Page 46 of Operation: Valiant Angel

“Let me know what you find out. I promised Rae that I’d let her know what we found. She’s really attached to this little girl.”

“I guess it’s not out of the realm of possibilities that the Marshals stashed another protectee in the same town they put Rae in, but if they did, Rae can’t know that.”

“I know,” Wilson said. “I’d just tell her we looked into it, and all is well.”

“You might want to just tell her that now. She doesn’t need to be worried about this kid and her mom.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Wilson agreed. He didn’t want to lie to her, though. Rae had a valid concern, and he didn’t want to brush it off. He respected her too much to do that.

“I’ll be in touch when I know something,” Garcia said.

“Thanks,” Wilson said.

His vigil continued for the remainder of the afternoon. Mother dropped off dinner to them just after Jackson had woken and joined Wilson. Shift change would be in about an hour. Motherwas getting as frustrated with their unproductive surveillance as much as Wilson was.

“What if the street dealers are delivering product to be packaged as well as taking away the drugs ready to be sold? It’s been two days and no big deliveries. I don’t believe the place was that loaded with product that they wouldn’t have needed to restock by now,” Wilson said.

“That’s what Lambchop was thinking too,” Mother said. “Let me get him on the phone.” He dialed Lambchop and put him on speaker. “We were just discussing a change in approach,” Mother told Lambchop. “Wilson agrees with you that it could be the street dealers delivering the raw product to the house, as well as taking away the packaged units.”

“What change in approach are you thinking?” Lambchop asked. “Do you want to take one down before he reaches the house?”

“I think we need to track one from the moment he leaves the house until he returns,” Wilson said. “We intercept him before he arrives at the house, and all kinds of red flags may go up with the bad guys.”

“Agreed,” Lambchop said. “Let me get Espinoza on the line with us. Hold on.” There was a pause. A minute later, Lambchop was back on the line. “Espinoza, you still there?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Lambchop filled him in on what they suspected and made the pitch for stepping up surveillance.

“These guys are so fucking paranoid that shadowing one of them for twenty-four hours isn’t going to be easy,” Espinoza said.

“We’ll use trackers and long-range surveillance. We’re not going to be following them down the street. They won’t see the same three cars on their tails,” Lambchop said.

“Who would you like to start with?” Espinoza asked.

“You identified that Angelo douchebag as being pretty high up on the food chain. He’ll be our first target,” Lambchop said.

“We’ll have Sloan and Sherman acquire him tonight. He normally hands off to street dealers throughout the War Zone before midnight and then flops at one of his baby momma’s apartments,” Mother said.

Later that night, as he lay in the bed Jackson slept in earlier, Wilson messaged Rae. “Hey, we’re still looking into your missing mom and child. Right now, we’ll say no news is good news.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we haven’t found anything worrisome. Look, sorry, I have to go, work stuff. I’ll be in touch soon,” he said, to end the messaging and her questions.

“You’re working late,” she messaged. “Thanks for the update.”

He let that last message hang and didn’t respond to it. His thoughts at that moment again went to Rae and that she’d entered that house alone. That could have gone horribly wrong for her. What had she been thinking? He had to talk with her about being more careful at a later time.

The next morning, Wilson was again monitoring the video feed. Sherman and Sloan had acquired Angelo the night before. They tracked him over the course of five hours, delivering product to a half-dozen street dealers and collecting the proceeds from previously sold stock before he turned in at midnight at the apartment of one of his known baby mommas, one of five in the War Zone. Angelo was a busy boy.

Mother and Lambchop had taken over surveillance at zero seven hundred. It was eleven hundred and Angelo was just leavingthe apartment. Wilson’s phone chimed in a text message. It was from Shepherd with a request for a video chat.

“Things are getting hot here, Shepherd. Can this wait an hour or two?” he replied back.

“You let me know when is better,” Shepherd replied. “We’ll do it then.”

“Affirmative,” Wilson replied, and then turned his attention back to the communications between Lambchop and Mother.

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