Phillips keeps watching until the sun sets, then slips away to the Dodge Charger he hid deep in the woods under a camo tarp.
The vehicle they never found.
The one they never even looked for.
CHAPTER 63
IT WAS HARDER TO locate a good vantage point today, but Aiden Phillips lucks out in finding an abandoned house about half a block away from his target.
All signs screamempty house. It takes him only a few minutes to check for surveillance cameras and determine there are none. No lights. No sounds. No movement from inside. The lawn is unmowed. Looks like nobody’s been here for quite a while.
Phillips enters through an unlocked cellar window, then scouts the second floor until locating the perfect spot for a nest. He drags a worn mattress over to a bay window, draws the shade down so that just a crack of daylight shines through, then settles in to wait.
The most important part of surveillance training—the part they never show in the movies—is learning how to be perfectly still. Ninety-nine percent of this work is waiting and waiting and then waiting some more—without losing focus.
Phillips saw what happened when a spotter on a two-man sniper team got twitchy after a few hours. What happened was the spotter got a bullet through his brain. So did his partner. That’s one reason Phillips prefers to work alone.
In his gloved hands he again holds a Zeiss monocular. He scans the street, then settles the lens on a plain yellow Cape Cod–style house down the block.
The one belonging to Detective John Sampson.
The garage door is closed. There’s a black sedan in the driveway. Government vehicle. Virginia plates.
As Phillips watches, the front door opens and two men in dark suits walk out. One thin, one thickset. Behind them, Sampson looks tired and annoyed.
The chunkier guy looks up and down the street. For a split second, he looks right into Phillips’s lens.
Phillips recognizes him instantly, even in the business suit.
It’s Tom Walsh from the CIA’s Special Activities Center. He was Phillips’s former contact in-country. And now, clearly, Walsh and his partner have connected with Sampson.
Phillips expected it to happen. And it didn’t take long.
He’s starting to wish he had his long rifle with him.
Blowing off Tom Walsh’s head would be a gift to the world. And a deep source of personal satisfaction.
But there’s other work to do this morning. As soon as Walsh and his buddy leave, Phillips disappears too.
Leaving no trace that he was ever there.
CHAPTER 64
Sampson
I PARK ABOUT TWO blocks away from the Cross house, still thinking about my meeting with the two CIA spooks. I’m looking forward to another classic Nana Mama breakfast and, even more than that, to seeing Willow. I miss my daughter’s sweet little face.
I turn the corner and get a signal on my police radio.
Shit. What now? Can’t I get one minute of peace?
I pull the radio up from my waistband. “Sampson, D-five, go.”
“Dispatch, D-five, respond to fourteen forty Montgomery Northeast.”
“Dispatch, Sampson, D-five, what’s the situation?”
“Another bombing.”
