OUTCAST Ops: The Poseidon Initiative

TWENTY-SEVEN

When tailing a target who has already seen you, it is imperative to alter their perception of you before continuing. To this end, Shah ditched his jacket and briefcase (removing his Spydeco folding knife first and transferring it to a pants pocket). He also donned a pair of dark sunglasses and a baseball cap that had been in the case.

Following Dante, Naomi, Jasmijn and their Hofstad escorts across the campus was child’s play for Shah. Lots of foot traffic out here, plenty of criss-crossing foothpaths winding this way and that, trees and shrubbery, campus maps on kiosks. He easily kept them in sight while staying far behind until they reached a parking lot and made for a blue van. That was when Shah realized he could be about to lose control of the situation very quickly.

His own vehicle was parked on a different lot all the way across campus. He could try to run to it and then catch up with the van, which he now noted sported the university logo. Hofstad must have taken it from one of the guards they killed. Or, he could approach within earshot and try to overhear a clue as to where they were going.

Another split second decision to make in the field. He’d been confronted with lots of them over the course of his career, and he never second guessed them, even when they turned out to be dead wrong, literally in some cases. In this line of work, inaction was often worse than a wrong decision. If he were to do nothing for the next thirty seconds, that blue van would be out of sight, and along with it his colleagues’ only hope for external support.

The neurons in his brain fired and he took off walking — not running, although he wanted to — toward the van. Just a guy walking across the parking lot. There were lots of vehicles here, not just the van, and there was no reason for anyone to suspect that something was wrong here. He only wanted to get to his car after a long day in the academic trenches, that’s all. But to get to it he’d pass right between the van and the black pickup truck parked next to it.

As he approached, he turned his head toward the left as though he were looking in that direction, but beneath his glasses his eyes shifted right. He caught the outline of a pistol barrel pressed against the pocket of one of the “security” personnel’s jackets. It was pointed first at Dante as he was ushered into one of the van’s rear seats, and then Jasmijn.

As Naomi stepped up to the van, she tripped — or appeared to, reaching down to adjust her shoe. Now passing the van, Shah heard the guy with the concealed gun utter something to Nay that meant, hurry it up, get in.

As she stood, she glanced left and looked right at Shah, who continued to watch her only out of his peripheral vision to avoid being seen making eye contact. Then she turned away from him and stepped up to the van. As she climbed in, she said something loud enough for Shah to hear as he passed between the van and the pickup.

“Will our boat be waiting for us at the wharf?”

Attagirl, Shah thought. Excellent work. All he had to do now was continue to walk slowly through the lot until they left in the van, and then he could retrieve his own vehicle and go to the wharf. At least he had an idea of where they were heading. If he was lucky he’d even be able to tail them on the way over there.

But as he pretended to make a beeline for a car that wasn’t his, Shah’s inner voice nagged at him.

Why were they being taken to the wharf? He shook off mental images of his team being tied to cinderblocks and pushed into the water.

He stopped at the driver side door of a metallic brown sedan and pretended to fumble around for his keys while the van rolled past toward the exit. If they did cast any kind of suspicion on him, with any luck they’d now be watching for a tail to come in the form of a sparkly brown four-door sedan. Once the van had left the lot Shah waited for thirsty seconds to make sure it wasn’t a ruse, that they would turn back in and spot him walking away from the brown car. But as he counted down…two Mississippi…one Mississippi…no van re-entered the lot.

Shah took off at a trot across the park-like environment toward his rental vehicle. Four minutes later he reached it, a subcompact SUV in white, the color chosen deliberately because it was the most common car color.

He drove slowly, within the posted limits until he had left campus property. There was no time to get pulled over now, and he could not afford to be chased when he needed to chase someone else. He took advantage of the slow speed to initialize his GPS and set up a route to the wharf. As soon as he reached a public surface street, however, he gunned the little vehicle until he was doing seven km/h over the speed limit.

Traffic was moderate, and Shah stuck to the fast lane when he had a choice. There was no highway to take to the wharf, so he followed the route the computer had plotted as being the most direct. It put the drive time at twenty-five minutes, and after about half that, the OUTCAST operator felt that familiar rush of sighting his target again after becoming separated.

Don’t count your chickens — make sure, he told himself as he jockeyed for position around a pair of slow-moving work trucks. When he passed them he got a better look at the blue van. Same university logo.

Bingo!

He was back in visual contact.

Not too close.

Shah flashed back to his earlier days in the field when he was a true wheel artist, in command of vehicles designed for tactical use. These included headlights that could be individually controlled, blinking one out after a time to make it look as though a different car was there, brake lights that could be disabled with the flick of a switch, stall switches to simulate a vehicle breakdown in case he should reach a cheating command of the target and need to let them pass before starting up again as a “different” working car. Heavy-duty suspension, bumpers, batteries — various other modifications to increase the staying power during long follows.

But he had none of those advantages now, just a stock rental car by himself, no additional agents forming a box around the target. Still, he was highly trained to adapt to fluid situations and make do with what he had. Shah stayed four cars behind the van, one eye on the road and the other on his GPS. He was approaching what the map said was the exit for the wharf. Would the van take it?

He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the right turn signal start blinking on the van.

Shah waited in his lane until the last possible moment to exit, allowing two cars between him and the van. He watched the van take the expected turn according to the GPS if they were headed to the wharf. Again Naomi’s words haunted him.

Will our boat be waiting for us at the wharf?

He wasn’t sure how he was going to deal with the boat. If it was a ferry with a lot of passengers he might be able to board it and mingle. But if it was a small boat…

He forced his mind to stay on task with his follow. If he lost them now it could all be a moot point. They wound through a semi-treed area with some open grassland on either side of the road until the ocean was visible in the distance, a spate of buildings partially blocking the views.

Some drivers had their headlights on for safety although it was daytime, and Shah flipped his on, knowing it would change the appearance of his vehicle in rear view mirrors. He hung back three cars, doing the posted speed limit. He kept watch on the van’s windows for any signs of struggle coming from within — what if Nay and Dante were desperate and tried to fight their way out? — but he saw none.

The female British accent of his GPS unit announced that he should make a right turn ahead.

The van made the turn. Shah hung back, well aware that turning after a target vehicle brought high risk of detection. He checked the GPS map and saw that another road up ahead intersected with the one the van turned onto in about a mile. He decided it was worth the risk and passed the turn, then sped to the next right. He took it and cruised a little over the speed limit until he reached the road leading to the wharf. He stopped at an intersection, farm properties on both sides of the road. He waited to make sure he hadn’t somehow come out ahead of the van, and then turned left onto the road.

Another mile ahead he caught up with the van. Beyond it he saw shimmering water, fishing boats in their slips.

Where were they going? He couldn’t follow the van too much longer without being an obvious tail. After one more block Shah turned off onto a side street and parked. He observed the van from inside his vehicle until he was sure it was parking in the wharf lot. Then he exited and started to toward the wharf on foot.

He approached from a block over, walking at a normal pace. Small clapboard houses lined the street. At the waterfront there was a mild cluster of activity — fishermen unloading the day’s catch, a row of shops and pubs, some industrial activity — loading and unloading of large containers. The tang of salt air filled his nostrils while the call of gulls assailed his ears. Shah turned to his left and saw that one of the two pubs had an outdoor seating area with a few old salts out there smoking pipes and playing cards at a small table. He ambled up to the place and swung open the wooden gate that led to the patio. He took a seat at a small table by himself, behind the men playing cards so that they shielded him somewhat from the van’s view.

He observed two Hofstad men exit the van. One walked out along one of the wooden docks while the other proceeded to a storefront along the wharf, maybe six down from the pub where Shah sat. Everyone else remained inside the van.

Shah watched as the man on the dock reached a power boat he judged to be about twenty-five feet in length, with twin 250 horsepower outboard motors. The man ducked into the boat’s cabin for a few seconds, then emerged and started the engines. Meanwhile, the other terrorist had entered a scuba diving shop.

A waitress emerged and asked Shah if she could get him anything. He ordered a pint of La Trappe beer without taking his eyes off the van. The server left and then the door to the van slid open. He watched as Naomi, Jasmijn and Dante piled out, surrounded closely by the other three Hofstad men. Shah noticed that they no longer wore the security guard outfits, but had donned commercial fishing gear — rubber aprons with hip boots and knitted caps.

Shah chugged half his beer in one gulp and left a bill to cover it on the table. No sooner had he set down his glass than the Hofstad agent emerged from the dive shop wheeling a cart full of scuba gear, headed for the boat at the dock.

Shah eyed the vessel again. The operative there was untying lines, preparing for departure. The boat was much too small for him to have any hopes of boarding undetected. He wished he knew the purpose of this trip. What were they scuba diving for? He looked around the wharf. He could wait here until they returned.

But what if only the Hofstad members came back?

Then he saw an old man of the sea type step off a fishing boat that was smaller than the one Hofstad was using. Shah a glanced over to the dock, where Jasmijn, Dante and Naomi were now walking the plank, it appeared to Shah, out along the dock out to the boat, with Hofstad men in front of and behind them. He got up and left the pub through the front gate.

He forced himself to walk at a normal pace to the old man with the boat, his wallet in hand.