Operations Center 3, CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
“The FBI is converging on the location now, but it’s going to take time.”
Leroux watched the feed from the FBI on one of their monitors, dots converging from all across the area, heading toward the one critical dot.
The one indicating Kane’s location.
“Do we have eyes yet?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Therrien, bringing up a drone feed on another monitor. A large warehouse filled a significant portion of the screen, the entire area industrial, which was good. If things went to pot, civilian casualties would hopefully be minimal, and if the Cesium was indeed there, if it were detonated, a warehouse district was a lot easier to deal with than pretty much any other location in the region.
But they needed to know how many they were dealing with.
“Switch to thermal.”
The screen flashed and a massive blob of red filled much of the warehouse. He turned to Therrien. “Is there something wrong with the imager?”
Therrien’s fingers flew over his keyboard as his head shook. “I don’t know, sir, let me see if I can clean it up.” His fingers froze as his gaze moved from his own terminal to the large screens at the front of the operations center. “Holy shit!”
Leroux turned back toward the screen and felt his heart nearly stop. “What the hell am I looking at?” The large mass of red and orange had resolved into dozens of smaller dots, spread out across the entire building.
Therrien’s reply was almost a whisper. “I-I’m counting over one hundred targets inside, sir.”
Leroux snapped his fingers. “Get me the Director. Now!” He turned to Therrien as Sonya grabbed her phone. “Does the FBI know?”
Therrien shook his head. “They should if they cleaned up the feed. I’m using their data stream.”
Sonya held out the phone. “It’s the Chief.”
Leroux took the phone. “Sir, we’re counting over one hundred hostiles at Kane’s location.”
“Jesus! Are you sure?”
“I’m looking at the drone feed now, sir. At least one hundred targets.”
“Keep me posted through internal messaging. I’m going to a Presidential briefing right now.”
“Yes, sir.”
He handed the phone back to Sonya as he watched the single, pulsing red dot at the center of the image, representing the only friend he had in the world, surrounded by a sea of swarming hate.
Then there was a second dot.
“What’s that?”
“One of the other trackers just activated,” replied Child as the two dots continued to separate, it clear this wasn’t a false signal or an accidental activation. “Kane must have activated it, sir.”
Leroux sat in his chair, firing a quick message to Morrison as he watched the target move toward a newly arriving heat signature, some sort of vehicle, its engine hot. Whoever it was, they must have been important for Kane to risk planting a tracker.
Or was it a signal that they should begin the assault?