“Other than that, I have a multiband antenna on one of our vehicles on Glover Street, plus one on each adjacent street—attached as high up in the trees as we could manage. They have a very limited power supply. Our Russian friends have mainly used encrypted push-to-talk satellite communications. We should be able to map them out as they move into position.”

He handed Graves one of the laptops on the seat between them and took the other for himself.

“There’s no difference between either of these laptops, for redundancy reasons,” he said, flipping the screen up. “I figured I’d analyze the frequencies and sensors, while you maintained the bigger picture and communicated with the teams?”

“Sounds like a plan. Same comms arrangement?” asked Graves.

Gupta reached behind the seat and retrieved a headphone set attached to a heavy-duty-looking coiled cord. He handed them over to Graves.

“Same. Same,” said Gupta. “Right ear is the primary communications channel. We’re using one channel. Left ear is whatever you want. I currently have it tuned to the local police frequency. You can change it through the computer interface. If for some reason we need to leave the vehicle, there’s a handheld radio preset with the same frequencies and an earbud headset in the seat pocket directly in front of you.”

Graves didn’t like the sound of that at all, but it came with the job, along with a wide variety of other possible unpleasantries—like getting shot in the leg and walking with a slight limp for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, things like that didn’t go away like tensed shoulders. He knew that from experience, which led to his next question.

“What’s our security situation?”

“Rich and Scott will be across the street until the extraction,” said Gupta. “Other than that, there’s a loaded Sig Sauer compact pistol with two spare magazines in each door pocket.”

“Wonderful,” said Graves.

“Back into the frying pan, man,” said Gupta. “Just like old times.”

“It wasn’t that long ago,” said Graves, suddenly remembering just how much he didn’t miss this.

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 26

Devin Gray drove up and down the streets east of the town house for close to twenty minutes before a parking space opened on South Belmore Avenue. He spent the next few minutes trying to squeeze his car into the opening left by a Prius. The end result wasn’t pretty—the back end of his car protruded about a foot into the street—but it would have to do. Berg’s people were anxious to offload their gear and get started. From what he had gathered, most of them would remain at the town house overnight, while the team leaders joined Devin and Berg at Helen’s apartment to examine the evidence.