WASHINGTON, D.C.
Lost him,” Tyler said.
Sandra Kyle tapped the mute button on her cell phone and swore.
Tyler was the newest man on her team. She was shorthanded at the moment, and the Ryan project was top-drawer because Senator Dixon was her top priority. Kyle assumed that basic surveillance for an ex–Pinkerton contractor like Tyler wouldn’t be a problem.
Apparently, she was wrong.
The acne-scarred contractor had lost his target. She unmuted her phone. “He knew you were following him?”
“I don’t think so. Just running a vehicular SDR.”
“Just for the hell of it?” Kyle couldn’t wrap her mind around Clark running a random surveillance detection route.
“It’s normal SOP for high-value targets in high-threat environments to run them.”
“I wouldn’t call Clark a high-value target, and D.C. isn’t exactly the Green Zone.”
“Maybe Clark isn’t the high-value component.”
“Who’s with him in the vehicle?”
“Unknown male. Late twenties, maybe early thirties. Bearded, short hair, clean cut. Blue eyes, dark hair. Six-one or so. Athletic build, maybe one-ninety or two hundred pounds. Carry-on leather satchel and a computer bag.”
Kyle drummed her fingers on the desk. She ran a few dates in her head. Everything but the beard made sense.
Kyle had actually met Jack Junior—a college kid at the time—when she was still with the Capitol Police. Nice kid. Good-looking. Kind of bookish, too, as she recalled. Georgetown, wasn’t it? Yeah, that was it. Just like his old man. That meant he was smart.
It wasn’t completely crazy that someone like him would work for a financial outfit like Hendley Associates. Gerry Hendley and President Ryan went way back. She could see the President picking up the phone and asking Gerry to do him a favor and hire his kid. Good connections for Hendley, too.
But why was Clark playing chauffeur to a suit monkey like Junior? Clark must have been, what, seventy-plus years old by now? Too old to be a bodyguard, and besides, that’s what the Secret Service was for.
So where in the hell was the Secret Service?
Something was definitely off about all of this.
“You get any pictures of the passenger?”
“Sending now.”
A moment later, her phone dinged. She checked the photo.
Yeah. That was Junior for sure. Interesting.
The President’s son.
“Where did Clark pick him up?”
“At an apartment in Alexandria. They left there and headed back over to Hendley Associates. Pulled into the underground parking lot. I couldn’t follow. About twenty minutes later they pulled back out and headed west.”
“West?”
“Yeah. Surprised me, too. I assumed they were headed for the airport. That’s when they started their evasion route. After three turns, I broke off, as per my SOP.”
Kyle sighed. There wasn’t any way to run mobile surveillance with just one vehicle on a determined target. Breaking off was the right move. Maybe Tyler wasn’t a complete idiot after all.
“Did you get the plate number?”
“Sending now.”
Kyle’s phone chirped again. “Good job. You can call it a night.”
“Sorry I dropped the ball, chief.”
“This one’s on me. I’ll take it from here.”
Kyle rang off, then dialed another number. A captain in the D.C. Metro Police Department owed her a favor. Last year, his wife contacted Kyle’s agency, wanted a surveillance on her husband, whom she suspected of having an affair. She wanted evidence—or, more accurately, her divorce attorney did. Kyle agreed. Came back empty-handed.
“You sure?” the captain’s wife replied, stunned and disbelieving.
“I never caught him with another woman” was Kyle’s honest answer. Honest, because Kyle was the woman the captain was sleeping with, and there was no other woman besides her that she ever saw. Saved the captain half of his pension and six figures in legal fees.
“Sandra? To what do I owe the pleasure?” the captain said.
“Need a favor.”
The gravelly-voiced captain chuckled. “The long favor or the short one?”
“I thought you and your wife were back together.”
“We are. But you know how it is.”
“Well, the favor I’m asking for is vertical, not horizontal. I need you to track a vehicle for me on the DAS—and on the down-low.”
“I’m just about to leave my shift.”
“It’s important.”
“Give me the details.”
Kyle gave the captain the plate number, along with the make, model, and color of the vehicle. She also suggested its final destination.
“How long will it take?”
“Depends on where it lands. If you’re right, probably no more than thirty minutes.”
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“And you know how I’ll want it paid back, don’t you?”
“Horizontal.”
“Next Tuesday. My place in Georgetown. Eight o’clock.”
“Deal.” She didn’t mind. Captain Merriweather was a legendary lay.
Twenty-three minutes later, Merriweather called.
“I just texted you a file. Your car arrived at Dulles ten minutes ago. Headed for the charter jet FBO.”
“Thanks, DeAndre.”
“Next Tuesday. Don’t forget.”
“I’ll be there with bells on.”
He laughed at the imagery. “Hope we don’t wake the neighbors.”
He hung up just as his text message arrived. It was all pictures, each taken from the D.C. DAS—the Microsoft-branded Domain Awareness System. The technology was straight out of the television show Person of Interest. The DAS was a surveillance software package that linked thousands of D.C. metro area cameras, allowing law enforcement to track the movement of people and vehicles in real time. It was even possible to track them twenty-four hours prior—everything was recorded, but the city budget allowed for only one day’s worth of data storage.
Tracking a vehicle was especially easy when the vehicle license plate was known. The DAS even provided a windshield shot of both Clark and Ryan in the front seat of their generic sedan. Exactly the kind of confirmation Kyle liked.
Clark had, indeed, driven aggressively to either avoid or shake any kind of tail. Kyle hoped it was the former. Dixon had been quite specific about not getting caught in the act. The final picture in Merriweather’s text was of the car passing through the general aviation gate toward the FBO terminal.
But why Dulles? Reagan National was far closer to the Hendley Associates building. Then Kyle remembered: Reagan was good only for domestic flights for private charters. A private charter had to go through either Baltimore or Dulles for international flights. Reagan National didn’t have the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities needed for international travel on private planes.
So Ryan was flying out of the country. But to where?
No way to tell from these photos. But Kyle had an idea. She jumped on her laptop and started digging into her favorite databases. Within an hour she had pieced it all together. Hendley Associates owned a Gulfstream G550. After procuring its tail number, it was a short jump to the FAA database to find the filed flight plan.
Bingo.
Jack Junior was heading for Warsaw, Poland.
She called Dixon with the intel.
Strangely, the senator didn’t seem surprised.