Cold Hit

Chapter 39

You guys were supposed to be running a low-profile no-see-um ground op, but less than ten hours after you leave this office, half a dozen feds chase ya into the police garage." Tony was a red-faced, five-anda-half-foot blood pressure problem, standing in the center of his office with his feet spread, glaring at Rowdy and Snitch, Cubio and me.

"Don't you get it?" Tony continued. "If the humps down at Homeland decide to make all of you disappear, I can't do shit. It's worse than just them catching you out there disobeying Virtue's direct orders, they also probably know exactly how you're doing it."

"How?" I asked. "All we did was go to a Lakers game and to a Russian restaurant."

He crossed to his desk, retrieved a small box, and emptied it onto his blotter. Ten or twelve miniaturized bugs, none of them any bigger than the transmitter we pulled off the Fairlane spilled out onto his desktop.

"So far this is what Sam Oxman in Computer Services found in our phones and ceiling fixtures. We also turned up scans on half a dozen computers, including Alexa's and the main databank at CTB. So far, thank God, we haven't found anything in the ME's office."

"Keep looking," I said. "There has to be something down there."

"We're still on it, but after finding this stuff, I also notified the DA and the Superior Court. If somebody wants info on our activities this bad, it could also extend to other branches of municipal law enforcement, like prosecutors and judges."

I glanced around the office with concern and Tony waved my look off.

"This room is clean now," he said. "We went through it twice. Found four transmitters on this floor alone. Somebody in our own house must be planting these things, 'cause security's too tight for anybody else to get in here and do it. I'm gonna give everybody in ESD a close look and a lie-detector test." He grabbed up a couple of the bugs from the blotter and held them up. "Some of this stuff is so new we've never seen anything like it before. We had to use a microwave zap to shut the damn things off. They've got batteries the size of a pinhead, and they're sound activated. They run on such low power that our ESD analyst said they could have up to a twenty-year life."

"If ya let hornets nest in yer outhouse, it's hard t'get pissed when they buzz down and sting yer ass," Emdee contributed wisely. Tony groaned at the analogy.

"Do you think these came from Americypher Technologies?" I said, looking at Emdee and Roger. Each picked up a bug and studied it. It was hard to tell because none of them had brand markings. Finally, Broadway shrugged.

"Okay, we're running completely without cover now," Tony said. "I expect to hear from Robert Virtue any minute. He's bound t' sic his bunch of crewcuts on us. He's also probably gonna demand I hand the three of you over for obstructing justice-failing to obey a direct order from Homeland. Depending on what's going on, they might even be able to gin that up into a threat against national security."

Tony picked up the transmitters and put them back in the box. "The FISA court doesn't have to divulge its reasons for approving wire taps or arrest warrants. They can bust you and hold you without ever saying why. We can't beat these guys. Once you go into the system, you could be reclassified as enemy combatants or people of interest-whatever they need to put you on ice till this is over."

The room got very quiet.