Free Ice Cold Kill by Dana Haynes Page B

turned to their communications man. “We need to redirect the Syrian, please. He’s going to the wrong site.”
    The second man in the Grand Cherokee shouted into his mic. “He’ll be suspicious. He won’t—”
    “Gentlemen?” Asher reached up and lowered his glasses back into the bridge of his nose. “The plan calls for the CIA to intercept Mr. Belhadj. The CIA is no longer going to be on Forty-second. They are going to be at Verdi Square.”
    He made a gesture to Schullman that the big man correctly interpreted. Schullman began looking up Verdi Square.
    The Cypriot said, “If we move the Syrian fucker, he’ll know—”
    Asher interrupted quietly, “Please do it,” and disconnected.
    Schullman looked up from his laptop. “Uptown. West Side.”
    Asher said, “Thank you. Can you lead the mobile team, please?”
    Schullman shrugged into his jacket, hiding a shoulder holster and a hand cannon. “And Daria?”
    The faint echo of a smile crossed Asher’s thin features. “I don’t think we need worry. She’ll be there.”
    “But how—”
    Asher patted him on the shoulder. “That’s Daria. When she dances, she always likes to lead.”
    *   *   *
     
    Syrian Agent Khalid Belhadj’s commuter train was just reaching the Hudson River when his cell phone vibrated. He confirmed that the call was being routed through a secure server in Estonia, then accepted the text message.
    Belhadj returned his phone to his pocket. He wore a shapeless dun raincoat, brown trousers, shoddy oxfords. He knew he looked and moved like a soldier, so he’d added a brimmed hat, a few sizes too large for his head. The brim hid his granite-hard eyes and watchful stare. The baggy clothes hid his rigid, on-point body language. The coat hid a Springfield .45 handgun that could punch a hole through cinder block.
    He pondered the message. It seemed his meeting was being moved to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The change of venue would have made Belhadj suspicious. Except he’d been suspicious about each and every aspect of the meeting for days now. The change of plan didn’t trigger further suspicion; it confirmed his instincts.
    *   *   *
     
    Daria remembered one of her trainers in Israeli Intelligence expounding on the subject of countersurveillance: “You don’t shoot birds in the bushes, idiot! You spook them, get them to fly. Surveillance can be easy to hide but difficult to transport.”
    From her second-story perch in the Hyatt bar, Daria could not tell which unmoving trucks, which idle pedestrians, which slowly cruising taxis had been watching Forty-second Street, waiting for her. Hiding in plain sight.
    Until they weren’t.
    She caught the motion of the long, white truck with the logo of a film company, as well as five pedestrians who, simultaneously, touched their ears or glanced around, then hurried away in the same direction. Individually, they had blended into the scene nicely. Now choreographically mobile, they became a unit, an ensemble.
    That wasn’t what worried Daria.
    No. It was the movement on at least two, possibly three, roofs. Snipers.
    This was not a benign surveillance unit. This was a kill squad.
    *   *   *
     
    In Langley, John Broom spun around, located Nanette Sylvestri, the Person in Charge. The tall, gangly woman towered over most everyone else in the Shark Tank. She was willow slim, with tightly cropped hair the color of old nickels. She’d been in the agency for nearly thirty years and had run many operations. She was the one you called in to run the Shark Tank for big events like today.
    “Nanette?”
    Her eyes were glued to the eight flat-screen monitors that reflected real-time intelligence from Forty-second Street. She nodded, acknowledging she had heard him, but keeping her eyes darting from screen to screen.
    “Something’s wrong here.”
    She offered a grim smile. “You think? We’re out of place.”
    “No,” John said, “It’s something else.”

Six
     
    The tool