A former Navy corpsman, Adara Sherman had seen action in most of the Stans, where most of the killing was being done these days. A CrossFit fanatic, she was an extremely competent operator, and, more important, dead calm under pressure. She was also romantically involved with Dominic Caruso, the only actual federal officer on the team — seconded to The Campus. Ryan’s cousin, Caruso was a Feeb — still on the FBI rolls. Chavez imagined that the tight-ass middle managers in the Bureau — every agency had them — surely wondered what the hell kind of special duty their agent had disappeared to do for such a long period. The director knew. That was enough.
Chavez looked at Clark again, more than a little embarrassed that his guys were seeing ghosts. Clark’s face remained as passive as one of those stone dudes on Easter Island. Completely unreadable.
As the director of operations for the off-the-books intelligence agency known as The Campus, John Clark was grading Chavez, just as Chavez was grading his team.
This training op had been in motion for the past five hours, with Dave and Lanny playing the role of rabbits. Both former Marines, they were handpicked force-protection specialists for the company — the guys who handled physical security at the building, the Gulfstream, and countersurveillance when the need arose. They’d started early, leading the four members of the operational team on a series of winding surveillance-detection routes that began in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from the financial arbitrage firm Hendley Associates — the name that was on all their paychecks.
Everyone on the team was pro — experienced, tried by fire. But even pros needed periodic training. Tradecraft, like any skill, grew stale when it wasn’t used. Clark’s motto to practice “not until they got it right, but until they didn’t get it wrong” was ingrained in each of them by now. All were naturals, endowed with innate talent that lent itself to surveillance, surveillance-detection runs, surreptitious entry, and, more important, the social engineering that intelligence work required. The life’s blood of intelligence work. They practiced defensive tactics as well — and some offensive ones — and firearms. Everyone enjoyed that the most, though no one was carrying today except Clark, Chavez, and Caruso. All of them were highly proficient with firearms — but they also trained extensively for the countless times when they would not have access to one of Samuel Colt’s equalizers. Still, situational awareness trumped a gun only until it didn’t. They’d arm up when able. Hence the leather BOG — bag o’ guns — hanging over Ding’s shoulder.
The securities and forensic accounting side of Hendley Associates was a working front, the “white side” that paid for the hidden raison d’être of the firm. Highly sensitive, and generally autonomous from the other intelligence agencies of the United States government, The Campus was conceived and organized in concert between former senator Gerry Hendley and President Jack Ryan.
Ryan Senior took a hands-off approach to their actual assignments. Hendley was an avuncular boss, friendly, strict when he needed to be, in on the planning while at the same time staying out of the way. He left the actual mission execution to the pros, John Clark in particular.
Clark’s leadership style had surely developed from the way he liked to operate. He believed strongly in setting parameters and then allowing his team to rattle around inside those boundaries, making their own decisions with the knowledge that could be gained only by someone with boots on the ground. He continued to play an active role, but was stepping back a little, playing elder statesman, and turning more and more of his duties over to Chavez.
The object of this mission was straightforward if not simple — just like the real world. The team was to surveil their rabbits to their hide. Once they learned that location, the team would create a diversion, defeat any security systems, break in, and steal Ding Chavez’s prized RAF Credenhill — otherwise known as Hereford — coffee mug. Easy peasy — so long as Dave and Lanny didn’t identify them.
The countersurveillance Jack Junior had seen was a nonissue, because it didn’t exist. The kid must have dreamed it up.
Midas Jankowski broke squelch next. A retired Delta Force colonel, his voice was calm and resonant, like he’d been born to speak on the radio.
Chavez looked at the dots on his phone, all of them heading east on Canal now.
