The Rescue(62)

Most of JRIC’s day-to-day magic occurred in much smaller rooms, separated by section. Surveillance took up more than half of those rooms. He stopped at the JRIC’s Fusion Center to check in before heading to the team responsible for facial-recognition operations. A woman with glasses peeked around her monitor when he entered.

“Angela,” said Reeves.

She slid her chair over so the monitor didn’t stand between them. “My favorite supervisory special agent,” she said. “What can we do for you today?”

“More like what haven’t you already done.”

“Oh boy,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I should have known this morning’s request wasn’t all of it.”

“Maybe I’m just here to say hi to my favorite Fusion Center coordinator of all time.”

“I’m the first and only coordinator,” she pointed out.

“The words are still true.”

“Special Agent Kincaid,” she said, “I feel sorry for you.”

“Me, too,” said Kincaid.

Reeves shook his head while she and Kincaid shared a laugh. “This is going in your evaluation, Matt. Undermining a superior.”

“Well, then,” said Angela, straightening up in her chair. “We better get down to business before Mr. Fussy-pants writes us both up.” She took off her glasses. “I disseminated your requests to the appropriate sections. I should have a fused workflow running by the afternoon, which will start producing data for you by tomorrow morning at the latest. Probably get it running tonight. We’ll send you a secure log-in specifically for this data feed.”

“Incredible. Thank you, Angela.”

He really meant it. He’d dropped a load of requests on her lap this morning, representing a ton of work for the section. Last night’s surveillance disaster had left him empty-handed, so he needed to start from scratch. He had agents watching most of Mackenzie’s partners’ apartments, but like Kincaid had said, it was highly unlikely that she would make that kind of a rookie mistake. On top of that, he’d have to divert most of his field resources back to the Russians within forty-eight hours, possibly sooner. The Solntsevskaya Bratva was his division’s primary focus. Finding Decker would quickly fall to the wayside once new Russian leadership started to assert itself.

Thirty-six to forty-eight hours didn’t give him a lot of time to pick up a cold trail, so he’d thrown everything feasible at the problem. He’d provided the Fusion Center with every byte of data available for Ryan Decker and the members of Mackenzie’s investigative firm, which Angela’s analysts would deconstruct and expand before creating custom search parameters for real-time, passive surveillance operations.

Facial-recognition software based in the JRIC scoured city-linked camera feeds, police vehicle cameras, and a network of private cameras that opted in to the LAPD system. The same software also analyzed millions of social media pictures for matches based on the parameters. License plate–reader software looked for tags linked to Mackenzie’s group, their known associates and family, plotting their last known locations. Credit cards and cell phone numbers associated with the parameters would be tracked. His money was on facial recognition, which was why he wanted to have a chat with the team that ran the software.

“My pleasure,” she said. “You’re one of the few agents I don’t mind hanging around the section. Kincaid, too, I guess.”

“She’s getting sassy in her old age,” said Reeves.

“If I wasn’t fifty-two creaky years old, I’d chase you out of the building for that crack,” she said, standing up. “Now get out of here before I change my mind.”

“What’s her story?” said Kincaid on their way down the hallway to Facial Recognition.

“Angela and I go way back. She used to run the field office’s IT group,” said Reeves. “One of the FBI’s IT integration pioneers. She put herself through UCLA in her thirties. Computer science bachelor’s and master’s degrees. They say she brought the LA office out of the dark ages. JRIC stole her about three years ago to run the Fusion Center. Stay on her good side.”

“Will do,” said Kincaid. “So who are we visiting in the Facial Recognition section?”

“Nicholas Watts. He’s been working on something under the radar for a while now. Improved-range facial recognition.”

Kincaid shrugged.

“I’ll let Watts explain,” said Reeves, knocking on the door. “It’s kind of his baby.”

“It’s not on the market yet?”

“No. He’s still working out some kinks in the system, but I think it might be useful to us, regardless of those issues.”

The door buzzed before opening inward a few inches. Reeves pushed it the rest of the way, revealing a thin, middle-aged man in khaki pants and a red polo shirt sitting behind an expansive desk supporting four widescreen monitors.

“I was expecting you,” said Watts.

“Really?” said Reeves.

“I watched you from the front entrance all the way to this door.”

“Okay,” said Reeves. “Am I on some kind of watch list here?”

“Yeah. The pain-in-my-ass watch list,” said Watts, leaning back in his expensive-looking office chair. “I flagged your face when all those requests landed in my workflow. Figured you’d show up sooner or later to request the works.”