I said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Butyouknow we’ve done it before.”
He said, “Those had been extraordinary circumstances. We aren’t there yet. We have the entire intelligence and federal law enforcement community focused on this right now.”
Which really meant a bunch of feds were paying lip service to it because they were pissed they’d been redirected from whatever they were doing before—something they probably thought was more important.
I said, “Well, at least let me send Knuckles to give advice and assistance to whoever’s looking. He knows the problem set.”
I heard the door open behind me and saw the team file in. Wolffe said, “Creed’s done. I’m giving him back to you. I’ll think about what you said, but focus on your own mission down there. We’ll continue to work it up here. Good hunting.”
Creed sat back behind the computer and said, “It worked. I have a location on the van.”
Chapter 54
Khalil pulled out of the general aviation lot and circled back to the expressway, then realized he had no idea where he was going. He pulled up the navigation feature on the vehicle’s embedded screen and studied it, looking for somewhere to stop and maybe get a coffee.
Just east of the airport was a large expanse of green on the map. He zoomed in on one of the green rectangles and saw it was something called Ecoparque, and then he remembered having visited it in his youth, but back then it had been a zoo. From the map, he could see winding pathways and multiple small ponds, with various vendors scattered about. A good place to kill some time.
He set the entrance to the park as the destination, put the van in gear and exited the airport, following the GPS. Halfway to the endpoint the GPS blanked out, a warning screen appearing telling him something strange about some component in the system initializing. He was presented with a choice of yes or no and hit yes, trying to get back to the GPS screen. The warning vanished, and the map reappeared.
He followed the directions down Sarmiento Avenue, finding the park on his left, but saw no place to leave the vehicle on the street. He continued on, hitting a traffic circle and seeing the archway entrance to the Ecoparque, but still no place to park. He went around the circle and then began heading north on India Avenue, now retracing his steps on the other side of the park, the road nowhere near as big as the first, with only two lanes and cars parked along both sides.
He slowed and found an open space, spending several minutes jockeying the sprinter van into the slot. Once in, he checked his watch, then just sat inside for a moment, listening to the music and thinking about what Omar had told him.
He had spent his life dedicated to Hezbollah, and he’d even been involved in fighting Israel in 2006 when that war had erupted during his training, but most of his time had been spent working financial support. He was a cog in the large wheel of drug running and other criminal activity that Hezbollah used to finance its operations. In that capacity, he’d dealt with shady characters, and in fact had killed a man once, but it hadn’t been for a cause. It had been the result of a deal gone bad.
Omar’s discussion about the suicide vest had been a wake-up call. Up until this point, all of the bluster about jihad and death had simply been chants between team members trying to prove their loyalty That all ended tomorrow, when he was responsible for transporting a hit team to penetrate a news conference, kill the Israeli prime minister, and then escape wearing suicide vests—both men fully prepared to give their life for the mission.
That wasn’t him. He didn’t have that courage or requisite zeal, and he was glad he was simply responsible for the exfiltration of the team. One thing was for sure; when this was done he would be one of the most hunted men in South America.
He turned off the radio and exited the vehicle, wanting to forget about tomorrow and spend whatever spare time he had left acting like a normal visitor to Buenos Aires. He jogged across the street and walked down the sidewalk back to the entrance. He reached the stone portal and passed through it, noticing for the first time that the entire area was fenced, with the stone arch a chokepoint.
He decided to stay near it, just in case. He walked through the crowds, passing tours of school children and couples enjoying the balmy winter weather, reaching a plaque next to a small lake. He vaguely remembered the lake from his youth, but everything looked different.
He read the plaque and learned the zoo had closed in 2016. While there were still a few animals left, most had been moved and the park was nowknown for its conservation efforts. He studied the map, seeing a walkway on both the left and right side of the lake, and went left, following a concrete path until he reached a bench overlooking the water. He took a seat and pulled out his phone, making sure he hadn’t missed a call. When he saw he hadn’t, he began to scroll various feeds, doing the modern version of sitting in the sun reading a newspaper, occasionally glancing up at the people passing by.
He’d been there almost thirty minutes when he looked at the entranceway and saw someone familiar. He didn’t recognize the man, but he’d seen the woman before. Somewhere.
He thought it might have been in Iguazú, possibly at the falls, but that would be impossible. How could she have been there and now following him here, a thousand miles away? Mossad was good, but they needed something to track besides black magic.
And then he remembered the weird alert in the van.
Chapter 55
I went as fast as I could, given the traffic, trying to get our technical devices in play before whoever was in the van decided to turn it off. I figured I’d reached max allowable speed by the way Shoshana kept stomping her foot into the floorboards of the passenger seat.
I said, “Anything?”
She looked down at the screen of the Growler—a device that resembled an iPad mini on steroids, an inch thick with two short antennas sticking out from the corners—and said, “Nothing yet.”
I said, “Check with Aaron.”
She dialed her phone, and I kept hurtling forward to the east side of Buenos Aires, the area in which Creed had said the van was now operating.
He’d given us a bubble that was a hell of a lot bigger than a city block, spread west from the freeway running next to the Jorge Newbery Airport to the major artery of Santa Fe Avenue. Luckily for us, most of the bubble were pedestrian-only parks, to include a Japanese botanical garden and the old Buenos Aires zoo, without the cloistered buildup of the rest of the city, making our task easier because it was just thoroughfares splitting through each separate greenspace. Unluckily for us, and the reason I was speeding, the United States embassy was also in the bubble, just east of the zoo. I didn’t think that would be a target, but it was a little concerning that the van was driving near it.
We reached Santa Fe and Shoshana said, “They’ve got nothing either.”
I said, “We’ll hit the west side of the zoo. Tell them to take the east side.We’ll both go until we reach the presidential freeway. If we don’t get a ping, we’ll start a grid search by sight.”
