Free Ice Cold Kill by Dana Haynes

she’s always under surveillance and takes countermeasures. Look, study this.”
    He produced a file folder, about a half-inch thick. “Backgrounders for both the Syrian shooter and this Gibron woman. We put the team together so fast, I didn’t have time to brief everyone.”
    He handed the folder to the nearest agent.
    *   *   *
     
    Daria’s Manhattan meeting place was under surveillance by the CIA.
    Both Daria and the CIA team, in turn, were under surveillance by Asher Sahar and his crew. After all, the whole event had been orchestrated by Asher. He had no intention of missing the show.
    His procurement specialists—completely separated from his tactical field specialists—had provided a third-floor storage space above a diamond store. The space was remarkably low-tech despite its content: eight-foot-tall wooden chests of drawers, the drawers all uniformly four inches wide by three inches deep, all filled with velvet-lined boxes of diamonds and other gems. Upon reviewing the space, weeks earlier, Asher and Eli Schullman had come to the conclusion that the only security was a sign on the door that read NO ADMITTANCE!
    Three wood-framed windows looked out on Forty-second. Schullman had coated the inside of the windows with static-hold sheets, adhered them with blasts from a hair dryer. The sheets reduced lens flare from the cameras and rifles inside the diamond exchange.
    Asher’s surveillance experts—a cell of good people, well isolated from procurement and tactical—had provided wide-spectrum receivers to monitor the CIA teams. The guys in surveillance had bought the CIA frequencies from the Russian FSB. Strange bedfellows …
    Asher, Eli Schullman, and two others manned the third floor of the diamond exchange. Two more men waited below them in a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a well-faked handicapped parking permit.
    Asher pushed his eyeglasses up into his thinning hair and raised binoculars, adjusted them. “Timing for Belhadj?”
    One of his men, an Ethiopian Jew, checked his handheld. “We assumed he’d come into Penn Station but he switched trains. He should reach Grand Central Station inside the hour.”
    “Terminal,” Asher whispered, making minute adjustments to the binoculars. “Grand Central Terminal.”
    Schullman rubbed his Cro-Magnon jaw. “And Gibron?”
    Asher clucked his tongue. “I’m sure she’s around.”
    *   *   *
     
    In the CIA truck-and-trailer, one of the techs, a taciturn Texan, spun from his monitor and deftly doffed his headset. “Got her! She’s calling the FBI!”
    “Block it!” Thorson rose from his bolted-down seat.
    *   *   *
     
    At the Los Angeles Field Office of the FBI, Ray Calabrese glanced down at his cell phone, which sat atop a pile of files. The phone rang once. He reached for it, but it didn’t ring again.
    Odd.
    As he pulled his hand away, Special Agent in Charge Henry Deits knocked on his door. He held his laptop, propped open, cradled like an infant.
    “Have you checked the dailies from the CIA yet?”
    Ray leaned back in his chair. “No. They got something good?”
    Henry looked more pale than usual, which was saying something. “Something, yeah. Not something good.”
    He stepped into the room and showed Ray his laptop, with the twin photos of Khalid Belhadj and Daria Gibron.
    *   *   *
     
    The Texan in the CIA command vehicle redirected Daria’s call away from Ray Calabrese’s cell phone. Thorson’s crew and those back home in the Langley Shark Tank listened to the recorded intro they had pirated from Ray’s cell earlier that day. “Hi, it’s Ray. I’m on another line. Please leave me a message.” Beep.
    The three men in the long, technology-laden mobile ops center kept quiet, doffing their own headsets. The truck included an interior door that led to the cab but no driver sat up there. Nothing looks more like surveillance than a driver behind the wheel of an unmoving truck.
    After a couple of clicks, a voice rang