Читать книгу The Protectors of the Saltire - William Speir - Страница 15

“Stop,” Ralph said, pointing to the corner of the video monitor. “Back that up and zoom in there.”

The intervention team was reviewing the traffic camera footage taken on the day that Billingsly spotted the two wanted HSF officers in town. Emily backed up the image and adjusted the zoom to focus in on an old green sedan.

“Is that the car you saw one of them getting into?” Ralph asked Billingsly.

“Yes, that’s the car, and that’s the right license plate.”

“OK. Emily, let’s see where that car went.”

Emily started the tedious process of determining which traffic cameras the green sedan would have passed based on the direction it was traveling. The car was spotted several times from a number of different camera angles. It had come into town on one road, made one stop, and left town on the same road it came in on. She searched for the car used by the other HSF officer that Billingsly had spotted and discovered that it had followed essentially the same route as the green sedan.

Once Emily had identified the traffic cameras with the best views of the two cars entering and leaving town, she sped through the footage taken each day afterwards to see if the cars had traveled that road more than once. After several hours, the team had seen the cars entering and leaving town by that same road two to three times a week – always at approximately the same time.

“The green sedan comes into town just before 10:30 and turns north here,” Emily said, pointing to an intersection on her map. “The other car comes into town just after 11:15, goes straight through that intersection, and turns south one block later. Both cars leave approximately 90 minutes after they arrive.”

“Where do we lose them?” Ralph asked.

Emily pointed to her map. “When they reach this point, they’re past the point where any traffic cameras are set up. I think we have two options. One, we plant more cameras along this road at every intersection so we can see where they get on and off. Two, we have teams along this road to follow them. I think the cameras are safer in case they’re watching for a tail, but we need to be careful in case they’re also watching the road for anyone planting surveillance equipment.”

“I agree. How would you handle that?”

Emily thought about it for a moment. “What if we got some of those yard signs that advertised a car or a trailer for sale? I could mount cameras on those. It would look perfectly normal for someone to be stopping on the side of the road and sticking signs in the ground.” She pointed to the screen. “There are already dozens of signs like that along the road already. No one would think twice about a few more.”

“When can you have the cameras set up?”

“If we can get some blank signs, I can print the ad on adhesive paper and mount the cameras in about an hour. If someone can get the signs and help me put them out, I can have it done by late this afternoon. If they follow their usual timing, they won’t be back in town until tomorrow.”

“Let’s do it,” Ralph said.

Two members of the team volunteered to get the signs and help Emily put them out that afternoon. By the time they returned with the blank signs, Emily had printed 40 fake advertisements for a two wheel trailer. The phone number on the signs was a real number that belonged to a dummy cell phone owned by the Order. The voice greeting on the phone had been changed to ask callers inquiring about the trailer to leave a message and phone number. Emily didn’t want to take a chance that the two targets might see the sign, call the number, find it was a fake, and panic and flee the area. Emily knew that it might be more work than necessary, but she had seen interventions go wrong before because details were overlooked. The surveillance game required attention to detail and patience – two things that Emily had in abundance.

Emily and the two team members mounted the signs on the wire base that would be stuck in the ground, attached the advertisements to the signs, and mounted a small camera to each sign. They put the signs in the back of one of the team members’ cars and drove toward the edge of town.

It took about two hours to place the signs the way Emily wanted them. Each camera had to be pointing at the right angle, but it had to be done without calling attention to the fact that there was more going on than just sticking a sign in the ground along the side of the road. A sign was placed before and after each intersection on the road for about 10 miles, and several signal repeaters were also hidden along the side of the road to boost the range of the camera transmissions. The plan was to review the video footage each day and then move the cameras further away from town until the right intersection had been found. New signs would be printed and the cameras planted along the next road until the target’s hiding place could be located.

At nine o’clock the next morning, Emily, Ralph, and several other members of the team were watching the video monitors hooked up to Emily’s camera system – hoping to see the target cars that day. Another video monitor was also showing the live traffic camera feeds in case Emily’s cameras missed them.

At ten-fifteen, the green sedan was spotted coming into view near the second-to-last camera that Emily had placed. “Why didn’t the other camera pick up the car?” Ralph asked as they watched the car pass each of Emily’s other cameras until the traffic cameras picked it up.

Emily pulled up an aerial photograph of the area and enlarged the section between the last two cameras. “There must be a dirt road along here that goes back into the woods. I didn’t put cameras on them – only on major roads.”

They watched a while longer, and saw the second car appear about 40 minutes later, but on the third-to-last camera. The last two cameras failed to spot the car. Emily looked at the aerial photograph again. “They’re getting on this road from two different places. If they disappear in the same area, we’ll need to move the cameras and concentrate surveillance in this spot,” she said, pointing to a segment of the road near the last three cameras.

Other members of the team watched the two targets while they were in town, but no one followed them once the targets got back in their cars. Emily and Ralph watched the two cars heading out the way they came in. The green car passed the camera where the second car had appeared, and then it disappeared. They watched the second car about 30 minutes later pass the same point and then pass the camera where the first car had appeared. It disappeared after that point.

“It looks like they don’t take the same route leaving that they took coming in,” Ralph said. “The first car left the road where the second car entered, and the second car left where the first car entered. We need to get the cameras moved around to watch those areas better.”

“We need to print up some new signs,” Emily said. I don’t want them to see the same signs in different places and get suspicious.”

“Good idea. Let’s leave up the old signs for now, but get the cameras off of them. I’d like to have the cameras repositioned in this zone by tonight.”

Emily and her two volunteers quickly made up several new signs, each with a different advertisement so no one would notice too many of the same sign in close proximity to each other. They drove out and took the cameras off all of the old signs except for the last three. Those cameras were staying in place in case the new signs still couldn’t pick up where the cars were getting on and off the road. Emily mounted the cameras on the new signs, and put them out along the road. She also repositioned the signal repeaters to be closer to the new camera positions.

Emily decided that each sign needed to be visible to the next sign. That way, no one could enter or leave the road without being spotted. She had just enough signs to cover the area between the last and the third-to-last original camera positions. She quickly tested each camera to make sure it was aimed in the right direction. Once all of the cameras were in place and tested, she and the other team members left the area.

Two days later, the team watched the video monitors at the time the first target’s car should appear. By 10:40, the car hadn’t appeared yet, and the team was beginning to get worried. After another five minutes, the team saw the first car pulling out of the trees and turning onto the road leading into town. Thirty minutes later, they saw the second car pulling out of the trees about 400 yards closer to town.

Emily pulled up the aerial photograph for the area and enlarged it. “There’s a clearing back here with what looks like a barn and maybe another building,” she said, pointing to an area on the photograph. “There’s a road leading out of the front of the clearing that connects to this road way over here, but there might be two tractor or horse paths here in the back that they could be using to get to and from the road.”

Later that day, they watched both cars approach the hidden paths and pull off the road into the trees. The first car turned off where the second car had entered, and the second car turned off where the first car entered – just as they had two days earlier.

“We need to see what’s back there,” Ralph said later that day when the entire team was assembled. “There could be booby traps, alarms, sentries… we don’t know. We need to be careful, though.”

“What happens once we find out where they are?” Billingsly asked.

“We apprehend them and turn them over to the Army,” Ralph answered.

“And if there are more HSF officers hiding there or they’re well-armed?”

“We call in the Army to handle it.”

“Ralph, with all due respect, I think it would be better to get the Army in here to take them down. We know approximately where they are, we know for a fact that there are two wanted targets operating in this area. The Army is better equipped to handle the apprehension, and it prevents the chance of anyone knowing that we were involved in this.”

Ralph thought about it for a moment. There are risks with going into the woods blindly to see where the two targets are hiding – perhaps unnecessary risks. It’s safe to assume that the targets were well-armed, which makes apprehending them at their hiding place dangerous. It’s also a very bad idea to attempt to apprehend them in broad daylight in the middle of town. Ralph had to agree that Billingsly’s argument made sense.

“OK, I’ll call Colonel Burkhart with CID and have him send in a team.”

The team agreed, and Ralph put a call into Burkhart.

“Burkhart,” Ralph heard him say when he answered the phone.

“Colonel, Ralph Gardner here. I have a couple of wanted HSF officers hiding down here. Can you send a team to pick them up?”

“Ralph! Good to hear from you. Two HSF officers, you say?”

“Two that we’ve spotted, Oddly enough, they were stationed in Charleston. That’s how we spotted them. One of the Charleston guys from Navassa recognized them.”

“Do you know where they’re hiding?”

“Pretty close.”

“I can have a team there early tomorrow.”

“Great! Call me when you get here and we’ll show you what we have.”

“Fantastic. See you tomorrow, Ralph.”

“Good bye, Colonel.”

Colonel Frederick (“Fred”) Burkhart was the Deputy Director of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigative Service (CID) and a fairly new member of the Order. Ralph had known Burkhart for years, having served with him in the Army. Burkhart was responsible for dismantling the HSF, bringing its former officers to justice, and going through the mounds of records and paperwork to create the total picture of every crime the HSF committed against U.S. citizens. President Sheppard had personally assigned him to this role. He wanted to know every victim of the Sanborn administration, so he could determine what needed to be done to make restitution.

Burkhart felt that the task was overwhelming at times, but he appreciated the necessity of getting it done right. The country could never heal until a thorough accounting of the acts committed by the HSF was completed.

Burkhart had been given all the resources he could need to complete his assignment. This included access to several Special Forces units that he was using to capture former HSF officers in hiding. He picked up the phone and called the Captain responsible for these units. “I need Team Two ready to fly in six hours. Full gear. We’re going hunting.”

The plane took off just before midnight. Burkhart had briefed the team that there were at least two HSF officers located by “civilian contractors.” Their hiding place was generally known, but no one knew what may be waiting for them once they arrived. Burkhart joined the team on the plane. He wanted to be there when these criminals were captured.

It was close to 2:30 in the morning when Burkhart and his team arrived to meet with Ralph and his team and review the photographs and footage. Tom was there as well. He and Burkhart were both part of the effort with the Order to look for trends and patterns, and both were keenly interested in determining what the former HSF officers in hiding had been up to.

By 4:15, Burkhart’s team was making its way through the woods towards the clearing where Ralph and the team thought the targets were hiding. There was no moon that night, and the team’s night vision goggles helped them see and avoid a number of booby traps that had been planted around the perimeter of the clearing. There were several sentries patrolling the clearing, but they were taken down quickly and silently.

The Army team cautiously entered the clearing. There were a number of cars parked on the edge of the clearing, and the team confirmed that two of them were the ones used by the targets.

At about 4:50, the Order was given, and the team stormed the barn and the farm house next door. The HSF officers in hiding were taken completely by surprise, and none of the Army team members were injured in the raid. The captured HSF officers were dragged outside and bound and gagged, just as the morning sky began to get lighter and the sun rose above the horizon in the east.