THEY FOUNDa Best Buy off Highway 75. Lucas and Bob left their phones in the Jeep and Rae drove it away; a half hour later she was back for a flying pickup, and Lucas and Bob gave her a new burner phone, identical to the ones they’d bought. They thought the killers had probably tracked Lucas, but decided not to take a chance—maybe they’d tagged Bob or Rae.
“Now what?”
“Now we find a nice improbable and semi-trashy place for us to go, not too far from the hotel, and we spend some time there, like we did with Arnold. Then one of us drives the Jeep back to the hotel with our regular phones inside, leaves the phones at the hotel, and drives back. We’re gonna ambush their asses.”
Rae said to Bob, “I do like the way he thinks.”
—
RAE WASstill driving and Lucas used his iPad to look over the Dallas area, and decided to check the town of Addison, which appeared to be a highly mixed commercial-industrial town built around a general aviation airport, and not too far from the hotel.
Rae took the Jeep that way and they eventually spotted a town house complex surrounded by narrow lawns on all four sides, and a wraparound parking lot that was mostly empty. The front of the complex faced the concrete back side of a truck terminal. Two other concrete-faced commercial buildings stood at opposite ends of the street. If there should be any shooting, it would be as safe outside the complex as anywhere they’d seen. They cruised the neighborhood a couple of times, talking about possible setups, and then headed back to the hotel.
“One thing we’ve got to talk about... do we tell the Addison cops what we’re doing?” Rae asked.
“If we’re setting up to ambush a couple of killers, in their town, they might be a little nervous and maybe even a little pissed, if we had any other options,” Bob said. “The usual unwarranted aversion to bullets flying around.”
Lucas: “I know you federal guys—us federal guys—like to bring the locals in whenever possible. This might be an exception. We’ve got a safe spot to make a stop, and we’re going to have to make a stopsomewhere...”
“Your call,” Rae said.
Lucas thought about it, then said, “Fuck it. Let’s tell Addison we’re doing surveillance down here and ask them not to cruise thearea. If it all goes up in smoke, at least we’ll have that for cover, you know—that we called them in advance.”
“Sneaky,” Bob said.
—
AT THE HOTEL,they moved some of Bob’s armory around: Lucas got a heavy-duty vest, and Rae and Bob carried M4s, ammo, and vests to their separate cars. Lucas carried a battery-operated Altec miniature speaker out to his car. A quick stop at a Subway got them sandwiches and bottles of water, and Diet Coke for Lucas, and a second stop got them magazines and newspapers, and then they headed back to the town houses.
Once there, Lucas and Rae parked at opposite ends of the front parking lot, and Bob parked in back. Lucas hooked up the tiny Bluetooth speaker to the iPad, picked out a decent playlist, and settled in to wait.
Bob called his boss at SOG, told him what was happening, then called the Addison cops, got the chief, identified himself, told him about the surveillance, and asked that patrol cars not cruise the neighborhood too heavily. He gave his SOG boss as a reference. Lucas called Forte, his contact in Washington, told him the same thing. Then he called Rae, and Rae called Bob, to further establish their location if somebody was monitoring them.
Two hours after they made the parking lot, Lucas called Bob and said, “Come get the phones.”
“On the way,” Bob said.
Bob collected Lucas’s and Rae’s phones, drove them back to the hotel, then made calls on each of them—to Washington and back tothe SOG headquarters. That done, he left the phones at the motel and drove back to the apartment and set up at his previous spot, and called Lucas and Rae on the burner phones.
“We’re set,” he told Lucas.
“Could be a long wait,” Lucas said.
“Be worth it to take these sonsofbitches down,” Bob said. “What they did to Arnold...”
15
THE COLLEGE-SOUNDING GUYhad spotted Lucas flying out of Nashville for Dallas. As they were leaving to follow, by car, Kort stole a couple of pillows from a Holiday Inn linen closet left open by the cleaning crew. Her ass felt like it was on fire, and when she pressed on the wounds with toilet paper, she was getting some nasty-looking fluid.
“Might have an infection,” Soto had said. He sounded like he didn’t care, because he didn’t.
“Hurts like hell,” Kort had groaned. “I’m going to Dallas flat on my stomach. Ten fuckin’ hours.”
“Better get some pillows or something,” Soto had said.
She’d done that and Soto had hauled their suitcases out to the latest rental, a Chevy Tahoe, from National. The thing should cost an arm and a leg, but since they were using a phony credit card and ID, and wouldn’t be returning it, the cost didn’t matter, and Kort could lie mostly flat in the back.
Soto made one last trip inside and came back carrying a bottle of gin, partially wrapped in a towel.
