“WHAT HAVE YOU got?”
“License DLY 224, a dark blue Mercedes McLaren. Leased to a Temple Suiter.”
“The lawyer?”
“Presumably. Who else would it be? Guy’s got more money than God.”
Carl Villanovich put the camera down and rubbed his eyes vigorously. It had been three straight nights of surveillance in the woods of Blacksmith Farms, and he was stone-cold sick of the duty.
He unfolded a tripod from his pack and mounted the camera to give himself a break. The image played on a laptop next to him as he zoomed out for a long shot of the house exterior.
The place was huge, limestone from the look of it, with three-story columns in front. It had probably been a plantation house at one point. There was a converted barn in the back and several other outbuildings, all of them dark tonight.
“Here comes another one.”
His partner, Tommy Skuba, fired off several shots with a high-speed digital SLR as a wine red Jaguar coupe came rushing out of the woods. Villanovich went in tight on the Jag’s license number when it swung around the oval loop in front of the house.
“Got that?” he asked.
“Got it,” came the voice on his headset. Command Center was seventy-five miles away in Washington, watching everything in real time.
There was no valet out front. The new arrival parked himself and rang the bell. Almost instantly, a tall, gorgeous black woman in a shimmery dress answered the door, smiling, and let him right in.
“Skuba, stay on the windows.”
“I know, I know. Doin’ my best to make Steven Spielberg proud. Jaguar must be a regular.”
Villanovich rubbed both hands up and down his face, trying to stay sharp. “Any chance of calling this early tonight? We’ve already got more than we need here, don’t we?”
“Negative,” Command came back right away. “We want you there for departures.”
Another round of shots from Skuba’s camera pulled Villanovich’s attention back to the house. The Jag’s driver had just passed a window on the stairs, walking with a girl on his arm. Tall and black, but not the woman from the front door.
“Jesus Christ.” Skuba lowered the camera and muted his headset. “Did you see the rack on her? I don’t mind saying, I’m a little jealous out here. And, uh, horny.”
“Don’t be. Quantico’s on the case now,” Villanovich told him, still watching the empty window. “When this place goes down, they’re all going down with it.”