Page 43 of The Woman Left Behind

“I have eyes, and I can drive.”

“You might be needed here at any time, and trust me, you can’t drive in Paris. It’s a nightmare. You don’t speak French, you don’t know anything about the streets, you’d get lost, and you’d likely cause an accident that would get you killed.” He grinned at her. “We’re looking out for you.”

And boring her to death at the same time. “Does everyone speak French except for me?”

“Some, at any rate. Voodoo’s fluent, Ace and Trapper not quite as good. The others get by, but the French sneer at them. You should take some language courses.”

“In my spare time.” But that was an idea. She’d see which languages were most useful now, and at least get some rudimentary language skills going. Overseas flights were long, and that would be something to pass the time because sleep was hard to come by. She’d been too excited, quarters had been cramped, and she hadn’t acquired the guys’ ability to nap on a moment’s notice whether they were lying, sitting, or propped against a wall. Not only that, Jelly and Crutch were such practical jokers she didn’t think she’d ever feel comfortable sleeping in their presence.

Her work cell phone buzzed. She jumped, and her heart rate picked up. Part of the protocol was that anything relating to the drone would be sent by text, instead of a phone call that might be picked up by an audio recording bug. The text was from Levi:

get tweety ready

Adrenaline shot through her system, making her feel almost dizzy. She jumped to her feet and got Tweety ready to fly. Guidance systems for drones originally required line-of-sight communication with the controller, but they were so far beyond that now she could operate him from just about anywhere; the military’s Predator drones could be controlled by people sitting in front of a screen thousands of miles away. But that much distance had the built-in lag time that MacNamara had wanted eliminated, so Tweety didn’t need that kind of capability. Paris was a big city, with innumerable obstacles, but with Tweety’s 360-degree cameras, sensors, and pinpoint GPS, she could zip him around the city as easily as if he were a real bird.

The next text was the coordinates where Levi wanted the drone to be positioned.

Swiftly Jina pulled the coordinates up on the computer and surveyed the area, while the computer plotted the best path. Paris was an old, overcrowded, jumbled city, with almost no straightforward route to anywhere. There were so many variables that had to be considered: wind, pedestrians, buildings, streetlamps; Tweety had been designed to attract minimum attention—he was silent and had awesome battery power—but keeping him unnoticed with so many people around was a priority. The last thing they wanted was to have an incident that resulted in the drone being knocked from the sky and captured. That wouldn’t be as bad as the software in the laptop falling into the wrong hands, but still.

She texted Levi that Tweety was on the way and suited actions to words.

It was a rush, watching on her computer screen, seeing what Tweety saw, deftly guiding him over or around obstacles, sending him flying to Levi’s location. This was what she’d trained for months to do, though not exactly this; she’d thought there would be more of a “hot mission” feel to it, rather than these rather prosaic conditions. The sky was overcast, the day cold and windy but not drastically so, with the possibility of rain at any time. Paris might be called the “city of light,” but it looked dreary on a cold, late November day, and Jina was just as glad to be inside their cramped, run-down hotel room, exploring Paris from the all-seeing eyes of her Tweety.

There was an art to the flight, choosing ways that allowed her to blend the drone in with the background. She had practiced making his motions look like those of a bird, sometimes darting and swooping, sometimes flying straight, sometimes pretending to “roost” by hovering close to a ledge or anything else appropriate. Now she opted for more speed, because the faster she got to Levi’s coordinates, the better.

Getting him there on surface streets would have taken over an hour. Flying him there, she had him close in fifteen minutes and texted Levi for further instructions.

Crutch was quietly talking on his headset, coordinating the six guys on the ground, making sure everyone knew what everyone else was doing and no piece of information went by unnoticed. Jina half listened to him while she mostly concentrated on her eyes and fingers, seeing what Tweety saw, immersing herself in the program the way she did when she played computer games.

Tweety’s software was programmed to recognize the team members, and one of his cameras immediately locked in on Levi, showing him standing under an awning that protected him from the light rain that had started falling. Even from Tweety’s viewpoint, Levi’s physical presence was like a punch in her sternum, making her feel breathless and dizzy. He was so tall and powerful that people instinctively glanced at him, which wasn’t the best thing for covert work but perversely made others in the same field disregard himbecausehe was so noticeable. His features, though, blended in with the native French; his hair and eyes were dark, his facial bone structure was chiseled enough that he could belong to any number of nationalities.

She didn’t want to notice, didn’t want to think about what had happened between them Sunday afternoon. Staying busy was the best antidote to depression and frustration.

She sent a text that Tweety was in position. Levi took out his phone and read the message, but was too professional to look around for the drone. Instead his thumb moved over the keypad, and her phone buzzed again.Across street in cafe, get photo of filewas followed by a brief description of the men in question. Then Levi pocketed his phone and walked off down the street, not once glancing at the café or his quarry.

Okay, it was up to her now. She positioned Tweety and located her target. The two men were sitting at a table against the window, protected from the elements but able to watch their surroundings. With Tweety’s fast, high-resolution camera recording, she flew him past the window, high enough to look down. From what she saw on the laptop, the file was an actual file folder, which struck her as ridiculous. If they were up to something nefarious, shouldn’t they be sneakier about it, rather than meeting in the open with a real file folder? She gave a mental shrug. Maybe being so open and acting innocent was the new thing with terrorists. She’d been told to get photos, so she got photos.

The two men talked. Graeme Burger opened the file, turned it around, and with the expertise of someone who often dealt with upside-down paperwork, pointed out several things to Nawal Daw. For all the world, it looked as if he was making a presentation, or trying to close a deal, maybe convince the Sudanese to move some money to his bank. Well, at the base of it, terrorism needed money to exist. But what did this have to do with Burger’s planned visit to the United States? Maybe something, maybe nothing.

She took Tweety on another pass, photographing the open file. Then she took him to a roosting position on a streetlight, looking down and waiting for another page to be turned. The two men often looked at the foot traffic on the sidewalks, and around them in the café, but neither of them noticed Tweety’s roughly bird shape.

Crutch murmured, “Everyone has pulled back, waiting to resume surveillance.” His phone dinged, and he looked at the message. “Burger has booked himself on a flight leaving de Gaulle this evening, back to Johannesburg. Given the flight schedule, he should be leaving here and going straight to the airport.”

Levi said, “Snake, Voodoo, you’re on airport duty. Boom and Trapper, swap out with them. Jelly and I are on Daw.”

Two acknowledgments.

Another page was turned in the thin stack contained in the file folder. Jina sent Tweety by the window again. Burger caught a glimpse of movement and glanced up, and smoothly Jina swung the drone higher, out of his view.

The file contained five pages. After each page had been examined, the two men shook hands and parted company.

“That doesn’t seem very interesting,” she said to Crutch.

He shrugged. “Never can tell.”

She sent the intel to GO-Teams headquarters for analyzing. She could have read what was on the papers herself, by enlarging, but she didn’t have any way of putting what she read into global context.

On Levi’s command, she began bringing Tweety home. The rain was falling more heavily now, and wind gusts kept her busy finessing the drone’s balance and direction. Umbrellas popped open on the sidewalks, where pedestrians were rapidly finding dry places to be, meaning she didn’t have to be as careful about disguising Tweety’s movements. Still, it was nerve-racking. At one point a gust blew him against the side of a building and she hastily recovered his balance, swearing under her breath—or not so under her breath, because Crutch looked up with eyebrows raised—and praying there was no damage. She’d become fond of Tweety. Never mind the drones were all the same, and never mind it was a miniaturized machine/computer; this particular drone was hers. She’d named him. And once things had a name, they developed personalities, even if the personality was wholly in the mind of the operator. Tweety was her bird.

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