With a satisfied smirk, Griffin lit up the interior with his flashlight. The space was filled side to side by a black nylon bag. He carefully removed it, and looked into the trap again. Held in place by metal clips attached to the wall were a Walther PPX pistol, three preloaded magazines, and a suppressor.
Griffin reached into the compartment and searched around. There were no more loose items inside, but he did find two dome-shaped, incendiary devices fixed to the bottom, each one more than enough to destroy what had been in the trap.
Overkill. Which meant the owner had really wanted to make sure the black bag’s contents didn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Oops.
Griffin unzipped the bag.
Not surprisingly, it was a standard dump-and-run kit: an envelope full of cash — about five grand, a change of clothes, and two passports, US and Canadian. The names were different, but the pictures were the same.
The driver, no doubt.
“Hello there,” Griffin said.
He pulled out his phone and took a picture of one of the passport photos. He then opened his e-mail, but before he could create a new message, he saw two e-mails waiting for him. One was from Morten, anxious for a progress report. The other was from Dima — no message, only three attached files.
Griffin opened them. The first was a picture of the woman. The second of the Asian man who had been in the car with her. And the third was the same man pictured in the passport.
Perfect.
Griffin opened a new e-mail, attached the photos from Dima and the one he’d taken, then wrote:
Identify. You have one hour.
Griffin
He addressed it to the best researcher he knew, a man who, like Dima, Griffin controlled. In this case, it wasn’t from knowledge of past criminal activities or some deviant sexual behavior, but merely by fear of Griffin himself.
Once the message was sent, he confiscated the Walther, its mags and suppressor, put them all in the black bag, closed the trap, and shut the trunk.
His work at the yard was done.
CHAPTER 22
An icon flashed in the corner of the Mole’s monitor, letting him know a new e-mail had arrived. At the moment, though, he was busy trying to coordinate his online team as they attempted to clear another street of the alien soldiers trying to invade Earth.
“Red Dog, what the hell are you doing?” he said into his headset microphone. “I said left side, dipshit. You’re with Monty, not Jasmine.”
“Why do I always get stuck with Monty?” Red Dog whined.
“What’s wrong with me?” Monty asked, his voice deep and booming. It wasn’t his actual voice, the Mole knew. The guy was a squirrelly, twenty-five-year-old grad student in the UK who’d purchased a vocal synthesizer. He’d be surprised that the Mole knew this, but then again, the Mole knew everything about his entire team.
The Mole was an info guy, a researcher, so looking into the people he gamed with was not something he even thought twice about. For instance, while Jasmine was a female, she wasn’t the kickass twentysomething she pretended to be online. Instead she was a sixteen-year-old honor student going through what he considered a prolonged awkward phase. Not that he was one to talk.
“I’ve got movement! I’ve got movement!” Ivan yelled.
The Mole, as team leader, had the ability to observe what each of his team was seeing. He switched to Ivan’s view. “Dammit! Everybody, left, left! Behind the building. There’s a whole squad of Jellys heading our way.”
The team scrambled down the street, but it was already too late. The Jellys — nicknamed for the way their guts poured out when shot — had seen them and opened fire. Warning lights started popping up on the Mole’s screen as members of his team were hit.
“What’s wrong with you people?” the Mole yelled.
“They came out of nowhere!”
“That wasn’t my side to watch!”
“Ah, crap!”
“I don’t think this is realistic! They wouldn’t have just shown up like—” The game cut off Monty’s voice the moment a Jelly’s plasma ray ripped through his combat suit. Once killed, a player was dead until the end of the battle.
The Mole looked around. Only two others had made it to the safety of the building with him, and one of them was badly hurt. The Mole had played the game so many times, he knew it was impossible for his team to finish this level with so few members.
Five minutes later, he was proven correct as his screen flashed white and his voice was cut off. Since he’d been the last man standing, there hadn’t been anyone to talk to anyway.
With the whole team dead, the game reset, putting everyone back in the ready room and reactivating communications.
“Well, that sucked,” Red Dog said.
“Way to state the obvious, asshole,” Jasmine shot back.
There were a few other choice comments before Monty said, “So are we going again, or what?”
The e-mail icon on the Mole’s computer was still flashing. He frowned, wanting to keep playing, but he did have a business to run.
“Five-minute bathroom break,” he said. “Then we go.”
He pushed his headset down around his neck, minimized the game, and brought up his inbox. It contained several unread messages. Two were notifications from his bank about payments he’d received — nice! One was an auto-generated message, from a bot he’d sent out to dig through some secured servers in Texas for some information a client wanted. The rest appeared to be requests for his services. He was always ambivalent about new work. While he usually enjoyed the process, the people asking for his help were, more times than not, pains in the ass.
He checked through the requests to make sure nothing was pressing, and made it three quarters of the way through before a sender’s address caused him to stop.
Griffin.
Shit.
The Mole could go for months without thinking about that asshole. Months when he could just do his thing, and not worry that he’d find Griffin sitting in his room with a big knife in his hand, ready to slice the Mole’s throat from ear to ear.
But not only did Griffin know where he lived, he also knew the Mole’s real name. None of the Mole’s other clients had any idea. Well, Orlando did, but she was a friend, probably the only true one the Mole had, and she’d never used her knowledge against him.
Griffin, on the other hand, was all about using what he knew.
A sound of scratchy voices coming out of his headset broke the Mole’s trance. He pulled it back on.
“—keeping time?” Ivan said.
“Come on. Let’s go. We’re losing daylight.” This came from Red Dog.
“Change of plans,” the Mole said. “You’ll have to go on without me.”
“What are you talking about?” Jasmine asked. “I thought we all cleared our schedules.”
“Yeah, well, mine just got busy.”
“Serious, man?” Ivan said. “You’re going to screw us up.”
“Red Dog can step up to team leader,” the Mole said.
“Uh, sure. I can do that,” Red Dog responded.
Of course he could, the Mole thought. Red Dog had been dying to lead a mission ever since they all teamed up. Well, here was his chance. “Try to stay alive,” the Mole said.
He quit the game, and set his headset next to the vocal modulator box he plugged into anytime he talked to a client. It was light years better than the one Monty used, and gave the Mole’s voice a deep, haunting monotone that he augmented with a slow, uneven speech pattern. No need to use the unit at the moment, though. He didn’t want to talk to Griffin until he had the information the man requested. Besides, Griffin knew what his voice sounded like.