Vengeance

61 MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

Seated beside Khalila on the main floor of the National Counterterrorism Center, surrounded by sixty other men and women focused on their computer displays, Jake Harrison leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. It had been a fruitless two days as he and Khalila looked for clues to Mixell’s whereabouts, scouring law enforcement reports and databases. It was obvious that Mixell was planning something major, with the target likely in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., area, but thus far the man had remained a ghost.

Mixell’s updated appearance had been fed to the automated surveillance databases, but personnel resources assigned to tracking him down remained scarce because the issue still hadn’t been designated a National Special Security Event by the Department of Homeland Security. They hadn’t yet determined what Mixell’s target was nor the timing of the attack. As a result, only a handful of NCTC analysts had been assigned to assist Harrison and Khalila.

Khalila noticed Harrison taking a break, leaning back in his chair. “Want another cup of coffee?” she asked.

It was only 8 a.m., but they had already been at it for two hours. After Craig Daniels had helped generate the sketch of Mixell’s updated appearance, Harrison and Khalila had redoubled their efforts to track him down, working nonstop the last few days aside from six hours of sleep each night.

“Yeah, I could use more coffee,” Harrison answered.

“Great,” Khalila said. “While you’re at it, get me another cup, too.”

She gave him a deadpan stare, having turned what had seemed to be an offer to get him a cup of coffee into Harrison getting one for her. Then she broke into a grin.

“Just kidding,” she said as she stood, placing a hand on Harrison’s shoulder as she passed behind him, headed toward the coffee station at the back of the main floor.

Harrison’s eyes followed her, his thoughts flitting back to the night they had spent together in Bahrain. Since then, her demeanor had softened considerably, and a subtle, dry sense of humor had surfaced. True to her word, she had displayed no further interest in a romantic relationship with him, which suited Harrison. He still felt guilty about what happened, ending up in another woman’s arms so soon after Angie’s death.

His computer monitor began flashing, drawing his attention to the display. Facial recognition algorithms had identified a match in one of the secondary surveillance systems. In addition to federal and state camera networks, the NCTC had access to thousands of private security surveillance systems, subject to each company’s agreement to participate in the government program.

A visual match for Mixell had been identified on a surveillance system installed at a Giant Food store, the largest grocery chain in Maryland. As Harrison studied the video frame supposedly capturing Mixell’s image, Khalila returned with coffee, handing him a cup.

The image was somewhat grainy, but Harrison was convinced it was Mixell.

“What do you think?” he said, turning to Khalila.

Before she could respond, Harrison’s display filled with three more alerts, also from the Giant Food surveillance system. Mixell had been spotted three more times.

“It’s him,” Khalila concluded.

Harrison scanned the surveillance photo details, searching for the location of the Giant Food store. However, each surveillance photo had come from a different store. That made sense, Harrison figured. Mixell was altering his routine, not shopping at the same place each time. But then he noticed an oddity. The surveillance cameras had detected Mixell at four different grocery stores on the same day.

He pointed to the dates. “Is this correct?” he asked Khalila. “Are these when he was spotted on the cameras, or the processing date? It doesn’t make sense that he’d visit four different grocery stores on the same day.”

“I don’t know. It could be dependent on the surveillance system.”

Khalila picked up the phone and contacted the supervisor overseeing their section of analysts. Jessica Del Rio descended from her second floor office overlooking the main floor, stopping behind Harrison and Khalila.

After Harrison posed his question, Jessica replied, “All surveillance systems are designed to input the capture date, not a processing or delivery date to us. This means Mixell visited four different stores on the same day. I admit it seems odd, but let’s put that aside for the moment and focus on finding him. Do you know how to identify the store locations?”

Harrison nodded, then dragged the address of each store onto a locator app, and a map appeared on his display showing the location of each Giant Food store. All were located in Eastern Maryland between Washington, D.C., and the Chesapeake Bay, within a ten-by-ten-mile area.

“A hundred square miles,” Khalila muttered.

“It’s a start,” Jessica replied, “and we can narrow his location substantially if we can get a license plate number.”

She assigned four analysts to assist, one to each Giant Food store, and they downloaded video from every camera at the stores during Mixell’s visits. Harrison waited tensely as each analyst viewed multiple video streams simultaneously.

“Got it,” one of the analysts reported.

Harrison and Khalila gathered around his computer monitor, which displayed video from a parking lot surveillance camera, showing Mixell placing his groceries in a green Jeep Grand Cherokee. The analyst zoomed in on the license plate and froze the video. After clicking on the image, the details appeared in a text box nearby.

“It’s a rental,” the analyst announced, “to a John Fonda. The vehicle was rented from Dulles Airport a few weeks ago, with a home address in California.”

“Pull up all hits after the rental date,” Jessica ordered. The analyst complied, and a map appeared on his display, populated with dozens of drop-pins. Jessica explained, “These are license plate detections from speed and traffic light cameras.”

The bulk of the drop-pins were clustered in the city of Woodmore at two intersections along Enterprise Road: Lottsford Road and Central Avenue. Along the 1.5-mile stretch of Enterprise Road between those intersections were nine entrances into housing developments plus several small farms.

“I’ll coordinate with law enforcement and have checkpoints established at both intersections,” Jessica said. “We can then conduct a door-to-door search.”