few commercial apps for clandestine work, but this one would be far superior.
The good thing about his own phone, however, was that it was virtually untrackable. In contrast, with this device from CIA, he knew that as soon as he turned it on the Agency would know where he was, something that, for most of the past five years, would have utterly terrified him. Before his recent détente with Langley he’d lived off grid as a burned asset, targeted by the very organization he now served. His truce with the Agency was only a few months old, and in that time he’d caught himself more than once missing the simplicity of working alone, an assassin for hire, only taking contracts that he believed served the greater good.
Now his life had returned to taking orders, need-to-know-only briefs, and impenetrable ambiguity.
He put his concerns out of his mind and turned on the phone, then slipped it into his cargo pants, along with a cable and a spare battery.
He found a headlamp, which he left in the bag, along with another bottle of water. He then pulled out a tiny case that contained a pair of earplugs. They were electronic noise reduction devices, but they also enhanced softer sounds to twelve times their normal volume. He immediately turned them on and placed them in his ears. The ambient noises around him were cacophonous; birds, the strong breeze, a distant train approaching along the track behind him.
He tapped the earplugs and the enhancement function turned off, and then he slipped them back in their case and into his pocket.
He loaded the M320 with a high-explosive round, slipped it into the go-bag, and then threw in his suppressed pistol, the toolbox, the binoculars, two extra magazines for the SIG, and the climbing rope. He left everything else, including his own backpack and the bike, in the woods and began crawling towards the east.
CHAPTER 9
Former Russian spy Zoya Zakharova hadn’t hitchhiked in the United States since her college days in California, but after hiding in the woods and then walking aimlessly through backyards for nearly two hours, at four a.m. she managed to thumb down a Honda Civic driven by a middle-aged woman on her way to her job at a call center in D.C. Zoya fed her a story in flawless and unaccented English, a tall tale about her boyfriend kicking her out of his house with only her clothes and shoes, forcing her to leave her purse and phone behind and walk home to her apartment in D.C.
The woman offered to give her a ride home and Zoya directed her to an apartment building just a few blocks from Union Station.
As soon as the woman drove away, Zoya headed for the station, but she did not enter. Knowing cameras would be prevalent there, she found a place to sit on a bench next to the Christopher Columbus Memorial Fountain that was shielded from view behind it by a concrete wall.
She focused all her attention on the front of the station.
At this hour there was only a trickle of commuters leaving the station, and Zoya eyed them all. She also noticed a strong police presence in the area, mostly patrol cars. She wondered if they might have been looking for her, but her tradecraft kept her away from both law enforcement and any suspicious unmarked vehicles that might be from CIA or FBI.
It took her almost a half hour to find a target. A bearded man in an expensive leather jacket came out of the station and began walking down the street, heading towards Louisiana Avenue. Zoya rose to her feet and followed, lagging just behind him while maintaining good situational awareness.
The man spoke on his cell phone and pulled a black leather Tumi roll-aboard behind him. He stopped at a street corner with several people waiting there in the dark for the signal to change, and Zoya moved next to him.
She had trained in picking pockets ever since she was a little girl, so she knew what she was doing. First, she’d profiled him as a man carrying cash, and she’d already identified the location of his large folding wallet, in his inside right coat pocket. In addition, the man was focused on his phone call, making him an easier mark.
At the corner he kept talking, his eyes on the crossing sign while he waited there.
Attention steers perception, Zoya had been trained. The man wasn’t thinking about the wallet inside his jacket, nor the