Ding decided to let it play out. It would be good training — embarrassing as hell for Ryan and Midas, but good. To professionals like these, failure in front of peers was more horrifying than getting shot by an actual enemy.
Time plus distance plus boredom equaled mission fatigue, making the training more realistic — so Chavez made sure the scenario contained large doses of all three.
The rabbits had transferred to the Red Line on the D.C. Metro system, arriving at Union Station with tickets already in hand, just in time to jump on the 8:40 a.m. Northeast Regional Amtrak train going toward Boston. Ding had been proud of the way the team scrambled to make it on board just before the train pulled away. He and Clark had taken the Acela Express ten minutes later, carrying the bag o’ guns. As a credentialed FBI agent, Caruso could travel armed virtually anywhere he went in the United States, but the rest of the team needed to go slick in the event they had to follow a rabbit into a museum or onto a commercial airplane. Clark rarely went anywhere without his 1911, and though intelligence work often called for operatives to be unarmed, he knew all too well the dangers of their job. He believed strongly in overwatch that had the ability to provide deadly force quickly when needed. If at all feasible, someone on the team carried the BOG. Caruso carried his Glock as well as Adara’s M&P Shield in holsters inside his waistband. This was a drill, but there were additional Shields in the leather BOG, including one for Adara, in case Dom couldn’t link up with her.
Chavez and Clark’s Acela Express beat the Northeast Regional train to Penn Station in Manhattan by twenty minutes. The rabbits stopped to eat some cheesecake at Junior’s off Times Square, then led the team on a merry walk around Central Park, then back to Midtown before boarding the N train to Canal Street.
“Are you running countersurveillance?” Clark asked.
“Nope,” Chavez said.
Chavez was no slouch when it came to his tactical background. He had eons of experience in the Army, as a protective officer in the CIA, and a team leader of the multinational Rainbow counterterrorism unit. He’d been there and done that all over the world. He had the T-shirt and the scars to prove it. But Clark was a legend in the intelligence community, which was saying something in a business where anonymity was the rule of the day. A former Navy SEAL and longtime operator for the CIA, the details of Clark’s past were fuzzy, if not altogether redacted. Few in the business knew exactly what he’d done, but they knew he’d done it. A lot of it. And knowing that was enough.
Since Clark also happened to be Ding’s father-in-law, this added a nuanced layer of stress — and trust — to every operation. They’d worked together long before Ding had met Patsy. John must have approved of the union, because Chavez was still standing upright. He and his father-in-law had gone on to spill blood and have plenty of their own blood spilt.
Clark glanced at his watch — a Victorinox analog, plain but hell for stout. Chavez took another drink of bubble tea. Funny how the boss looking at his watch could make even the most even-keeled person squirm. As assistant director of ops, Chavez was running point on more and more missions, allowing Clark to stand back and quietly observe — while he drank coffee and looked at his watch.
“Something bothering you, Mr. C?” Chavez asked.
It wasn’t like Clark to fidget. They’d been together all morning and Clark had just now suffered a tiny crack in his stony composure.
“I’m good,” he said, giving the slightest of shrugs as he aimed his thousand-yard stare down East Broadway. Chavez was surprised one of the passersby didn’t catch fire. “Just thinking.”
Midas spoke again, more urgently this time.
Odd, Chavez thought, that Dom would question intel from another member of the team.
Ding stood up straighter now.
