30

Sitting on a cinder block next to Knuckles, I took a swig from a water bottle and watched Jennifer down the road, pattering on about something with Veep. I saw him laugh and her put a hand over her mouth, looking all the world like a couple on a date. Out of nowhere, I wondered if they were talking about me. Jennifer’s probably bastardizing the story of our triathlon earlier, getting on the millennial’s good side.

Knuckles said, “He’s got her number. Maybe you should’ve put Retro in that position.”

I glared at him, and he smirked, saying, “Touchy. With so little confidence I’m surprised she’s stayed with you.”

I laughed and said, “I’ll see how that works with Carly.” He started to retort, and I said, “Retro has to coordinate with Creed for Veep’s ridiculous plan. You’d better hope he’s not burned.”

“He’s not. Not with normal clothes on. I’m the only one who’s no good for surveillance against this guy. He never got a look at Veep’s face. He was focused on me the whole time.”

Jennifer and Veep were sitting at an outdoor table next to a narrow hotel entrance—one we’d conveniently rented the night before. We were up the street behind a temporary wall of a construction site, the ground littered with scaffolding, two-by-fours, and paint cans. Retro was about fifty meters behind us in a minivan, working his Wi-Fi magic with Creed on one of the few roads big enough for cars. Our ambush was set. It only remained to be seen if Veep’s idea was worth a shit.

Personally, I thought it was nuts, but he had been adamant, and I was willing to give it a go, if only to develop him as a leader. It was the first time he’d taken charge, and I wanted to encourage that—and the plan did show some out-of-the-box thinking.

Yesterday, we’d tracked the Dragontooth around the ancient Moorish neighborhood of Albaicín, right up the hill from the Darro River and the plaza with the hipsters, seemingly wandering the narrow footpaths aimlessly, to the point that I wondered if the equipment was malfunctioning.

The Dragontooth was a crowd-sourced beacon that utilized the cell network to leverage unwitting cell users on that same net. It worked on Bluetooth and sent data to anyone within range who had a smartphone—which was just about everyone nowadays, outside the odd grandparent still using a flip phone. Basically, it was malware that infected the local population’s phones as if they’d asked for the app, and when our beacon registered with the phone, it sent us an alert with a time and location. Once the beacon was activated, it would talk to any cell phone in range, and that cell phone would talk to us, whether it wanted to or not, letting us know where the beacon was.

It wasn’t perfect, because the beacon could travel along a lonely highway at seventy miles an hour, passing cars going the opposite way at the same speed, or the beacon could wander for hours outside of any other cell phones, giving us imprecise or latent data, but if someone was on foot in a crowded area, it was pretty damn precise.

In this case, the beacon seemed to be wandering aimlessly through the neighborhood. It would stop for about half a minute, then wander on, winding through the twisting roads and alleys. We watched it, with everyone on the team having an opinion, but nobody could determine exactly what the guy was doing. He didn’t stop long enough to do any drug deal, and he was going up blind alleys and roads that made no sense. Eventually, I’d gotten sick of the beacon-only tracking, not trusting the results, and had sent Retro and Jennifer into action, on foot.

They had picked him up right at the Darro River, on the main road that paralleled the water about a hundred meters from where the hipsters had been, and then had followed him right up into the Alhambra itself. On the way, he stopped every couple of hundred meters and messed with his phone, standing still like he was taking a picture of something, only nothing was there. And instead of pressing the photo button, he flicked his touch screen up and down repeatedly.

I’d gotten a third call from Jennifer giving me the same report, which was, “He’s looking at a patch of grass and flicking his phone.”

I replied, “Come on. Something’s there.”

“No. Pike, I’m telling you, I think he’s on drugs.”

I said, “Keep on him. Keep on him.”

She said, “He’s walking up the road to Alhambra. He can’t get in without a ticket, and they sell out early. If he has a ticket, we won’t be able to follow.”

I said, “Just stick with him. Figure out what he’s doing. If you have to peel off, don’t worry about it. At least we know the beacon’s working.”

They reached the summit, discovering there were some areas free of charge inside the Alhambra, including a couple of hotels, squashed right in the center. The target passed through the taxi stands cloistered outside the gate, looking at his phone and walking forward, as if it were telling him where to go.

Throughout the surveillance, Veep had been working the computer for research and reported that there were two hotels on-site: one a five-star and one a dump. I gave the information to the team, directing them to the less savory hotel, figuring that was where the target was headed.

The citadel was huge, with most of the historical constructs available to ticket holders only—gardens, waterworks, castles, and art museums—but there was a large part that anyone could enter, centered around the hotels. Most of it was apparently a tease to get you to buy a ticket.

They followed the target past the first hotel, and he stopped again, doing his incomprehensible cell phone dance, this time in the parking lot just outside the entrance. Honestly, the repeated action was driving me nuts. Nobody does anything that strange unless he is up to no good. We just needed to figure out what it was.

Jennifer gave me another stale report, and I said, “Come on, you guys call yourselves commandos? I’d expect this out of the Air Force. What the hell is he doing?”

Inside our hotel, Veep—an Air Force Special Operations member—gave me a look but backed down when I’d glared back. Knuckles said, “Veep, you really don’t have to take that shit. You can tell him he’s an asshole.”

I clicked back on the radio and said, “Correction. You’re acting like a bunch of SEALs.”

Retro said, “Pike, I have no idea what he’s doing. I’ve analyzed every stop. There’s nothing of interest at any of them. Nothing.”

Off the radio, Veep said, “Get me video. Get me a clip.”

I looked at him and he said, “Sorry. Can I ask that?”

I said, “Of course you can. Jesus. Why, though?”

“I don’t want to say. I got a feeling.”

I nodded and said, “A feeling . . .”

Knuckles had laughed and said, “It’s worked for you.”

I went back to the radio and said, “Give me a video. From two angles. Veep thinks he’s got something.”

Veep looked a little startled at my call, like he was surprised I gave the order.

Jennifer came on, saying, “Pike, we can use this place for cover reasons. It’s a UNESCO Heritage site. We need to get on this if we’re going to do any work here. Get the cover of Grolier Recovery Services engaged.”

Which was her way of saying, I really want to go look at a bunch of old shit.

But it did make sense. I glanced at Knuckles and he went to the computer, sending a message to the Taskforce. I said, “Okay, okay, Koko. We’ll go look at Alhambra if we have time. Knuckles is working it now.”

The target made a stop right outside of a kiosk selling beer and popsicles to the line of people waiting to enter Nazaríes Palace—a place that required an additional ticket to enter. He repeated his weird actions, and the team caught it on video and sent it to us.

We watched the video, and I swear it was exactly what they’d described. A guy with a cell phone pointing it into the dirt and then flicking the screen over and over again.

I said, “He’s obviously marking territory. He’s building a kill box, or a target set, or something.”

Veep studied the video a second time and said, “No, he’s not.” He turned to me and said, “We have a way to get him.”

Knuckles and I both looked at him like he had a third head. Now animated, Veep said, “We need to get Creed on the line. Get some hacking capability. We can build a trap for this guy.”

Knuckles glanced my way with an expression that said Veep was a loon, then went back to him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Veep grinned and said, “He’s playing Pokémon Go, and he’s addicted.”