John Ringo - Cally's War

She moved fast enough to follow him around the corner at the end of the block from not too close, not too far. He couldn’t be heading for the beach along the lake shore. It just couldn’t be that easy. A jogger. Go figure. He really was. Right past a small baseball and tennis park, down another bit, up the stairs and across the pedestrian overpass. Since the lake effectively limited his options, she took the opportunity to stay on the opposite side of the street. As she went, she pulled out a helmet and shades. Instant anonymity. A bit of bubble gum from a pouch in the backpack made a nice prop. Ear buds and her PDA clipped to her belt created an instant illusion of a skate babe lost in her own little musical world.

About a half a mile down, he crossed back on another pedestrian overpass and began to work his way back through the streets towards the tower.

She shadowed his route through the warren of narrow streets and small blocks, memorizing. Surely he’ll vary his pattern every day… but maybe not. Jogging is for idiots. Jogging when one has deadly enemies is for extreme idiots. This would be an ideal place for a heart attack if I just needed to kill him. Unfortunately, the only way to verify Robertson’s assessment of his lack of serious value is to interrogate him first. He’ll be missed too soon if I drop him on the street. Need something better.

She breezed past him going backwards, leading his probable route. Odd, but people never thought you were a tail if you were in front of them. Whenever she got too far ahead she slowed next to a boutique window to look at the display, popping her gum as she gave him some time to catch up a bit. One of the places they passed was a valet park deck that had a line of cars with government plates and a few Fleet Strike uniforms walking out of it. Subject’s probable parking location found.

By seven he had made a circuit through the city streets and back to the north face of the Tower. She let him get past her and got lost in the crowds behind him, locking up the wheels, shoving the helmet and shades back into the pack, changing the posture and walk a bit, ear buds into a pocket, PDA to the front pocket, swallow the gum. No more skate babe.

The coffee shop was more than happy to let her buy a large cranberry juice and an apple strudel and go back to her sketching. She made light conversation about art with the busboy who occasionally came out to pick up any trash left on the tables by other customers, but only when she couldn’t avoid him by looking busy. The target didn’t leave the building for lunch. Either they had a sandwich shop or something in the building, or he skipped it, or snacked out of machines. Something. Not that she minded sitting and watching the other uniforms come and go. Fleet Strike either believed in a good PT program for its headquarters staff or their doctors were doing some good metabolic work to cope with the desk jobs. Quite a few of those young — well, okay, young-looking — men had some seriously tight buns.

Around two she moved her car to the self-park deck that adjoined Fleet Strike’s valet deck. If it hadn’t been a Friday afternoon she would have had no hope of getting a spot close to the stairwell and the exit, but on a Friday somebody always knocked off early. Fortunately, the place was basically empty, but she still watched carefully as she cut her way through the fence separating the two decks and climbed over the low concrete wall. It would be impossible for a single agent to tail a car by eye through Chicago streets. If you didn’t stay close enough to be readily spotted, the subject would lose you in two blocks without even trying. She had to hide from passing valet employees three times before she finally found the car the Illinois DMV so obligingly revealed was registered to her target.

Petane was apparently one of the people leaving early this Friday afternoon. It wasn’t quite four thirty when he came out the door carrying a gym bag and walking towards the parking deck. One advantage to her of his early departure was the sidewalks were still open enough that she could drop her wheels and skate between pedestrians, dropping down into a fire lane here and there to get around clumps of slow walkers, and getting to her deck well before he got to his without drawing attention by appearing to hurry.

She paid the exit machine and got her car out and into the fire lane quickly, but it was always touchy doing a solo surveillance. Sometimes you just had no choice but to let the subject out of your sight, and sometimes you lost him. When you did, of course, you just picked him up again when and where you could. On a mission like this, better to lose him for a bit than to get too close and risk him spotting the tail. Especially since she had assistance, if needed, in picking him back up. She glanced at her PDA whose screen was displaying a single big red button. If she lost him, it was just a matter of pressing the button and having the beacon pinged. The location would cross reference to the metro Chicago street map she’d loaded and display a map section and his location. The nature of the street made some part of tailing him out of the deck a matter of guesswork. His patterns suggested that west to Lakeshore would be the best route to location B, and east to 94 would be the best choice for his probable home. On Friday, location B was more probable. She had her shades on again so her face could be turned slightly away from the other parking deck’s exit, while her eyes watched every car and driver coming out for Petane in his ’45 Ford Arabian. Her breathing loosened when he appeared at the exit at the wheel of the cherry red sports car, the rearing horse logo on the front grill sporting the distinctive arched neck.

Following was a delicate balancing act of staying far enough back not to be noticed, but close enough not to lose him too many times. There was always a chance, however small, that a beacon transmission would be detected. It helped, of course, to know roughly where he was going. The route he chose was obvious and direct, the behavior of a man of fixed habits who feels safe. The apartment he drove to was in a lower middle class suburban complex. After he entered, she watched the building carefully for changing lights. Not a sure thing, since it was still daylight, but the best she had. Fortunately, most people turned on the lights inside even when the natural light was good, and Petane and whoever he was meeting were no exception. Well, that was probably the right apartment, anyway. A good place to start. It was still early for the evening rush, so Cally made good use of the deserted parking lot, walking casually over to the building entrance and hiding the door knob with her body while she picked the old-fashioned key-lock. She had to look at the first and second floor apartments to get the numbering scheme.

Once she had the address, it was child’s play to use the back door into the phone company to tell the phones in apartment 302C that they were off hook, making them into instant bugs. Does this guy take no precautions at all? She set her PDA to dump the audio into storage on a cube and play real-time. Judging from the sounds and Petane’s first name being “Charles,” she had the right apartment for his mistress. She pulled up her notes from the camera search. There’s always something slightly obscene about listening to a target screw. Okay, he visits the mistress Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, looks like. Maybe he’s not that regular, but he sure looks like a creature of habit. Drug the mistress and bring a sound damper and I can interrogate him here — he won’t be officially missed until his wife gets anxious, maybe not noticed by Fleet Strike until the next morning. If I check in after cleaning up from the job, I’ll have my makeover into Sinda and it doesn’t get more off the radar than premission prep. Monday, then. Heart attack. Mistress wakes up with a fuzzy memory and a corpse. Not a nice morning for her, but a clean hit that leaves her alive. Flunitrazepam and alcohol for her, a viagra, insulin and coke cocktail for him, a nice little party. I’ll have to be gentle with the scumbag at first, on the very small off chance that there’s more to him than meets the eye and he’s the Comstock lode of sources or something. Yeah, sure.