He sighed and glanced out his window, watching for the headlights of Enrique’s car to appear in the parking lot entrance.
Feel right or not, what was about to happen would happen anyway.
He just wanted to be finished with it and get back to business as usual.
As Enrique Quiros approached Balboa from the northwest, the third automobile in his entourage separated from the others and took the turnoff to the Cabrillo Bridge. Remaining on the San Diego Freeway, Quiros and his lead car continued to head toward the Pershing Drive exit that provided the easiest and most direct access to the Spanish Village area.
Inside the tail vehicles that had kept pace with Quiros since he’d left the ranch, the members of each surveillance team noted this unexpected development and promptly advised their respective superiors.
“What do you make of it?” Ricci said.
“The bridge hooks up with Laurel Street, and that’ll take you over to Balboa,” Glenn said. He had pulled the LeSabre into a dark, empty employee lot behind a municipal building on C Street, within view of the park. “It’s kind of a long way around. The scenic route, I guess you’d call it. Runs between these two wooded slopes.”
“I don’t think our guys are interested in admiring the foliage,” Ricci said.
“Not that anybody could in the dark,” Glenn said and sat thinking quietly. After a moment or two, he turned to Ricci. “What’s that E-mail we got again? The exact words?”
Ricci frowned, took his cell phone out of his pocket, and touched a button to illuminate the LCD. Then he pressed a second button on the keypad, retrieved the stored message Nimec had forwarded from San Jose, and opened it. “Here,” he said and handed the phone across the seat to Glenn. “Read the damn thing yourself.”
Glenn did. It said:
QUIROS. ELEVEN P.M. BALBOA PARK. FINAL CLOSEOUT, EVERYTHING UP FOR GRABS. GET WHAT YOU WANT BEFORE HE’S GONE. FROM ONE WHO KNOWS.
“Coded messages. Anonymous tips that don’t mean anything.” Ricci studied the government office building’s flat, concrete backside through the windshield. “I’m sick and tired of being jerked.”
“If you ask me, we’re lucky just to be in the game,” Glenn said, still looking at the LCD.
“I guess.” Ricci glanced at the dash clock and saw that it was exactly 10:30. “Be nice if we could figure some of it out before we need to make our move.”
Silence. Glenn pursed his lips, gave the phone back to Ricci. “You know, Laurel connects with a long strip of the park called El Prado,” he said. “That’s the main pedestrian mall. It has lots of recognizable buildings, a big reflecting pond, other stuff.”
Ricci looked at him. “You guessing it’s where the action might be?”
“I don’t know,” Glenn said, “but there has to be a reason the last car in Enrique’s cavalcade of stars broke away to head in that direction.”
Ricci tugged at the flesh below his chin. “You’re looking to set something up, it’s always a good idea to pick a spot where there are landmarks.”
“Agreed. And tell me this isn’t the definition of a setup.”
“Do we have people sitting on the area?”
“Some,” he said. “And we can shuffle more over.”
Ricci nodded. “How close are we?”
“A hop and a skip,” Glenn said.
Ricci grabbed for the door handle. “Come on, I think we’ve got ourselves a destination,” he said.
“Lucio,” Quiros said.
“Enrique,” Salazar said.
They shook hands.
It was a few minutes shy of eleven o’clock, and they were standing in the darkened parking lot behind the Spanish Village. Salazar’s Caddy on one side of them, Quiros’s Fiat Coupé and Lincoln on the opposite side, their bodyguards grouped loosely near the cars from which they’d emerged.
“So,” Salazar said. “What now?”
Quiros looked at him in silence a moment, the cool night breeze riffling his lightweight sport jacket around his body. “Now we talk,” he said. “See if we can find a way to straighten out our problems.”
Salazar tilted his head toward their guards. “We need to give ourselves some room,” he said. “Take a walk, air things in privacy.”
Quiros nodded. “I propose we each bring one man to follow behind as a precaution,” he said. “Leave the rest here with the cars.”
Salazar had to grin. “Sure, a precaution,” he said. “Got to make sure we don’t kill each other on the garden path.”
Enrique looked at him. “I’m glad you’re smiling, Lucio,” he said.
The balance that Sword’s foot surveillance teams generally had to strike was the same balance struck by cops doing undercover work in every major population center in America or for that matter the developed world. On the one hand, there was an appreciable chance that someone would see them — regardless of their skills at camouflage, concealment, and clandestine movement, and also regardless of how derelict, deserted, or remote their area of operation might be. On the other hand, they understood that being seen and being noticed were two very different things, and that being exposed was yet a third thing altogether.
Here and now in Balboa Park, this meant they faced specific limitations in their use of apparel, weapons, and accessories. They could not, for example, wear form-hugging stealth suits, equipment vests, night-vision goggles, and ballistic helmets in environments where there was even the scant likelihood of a late-night stroller mistaking them for terrorist invaders out to lay siege to his home and neighborhood or, worse, of their targets nailing them for the covert personnel they happened to be.
With regard to arms, they were a bit less hamstrung. Full-sized VVRS rifles with their twenty-inch barrels were of course virtually unconcealable and consequently out. The diminutive upgrades most recently trialed by Ricci’s rapid deployment team were in, but because they were still designated as prototypical, they had been issued only to the complement of A-Team Sword ops who accompanied Ricci from San Jose that afternoon. Nevertheless, a fair range of offensive and defensive gear was available to the entire task force, from incapacitant sprays and grenades and less-than-lethal stingball guns to very lethal revolvers, automatic pistols, and compact submachine guns.
Their tactical guidelines were basically low profile: Street clothes were to be donned over mandatory Zylon bullet-resistant vests, weapons had to be easily stowable, and deadly fire restricted to an option of absolute last resort.
The civvies worn by the three-person foot team in the shadows outside the botanical building were sufficiently camouflaging to make the odds of their drawing a first glance quite slim, and sufficiently inconspicuous to make a second glance even less probable, should anyone’s eye chance upon them. One of the men had on a black rugby shirt, navy chinos, and black canvas loafers. The second wore a slate-gray sweatshirt, baggy crew pants, and black running sneakers. The female member of the team was dressed in a dark green rigger ensemble and matching jogging shoes. Their Sword identification patches were concealed beneath pull-down velcro flaps.