Page 26 of Very Special Forces

"Let mesee." Lucas turned to the keyboard and began tapping the keys,writing something unintelligible on the screen. I read it anywaylike I knew what I was looking at and crossed my fingers that therewouldn't be a pop quiz in coding later. "There are six cameras inthe area but none within a mile, which makes sense since I'm sureFort Charles has their own system and probably doesn't want to beclosely observed by their neighbors. There are two traffic camerason the major routes out of Fort Charles heading towards thehighway. There's a gas station on one route, two stores on a stripmall just before the Chester town limits and what looks like afarm. All have security cameras."

"Can youaccess all of them?"

Lucaslaughed. "Can I access them? she asks! Okay, the traffic cameraswon't pose a problem but it will take me a little longer to bypasstheir firewall. I tapped into the feed from the gas station. Theyupload their feed to an off-site server that has questionablesecurity. I downloaded the time frame you requested."

"That'sgreat! What about the other route?"

"Give mea sec... Okay, one of the strip malls deletes their video historyafter forty-eight hours but the other has it on a drive on the sameIP address. It doesn't look like I can lift a segment so I'll grabthe lot."

"Willthey notice?"

"Oh,please," scoffed Lucas. "I'll work on the other cameras. Is thereanything else you need?"

"Arethese definitely the only two routes out of FortCharles?"

"Iguess. I don't know the area. Did you check a map?"

"Did Icheck a map?" I scoffed. Then I pulled out my cell phone, called upthe maps program and checked. I found Fort Charles, zoomed in andverified there were only two routes away from the base. The tankhad to have been taken via one of them. "Yes, send me anything youhave and I'll check back later. When I know which route the tanktransporter took, I'm going to need you to follow the route untilwe find it."

"I'venever wanted to take a sick day more."

"Gladyou're looking forward to it," I said, ruffling his hair as I left.While the idea of searching through hours of footage in the hope ofseeing a tank transporter pass by didn't exactly thrill me, atleast it was a nice, safe job before the wedding.

When Igot back to my desk, I punched the password into my laptop anddownloaded the video Lucas sent me. The map program marked the gasstation on the route heading out of town. The tank transporter — ifthere even was one — could have been taken out of town, in whichcase it would be hard to track, especially if it crossed statelines. I didn't relish passing that news onto my old buddies. Untilthat became a real possibility, I picked the easier option: thestrip mall was on the way into the nearest town, Chester. If thetank went into the town, it was more than likely that it wasstashed there.

I gotup, made a coffee at the small coffee station across the room, thensat, my mug in hand, and opened the store's video, setting it toplay from eight pm in double time. After fifteen minutes, I set itto four times faster. I was pretty sure I would see something aslarge as a tank transporter and I didn't need to see every littlevehicle or tree branch waving in the breeze. At that zoomed-upspeed, it took me an hour to watch four hours of tape and just as Ibecame excessively bored, a very large vehicle lumbered past thescreen.

Poppingupright in my chair, I hit pause, then rewind, and reset the tapeto play in normal time. The vehicle was a tractor in a dark colorwith a low loader trailer. The trailer was covered with a tarp butit was the size, shape and bulk of a tank. Yes, that was definitelya tank transporter and I would stake money on a tank being itscargo! I rewound and played the tape again, searching for anydetails but the footage was too grainy to make out the face of theperson inside the tractor's cab.

"Lucas?"I said when he answered my call.

"Nearlythere with the traffic cams," he replied.

"Forgetthem. I have footage of the tank going past the strip mall atmidnight, heading towards Chester. Can you track it fromthere?"

"I canwrite a program to track it," he said. "It'll take a little time asI'll need to collate data from hundreds of cameras and you know, ifit goes into a no camera zone, we'll lose it."

"Find meas much information as you can," I said.

"You gotit."

Iprinted off a screenshot of the tank transporter and added the pageto my file. Now that I knew the tank had definitely been taken offbase, I had something to work with. I called Harris back and gothis voicemail so I left a cryptic message about tracking his parcelfrom the depot just in case anyone else happened to listenin.

While Iwaited for Lucas to work his tracking magic, I printed off a map ofChester. Since the transporter was heading that way, it waspossible the tank had been stashed nearby during the night when noone would notice its movements. There weren't many places a tankand a tank transporter could be hidden without attracting someone’sattention. I knew that I could immediately rule out large swathesof open land. Any public parking lots and residential areas wouldall result in too much attention. Ditto anywhere outside. If a tankturned up somewhere public, people would have noticed and therewould be some chatter in law enforcement. I hadn't heard athing.

Thatmeant the tank had to be hidden well. Within fifteen minutes, Ihighlighted several warehouses in neon pink, two business parks,and one disused industrial site.

My deskphone rang and I answered. "That was fast," I said.

"I got ahit already."

"Where?"

"Strangely enough, in Montgomery. Around an hour after youspotted the vehicle leaving the base."

"Here inMontgomery?" I frowned. I couldn't fathom why a tank would betransported here.

"Yes,this Montgomery, not the one in Alabama. I accidentally inputtedthe wrong search coordinates instead of those for Chester and itpopped up."

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