She continued strolling along the walkway until she had pulled even with the seventy-five-foot coast redwood in the middle of the lawn. There, she turned and crossed the manicured grass, headed directly for a concrete bench on the opposite side. It felt good being free from the confines of the Jeep, and she enjoyed the brief reprieve as she breathed in the fresh air and scanned the surrounding buildings for interlopers. Just before reaching the bench, she knelt to tie her shoe and surreptitiously surveyed the length of the lawn and the path behind her.
A flash of movement near a sycamore caught her attention. She untied and retied her shoe, focusing on the spot at the west edge of the lawn until satisfying herself that it had been nothing more than the wind. She was alone. She turned and sat on the bench, then slipped the memory card from her pocket and reached under the front edge to insert it inside a hollowed-out nook. With the drop complete, she leaned back and took a deep breath of the fragrant air with satisfaction before standing to resume her leisurely circuitous route around Dexter Lawn.
She had been on campus less than twenty minutes, but already the coastal overcast was beginning its slow retreat back to the sea. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day and was a small consolation prize for having to spend the next several hours behind the wheel. She was exhausted but couldn’t rest until she had returned to Long Beach and notified Mantis she was in position for the evening’s operation.
She glanced up at the redwood as she circled around to the south side of the lawn, then resumed looking for anybody who might have witnessed her completing the dead drop. But she had been careful. She hadn’t spotted a tail during her drive north from Long Beach, and she hadn’t seen a soul on campus. She had only one more task to complete before she could leave.
Nearing the signal, she bent over and scooped up the fork, carrying it to the nearby trash can at the end of the walkway as her countersignal that the drop had been loaded. Though she hadn’t seen anybody who might have witnessed the act, she reasoned that if they had, they would have just assumed she was your typical California co-ed, removing litter from the green space.
But she was alone. She felt it.
She deposited it into the receptacle, then turned at the Engineering West building and continued at a relaxed pace for her Jeep.
Despite the comfort of the BMW sedan, Rick was exhausted from maintaining his tail throughout the night. After Air One had departed station to return to the Long Beach airport, he closed the distance to within five car lengths. Maintaining his visual on the Jeep took priority, and it was a nerve-racking drive north on Interstate 405 through Los Angeles. But by the time his quarry merged onto Highway 101 north of the Santa Monica Mountains, he had perfected his technique.
He thought of it like casting and drifting, setting the bait and letting the current carry him toward his target. He weaved in and out between cars and blended in with the surrounding traffic, at one point even passing the Jeep Wrangler and exiting the freeway before rejoining several car lengths behind. His only goal had been to keep his movement as random as possible to avoid her detecting a pattern and making him. The technique worked until the traffic thinned out, leaving his BMW as one of only a handful of cars remaining on the road.
In spite of the challenging conditions, he had managed to maintain his visual on the Jeep until she turned onto California Boulevard in San Luis Obispo. After driving only a few blocks, she quickly turned down a side street and came to a stop alongside the curb. It was a classic countersurveillance technique and only the first since leaving Long Beach. To Rick, that meant she was nearing her destination.
He kept his speed constant and drove past the side street, only looking at the Jeep from the corner of his eye. Her brake lights were still illuminated, which meant she hadn’t turned off the ignition and intended to continue driving. He drove another four blocks before turning into an apartment complex parking lot where he doused his lights and waited to see if the Jeep returned to the main road. After several minutes, his patience was rewarded, and he spotted the blue Jeep continuing toward the campus. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Keeping his lights off, he pulled out onto the road two hundred yards in trail of the Jeep, feeling a giddy nervousness with each passing minute. By the time his target had reached the Cal Poly campus, he was reasonably certain she hadn’t spotted him. But he didn’t want to take chances, and he drifted further behind and watched from a discreet distance as she turned right on Campus Way.
