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“How far do you think he’ll get?” Homeland Agent Maravich used his pinkie to circle the inside of his nostril.
Across the street from the Huateng Tower, in what was once the Magnificent Mile Marriott but was now a deserted hulk harboring junkies, alkies, and lice, Agents Ramirez and Maravich followed Joseph Warren’s antics on a portable vid screen. Scratchy audio buzzed from tiny speakers. An inset window indicated the subject’s position in real-time and read out his vital stats in a tiny scroll at the bottom.
“Far enough to hang himself.” Ramirez leaned over the monitor, set up on what was once the circular bar in the Marriott’s lobby. He refused to let any part of his body other than the soles of his shoes touch any surface in the derelict building. Water dripped and things skittered in the dark corners of the open space, long since stripped of fixtures and covered in a layer of filth deep as cake icing.
A team of six TAC officers in full gear held position near the boarded-up entrance. A chain hung from a hole in the plywood, its lock a thing of distant memory. The glut of street people lurking in the lobby had slunk away like feral dogs when Ramirez and his fellow agents shoved open the damp and rotting barrier and flashed lights around the interior. Ramirez perceived them hovering in the shadows the way a ship’s captain sensed bad weather over the horizon.
“So what is it about this dingleberry?” Maravich studied the small screen, his Eastern European ancestry evident in the flat planes and angles of his face. “This Warren guy, he ain’t much.”
“He’s going to get us in.”
“You think?”
“Warren is the only person I’ve ever seen get close to MacCauley who wasn’t one of her fanatics.”
“And you think that’s enough?”
On the screen, Warren accessed the security door, and the camera view switched to inside the room. Ramirez smirked as their subject tapped his way through the building’s security features.
“There’s more to Warren than meets the eye,” he told Maravich. “He’s a survivor. I get a lever on him; he’ll do what we need.”
“You say so.” Maravich shrugged. He snorted and spat across the bar. “I think the guy’s a chump.”
“He is. But he’s our chump. He’ll get us in, and we’ll run down these terrorist fucks once and for all. These assholes think they can tear down the foundation of this country and destroy the United States government. I will not, under any circumstances, allow that to happen. If I have to sacrifice a hundred Joseph Warrens, it’ll be a small price to pay.”