LITMIR.BIZ

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the hired guns had taken from their starting point to the Norfolk shipyard. Schwarz downloaded everything from the unit’s hard drive, gathering every destination that the vehicle had gone to and from.

      While he was plotting out thousands of miles of road travel for the vehicle—he made special note of the fact that it wasn’t a rental—he went to work on the communications systems that the men carried.

      They were fairly standard electronics, mass-produced in Southeast Asia—Vietnam to be exact. It didn’t quite jibe with the SIG 556 rifles, but Schwarz took a closer look at the assault weapons that had been utilized against them.

      They were Brazilian IMBEL Model LCs, not SIGs, though there were considerable similarities between the two weapons that could cause confusion at a distance. The fineries of weapon identification hadn’t mattered in the heat of combat, just that they could tell the unique sound of a high-velocity .22-caliber round and how easily it could penetrate body armor but not solid cover. The Brazilian firearms were going to be difficult to track, but that was the point, Schwarz assumed. The electronics were similar, and he would have to rely on the skills of the Stony Man Farm cyberteam to look for elements inside of the programming for these GPS units, just in case they were utilizing proprietary software. He noticed that there were downloaded updates of coordinates that had been recently entered into the electronics, new paths updated on the fly.

      Only two of the men had smartphones with them, at least as far as Schwarz could recover. He took the SIM cards from those phones to shield them from any long-range, remote nullification of the information in them. The phones themselves were just housings; the SIM cards held the most vital information for each of the mercenaries’ normal use. These were business phones, though, and had very little personal information as far as he could tell.

      It didn’t matter, thanks to the Location Area Identity entries into those cards. Now, in conjunction with the GPS, Schwarz could track their movements for several days.

      Right now, he was uploading the data from the devices to Stony Man Farm after gathering some preliminary notes. If anyone could discern what patterns the opposition were keeping to, it would be the techno-wizards at the Farm.

      In the meantime, he was going through the memory on the two smartphones that had been recovered. Memos and notes had been erased, but Schwarz had them plugged into his laptop, and he brought up a drive “unwiper” that could recover lost data easily.

      Blancanales rapped on the door to the room that Schwarz had set up as his tech lab. “Gadgets?”

      He looked up to his oldest, dearest friend. “What’s going on?”

      “Carl’s hit a brick wall.”

      “Poor wall. Or do you mean figuratively?” Schwarz asked.

      “Figuratively,” Blancanales replied. “You’d have felt the safe house shake if he’d actually punched a wall.”

      Schwarz nodded. “I’ve collected a lot of data already, on movements, on people called. Is he going to try to force admission?”

      Blancanales grinned. “It helps to be able to say we’ve got someone where they’ve been. We need to know as much about them as possible.”

      “Here’s the background and records pulled up from the Farm, too,” Schwarz replied. “Lots more dirt on our prisoners.”

      Blancanales accepted the small file folder, looking it over. His lips were drawn tightly, and Schwarz could see the glint in his eyes as he was filling his brain, memorizing everything he could about the two men in their custody. It was a typical tactic, not only of police detectives, but of carnival mentalists who gave “cold” readings of their subjects.

      The foreknowledge of answers to questions was a means of breaking down bricks in whatever wall the subject erected to deflect a questioner. If the questioner could provide answers to his own questions, it made any effort at keeping secrets seem more and more futile. Such a regimen was generally successful, even with the grimmest and toughest of subjects.

      Interrogation—the most successful and adept interrogation—didn’t come from torture or from terror. It came from shattered spirits, from the truth that nothing could be hidden from those interrogating them.

      “Carl and I have gotten about half of this,” Blancanales admitted. He looked up. “But we can still use this.”

      “Good. I’m still working with the Farm to dig deeper,” Schwarz said. “Aaron’s already on top of the forensic accounting for these two thanks to the smartphone work.”

      “That’ll prove interesting,” Blancanales mused. “Not enough for me to sit and watch it, but the results would be pretty damning, and useful for breaking our shooters.”

      “Right now I’ve done all that I can. I’m going to be sitting on my thumbs for a good bit,” Schwarz said.

      “Can’t grab a catnap?” Blancanales inquired.

      Schwarz spread out all of the information he’d accumulated. “Data overstimulation. I’m running things through the back of my mind subconsciously, so I’m not going to get much toward sleep.”

      “Multilevel intellect.” Blancanales sighed. “You’ve usually got at least three or four things working in that brain of yours. I’m surprised you can ever get to sleep.”

      “Meditation which duplicates REM sleep generally gets me through,” Schwarz answered. “That or caffeine crash. Coffee actually makes me sleepy.”

      Blancanales chuckled. “So what’s your plan? Hit up a coffee shop?”

      “Unless...”

      Schwarz looked down at one of the smartphones, then powered it back up.

      “We nullified all of the GPS-locating soft- and hardware, didn’t we?” Blancanales asked.

      “I triple-checked all of that,” Schwarz replied. “But you know...”

      “Hang out as bait? That usually works best if you’re in a team,” Blancanales countered.

      “You and Carl are busy. And Mack Bolan does the solo stuff all the time,” Schwarz answered.

      Blancanales shook his head. “We’re not that guy. He’s too experienced, too skilled. He’s on a whole different level than we are.”

      “He plans ahead, he lays traps,” Schwarz returned. “He thinks on damn near as many levels as I do. And he doesn’t have a trunk full of nasty technology like I do.”

      “So double the technology and a few points of IQ will make your little ploy as survivable as him?” Blancanales asked.

      Lyons entered and took the file folder from Blancanales. “Gadgets wants to suck in some more bad guys?”

      “Not necessarily to get into a rumble, but I can trace them while they’re tracing me,” Schwarz said. “And if things do get violent, I have a plan and the awareness for all of that.”

      Blancanales looked to Lyons for support.

      “You can’t stop him,” Lyons said. “His brain is afire. He’s got an idea, and when he gets that, he’s like me with a lead or you with an interrogation. We don’t let go. We’re driven.”

      Blancanales looked at Schwarz again, worry still present in his eyes. “At least tell me you have something that can minimize the danger. Something to even the odds.”

      Schwarz grinned. “I’ll have Schrödinger’s cat with me.”

      Lyons tilted his head. “That’s from quantum physics, right?”

      “Look at you, Ironman. Where’d you pick that one up?” Schwarz asked.

      Lyons shrugged, a little embarrassed “There’s a comedy about four scientists... Highly illuminating about guys like you, Hermann.”

      Schwarz’s grin grew, even though Lyons was gently gibing

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