Brett said, “You want to hit him at the hotel? Or track him someplace and ambush him?”
“At the hotel.”
Veep said, “That’s risky. We’ll get one shot at him, and if he has friends, we won’t control the outcome. If there’s a shoot-out, we won’t get out of here clean.”
“I know, but he’s one slippery mother fucker. If we pinpoint his room, that’s where we’ll take him. Clandestine hit, clandestine exfil, avoiding any help he might have. That’s what I’m planning on now.”
Knuckles said, “Shoshana doesn’t know which room?”
“No. All she found was the bed-down. She’s over there now, waiting on them to leave.”
Brett said, “We’ll need some high fidelity for a clean hit even if we PID his room.”
“I know. That’s why I want you to get over there. You guys go check in and get a lay of the ground. Take a Flipper Max and clone a key card. Shoshana’s going to tell me when they’re clear.”
Like a lot of things in the Taskforce, the Flipper Max was a bit of technology we’d stolen from the commercial market—in this case, a device called a Flipper Zero. The original was basically a Swiss army knife of hacking tools that could read and manipulate anything on the electromagnetic spectrum, from RFID, Bluetooth, and NFC to Wi-Fi and actual radio signals. It could execute small events like opening a garage door, changing a television channel, duplicating a key fob, or reading a chip-enabled credit card.
Ours was a little more robust, and could not only duplicate host devices but, using AI, could extrapolate encryption and predict master protocols. In this case, if we got a key card from the hotel, we could not only duplicate it for our specific room—like the Flipper Zero—but could also create a housecleaning key that would open all the doors in the hotel.
Veep started making a list, saying, “You want button cams in the rooms?”
“No. Too much of a chance that’ll get discovered. Remember, we’re after the Ghost here, and he’ll probably smell them if we install. Go with Pit Vipers. All we need to know is if he’s in there, not whether he’s taking a piss.”
A Wi-Fi camera would be the best for perfect planning, but it had an Achilles’ heel: in order for it to see the room, by default one could see it. If we had the time for a deep install, I’d go that way, but just slapping one on a lampshade was asking for compromise. The Pit Viper was a passive sensor that detected infrared heat put out by humans—just like the namesake reptile. I only needed to know that he was in the room before we hit it. I didn’t care what he was doing.
They finished packing and made it over to the hotel while I had Jennifer call Creed, getting him to hack into the hotel registration. I’d initially told him to look for anyone with a Lebanese passport but that hadn’t worked.
I hung up with Knuckles and said, “Still nothing from Creed?”
She said, “No. We know the Ghost has a Lebanese passport, and they take all passports at registration. If he checked in, he’d be in the system. It’s not like they have a hidden file or something.”
I said, “So you don’t think he checked in? Shoshana saw him enter with two guys. He’s staying there, I’m sure.”
She tapped a finger to her lip and said, “Yeah, I think you’re right, but both can be true. He’s there, but didn’t check in.”
I nodded, saying, “Have Creed broaden the search. Ninety percent of the folks at the hotel are going to be from South or North America. Tell him to look for something else.”
She started typing in the chat, and once again I thanked the gods thatthe Ghost had decided to travel to South America. While the flight was long as hell, it was at least still in our time zone, meaning we didn’t have to deal with getting stateside help at four in the morning their time. At least not yet.
She said, “He’s come back saying he can’t search that way. Well, he can, but he would have to read through every single guest. He wants something to type into a search queue.”
“Tell him anything from the Middle East.”
She typed, then said, “He’s saying the search doesn’t work that way either. He has to type a country, not ‘anything from the Middle East.’?”
Growing aggravated, I started stalking to the computer, snarling, “Damn it, tell him to pull out a map and start typing countries, or I’m going to rip his head off.”
She glared at me, and I stopped. She pulled up a map on Google and started sending him countries, while I muttered, “You keep babying him and he’ll never learn.”
She stopped and said, “You get more help with honey than you do vinegar.”
I started to say something else, when the phone Shoshana had given me vibrated. I answered, saying, “We can’t find his hotel room. No Lebanese have checked in. Are you sure that’s him?”
“Nephilim, that’s him.” I felt a little coolness, not the least because she used my true name again. “We just picked up the follow on a large SUV like you Americans love, and he’s in it. Maybe your information on passports is wrong, but the information from my eyes is correct, I promise you.”
The fact that she was behind the Ghost right now made me want to jump in a vehicle and catch up, but I knew that was a nonstarter. I said, “Okay, okay, sorry. So we’re clear to execute a B&E if we find his room? How much time do you think we have?”
“We just crossed the border into Brazil. You have plenty of time.”
