Beyond Limits (Tracers #8)(30)
“Help yourself.”
Elizabeth had thought long and hard about why she’d been picked for this task force, and she doubted it was because she was a token female. She had the sneaking suspicion that Gordon had put her on the team specifically to keep tabs on Derek. Gordon was manipulating her, and by getting closer to Derek, she was playing right into his hands.
“Anyway,” Lauren said, “I don’t want to look a gift assignment in the mouth, so . . . done worrying about it. How’d breakfast with your friend go?”
“It got cut short.” Elizabeth slurped her drink. “I had a meeting.”
Her mind flashed to today’s encounter with Derek on the firing range. And even more unexpected, her encounter with his mother. SEALs often seemed like superheroes, capable of death-defying feats of strength and bravery. Sometimes it seemed like they came from another planet, so it was almost surprising to discover that Derek came from a tree-lined street in suburbia.
His mom had seemed so normal. So friendly. And clearly bursting with curiosity about why an FBI agent would want to talk to her son.
“That’s it?” Lauren stared at her. “That’s not much of a review.”
“It wasn’t much of an event.”
Elizabeth watched Lauren finish off the noodles and thought about whether to tell her about Derek. She felt awkward. Opening up about her personal life didn’t come naturally.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” Lauren asked. “Are you hung up on this guy?”
“What? No.”
She was saved from further explanation by a knock at the door and jumped up to answer it. “That’ll be Potter.”
Lauren sighed. “So much for girl talk.”
* * *
It was standing room only the next morning in the briefing room.
“Something’s up,” Torres muttered as he grabbed a patch of wall space next to Elizabeth.
Torres was right. There was a definite tension buzzing in the air. The entire team was here, and the only hint that it was Saturday morning was that several agents wore workout gear instead of their usual suits, as if they’d been called in on their way to the gym. Elizabeth had a feeling their morning plans were about to get disrupted.
Gordon strode through the door, closely followed by his tech expert from Washington. He looked over the assembled troops and motioned for everyone to sit. He sank into a chair as his assistant flashed some slides onto a screen.
“Several updates,” he said briskly. “As you all know, Interpol uses one of the most advanced facial-recognition programs on the planet at border checkpoints. What you may not know is that that system was recently upgraded. They just implemented a state-of-the-art software package that allows them to identify, match, and cross-check literally millions of faces a day with unbelievable accuracy. Today it identified these two men.”
Two separate pictures appeared of men standing at immigration checkpoints. Elizabeth recognized Rasheed.
“Both of these images were captured ten days ago,” Gordon said. “The man on the left is traveling under the name Martin Delgado, but you’ll recognize him as Omar Rasheed.”
“Who’s the man on the right?” Torres asked.
“As of now, he is our biggest problem.” Gordon paused and looked around. “His name is Zahid Ameen. He’s on the terrorist watch list for numerous bombings and was most recently implicated in an attack on a bus in Kabul.”
The image of a charred bus carcass flashed onto the screen.
“Sixteen schoolchildren died in this bombing, all girls, along with twelve adults. The bus was on its way to a newly opened school.”
Silence fell over the room.
“Ten days ago, Ameen boarded a flight from Athens to Caracas, Venezuela, that landed just hours before Rasheed’s flight. One week ago, Rasheed entered the U.S. with a Mexican coyote, most likely through border tunnels controlled by the Saledo cartel. We believe Ameen did the same.”
“What do the Venezuelans have on them?” The question came from Lauren, who was seated across the room.
“Nothing,” Gordon said. “Or at least, nothing they’re willing to share. Our relations with them haven’t exactly been cozy lately.”
Elizabeth’s stomach tensed as she looked at the mangled bus. Sixteen schoolgirls. There had to be a special place in hell for someone who would do that.
“If he’s on a watch list, why didn’t they pick him up in Athens?” Lauren asked.
“His passport worked,” Gordon said. “And he’s had some plastic surgery recently. Looking at our previous photos of him, there isn’t much resemblance, so it’s no surprise they missed him. But this new biometric security software they’ve got—it’s beyond anything anyone’s ever seen before. Its matches are amazingly accurate. Based on this intelligence, we are now operating under the assumption that both Rasheed and Ameen are within our borders, and they’re working in tandem. We believe they have contacts here. And we believe they’re planning an attack.”
Gordon turned to face the screen displaying the charred bus. “With Ameen involved, we know that no target is too soft—schools, shopping malls, subway stations. Heavy civilian casualties are his trademark, and he’s completely without conscience. We are pulling out all the stops to find him. Every agency in Homeland Security is engaged in this manhunt.”