Deep Sleep (Devin Gray #1)(54)

“I can’t complain too much,” said Graves. “It wasn’t the easiest adjustment to make after spending close to two decades in this line of business, but I’m making it work. Every day my shoulders relax about a quarter of a millimeter.”

Rich laughed. “Well, I apologize for setting your shoulders back a few months, but I do appreciate you coming out of retirement temporarily. My guess is we’re going to need all the help we can get on this one. Did Miralles bring you up to speed on the mechanics of the operation?”

“She did. Is this really the Russians?” asked Graves.

Rich nodded. “Long-dormant sleeper network. Second generation—if it checks out.”

“Second generation? Holy shit,” said Graves. “Wait. You haven’t vetted this yet?”

“Tonight’s operation has been vetted,” said Rich. “But Karl Berg says it’s connected to a much-bigger conspiracy. We’ll all get a chance to scour the evidence and try to poke holes in the theory.”

“This is Berg’s theory? I thought he was retired.”

“He is. Or was. Kind of like someone else I know,” said Rich, patting him on the shoulder. “A former colleague of his at Langley apparently spent close to the past two decades investigating this theory. She was killed under suspicious circumstances about two weeks ago. Killed herself, but too many aspects of her case don’t add up. She handed over the reins to her son, Devin Gray. He reached out to Berg at his mother’s recommendation—and here we are.”

“And Berg is convinced?” asked Graves.

“He sounds convinced,” said Rich. “But he’s open to criticism. Same with Devin Gray. They both want to be wrong about this.”

“I knew I should have left my phone behind when I took the boat out this morning.”

“What kind of boat?”

“Nothing too fancy,” said Graves. “Just a fishing boat.”

“Does it have a flying bridge?” asked Rich.

“It might.”

“Sounds kind of fancy,” said Rich. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you back to your yacht in one piece.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” said Graves. “And take you fishing if you make good on it.”

“Deal,” said Rich, shaking his hand. “Keep your friend out of trouble. He hasn’t matured since you left.”

“I heard that,” said Gupta.

“Be good, guys,” said Rich before crossing the street and getting into the passenger seat of a black SUV that hadn’t drawn Graves’s attention until now.

In the fading light of the evening, he recognized Scott Daly, former Navy SEAL, behind the wheel of the SUV. Daly waved at him, and he nodded back. They were in good hands. Graves climbed inside and gave Gupta a high five before shutting the door.

“Thanks for answering the call of the wild, bro!” said Gupta. “The band is back together, baby!”

“Is it too late to go home?” asked Graves.

“You know you missed me,” said Gupta.

“Not really,” said Graves. “What are we looking at here? They shoved me behind the wheel of a car a few minutes after I showed up and parked me on Glover Street with the least talkative operative I’ve ever met.”

“Miralles? Yeah. She’s all business, and good at it, too,” said Gupta. “All right. So here’s what we’ve got for coverage. Two low-light-capable, high-def block cameras placed on the town house adjacent to the target house, giving us a good enough view up and down Glover Street. The trees kind of mess with the view at certain distances, but we have a good overall picture of the street. I have that on a split screen here. I’m running the feeds through motion-detection software, so it’ll draw our attention to anything larger than a dog.”

Gupta leaned forward and tapped the space bar on the laptop sitting on the Suburban’s wide front-seat armrest, activating the screen. Graves saw what he meant about the trees. Not ideal but not bad. The motion-detection software would overcome that issue.

“We also have a basic fish-eye dome camera set up on the fence behind the town house, off the alley. One-hundred-and-eighty-degree coverage. Motion activated. It’ll pop up as a window in the bottom-right corner of the screen if it’s triggered, or you can click on the rightmost tab to open the feed at any time. We both have the same access on our laptops, in case we need to split our attention between the front and back of the town house. I anticipate doing that during the pickup.”

Graves clicked the tab and liked what he saw. The concrete alley was well lit.

“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?”