Jacob went to the other sleeping pallets, shaking the legs of Carlos and Devon. They woke up and Omar stood above them, projecting the aura of the first time Jacob had met him, his power absolute.

“It’s time. Prepare yourself for martyrdom. Cleanse your body and clear your mind. Your greatest triumph lies ahead.”

84

I got one more negative contact from Knuckles and began to wonder if the phone was turned on. I said, “You sure you’ve got the right IMSI in the box?”

Piqued, he came back, “I got what you gave me. Maybe you’d better ask the Taskforce asshole who sent the information.”

I looked at my watch, feeling the time slip away. It was now past seven thirty, and our opportunity to find the bed-down site with the phone information was growing smaller and smaller. Soon, it would be on the move, and we would lose the chance to hit them together, at a place of our choosing. I feared the next hit would be the one of their choosing.

The Taskforce intel analyst had given me the information on the handset purchased in Venice, a so-called drop phone bought at a train station kiosk. They’d gone into high gear and hacked the database of the phone vendor, learning the serial number and—more importantly—the international mobile subscriber number, or IMSI, attached to the phone. This was the unique identifier the phone would use to communicate with the network, and something that could be tracked.

We’d done the large-scope search, and seen the phone had only been used a few times. Some of the calls had been placed in Venice, one had been in between Venice and Rome, but the latest were in Rome itself, telling me the phone purchased with the suspected credit card was now running around the capital. All I had to do was find it, which I most definitely had the capability to do.

We had the general location of where the phone had been due to its constant talking to cell towers, but that wasn’t enough of a refinement for a surgical assault. It did show me a pattern that proved hunting the IMSI was worth the effort, because the phone’s last tower contact had been in the vicinity of our gunfight the night before.

I’d awakened the pilots and Knuckles, telling them what I had and getting them moving to the rock-star bird.

In addition to transporting my team around in style and hiding our equipment, the Gulfstream had a suite of surveillance capabilities nestled among all of the electronic gear that allowed the aircraft to fly. One was the ability to geolocate a cell phone down to a ten-digit grid. Basically acting as a flying cell tower, the aircraft would suck in and reject thousands of cell phones, searching for the correct IMSI. Once that was found, the phone would be locked and we’d trace the signal straight-line to a location, taking three readings and finding where they intersected.

Knuckles came back on, the connection from the aircraft to my computer making him sound like he had a head cold. “We’ve lapped Trastevere twice, with no joy. I’m recommending a grid pattern search.”

The Trastevere area had the longest stay of the phone, according to the cell tower data, and I was hoping it was the bed-down location, but nothing had registered. The cell was either off or already on the move to a different location.

The IMSI grabber in the aircraft was limited in range—it couldn’t suck in every phone in Rome—and thus had to be targeted at a specific area. Knuckles was asking to start flying over Rome like he was mowing the lawn, but that posed its own problems—namely the air traffic control over the airspace of Rome. They’d want to know why we wished to fly willy-nilly across the city.

I said, “What’s the pilot’s take?”

I waited, then heard, “He’s saying he can do it, but it’ll be short. He thinks he can convince them that we’re sightseeing, flying over the Colosseum and the Vatican before we get on our way. We won’t get the city.”

I thought about it, knowing it would be the last thing we did. I was about to give them the go-ahead when Jennifer came into the room, holding my Taskforce phone. “Analyst on the line. He’s got a lead.”

Into the computer I said, “Stand by. I got the Taskforce on the phone. Head out of the city and loiter.”

I took the cell from Jennifer, put my hand over the mic, and said, “Christine?”

Jennifer said, “Nothing yet. Doctor says she’s still out from the sedatives and the trauma. Her vitals are good, so he thinks she’ll come around soon.”

Not what I wanted to hear. Well, I mean I was glad her vitals were good, but, Jesus, couldn’t she wake the hell up already? I put the phone to my ear and said, “What do you have?”

I’d given the analyst the mission to identify all the calls our target cell had made, and I was hoping they had something I could use to broaden my search.

“We think we have the bed-down location. One of the contacts made by the handset was to the Hotel Imperiale. It’s the only hotel they’ve called, and the same one of your linkage target. Our evaluation is they’re staying at it. We recommend penetrating through cyber and getting a guest readout. We can analyze for anomalies if they’re using an alias.”

Not a bad bit of analysis, but unfortunately way off. This analyst was dedicated to finding linkages through electronic tethers, and not an all-source guy who could provide predictive intelligence based on multiple inputs. He had no idea what had transpired last night, but at least he was trying.

I said, “Thanks for the information. Who else has that phone called? Do you have the other IMSIs?”

I could hear the deflation over the phone. “Yes. There are a few other numbers, most mundane. We’ve got one other pay-as-you-go cell, bought in Rome. But I really think you should focus on the hotel.”

I said, “I might. Give me the IMSI.”

He did and I relayed it to Knuckles, telling him to put it in the system, re-attack Trastevere, and if that was a bust, to conduct his limited grid search. It was all I could do.

Jennifer said, “It’s now past eight.”

“Thank you for that reminder.”

She took my sarcasm in stride, waiting. I said, “What?”

“Shoshana. She says she can find Omar. I think we should let her try.”

“Jennifer, that is fucking crazy. I may not have a lot of leads, but I’ll be damned if I’m resorting to calling the psychic network for answers. We let her loose and she’s just as likely to burn the operation as facilitate it.”

“Pike, talk to her. Give her your mission parameters and she’ll execute. I’ll go with her. I’ll keep her in check.”

I thought about it. Kurt’s conversation with me last night had driven home that a slaughter was coming. All indicators were putting the attack as imminent, and the Islamic State had shown a barbarity unlike anything seen since the Middle Ages. They’d put enormous effort into this plan, and the end result would be commensurate. Something more horrible than the burning of the Jordanian pilot.

Kurt had inserted the Lost Boys into the Italian system, and the United States was blaring from all classified agencies to every liaison in Europe, but hoping some cop stumbled across them was not a means for success. It was like 9/11 all over again, with everyone warning of the punch, but nobody knowing how it was coming.

But waiting on Christine to wake up was doing little as well. In truth, I hated sitting on my hands. I wanted to be proactive. To be doing something.

I said, “Go get her. But you’re going with her.”

Jennifer smiled and raced out of the room. She came back in almost immediately, making me wonder if Shoshana had been waiting right outside.

Shoshana said, “I appreciate your trust.” No witty sarcasm. No playful banter. She was all business, but the dark angel was hidden.