“Lear, are you tracking the van?”
Lear just snorts. “Not my first day on the job, boss.” His fingers fly, tap.
“It’s inside the warehouse now,” Colin says. “Moving through it, looks like. Exiting the other side—left turn. About to lose visual.”
“Got it. Northbound.” A pause. “Heading for the tunnel.”
“The tunnel? To Manhattan? What sense does that make?” Harris asks; it’s rhetorical.
“Dunno, but—yeah, they’re in the tunnel. Thermal imaging lost. Tracker is online.” A pause. “Shit. They’ve stopped.”
“In the tunnel?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Lear mutters. “What are you fuckers up to?” He brings up a different view, this a satellite view of the tunnel exit in Manhattan, and another of the exit in Queens. “Looks like all traffic has stopped. Accident maybe. Don’t have a scanner queued up or I’d know.”
Abruptly, the red dot vanishes.
My heart stops. “What—what happened? Where’d he go?”
“Shit. Fuck, shit, fuck.” Lear taps the keyboard a few times, more in frustration than an attempt to do anything. “They wiped it.”
“They wipedit, though, not him?” I ask, swallowing hard.
“Yeah, if it was him, his biometrics would have reflected that—dropping heart rate, body temp. They scanned him and wiped it.” He looks at me, his pale eyes apologetic. “We knew it was a risk, honey. But don’t worry, we’ll find him.”
“Colin, head for the tunnel,” Harris commands. Find out what’s going on in there.”
“Copy, sir. Heading for the tunnel.”
A few minutes later, we hear the buzzsaw of a dirt bike motor zipping past us. Lear is intently watching the screens—traffic into and out of the tunnel is still at a standstill. Not an unremarkable occurrence, all things considered.
More minutes of waiting, of nothing at all. Then Colin’s voice. “Eastbound traffic is stopped for…looks like construction? Stand by.” We can still hear him, though, his mic still keyed. “Suspicious. They’ve got the high-vis vests and helmets, pylons, and barricades around a spot in the road, but from what I can tell, they’re not actually doing anything. This is a setup, if you ask me. A delay, so they can—” he stops, interrupts himself. “They’re moving things out of the way. Yeah, shit, confirmed, I can see an earpiece in the one guy’s ear. I’m behind the van a few cars…shit, the fake construction guys are looking right at me.”
“Hold your position, Colin,” Harris says, his voice calm. “Do anything abrupt and you’ll confirm their suspicions. Right now, you’re just a guy on a motorcycle.”
“They’re strapped, boss,” Colin says, his voice rising. “One’s got an HK.”
“Hold position, Colin,” Harris says. “Do nothing.Nothing.”
“A Range Rover just pulled up next to the van. Now the guys are milling around, obscuring things. Lots of movement, at least half a dozen fake construction dudes. Someone’s getting out of the van—the scarred guy from the warehouse. Something’s up, boss. He’s getting into the Range Rover…the fake road work is cleared up, traffic is moving. The van is moving, too. Range Rover is gone.”
“Stay with the van,” Harris says.
“Copy.” A silence, then, nerve-wracking. Many long minutes later, his voice comes up again. “They’re pulling into a paid parking lot…hold on, gotta pull over.” Another pause. “They’re leaving the van—I count three. Flagging a cab. Stay with the van or stay with the people?”
“Van.” A pause. “Wait. Three?”
Lear rubs his forehead. “I think we’ve been tricked, boss. Driver, Apollo, and four guards—should be six bodies total. Only Djakovic got out in the tunnel, and then somehow only three got out of the van.”
“They got a cab and they’re gone. Approaching the van.” Muffled sounds, from Colin’s end of the connection. “I got no fuckin’ clue what happened, boss. This van is empty. Looks…I dunno, normal.”
“Check for fake floors or something.”
“Nothing. Doors, floors, windows, all normal. It’s just a van. But where’d Apollo go? Where’d the other two dudes go?”
My hands press against my mouth. I’m shaking. “Where is he, Uncle Harry?”
No answer. Or not to me, at any rate. “Shit.” Harris rubs his face with both hands. “The Range Rover. Or the tunnel. One of the two.” He frowns, leans over Lear again. “Wait. Check the warehouse with thermal imaging.”
