been for years. Pain was a teacher, a tool.
They then clipped health stats boxes to their belts and arranged their shoulder-mounted holsters. Farrow checked them over, as solicitous as a mother hen.
‘Keep boxy stuff away from your mid-back. Clip everything to the side. If you fall backward on a hard surface, you could injure your spine.’
They sheepishly readjusted. This was basic stuff and already they were screwing up.
Farrow checked his slate. ‘Mr. Al-Husam, you’re not on the grid. Get your numbers.’
Fouad Al-Husam, a small man with beautiful black eyes and a round, almost feminine face, touched his keyboard, trying to find the bumps. Farrow approached him and patted his jacket sleeve. ‘Here,’ he said, and lifted Al-Husam’s arm to the right place. ‘Follow the guide ridges.’ Al-Husam smiled but his face darkened with embarrassment.
‘Still not there,’ Farrow said after a few seconds. ‘Reboot your pad. I have eight Lynxes on the grid, all healthy and happy. I see code in action. Good scatter. Ms. Lee, are you happy?’
Lee was the shortest and lightest person in the group but that did not faze Farrow. He was running her hard through her paces. ‘Yes, sir, I am happy,’ she called out.
‘Happy to be here at the Q?’
‘Sir, I am very happy to be here at the Q.’
‘We are not Gyrenes, Ms. Lee. Academy mandates snappy repartee. Show me your FBI beef.’
‘Happy as an aardvark under a full moon…at the Q, sir.’
Farrow’s grin was tepid. ‘Is wit truly dead?’ He glanced around the group, raising his shoulders in a long, sad shrug.
They all laughed.
‘Focus,’ Farrow shouted. ‘You’ve been working toward this moment for three weeks. You have the bastards in your sights. Remember your training. You ARE ready.’
William quietly sucked in his breath. He was far from sure of that. Standing beside him, Jane Rowland looked confident—hard as a piece of glass and about as brittle.
‘Okay—Al-Husam, you’re on the grid. You can stop fiddling with the keys.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You are knights in high-tech armor,’ Farrow said. ‘Make the flame-tormented shade of Mr. Hoover proud. Let’s go.’
‘Right, coach,’ William Griffin said under his breath as they fanned out.
They dispersed as four teams in four vehicles. William and Jane Rowland had drawn chits and were partnered for the bust. They climbed into an unmarked tan Caprice from the last century. Rowland took the wheel. ‘Ready?’ she asked William, face forward.
‘I am icy.’ He grinned.
Rowland rotated and poked her finger. ‘Don’t mess up,’ she instructed. ‘We have our docs, right?’
William held up his steno pad and a plastic folder full of paper-copy warrants and mug shots. The actors in the shots looked tough and bored.
‘We’ll do fine,’ he said. ‘You’ll do great.’
Rowland gave William a don’t patronize me scowl and cinched her seat belt. A helicopter blew overhead. Rowland flinched. Hostage Rescue Team personnel dressed in black and armed to the teeth hung out of the chopper doors like commandoes, waiting to abseil down to a roof. Hogantown could get crowded and noisy. Ten or twelve practicals could fill any given day.
‘Yeah. Right,’ Rowland said. She started the Caprice, pulled out onto Hogan Boulevard and drove around the corner and down Ness Avenue to their stake-out, just across the two-way street from the Giga-Mart parking lot. The suspects had been sighted shopping there this morning by an alert police officer, who had traced one of the men back to the Dogwood Hotel and the other to the Tolson Arms apartments. The Dogwood was across the street from the Giga-Mart. The Giga-Mart was small but functional. Its shelves had been stocked with goods that agents and Marines could buy but its clerks doubled as actors in Academy scenarios.
William put on his gogs and waited for the display to come up. The data and graphics looked greenish blue in the daytime, red at night. A little bell dinged in his earnode. He heard his own pulse magnified. He sounded nervous. He checked the pong sensor that detected human stress chemistry. The watch displayed three green lights, one yellow. Yeah, he was nervous. So was Rowland.
William glanced up at the Eyes in the Sky—cameras jutting out over the intersection from a power pole on the corner. A red light was on—surveillance was underway. The Masters of the Universe, agent instructors in the second floor command center above the Bank of Hogan, were waiting to pass judgment. MAVs—Micro Air Vehicles equipped with cameras—buzzed overhead.
William and Rowland were to take point once the suspects had been spotted. Team two and team three would serve as reinforcements and backup as each arrest was made. Team four would stand ready to intercept fleeing vehicles if necessary.
‘Team one to all teams,’ William said. Their grid lights blinked in his gogs. ‘Are we set?’
‘Team two in rear view of your position,’ came the response through their earnodes. That was Matty’s soft drawl—George Matty and Al-Husam had been partnered, almost certainly to Matty’s displeasure. He was a deep Mississippi boy and generally kept quiet around Al-Husam, but so far had played things professionally. And well he might. Al-Husam was special, they all knew that. Bigger judges than the Masters of the Universe were looking down on Quantico this year.
‘Team three here. We’re at Tolson Arms.’ Team three was Errol Henson, Nicky Di Martinez, and Carla Lee. They were in the dark blue engineering van, equipped for surveillance and carrying the Lynx server.
‘Team four setting up on State Street.’ Team four was Finch and Greavy, heavy-set men with bulldog expressions and quiet, efficient manners. ‘We’d like video hookups as soon as possible. Let us know which way they’re coming, gang.’
‘Apartment twelve at Tolson has motion,’ Lee said. ‘Lights are on.’
‘What’s parked out front, team three?’ William asked.
‘Five cars and a pickup,’ Errol Henson responded. His voice trembled. They were all high with excitement, like a brace of puppies chasing ducks for the first time.
William glanced at Rowland. She pressed her lips together.
‘Our suspect, Geronimo del Torres, is driving a 1959 Chevy Impala, primer gray with mottled paint, tinted windows, a work in progress, according to our sheet,’ Lee said.
‘We don’t see it,’ Henson said. ‘I like Impalas.’
Someone else said, ‘I catch and eat Impalas.’
‘Identify, joker,’ Farrow growled in all their ears, his voice like an angry God.
‘Team two, that’s me, Matty, sir.’
‘Tongues in neutral, team two.’
‘Yes,
