Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
She was home right now, and the blinds in the living room were open.
At ten thirty p.m. the balcony door to the corner suite of the hotel just across the street from Ortega was closed; it was icy cold and misty outside, but just inside the glass, four men sat, looking across the street.
Court Gentry and Chris Travers had binoculars on tripods, and they sat on dining chairs moved here from other portions of the suite.
Matt Hanley was deeper in the residence, looking across at Ortega’s unit with his naked eye, and Zack Hightower was all the way back by the kitchen, his own smaller set of binos in his hand, giving him some magnification, but not as much as the two guys seated closer to the balcony.
This was four people essentially doing the work of one, and a fifth person in the suite, Arnold Reyes, was resting on the king-sized bed in the bedroom, essentially accomplishing no work at all.
But the sixth person in the room was doing more than her fair share.
Jill Mori sat in front of four laptops splayed across a dining room table, monitoring cameras in the condo across the street; she wore a headset that picked up sounds inside the property and watched more images of CCTV in the building.
She had a view downstairs at street level through more cams she’d hacked into in the area, and she had an app open on her phone that fed her real-time local police radio transmissions.
Hanley had decided that there would be no attempt to make contact with Ortega, but instead the team would concentrate on looking out for any surveillance.
They knew she’d been followed today as she herself surveilled ODNI employee Lewis Shaw, so it was their intention first to find out who else was interested in Ortega.
Were these the good guys or the bad guys? Was Ortega herself one or the other?
So the six people stood, sat, or lay down in the hotel room, all the lights out so that they couldn’t be seen by anyone.
They tracked her through the evening, in her living room, her kitchen, and her dining room.
She’d spent the time on a laptop set up at her kitchen bar, she’d ordered DoorDash around eight p.m., and then she’d opened a bottle of red wine and drank a glass while eating ramen.
At one point—Jill marked the time at nine fifty-five—she actually stepped out on her balcony with a glass of wine and looked down through the cold mist at the street.
Her eyes rose slowly, and then she looked across the cold street at the hotel, and Court felt her eyes right on him, though he knew she couldn’t see through the glass into the darkened suite.
She went back inside, sat down on her sofa, and turned on her TV, then immediately focused her attention on her phone, and soon after this Hanley pulled his own phone out of his pocket.
“I’ll check in with Lacy, see if Pace has learned anything since this afternoon.” He stepped out into the hallway of the hotel to take the call, leaving the others to work inside or to continue the vigil.
He’d only been gone a few seconds when Gumdrop spoke up from her bank of laptops. “We’ve got a vehicle parking on the west side.”
There was constant traffic on the streets below, but a car parking on the street next to the target location was definitely worthy of note.
Court rose, moved into the darkened bedroom, and set his tripod up there. Looking down through a window, he called out to the room. “Yep. I’m clocking it. Dark gray four-door Audi.”
“Nobody’s getting out,” Jill said.
“Is the engine on or off?” Hightower asked from the kitchen.
Court couldn’t tell from his vantage point, but Jill said, “Appears to be off. No lights, no vapor from the tailpipe.”
Court said, “I can see the car where it’s parked, but I’d have to go out on the balcony to get a good view of the street. Gumdrop, just keep an eye on it, let me know if anyone climbs out. I’m going to stay in here but watch the street and sidewalks to the west.”
Jill did not respond at first, and Court was about to call out again to her from the next room to make sure she heard him, but then she spoke up. “Hey, guys…I’m monitoring local law enforcement channels. There’s an urgent BOLO in the District on a black motorcycle with a male driver.”
Hightower had stepped over behind Jill to take a look at her screens. “Why?”
“D.C. Metro PD has been notified by Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office that there’s been a double homicide in Tysons Corner.”
All heads turned to her.
“Male and female victim in a car stopped at a red light. A lone person on a motorcycle. Witness said they thought it to be a male, but they couldn’t make out a face.
A pistol with a suppressor. Did it right in the middle of a busy intersection, less than a quarter mile from CIA headquarters.
There was no tag on the bike, the shooter got away. ”
Tysons Corner was in Virginia, just across the Potomac and several miles to the west of them. It wasn’t part of D.C., but it was no surprise to anyone in the room that D.C. police would be informed to be on the lookout for the shooter just over the river.
The door to the suite opened back up and Hanley returned. Standing there in the dark and speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear, he said, “Two CIA counterintel officers were gunned down thirty minutes ago in Tysons Corner. Husband and wife. No robbery. Lone assassin on a motorcycle.”
“Jesus,” Court muttered.
Just then, Travers changed the subject, “Gumdrop, anybody get out of that vic on L Street yet?”
“Negative. Can’t see inside, but no one has stepped out.”
“Well…I’ve got another vehicle stopped, this one on New Hampshire. I watched it pull up a half block from the Savoy a couple minutes ago, about a block northeast of the Carriage House. It’s just sitting there.”
Immediately Jill said, “I see it. Black SUV. Could be a Ford Expedition. Can’t pick up a tag from my view.”
“Me, either,” Travers said.
After a moment’s silence, Hightower said, “Is it starting to feel like our subject is slowly being surrounded?”
Travers said, “These could be interdiction and isolation elements.”
Jill looked up from her computers; in the darkness her brown eyes sparkled wide. “What is that?”
Hightower answered. “Teams brought in to keep the target from getting out, and to keep anyone not wanted at the location from going in. I-and-I elements come first, then comes the strike team.” He spoke to Court in the other room. “What do you think, Six?”
“Too early to tell, but not too early to prepare.”
“What do you want to do?” Hanley asked.
“I can go solo down to street level. Nobody’s going to notice me.”
Hanley thought a moment. Then he said, “Stand by for now.”
A moment’s pause, just long enough for Court to convey that he did not agree with his orders. “Roger.”
Hanley’s phone buzzed in his pocket again, and he snatched it up, then tapped a button.
“Lacy, you’re on speaker.”
The female CIA officer said, “There’s been a killing down in Miami, had to have been within about ten minutes of the ones in Tysons.
A former FBI supervisory special agent, he was downsized last year, has been working for Gauntlet Group for the past few months.
Shot dead getting gas at a convenience store in Coconut Grove. ”
“How do you know about this so fast?” Jill asked.
“Who’s speaking?” Lacy asked, defensively.
Hanley answered. “That’s Gumdrop. Ghost Town’s OSINT analyst. She’s one of us.”
After a moment of silence on the line, Lacy said, “FBI sends out Agency-wide alerts any time something like this happens to one of their own. The Director of National Intelligence office picked it up and sent out a text to the entire IC.”
“Any connection to our subject here in Foggy Bottom?” Hanley asked.
“Jim Pace is looking into that, but so far we have no reason to suspect a connection to the CIA officers killed in Virginia. I did want to alert you as soon as—”
“To hell with that,” Hanley said. “They’re related somehow. We ran into Gauntlet security men today.” To Jill, he said, “What’s the status of the two vehicles downstairs?”
“Unchanged. Still stationary, one on the southwest side of the Carriage House condos, the other on the northeast side.”
Hanley relayed to Lacy what was going on here in D.C., and while doing so he moved to the balcony glass door, and he looked down at the vehicles, then out, across L Street, towards Irene Ortega, the lights from her TV flashing across her as she sat on her couch looking at her phone.
Lacy said, “Are you starting to think Ortega might be a target?”
“It’s leaning in that direction,” Hanley said. “I’ll call you back if anything happens.”
“Boss?” Court said again from the bedroom as Hanley hung up. “Might not have time to react if something goes down fast.” He was, once again, asking permission to leave the suite and get downstairs in case everything turned to shit.
Hanley ignored him. He said, “Gumdrop? You picking up any phone conversations?”
Gumdrop said, “She’s not talking on the phone, and not texting using her cell provider or Wi-Fi. Must be texting on Signal or some other encrypted app. I can’t pick that up. Her TV is muted; I’m not hearing any noises inside her apartment.”
Hanley nodded to himself, then said, “Six?”
Court called from the other room. “Yeah, Matt?”
“I want you and Teddy down at street level. Get me a tag number off one of those vics. Be ready to act if someone tries to move on Ortega.”
In the bedroom, Court turned to Arnold, who was now sitting up on the bed.
“Take over here. Watch that gray Audi parked on the corner. Keep an eye on the street around it. If any more vehicles stop in the area, let us know.” He moved quickly in the darkness back into the living room.
Travers was already up and moving, pulling on a heavy canvas coat and reaching for a neck gaiter and a ball cap he had lying nearby.
Court said, “Chris…I’ll dress as a telecom repairman again, just in case I have to go into the building and scoop Ortega. ”