Jabba looked at him like he was nuts. “You want them to know we were here?”
Matt nodded. “Yep.”
Jabba was now looking at him like he’d sprouted little green antennas from his ears. “Why?”
“I want to fuck with them a little. Shake them up. Keep them unbalanced.”
“It’s my phone, dude,” Jabba specified. “All they’ll know for sure is that I was here.”
“Same difference. They know we’re together.”
Jabba looked like he wanted to object more, but he gave up, raised his hands in surrender, and turned on his phone. He checked his watch, then fired up his Macbook and connected it to the phone, using the phone’s Internet connection. Matt watched as Jabba’s fingers danced across the keyboard and tapped the touchpad a few times. He then swung the laptop so Matt could see the screen.
It was on the home page of a company called Centurion. A slick slideshow showed an oil refinery in a desert location at sundown, then what looked like a gated compound somewhere in the Middle East, then a convoy of cars, again in the same sunny, dusty environment. The last picture showed a steely guy in pristine quasi-military gear, black gloves, and surfer-cool wraparound shades, poised behind a large-caliber machine gun. A slogan flashed up with each image, the last of them announcing the company’s motto, “Securing a Better Future.”
Matt and Jabba read through the “About Us” paragraph, which described Centurion as a “security and risk management company with offices in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East” and a “security provider to the U.S. government and a registered and active UN contractor.” Jabba clicked on the “Management” link, and a black-and-white portrait of Maddox leapt out at them. The hard case was the firm’s founder and CEO, and the accompanying blurb described his long, stellar career in the Marines and his achievements in the field of “security consulting.”
“Ouch,” Jabba said, flinching at the unsettling and unapologetic mug shot of Maddox. He glanced around nervously, clearly uneasy at the thought of taunting this man. He checked his watch again and held up his phone. “Eighty-five seconds. Can we please switch this off now and get the hell out of here?”
Matt was still absorbing every word of Maddox’s bio in silence. After a moment, he said, “Sure.”
Jabba turned it off as Matt fired up the car and pulled away.
He looked over at Matt. “So?”
Matt nodded to himself, his eyes a bit distant, his expression dour. “So now we know who we’re dealing with.”
“Dude, the man’s got a private army,” Jabba pleaded, his pitch doing its worry rise. “We’ve got a white Camry and a handgun with no bullets in it.”
“Then we’ve got some catching up to do,” Matt replied. “But let’s see what Reece’s wife has to say first.”
“YOU’RE SURE?”
Maddox wasn’t shouting. In fact, his voice was unnaturally calm, given the news he’d just been given. But his displeasure was coming through loud and clear to his contact at Fort Meade.
“Absolutely,” came the answer. “Komlosy’s phone signal popped up on the grid for just over a minute before powering down.”
Maddox walked over to his office’s window and looked down. Nothing unusual caught his eye. The parking lot and the street beyond were glacially quiet.
Two unexpected appearances from Sherwood in as many days, he fumed. The second one in the immediate vicinity of his office.
The man was good.
A bit too good for Maddox’s liking.
“How long ago?” he asked.
“It just went dead.”
Maddox seethed quietly. “Can’t you track him with his phone switched off?”
“Looking at his contract, it seems he’s got an iPhone, a 3G one,” the NSA monitoring agent told him. “If he keeps it on long enough, I can remotely download some burst software onto it that’ll let me track it even if it’s powered down.”
“I need you to do better than that,” Maddox insisted.
“We’re working on some stuff. But for now, it’ll get better every time he switches it on. The tracking software will have a head start on him; it’ll keep adding data every time he powers up. We won’t need as long to get a lock.”
“Okay. Let me know the second it powers up again,” the Bullet ordered. “And get that download done as soon as you get a chance.” With that, he hung up, stuffed the phone into his pocket, checked his watch, and glared out his window again.
Chapter 47
Deir Al-Suryan Monastery, Wadi Natrun, Egypt
“Don’t we have anyone who can get here sooner?” Dalton asked. “Where’s the damn