“Targets in the open,” Knight said. “They’re getting in a vehicle, preparing to move.”
“Roger,” King replied. “Bug out.”
On the street below, the other four immediately stopped what they were doing and headed to their designated rally points — cars parked at different ends of the street that would allow them to move quickly, in just such an event. Knight swept the sniffers into his backpack, hefted the camera case and bolted from the roof.
He could still see the red icons in his display, their last known location marked and remembered by the computer, but the image was only useful now in helping them reacquire their quarry. He knew that Deep Blue was probably looking for local CCTV networks, or even real-time satellite imagery to provide them with constant updates, but those resources weren’t as readily available in a developing nation like Egypt.
Knight swung easily off a second story balcony and dropped into a back alley, two blocks away from where Hadir and the bomb had last been spotted, and three blocks from his assigned rally point, which lay in the opposite direction.
Decisions, decisions.
As he was the only member of the team to actually get eyes on Hadir, he decided the wisest course was to reestablish visual contact before the car got lost in traffic. He sprinted from the alley, forced his way through the milling pedestrians and crossed the street. The virtual display flashed, warning of an imminent collision, even as the sound of shrieking brakes and tires skidding on the pavement filled his ears, but Knight never slowed. He vaulted over a vendor’s cart and slipped through the crowd like a bead of quicksilver. He ducked into another alley, and a few seconds later he emerged a stone’s throw from the door through which Hadir had exited.
The red dot winked out. The car was gone.
He scanned the street in both directions and caught a glimpse of white moving away, perhaps two blocks to the north. And then another further down the same street.
Knight shook his head in frustration. “Lost them. Look for a white Corolla. My best guess is that they’re going north.”
“Blue?” King’s voice echoed through his head. “Give me something.”
“Northeast would put him on the main road, about half a mile away,” Deep Blue replied. “That’s the most probable route. Once there he can either go northwest, toward Cairo, or southeast, which is a short ride to the port. I’ve got the plate number of the vehicle. If you see it again, the software will recognize it faster than you can.”
“Northeast then. Rook, Queen, you take the portside. Bish and I will head toward Cairo. Knight, acquire transport and follow as you’re able.”
Knight frowned in irritation.
Cut loose without even a thank you. Oh well, it’s not like I do this for the glory.
He skidded to a stop and began scanning the street for an unsecured set of wheels — not a car, though. No way he could boost a car without getting noticed, caught and drawn and quartered. A motorcycle? That would have been nice, and a lot easier to steal, but there were none to be seen. A bicycle? A camel?
The answer screeched to a halt beside him. He turned slowly and saw a black and white Fiat sedan with a large metal frame mounted to its roof. The driver had stepped out from behind the wheel and was making an inviting gesture.
“Blue,” he muttered. “How do you say: ‘Yes, thank you, I would like a taxi,’ in Arabic?”
2
“I’ll drive!” Rook didn’t wait for Queen to protest, but dashed for the left-side door of the rented sedan, intent on taking the driver’s seat. She was fast, but he easily outpaced her, seizing the door handle like it was the brass ring on a merry-go-round.
Queen didn’t say a word. Rook thought that was a little odd since he’d been hoping for some spirited competition. She simply ran to the right-hand door, opened it and slid inside. Shaking his head, he opened his own door and dropped into the seat, one hand reaching for the keys and the other for the steering wheel. The engine roared to life and the car rabbited away from its parking slot, but Rook’s hands were still empty. Queen, seated behind the right-side steering wheel of the sedan, blew him a kiss.
“Damnit!” He punched a mostly playful fist into the dashboard. “Who puts a steering wheel on the right side?”
“You drove it here,” Queen retorted with a triumphant smile. “Blame your failing memory, not the car.”
Rook’s mouth worked as he groped for a suitable retort, but nothing came. Queen had that effect on him. She was as beautiful as she was tough, and not even the scar in the center of her forehead could diminish that. The star with a death’s head — the mark of the brutal Vietnamese People’s Liberation Army’s Death Volunteers — had been burned into her skin by a particularly sadistic Death Volunteer officer, during a mission to save the world from a pandemic virus. He had tortured her brutally before branding her, but in the end she had survived and he had not. She now wore the scar proudly, as a sign of her triumph. Rook found that strangely beautiful, too.
“Rook, if you keep your eyes on the road,” Deep Blue admonished, “instead of on Queen, you’ll double our chances of spotting the target vehicle.”
Rook straightened in his seat. “I really hate technology.”
“Now you sound like King,” Queen teased.
King’s voice immediately echoed through Rook’s head. “I heard that.”
Rook wisely kept his mouth shut and focused his attention on the mission. He understood the operational reasons for having a completely unrestricted flow of information between the team members and Deep Blue, but it would have been nice to exchange a little playful banter with his best-girl without being on public display. He couldn’t even look at her appreciatively without the others knowing. His thoughts were still safe, but it was probably only a matter of time before Deep Blue and the team’s resident techno-geek, Lewis Aleman, figured out how to wire the q-phones directly into their brains, and then nothing would be off limits.
Queen raced down the lightly-trafficked street, slowing only as they reached the intersection with the much busier 23 July Boulevard, named for the date in 1952 of the revolution that had ushered in Egyptian independence from Britain. She rode the brakes as the front end of the sedan poked out into the thoroughfare, but then she cranked the wheel to the right and punched the gas. They shot into traffic amid a squeal of tires and horn blasts.
There were faint flashes of light in the virtual environment, as their cameras scanned every single license plate on the road ahead of them. Rook squinted to get a zoom-view of the road, even though he wasn’t really sure what to look for. Knight had said it was a white Corolla, but that was about as helpful as saying water was wet. Every other car in the Middle East — including the rental he and Queen were now riding in — was a white Toyota Corolla.
“Technology,” he grumbled again. “It’s no substitute for—”
There was a flash in the display and a red icon appeared above a barely discernible white speck, far ahead of them and traveling in the same direction. Next to it was a readout of the distance to the target—0.56 miles, an exact GPS coordinate that kept changing and a compass azimuth of SE 148 degrees.
“Gotcha!” Queen said.
“Like I was saying,” Rook continued, barely missing a beat, “we’re becoming too reliant on these gizmos. We’ll lose our edge.”
Queen ignored him and poured on the speed, weaving through the mostly unregulated traffic and generally giving no indication that her edge had in any way been dulled.
“Roger,” King said. “We’re turning around, en route to your location. Don’t press too hard. If he gets an itchy trigger finger, we’re all toast.”