John Gilstrap - No mercy

Jonathan shook his head. “I’m not sure I do.”

Doug sighed. “And I’m not sure how to tell you, because it’s not something I can tell you, if you catch my drift. I just wanted you to know that under circumstances like this, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, and whatever that means, you’ve got friends who’ll back you up.”

Jesus, Jonathan thought, Doug just offered to cover up a murder.

Gail opened her front door and found Jesse Collier standing there, slightly out of breath. “Thanks for coming,” she said, and ushered him inside.

“Thanclarified.

“Fine,” she said. She tapped her keyboard and the screen filled with an aerial photograph. “This comes from the SkysEye network,” she said, “and it’s only about an hour old. I think this is Ivan Patrick’s playground. Brigadeville, right? It’s the only patch of real estate that came close to fitting what your friend in the alley told you.”

“Andrew Hawkins,” Jonathan reminded her. SkysEye was a commercial mapping company that anyone with the financial means could access for the going rate of twenty grand a year for an open license, plus a usurious tasking fee every time they wanted a picture. The private satellite network was a recent startup headed by Lee Burns, one of the original Unit members who hadn’t seen action in two decades. At various high and low orbits, SkysEye satellites could count the dimples on a golf ball anywhere on the planet. Lee’s largest customers came from the petroleum industry, which used the network to locate the kinds of geological formations that looked like money. Given the founder’s background in Special Forces, Jonathan worried that Lee might have sold his services to a few bad guys over the years-after all, finding geological formations wasn’t a lot different than precision targeting-but he’d have never stated his concerns aloud. He owed that much to a brother in arms.

What was most remarkable about the SkysEye imaging-what set it apart from other commercial sites-was its ability to provide real-time imaging that refreshed every four minutes. Through extrapolation and a little guesswork, you could determine whether a particular piece of real estate was currently occupied, how many vehicles were there, whether or not there was an active power plant, and a host of other details that were of value to an invader. It was nowhere near as helpful as the SatCom images he’d used back in the day, but it was a close second.

Accessing the pictures was only the beginning. The real trick lay in manipulating the images to deliver the highest resolution. The raw images were little more than a tableau of treetops, the thick foliage making ground details difficult to discern. To learn useful details, Venice superimposed a thermal imaging view that showed the presence of three dozen individual buildings of varying size and shape. Using that data, a smart CAD system was able to make an accurate sketch of the entire area. The overall layout reminded him of old Army posts from the days of the Indian wars. An open space anchored the middle of the complex, with most buildings arranged in concentric ovals. In the back corner, far from the other structures, two buildings stood alone.

“They look like munitions storage,” Jonathan observed, pointing to the screen.

“They’ve got themselves a damn city,” Boxers said. “We can’t take that. Not the two of us.”

Truer words were never spoken.

The next step in building the computer image was to superimpose data from the public record onto the satellite image. That way, they could locate the known roads, as well as-if they were so inclined-the location of the septic fields, the aquifers, and even family burial plots. If it was in an accessible database, they could put it on the map.

Finally, with the entire infrastructure in place on the screen, the program used data from the U.S. Geological Survey to add elevation data. When Venice was done, they had a three-dimensional rendering of the area that could be rotated in any direction, for either a plan view or a more useful elevation view.

“No fuckin’ way,” Boxers said.

And it wasn’t just a matter of real estate. The map showed the heat signatures of several dozen people sleeping in the various walking along the street. The two of them together would undoubtedly spook his prey.

He didn’t have to wait long. Within a minute, he heard the sound of a door opening and closing, followed a few seconds later by the sound of a substantial lock being turned. A moment later, he saw the woman he’d been waiting for. She turned the corner to walk up the hill where he was stationed, but on the opposite side of the street. She walked hurriedly, with her head down. She looked preoccupied to Charlie, oblivious to him or his car or the night air or anything else that was not going on inside her head. He waited for her to get fifty yards ahead, and then he followed. He stayed on his side of the street; he never tried to close the gap between them.

He thought about how easy it would be to wreak havoc in a town like this. Watching her navigate the night as if there were no danger lurking, he thought about how easy it would be to take her. To have her. No doubt about it, she was hot in her own right. All he’d have to do, he wagered, would be to walk up to her and ask her for the time. She’d stop to help and then he could make her pay for the mistake. He imagined it was that way for everyone in this little burg. People who’ve never known violence never stop to think about it. It was the kind of naivete that conquerors dreamed of.

But tonight, his mission was not conquest; it was intelligence gathering. This was the night when he would come to know his enemy.

His earbud buzzed, “How’s it going?”

“Keep the channel clear,” he hissed, hoping that his annoyance came through. If he needed help from Frick and Frack, he’d ask for it. Meanwhile, he just wanted them to quietly do their jobs.

He was across the street from a church now, St. Katherine’s Catholic. It was a big place with spires and the kind of traditional architecture that you just don’t see much anymore. As the Alexander chick walked past, she slowed and looked across the vast lawn, as if hoping to see someone.

Her pace slowed even more as she approached the walkway that led across an even bigger lawn and then to the wraparound porch of a mansion that made Tara from Gone with the Wind look like a guest cottage. The place had to be 12,000 square feet, and it seemed to stretch forever. It was difficult to make out details in the darkness, but the house painted a hell of a stain against the sky.

Charlie found himself staring in disbelief as he watched his prey climb those stairs, navigate the walk, and then disappear through the front door. “Just how successful can the private investigating business be?” he mumbled aloud.

Gail Bonneville had to admit that she loved the town. Fisherman’s Cove was the kind of place she thought of when she thought of a quaint riverside refuge. She loved the fact that New World efficiency had not yet run off Old World charm. She could see why a man like Jonathan Grave would be drawn to a place like this, even if she couldn’t begin to wrap her mind around why a town like this would want a man like Jonathan Grave as a resident.

“I wish I knew what those guys were up to,” Jesse Collier said yet again. When they’d arrived in Fisherman’s Cove forty-five minutes ago, they’d noticed the Mercury parked across the street from the firehouse that served as the offices of Security Solutions and according to the public record also doubled as Jonathan Grave’s residence. From that very first moment, they’d assumed that someone else was surveilling the place, but they couldn’t be certain if they were working for Grave or against him.