The Rescue(8)

Motion in the far reaches of his peripheral vision announced her arrival.

“Is this seat taken?” she said.

He shook his head and moved the magazine, placing it next to his coffee. She set her frozen drink on the ledge and dropped into the seat, keeping the purple backpack in her lap. Neither of them said a word for close to a minute, each going about their business. Decker savoring his cappuccino. The woman slurping her slushy drink and texting away on her phone.

“Are you actually using the phone?” he said. “Or is that part of the act?”

“I’m adjusting the plan,” she said without appearing to move her lips.

“About that,” he said. “What’s the plan?”

“Working on it. I didn’t expect you to stop for coffee,” she said, pretending to nod at her phone. “Based on your route, I figured you were headed for Skid Row. Easy to disappear in there.”

“That was the plan. The white van changed my mind.”

“Well. That is no longer an option,” she said, checking her phone. “We’ll have to go with a more direct approach, which will take a few minutes to arrange.”

“I like the sound of that,” said Decker before taking a long sip of his drink. “So. What’s this proof you were telling me about?”

“Now you’re interested?”

“What can I say, Ms. Mackenzie? You’ve given me hope I’ll see my daughter again.”

“Call me Harlow,” she said, taking a sheet of paper out of her backpack.

Harlow leaned close to him, pretending to adjust her shoe. She slid the sheet under the magazine and sat upright, taking a sip of her drink. He waited a moment before returning to the flimsy magazine. Using the magazine to shield it from view, he removed the document and placed it directly in front of him, scanning it from top to bottom.

“Airspace waiver request for unmanned aircraft systems,” said Decker. “I’m very familiar with these. We did everything by the book. Looks like a class-C airspace waiver for Riverside Municipal Airport, but I can’t make sense of these coordinates without a map.”

“Filed by Ares Aviation’s office in Riverside. Coordinates line up with the southeastern fringe of RMA’s restricted airspace, just west of Hemet. You’re not the only one that does things by the book,” she said. “The waiver codes granted by the FAA gave the operator permission to conduct night operations over populated areas, out of line of sight of the unmanned aerial vehicle—above four hundred feet.”

Decker frowned at the request form. “Over four hundred feet? Out of line of sight?”

“That’s what you’re focused on?” she said. “Not the location?”

He took a slow sip of the strong espresso drink and nodded slowly. “The location is obviously important,” he said. “But the combination of requested waivers tells a more interesting story.”

“More interesting than the fact that someone requested a surveillance drone waiver over the Bratva distribution center your team raided?”

“Right. First—it tells me that Ares Aviation wasn’t flying a drone you can order off the internet.”

“I kind of already guessed that,” she said.

“Nighttime and out of line of sight kind of go together. Can’t see the drone at night regardless. The two are always filed together.”

“Makes sense, which doesn’t sound very interesting,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time, Decker. The drone isn’t run-of-the-mill. So what?”

“For night surveillance at that distance, you’d need a sophisticated night-vision sensor with significant magnification and clarity, which gets really expensive. At over four hundred feet, I’d also guess we’re talking about some kind of thermal-imaging component.”

“An expensive drone, then.”

“A high-tech drone. Military grade. Raven or latest generation. And the Bratva isn’t into drones. They’re decidedly low-tech,” he said, pondering the implications. “Ares Aviation? I assume you dug a little further?”

She nodded and held her phone up, pretending to laugh at a text. “Parent company is Aegis Global. More like a second-cousin company. The connection is obfuscated, but it’s definitely one of their holdings.”

“Aegis Global,” said Decker. “The top military contracting company in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“The only company providing military and logistical support to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” she said. “Things have changed while you were away.”

Decker shook his head again, draining his cup before crushing it against the brown painted wall in front of him. He didn’t care if his observers saw it. Partly because it was a logical thing for him to do as a hopeless ex-con. Mostly because he didn’t give a crap. Or did he care? The single sheet of paper presented by Harlow Mackenzie, stalker extraordinaire, provided an enticing spin on everything he’d come to believe over the past two years.

The Russians were involved somehow. The Solntsevskaya Bratva had owned the house in Hemet, and some very scary-looking men with extensive Bratva ink had perpetrated most of the attacks against him in prison. They were indisputably linked to this mess; he just wasn’t sure how anymore. If the paperwork Harlow had produced was real, a third party was involved—which changed everything.