“No one can know what you see or hear. Are we cool?”

Vail nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.” Her head rotated in al directions. “Where are we?”

“The bowels, where I work. No sarcastic comments, please.”

He stopped at a door, placed his hand on a glass panel, and waited while a yel ow light scanned his palm and a beam struck his retina. A computer voice said,

“Scanning complete,” the electronic click of a lock released, and DeSantos pushed through the door.

“What’s OPSIG?” Vail asked. She thumbed a fist over her shoulder. “Sign on the door.”

“Operations Support Intel igence Group. We’re a highly covert team. And that’s al I can tel you.”

“That’s al I think I want to know,” she said.

Inside, an entire wal was subsumed by oversize LCD monitors, which displayed satel ite imagery and blinking locator beacons. A worn conference table sat off to the side. An air-conditioned breeze whisked by Vail’s ears, neutralizing the intense heat radiating from the wal of screens that buzzed her face as she passed them en route to a chair.

DeSantos sat down on one of the navy seats, placed his hands on a laptop PC in front of him, and stroked the keyboard. He leaned forward and a light from an external device scanned his retina.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m logged in. Now, let’s see what I can do.” He reached over to a button on the table and pressed it. “Hey, man, can you come in here a sec?”

Vail moved to a seat beside DeSantos. “Who’s that?”

“Let’s cal him Benny. My personal tech guru. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing half the time. I’m TC.” He glanced at her, must’ve seen her mind unsuccessful y processing that acronym, then said, “TC. Technological y chal enged. My former partner could trol servers and penetrate secure databases like a true hacker. But me? I do Windows. That’s about it.” He struck a key. “When it involves delicate hacking, I need someone who knows how to hide our tracks.”

In walked Benny, a bear of a man with fingers so thick they reminded Vail of bratwurst. She wondered how he was going to navigate the keyboard.

“Whazzup, boss?”

“Have a seat,” DeSantos said. “We’re going fishing.”

BENNY, INDEED, HAD DIFFICULTY manipulating the computer keys—and as a result had to go slow, regularly correcting his mistyped commands. Final y, twenty minutes later, DeSantos retrieved a sheaf of papers from the LaserJet.

“Those are Sebastian’s phone logs?” Vail asked.

He splayed them across the table in front of him. “Cel , home, and work.”

“Scary that you can do that.”

DeSantos chuckled. “This ain’t nothing, my dear. You should see what we’re capable of.”

“Something tel s me that if I did, you’d have to kil me.”

Benny chuckled as DeSantos regarded the papers.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” DeSantos said, “believe me.”

Based on what little she had seen thus far, Vail certainly did.

Prior to printing the document, DeSantos had Benny sort the data multiple ways.

He filtered out cal s that were made to known people in Sebastian’s life: his family members, girlfriend, known acquaintances, and of course, Robby. Established businesses and federal agency contacts were eliminated. And that left cal s to individuals or businesses that were unidentified or suspect.

“We’l go from here, which is a lot more manageable.” DeSantos turned to Benny. “Page three. Do a search and get me the names of al the owners of these phone numbers.”

Benny turned back to the laptop and began poking at the keys. After a moment, he leaned back in his chair, which bent precariously close to the ground. “We’l have the results in a minute. So,” he said to Vail, “I haven’t seen you around here.”

“I’m with the behavioral analysis unit.”

Benny looked at DeSantos.

“She’s fine,” DeSantos said. “She hasn’t seen anything and even if she did, she can be trusted.”

Benny eyed her cautiously. His laptop beeped and he turned his attention back to the screen.

DeSantos rose and placed a hand on Benny’s thick shoulder. He pointed at the color-coded display. “Sort it here and here. Give me a printout. That’l leave us with a manageable list.”

Benny did as instructed, then left the room. DeSantos handed Vail the new, streamlined printout, which contained five names and numbers. “Let’s eliminate the four non-Hispanic names. If I had to guess . . . ” He placed a finger on the paper.

“That’d be our guy.”

55

U
nion Station was an odd place. Not the building—which was outwardly and inwardly architectural y pleasing, having been refurbished in 1988 into a modern transportation hub, shopping and restaurant destination—but the surrounding area.

Located in the heart of the district and only ten footbal fields from the Capitol building, one might assume it sat in a premier neighborhood, the pride of the heart of U.S. government. Yet a wrong turn to the northeast landed you in a down-and-out section of D.C. that was best avoided.

And that was where DeSantos chose to meet Jose Diamante, purportedly a man who had insider information into the Cortez drug cartel, the confidential informant that DEA agent Antonio Sebastiani de Medina coddled and cultivated, paid and protected. Yardley knew the value of a high-level CI such as Diamante, which explained the resistance to providing his identity.

DeSantos foiled their plans, however, and now Diamante had agreed to meet his contact Sebastian. In another tech feat, a different OPSIG team member had cloned Sebastian’s cel phone number, enabling them to send a text message to Diamante requesting the meet. After a tense ten-minute wait, the CI responded. He would be there.

Benny then hacked the DMV server and secured a photo and physical description of Jose Diamante. Now it was a matter of executing a get-together with a high-level CI who was, no doubt, a careful and suspicious sort.

“Me or you?” Vail asked.

“You mean the attractive woman approach? You think you can show a little cleavage and get closer than I can?”

“You don’t think I can pul it off?”

DeSantos made a point of running his gaze from head to toe. “Probably best if I circle around, bring up the rear in case he runs.”

Vail dropped her jaw. “Thanks a lot.”

DeSantos broke a smile. “If he runs from you, the guy needs glasses. C’mon, let’s go.”

Leaving the car in the Union Station parking lot, they hoofed it down H Street NE.

DeSantos stopped abruptly. “There used to be an Amoco station there, on the corner,” he said, nodding ahead of him. “That’s where I told him to meet us.”

Ahead of them was an empty lot, fil ed with sprouting weeds and partial remnants of asphalt that was spider-cracked like a sun-weathered face. At the corner of 3rd and H Street stood three battered passenger bus-size cargo containers. It appeared as if construction was due to start and the crew brought the equipment onsite prior to initiating the project.

“Maybe he figured it out and is waiting by those storage containers,” Vail said.

“Let’s hope so.”

They approached separately, DeSantos taking a detour between freshly constructed multistory brick apartment buildings, where he’d walk paral el to H, toward and across 3rd Street. He would then come up fifty yards behind the location where they hoped Diamante was waiting.

DeSantos was carrying the cloned cel phone—and al network traffic to that number was diverted to his handset. Like an arrested suspect, Sebastian’s real phone would remain silent until DeSantos’s team member released it for normal telephonic reception. If Diamante was not where he should be, DeSantos could contact him while retaining his cover.

DeSantos advanced from the rear. He signaled Vail, who began walking toward the front of the closest blue-gray cargo container. As she approached, she saw there was just enough room between the long structures for a person to fit—not comfortably, but it was possible to shuffle sideways through the opening. Just looking at the tight quarters made her chest tighten.

Along the exposed side of the shipping container was a smal er storage box.

Roughly half the size of the other two, it was positioned approximately a dozen feet away. And leaning against its side pul ing on a cigarette was Jose Diamante.

DeSantos had spotted him too, as he was tipping his head left in the CI’s direction.

DeSantos stood frozen, waiting for Vail to advance so that errant footsteps wouldn’t be detected before Vail could engage him.

She smiled and walked gaily toward Diamante, motioning at him until his head lifted and his body straightened. He was locked in.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m total y lost. My phone battery’s dead and I was looking for a pay phone. Someone said there was one in the gas station on the corner, but”—she spread her arms and made a point of swiveling her head from side to side—“there’s no gas station.”

“Looks like they tore it down,” Diamante said, then sucked again on his cigarette, out the side of his mouth, like he was thinking of what kind of fun he could have with the attractive redhead who was approaching.

“I was looking for a street that had an ‘NW’ after it, but al these street signs say

‘NE.’ Is there a difference?” She laughed.
Stupid me, I’m a vulnerable woman in a
bad neighborhood where a missing dimwit might go unnoticed for hours, if not
days. Go ahead and try something.

But he suddenly swiveled 180 degrees, and his body language suggested he caught sight of DeSantos and had read him as a cop. Not merely suggested—he tensed and coiled low and bent his knees and took off in Vail’s direction. She was stil a ditsy redhead and had not entered his threat zone. Yet.

Vail stepped left, into his path, and threw her arms around him. But he must’ve seen this move before, because he stuck an elbow into her neck, and she went down.