I said, “Status of the thieves?”
“Still digging around.”
“Okay. You go with Knuckles. Both of you get your ass on the road. Get downtown and I’ll vector you in to the action. You can take over surveillance once you arrive.”
Knuckles said, “Amena’s probably not a great idea.”
“You got a better one? I can’t magic you there, and somebody’s got to get on them for us to take over.”
He shook his head and started moving to the door, Veep behind him, saying, “Jennifer’s going to have your ass.”
I ignored him and said, “Creed, get on Veep’s monitor. Tell me when the thieves leave.”
He’d heard the entire exchange, his eyes wide. He nodded his head and scurried over to Veep’s computer, saying, “I might agree with Knuckles on this. My guys aren’t trained to conduct surveillance.”
I said, “Don’t worry about it. He only needs to be able to work the Grail.”
In my headset I heard, “Knuckles, Knuckles, this is Blackcat. Why did you guys send me pictures of gangster wannabes?”
I heard “Blackcat” and rolled my eyes, as Amena was making up callsigns because she thought the whole exercise was amusing.
I said, “Hey, it’s Pike, and we’ve got a change of mission.”
She said, “So now I’m working with the big man? The head commando? Did you fire Knuckles?”
Amena was my adopted daughter, and since I didn’t have any role-player support from the Taskforce, I’d decided to use her for a simple meeting. It actually worked for the scenario, because there’s no way the guys meeting her would be ready to engage a fifteen-year-old girl. It was one more way of throwing them out of their comfort zone.
I said, “Hey, doodlebug, this just got serious. I need your full attention.”
She heard “doodlebug,” a nickname I used to call her when she was younger, when we’d first met under very trying circumstances, and her entire tone changed, realizing things weren’t right.
“What is it? Did something happen to Jennifer?”
Confused, I said, “What? No,” then I realized that what I’d said sure sounded like I was preparing her for bad news. Something she was well versed in, having violently lost both of her parents and her brother.
I continued, “Everybody’s fine. Sorry that didn’t come out right, but we do have a change of mission.”
I saw the glasses move to the sky and realized she was breathing a sigh of relief, then I heard, “Pike, that’s not funny at all. Don’t come on the radio saying that stuff.”
I looked at my watch, saw the candidate was going to be there in less than a minute and said, “I know, I know, but things have changed, but in a good way for you. Instead of passing off the Grail and going for an ice cream, I need you to pass off the Grail and follow a couple of thugs.”
I gave her a quick synopsis of what had occurred, telling her the meetwould go as planned, only now he was going to have to use it to target our own computer, and she was going to facilitate that by getting him close enough.
She said, “And these guys on the phone are the guys who broke into the room?”
“Yeah. They’re still inside right now, but they’ll be coming down the elevators soon. You think you can do that?”
“Pike, I know I can do that. I was doing it when I was twelve. I don’t know about the candidate who’s about to show up. Why don’t I just go by myself?”
Amena was a Syrian refugee, and when I’d first met her she was surviving as a pickpocket in Monaco, basically living on the street. She’d learned at an early age how to blend into a crowd, conduct a theft, and exit without a trace, and she was very, very good at it. She was like a feral cat with a sixth sense about danger, which is why the idea of using her in the exercise had popped in my head at all.
I said, “Because you can’t work the Grail, and he won’t have time to teach you. Just get him close enough to hit it.”
She said, “He’s coming. He just crossed into the square.”
I whipped my head to the monitor and saw the candidate, a man named Bobby Tilly. He was a skinny guy wearing jeans that were an inch too short, a plaid short sleeved shirt, and running shoes. If he’d have had a pocket protector and thick glasses, it would have completed the image.
I said, “Just go through the meet first. If he screws it up, pull him aside and drop the pretense of correct procedures. The exercise takes a back seat now.”
