“So what do we do? Got a trick for that?” asks Shannon.

Another thunderclap booms in the distance. “Yes. I think so. If he has this place under surveillance he’s probably using an Internet connection. If we cut power to the whole block when there’s another lighting strike, it’ll shut that off.”

“Then what? I’m sure he has a backup plan,” Shannon points out. “This guy is clever. Real clever.”

Shannon is right. Cutting the power won’t be enough. I’m sure the Warlock had thought about the possibility of this place being discovered. Who knows what kind of booby traps he could have set up here. If he has something to hide, he might want to take the whole place out. We saw what he did to the body in the cemetery.

“Hold on,” I say. “Maybe we need to get some of our own geniuses on this.”

I call up Ailes for the thousandth time and explain the situation. We go over a few scenarios and decide that the Warlock would probably not have a bomb connected to a motion sensor, but that he would use a motion-sensitive camera to tell him if someone was on the premises. He could watch the feed on his phone anywhere in the world and react if necessary. If he sees some homeless man digging through the yard for scrap metal, he isn’t likely to set off a ton of C4 explosive. If half a dozen FBI agents come marching in through the front gate, that is a different matter.

“Gerald and Jennifer are doing a search of IP traffic in that area. We’re going to search for satellite signals too. Do us a favor and set up a laptop with a wi-fi card near the gate as well. We’ll give you some software to install.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER Ailes calls back. His team has got a map of all the Internet connections in the area. The FBI field office has a cellular sniffer to use as well, so we can monitor any signals sent over EDGE, 3G, 4G and LTE.

Using a periscope, a tactical unit spots three video cameras on the building. Two of them are aimed at the front gate. We can’t find one on the street, so that’s some relief. He’d probably get too many false positives out here every time a car drove by.

“I think we got it, Blackwood,” Ailes says. “We found three computers on the network. One is controlling the cameras and motion sensors. The second seems to just be sitting there as a backup.”

“What about the third?” I ask.

“We’re working on it. We’re doing a port scan. It seems to be plugged into several control circuits. Not cameras or other sensors. The kind of thing that would turn on your sprinklers at home.”

“A fire suppression system?”

“We don’t know. We can temporarily block outbound signals to all of them and interrupt the feed. But I can’t shut it down for good.”