Flint spoke into his phone in an urgent undertone while Wu watched the alpha team emerge from the garage. To his relief, they turned left, having gotten the message to leave the other teams to follow the van.
“The alpha team never caught sight of the van inside the garage,” Flint said, then disconnected and addressed Johnson. “Can you contact whoever manages that self-park to see if they have security cams on all the decks?”
“On it,” she said, tilting her head back down to her computer screen.
Wu appreciated Flint’s levelheaded reassessment of the evolving situation. He hoped they would eventually be able to get footage of whoever had been picked up or dropped off underground. In the meantime, they would follow the van’s progress.
“Excuse me, sir,” Johnson said, alarmed.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure how it happened, but we’ve lost all four tracking signals.” At his raised brow, she elaborated. “The ones in their cell phones and on their person.” The color drained from her face. “They all went dark.”
“I refuse to believe all the devices had a technical glitch at the same time,” Flint said.
“Try a total system reboot and see if you can reestablish the signal,” Wu said to Johnson. “Get Sandra Feehan to help you.”
Johnson got up to speak to another analyst at the far end of the room.
“Now more than ever, we’d better not lose that damned van,” Flint said.
“No chance of that,” Wu said, not sure whether he was trying to convince himself or the others in the room.
He watched the van while he waited for a report from Johnson. The van meandered through traffic until it made a quick turn and entered a parking garage on Hudson Street in Hoboken.
“Now what?” Flint said.
Wu voiced a nagging doubt that had begun to form in the back of his mind. “It’s as if they know they’re under surveillance and are using countermeasures. We’ve got aerial, ground, and electronic surveillance, and they’re trying to defeat them all.”
“It’s what I would do,” Flint said.
“Which means they’ve probably anticipated the tails we’ve put on them as well,” Wu said. “Have the beta team follow them into the garage. Make sure the gamma team is ready to pick the van up when it leaves, and have the delta team on standby.”
He had arranged for a total of six vehicles to trail the van from a distance, rotating out so the driver would never see one car behind him consistently. The satellite had been an added reassurance, affording them the ability to continue in the event the van traveled a longer distance outside the city, where cars would be more noticeable.
“The van stopped three levels down,” Flint said, phone to his ear. “Beta team says the driver got out, walked around the outside of the vehicle, then got back in and is now driving toward the exit.”
“He’s looking to see who’s after him,” Wu said. “Tell beta to stay put and have gamma pick him up when he leaves.”
Wu watched the screen as the van made its way back onto the street. Within moments, the gamma team was trailing him from a discreet distance.
“This guy either has some training, or someone gave him damned good instructions,” he muttered under his breath.
“Sir,” Johnson said, drawing his attention from the screen. “I contacted the management company. It’s an older facility, and their cameras have been broken for months. They haven’t gotten around to repairing them yet.” She grimaced. “Budget cuts.”
“Don’t bother with the second garage,” Wu said. “We had eyes on him the whole time. We know what he was doing.”
“Yes, sir.” She shifted her feet, clearly uncomfortable. “We did a system reboot. There is still no signal from any of the tracking devices.”
He nodded absently, determined to figure out what the Colonel was up to. Had they underestimated him so badly?
Flint cursed, interrupting his thoughts. “He’s driving deeper into Hoboken. Should we intercept?”
This was the question Wu had been wrestling with. So far the only thing that had gone wrong was a failure of the tracking devices. They still had Vega and Toro’s transport vehicle in sight. There was no reason to believe they were in danger, and the countersurveillance measures led him to believe they were on the way to see the Colonel. Interrupting the operation now would leave them no better off than before.
“Not yet,” Wu said.
He looked on, mounting frustration warring with concern as he tried to anticipate the driver’s next move and—more importantly—the strategy behind it. No one spoke. All eyes were riveted to the screen, following the van as it made a series of turns.
“He’s driving in circles,” Flint said. “Probably checking his rearview.”
“Have the delta team take over,” Wu said.
The van headed north on Washington Street, turned right onto Third, then left on Court Street before it maneuvered into a cobblestone alley and pulled to the curb.
The driver got out and leaned back inside the open front window, reaching for something. With a bird’s-eye view from the satellite, it was impossible to see what he was doing. The delta team had stopped outside the alley and couldn’t possibly get a good look from their vantage point.
He found himself holding his breath as the driver lifted out what looked like a bright-red three-gallon container and closed the door.
“What the hell is he . . .” Flint trailed off.
They all watched in dawning horror as the driver began splashing clear liquid from the container all over the van.
“He’s going to set it on fire,” Wu said to Flint. “Tell everyone to move in.”
He shot to his feet while Flint barked into his phone, drawing closer to the screen as if he could somehow put a stop to the nightmare.
Two agents from the zeta team rushed in from the alley’s entrance, but not before the driver lit a match and tossed it into the liquid pooled beside the van’s tire. Within seconds, a wall of flame erupted to engulf the vehicle.
Johnson clapped a hand to her mouth and spoke through her fingers. “They’re trapped in the back.” She turned horrified eyes to Wu. “They’ll be burned alive.”
CHAPTER 22
Dani sat beside Toro in the back row of the Suburban’s seats, looking out the darkly tinted windows. It was difficult to make out details of the passing scenery, but she could tell they were headed west, going deeper into New Jersey.
The men around her did not have much to say, everyone apparently content to keep their own counsel, Toro included. She figured they had been on the road for about an hour when the driver slowed to turn onto a smaller roadway. They passed a line of trees that opened into a wide expanse with long bands of asphalt.
Toro bent to whisper in her ear. “This is Lincoln Park Airport.”
She had heard of the privately owned airfield but hadn’t been there before. “Does the Colonel have a plane?”
“Not that I know of.”
Another fifteen minutes took them well past the airport to what looked like an aircraft repair facility.
The SUV ground to a halt, and Chopper was the first one to open his door and leap out. No one spoke as they all clambered from the vehicle and stretched their cramped muscles. Two hangars dwarfed the smaller building where Guapo was leading them. Dani noted that the driver got out and joined them, bringing the total in their group to seven.
Guapo typed a combination into a keypad on a reinforced metal door, and the latch released. He pushed it open and walked through, everyone else in his wake.
Dani saw five other men inside the building. Everyone stood quietly, as if waiting for orders. She stuck close to Toro, figuring that’s what his actual girlfriend would do in these circumstances.
Toro nudged her. “The one on the far right is Doc Tox,” he whispered in her ear.
She flicked a glance at a middle-aged man with curly brown hair, taking care not to study him overtly. Toro had been right when he’d guessed who had concocted the poison. She would make it a point to stay as far away from him as possible.
Moments later, a tall man who appeared to be in his fifties strode out from the shadows. His close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair added a distinguished look to his gray camo outfit. Even if she hadn’t seen his picture in the dossier prepared by Johnson, Dani would have known this was Colonel Xavier Treadway.
“Now that everyone is here, we can get to our first order of business,” he said in a deep baritone. His brown eyes swept the room, coming to rest on her. “Which is our visitor.”
She felt everyone’s gaze turn to her and made it a point to stand erect, looking the Colonel directly in the eyes with enough intensity to transmit confidence without overt challenge.
He ambled toward her, the others moving to make way for him. He came to a stop directly in front of her.
“Nicola Corazón?”
She gave him a curt nod.
“I call her Nikki,” Toro said, finally speaking.