Page 25 of End of Days

Chapter 16

We went across the promenade so we’d be facing in the direction of his approach, both of us pulling up the target’s picture on our phone for a final memorization of what he looked like.

He was an older guy, about sixty-five, with salt-and-pepper hair. Truthfully, he looked a lot like the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani—the guy we’d eliminated in a drone strike. Bushy black eyebrows and a neatly trimmed gray beard. He could have been a university professor. Or Doctor Evil.

Time would tell.

We finished our cones sitting right next to the river, waiting on him to appear.

He did not.

On my earpiece I heard someone whisper, “We’re breaching. We’re breaching. Status.”

I said, “I don’t have him. No breach. No breach.”

Jennifer slid her hand down my arm and I looked at her. She flicked her eyes, and there he was, walking down the promenade like he was just another tourist.

Shoshana said, “Pike, find him. He’s there.”

I said, “I have him. I say again, I have him. Clear to breach.”

We stood up after he passed, falling in behind him as he crossed the river.

His pace was a little bit less than someone with a place to be and a little bit more than a person just enjoying a stroll, but with the smallcrowd on the promenade, it didn’t really matter. We could stay behind him with little difficulty and keep him in sight.

I called Knuckles, gave him our location, and told him to close in on the far side of the river to give us some options to keep an eye on him.

The target wound around, eventually walking by the famed Saint Peter’s Church, the large clock in the bell tower shadowing his moves, before heading again toward the river, back the way he had come.

Which was strange.

He threaded through the streets until he hit an avenue called Schipfe, right along the water, passing by the promenade we’d just crossed over.

Stranger still.

He picked up his pace along the river’s edge and then took a left in a narrow alley. Before he turned, he did a brief glance behind, surveying the river walk, which gave me some concern. I pulled Jennifer next to me on the water’s edge, pretending to watch the spectacular view. I gave him thirty seconds, then went to the entrance of the alley, seeing a cascade of stairs, the buildings so close it wasn’t even an alley. It looked more like an indoor fire escape in a New York apartment. It was a choke point that would advertise anyone who entered behind him, the ancient stairwell so narrow any target above would see who was behind. I saw his back rising up the stairs at a trot and immediately retreated before he turned around and saw me.

I waited a bit, and then started to go again, the mission of keeping him in sight for Shoshana the foremost in my mind. Jennifer pulled my arm saying, “You want to follow him up that? We’ll be burned for anything else. Call Knuckles and have him interdict.”

Her words broke through my mission focus. It dawned on me.That son of a bitch is conducting a surveillance detection route.

I clicked my earpiece, saying, “Knuckles, Blood, what’s your status?”

I heard, “On the west side, moving your way. About thirty seconds out.”

“This guy is running an SDR. I can’t follow. Get on him.”

I sent them my location through the phone and waited. I saw the realization blossom in Jennifer’s eyes. She said, “Shoshana’s right. This guyisbad.”

I smiled and said, “Maybe. Maybe you’re just paranoid.”

Standing there with her now-melted ice cream cone, looking out over the Limmat River, she hip-bumped me and said, “I guess being paranoid was worth it.”

I laughed and said, “Still got to prove it.”

I contacted Aaron and said, “Target is still on the move. Temporarily unsighted due to terrain. Got the other team about to lock on, but they haven’t yet. What’s your status?”

He came back and said, “We’re in. Not a lot here. We have control of his computer and the only thing suspicious is a steganography program.”

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