Page 8 of Operation: Reckless Angel

“This is a nice subdivision,” Tessman said. “Lots of trees and bushes for privacy. That’ll help us when we go into Woods’ place. We can make entry through his back French doors and no one from the other units or buildings will see. I found the box that his internet and cable comes in through. It’ll be easy enough to disable, but we’ll be taking down the entire building.”

“We won’t be inside long enough to worry about one of his neighbors calling it in and the cable repair men coming onsite to get it back up before we’re gone,” Lambchop said. “And we’ll turn it back on when we’re done. Half-hour outages aren’t that uncommon.”

“We know the trash comes tomorrow morning,” Jimmy Wilson said. “Hopefully Woods puts his can out tonight and we can go through it.”

“And hopefully he goes to that country bar tomorrow night so I can make contact with him again, and you guys can go into his place to plant our surveillance, if we haven’t had the opportunity before then,” Roth said.

“Yeah, I’d like to get in there before tomorrow night. We’ll lose a whole day if we can’t get in there any sooner,” Wilson complained.

“We’ll make up for it when we get eyes in there. Garcia and Smith are on standby at HQ to try to get into his computer if it’s not a laptop he takes with him. That’s a benefit of us getting in there tomorrow night. I see it as highly unlikely he’ll take a laptop to a bar,” Mother said.

“So even if we do get in there before to plant the cameras and listening devices, if the computer’s not there, we may want to go back in if he goes to that bar tomorrow night to get access to his computer,” Lambchop said.

They set the coverage schedule. They would continue to have one man on surveillance of Woods’ place from the loft, rotating four-hour shifts. Same for the positioning of a car parked in the strip mall. The two rental cars plus the Suburban would rotate position every four hours to trail Woods’ car if he left the subdivision. The second rental car would head out immediately after, to run a two-car surveillance. Planting a tracker on Woods’ car was also a priority. Roth would not be included in the rotation as he had made the contact with Woods.

“So, unfortunately, now all we can do is wait,” Mother said. He kept his gaze on Woods’ place across the street for the remainder of his shift. The others readied the gear they’d need when they made entry into Woods’ place.

Several more hours passed. The sun set. They ordered a couple pizzas for dinner from the pizza place in the strip mall, because the team really didn’t want to eat all of their benefactor’s food. Wilson was on the watch up in the loft when he saw Woods’ garage door open. “Got movement at the target,” he said aloud to those in the house and broadcasting it through comms to Tessman, who now held the position in the strip mall. “Target is bringing out his trash and recycling.”

“Fantastic,” Lambchop said. “We wait until after midnight to grab it. We’ll go through it in the garage and return the cans quickly.”

Roth set his alarm and laid on the couch in the darkened living room to get a few hours’ sleep before they’d go after the cans. He was too keyed up to sleep, though. After an hour, he got up and went up to the loft where Lambchop sat watch on Woods’ house. Mother was positioned in the strip mall lot. The three other members of the team were in the two bedrooms, assumed to be asleep.

“Couldn’t sleep, huh?” Lambchop asked as he came up the stairs.

“No. I’m sure I’ll sleep great after we get the cans, though,” he answered.

A text message hit Lambchop’s phone. “Michaela,” he said. She can’t sleep either. She’s got some bad indigestion tonight, pretty common for a pregnant woman. He smiled.

“Have you two set a date yet?”

“Yes,” Lambchop answered with a big smile. “New Years Eve.”

“That’s an odd day to get married,” Roth said.

“It’s the only time her brother can commit to come to town. And she promised her father before he died that she’d have her brother walk her down the aisle.”

“Hey, who’s going to officiate?” He chuckled. “You can’t very well officiate your own wedding, can you?”

Now Lambchop chuckled too. “No, I can’t. Elizabeth got ordained. She’ll do a good job of it, I’m sure.”

That made sense. Elizabeth had nearly been a nun. “Elizabeth’s a sweetheart,” Roth said.

“Yes, she is,” Lambchop agreed.

Roth sat with him, making small talk until the others got up and filed out of the two bedrooms at midnight. It was decided that wearing all black, four of them would go across the street and pick up Woods’ bins. They’d bring them back to the garage where the four men would go through them, with the door shut. Mother would still be in the strip mall parking lot, and it was Tessman’s turn to be lookout in the loft. Roth spread a large tarp on the garage floor to empty the cans’ contents onto before he trotted across the street with the others to pull off the great trash can caper. They didn’t want to dirty Gibson’s garage floor.

It went to plan. They had disabled the light in Gibson’s garage until after Woods’ bins were inside and the door was shut to conceal them as they picked through Woods’ trash. This was one of the unglamourous aspects of the job, but Roth loved it, digging in to try to find what this guy was hiding. Even seeing what Woods ate, based on the wrappers, gave them a good idea of how he could form his undercover persona into someone that Woods would find familiar and gravitate to. Most people were drawn to people who were like them.

The one unexpected thing they did find in his trash was an empty cat food bag and a bag of used litter. Nowhere had there been any indication Woods had a cat. There had been no vet bills on his credit card over the last year, unless he was one of those owners who didn’t vaccinate his cat. And if he bought the cat food at the grocery store, there would be no trips to a pet store. Okay, they’d need to be careful entering Woods’ place, so they didn’t accidentally let the cat out.

That was all they found of interest in his bins. There were no papers of interest. Nothing that gave them any indication of any place he frequented that they didn’t already know about. And nothing that would indicate what he could possibly have hired someone to do in a chatroom on the darknet, not that they expected to find the answer in Woods’ trash.

After they brought Woods’ bins back outside and returned them to the curb, the men returned to the warmth of the townhouse. Everyone returned to bed. Roth settled back in on the couch and immediately fell asleep. He was awoken at six-thirty hours the next morning by the smell of coffee coming from the adjoining kitchen.

Wilson and Burke sat at the breakfast bar, sipping coffee. Roth greeted them on his way to the coffee pot. “You both are on at seven hundred, huh?”

“Yeah,” Wilson said.

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