Then:
U-Haul just passed your address.
This was the last message, just seconds earlier, and Frank saw my face.
“What is it?” he said.
“I got the location wrong.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
We pocketed our phones and filtered off the plane. It wasn’t until ten minutes later that another text came in.
Maybe he got spooked. Circled the block and got gas.
Then came back to the address.
Good job, Camden.
We grabbed a rental car and got underway. I exhaled, calming my nerves.
The space I had recommended for use as a command center was a vacated environmental consulting firm across from the row house. As we pulled into the garage below the building, my phone buzzed. A note from Shooter to call her.
Jo was likely driving back from the funeral and wanting to debrief, but I needed to focus on D.C.
I got out of the rental and walked to the elevator with Frank and Cassie.
“Poulton doesn’t make his way out to Texas much,” Frank said. “How’s it been for you, Gardner? Reporting to him?”
I blinked, realizing that while Frank had been called back here by Poulton, this was his first face-to-face with the director in months.
“Challenging,” I said. “There’s a lot of subtext that I suspect I miss.”
Frank smiled and placed his hand on my shoulder. “I miss your candor,” he said. He glanced at Cassie. “You, too, Pardo. No one in Texas talks like you.”
“No one anywhere talks like me,” Cassie said, grinning.
As the elevator rose, Frank told us that two dozen agents from the Bureau and ATF were on-site already.
“Is there a plan yet?” Cassie asked. “To raid the place?”
“Right now, it’s a wait-and-see. ATF wants to track who’s coming and going. Especially if Sandoval is not there.”
We took the elevator to the fifth floor and got out in a reception area with a logo that read EnviroTekk. A man in his twenties was behind the desk, and he stood as the elevator opened. We flashed our badges, and he motioned at a pair of double doors without saying a word.
The center area of the floor held eighteen cubicles, each with low walls separating them, the kind where employees could lean over and collaborate. But the only kind of collaboration going on now was between large men in tactical gear, their H&K MP5s laid out across the desks.
There are fifty-five FBI field offices, and every one of them maintains a Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, team. Several have what’s called Enhanced SWAT, too.
This was more than Enhanced SWAT. When Americans’ lives are threatened domestically, the Tactical Operations group at the FBI is called upon, and members of the Bureau’s Critical Incidence Response Group, or CIRG, are brought in. This team includes formerArmy Rangers and Navy SEALs, and as we circled the floor looking for Poulton, I counted six men who by their sheer size had to be CIRG.
“Someone ate their Wheaties this morning,” Cassie said in a low voice.
The windows had been covered in brown craft paper on the north and west sides of the building. The exception was one window, where two men were crowded around a scope.
My phone buzzed. As it did, Cassie pulled hers from her back pocket, too.
“Call Shooter,” she said.
