Operations Center 2, CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Sonya Tong stood in the center of the room, the pressure of an operation gone bad weighing heavily on her shoulders, and now she realized the pressure her boss and fantasy, Chris Leroux, must feel every time he was in command. She didn’t envy him, and understood why he had been reluctant to take on the role.
She glanced at Director Morrison, the man who had forced him into the job, still standing at her side, watching as the chopper powered back up. “I’m sorry, sir. I screwed up.”
He continued to stare at the display. “Screw-ups happen. It’s what you do next that matters.”
She nodded, then turned to the team. “Okay, let’s retrace the route. Look for any gaps. We need to see when they were out of our sight, then see if they took longer than they should have to get to the next point.”
“You got it.” Child hammered away at his keyboard, the screens rapidly following all the shots they had of the SUV, a simulated route running beside it, as the gaps in the cameras were too many for a complete picture. “Okay, here they went under this bridge. We don’t have any footage of them, but when they do appear, they’re about 40 seconds later than they should be.”
Tong shot a smile at Morrison, who responded with a frown.
And he was right.
It meant she really had screwed up. She should have caught the discrepancy earlier, but hadn’t, and now Chris and Agent White might be lost.
She activated her comm. “Echo Leader, Control. We’ve got a new location for you. Relaying coordinates now.” She snapped her fingers and Child tapped at his keyboard then gave a thumbs up. “Confirm receipt, over.”
“Confirmed, en route now. ETA two minutes.”
Tong turned to the team. “They won’t be there. Let’s analyze all the footage of the vehicles in the area at the time the exchange must have happened. See if we can spot them. Look for vehicles that head under the bridge, but don’t come out. This was well-planned and well-coordinated. They wouldn’t sit around for too long because they wouldn’t want to risk detection, so let’s start about five minutes before the phone call from Chris.”
Heads bobbed and the screen filled with time-segmented views of the two traffic cameras showing the bridge underpass, the analysts splitting up the work by timecode. She itched to return to her station to help, but that wasn’t her job. She was Control. And it shouldn’t take long to spot an anomaly, regardless, then hopefully they’d trace where the second vehicle had gone.
Child held up a hand, as if still in school. “Umm, Sonya, locals are entering Leroux’s apartment now.”
She sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes, saying a silent prayer.
Please God, let him be okay!