Mike said, “I’ve got more. She shows up on all three videos. She never takes off the ball cap, so all I can capture is the jaw. We’ll need more for the facial recognition, since the feed itself isn’t so hot.” She paused for a moment. “In one of the shots she looks up toward the camera. It’s like she’s letting herself be seen, and what does that mean?
“There’s something about her that’s familiar to me, but unfortunately I can’t tell you what it is yet. I have this gut feeling she could be our key. Maybe when we find out who she is, all the pieces will fit into place.”
Nicholas shook his head. “I don’t think the database is going anywhere with these images, but who knows? I’ll start running the program immediately, see if I can’t adapt the parameters to work with the angle.”
Mike’s phone rang. It was Zachery’s secretary. “He wants both of you.”
Mike hung up and stood. “It’ll have to wait. It’s Zachery. Showtime.”
They walked down the hall to the conference room, heard Zachery call out, “Drummond, Caine, get in here.”
They stepped in, faced the threat matrix board that tracked all of the ongoing and recently thwarted operations their office was working on. A quick glance showed Nicholas that they stopped attacks in Atlanta, New Jersey, California, and New York in the past twenty-four hours.
Their team usually started their workday with the threat assessment, sitting around the threat table, as they called it, going through their analysis of the threat matrix, and every single morning, the actual volume of threats astounded him. But Bayway hadn’t been on the matrix as a possible action. There’d been no chatter, no threats. Nothing. How many more plots were being planned that they didn’t know about?
Nicholas saw COE had moved to the immediate threat column. No wonder, after last night and fifteen deaths. No, nineteen deaths. COE was small, he knew it in his gut, probably no more than ten members, all told. He also believed COE wasn’t affiliated with another group, which made them more unpredictable. They were lone wolves, and lone wolves scared him more than the large organized groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. Groups like COE were hard to track, even with all the international cooperation.
Everyone in the room was talking: agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force compared notes with Homeland Security agents, NSA tap-danced with the National Intelligence Agency. Nicholas didn’t recognize many of the agents, but he knew they represented an alphabet soup of agencies, all wanting to be part of this team, jockeying for who would be named lead agency and run the show.
An NSA agent raised his head, saw Nicholas and whistled, then clapped his hands. “Hey, Drummond, we already applauded Wharton, now it’s your turn. Well done.”
All the agents at the table clapped, but not that loudly, particularly those with other agencies. Nicholas grinned.
Zachery said, “Gray and Nicholas saved the oil companies’ bacon. In addition, let me add that both he and Mike were in the middle of the explosion at the Bayway Refinery last night. They saved lives.”
The claps were louder this time. This was something they all understood.
“A moment, people,” Zachery said, and waved Mike and Nicholas to the hall.
He took them to his office, only a few doors down the hall.
“I have a job for you. No, no briefing, it isn’t necessary. We may have another line on COE.” He handed them a file. “There was a fire last night in Brooklyn. A body was found inside the building once the place had cooled down enough to check. NYPD is assuming it’s the body of the owner; they’re running DNA and dental records to be sure. The ME called, said the dead man had been shot in the chest. Thing is, a witness has an interesting story to tell about some people she claims were staying there.