Back into the archive I went, and entered the date, time, and camera designator. And there was carousel #4, still and empty. The first passengers from flight 6180 were just arriving to await their bags. After a couple more minutes of staring at the screen, I saw Daria and Anya step off the escalator. They walked to a bank of displays, stared and pointed briefly, then walked toward #4.
That's when the large man entered the frame from the left, the direction of the doors that led outside. He was holding a small sign but his angle to the camera was such that I couldn't read the sign or see his face. I knew he was my guy, though, because he was headed straight for the girls.
I checked my notes on the cameras in baggage claim, then returned to the search screen and entered the new parameters. This time the video started rolling just before the man arrived. I had a clear view of the doors as he walked through and as he grew closer, the letters on the sign became clear: ANYA & DARIA.
Only then did I look to the man's face. I immediately paused the playback and stared. Ho-ly shit.
CHAPTER 114
LAS VEGAS
COURTNEY MEYER
MEYER CONTINUED WORKING on her laptop as the black Bureau Suburban turned onto Green Mountain. The flow of email never seemed to stop, and she answered them as quickly as she could. Better that than putting it off and finding herself with hundreds to respond to at once. She looked up when the felt the vehicle slow to a stop. They were in a small parking lot behind a church. Another SUV was already there, along with HRT's big panel van. Meyer got out and looked around for the leader of the team that would surveil the house.
While the leader was dressed in exactly the same blackout style as the rest of his men, a minute of watching others approach and ask him questions, identified him as the agent in charge. She approached with her hand out and after the introduction and handshake were done, she said, "How far away is the house?"
He pointed in the same direction they had been traveling. "Four houses down on the right."
"Approach?"
"We got lucky. There's a railroad track that runs along the back of the houses." He hooked a thumb to point behind the church.
Meyer looked and could make out the rise of earth and a dull glint of metal in the moonlight.
The agent continued: "The back yard of the target house is unfenced, so we shouldn't have any problem with a stealthy approach."
"And you do understand the critical importance of stealth? A lot of innocent lives could depend on it, so we can't do anything that might trigger these suspects to hurt or kill these girls."
He nodded. "Completely."
"I'd like to monitor the operation."
"Not a problem. Follow me."
Meyer followed him to the panel van and then inside the back doors. The rearmost area—about half the rear space of the van—was outfitted with seating. In front of that, a bevy of high-tech equipment filled racks on either side wall and a console on the partition that separated the rear space from the cockpit. A young agent was seated at the console, looking at a series of video monitors.
The leader said, "We all wear cameras that transmit to this surveillance bank." With a nod toward the young agent, he said, "This agent will take care of you and get you set up to watch everything as it happens and if you like, he can wire you with comms to speak to me."
"Perfect," Meyer said. "How long until you go?"
He checked his watch. "Two minutes."
"Good luck."
He nodded and left the van. Console Agent said, "Have a seat and I'll get you set up."
CHAPTER 115
LAS VEGAS
COURTNEY MEYER
MEYER WATCHED the team advance along the railroad track toward the house. The largest monitor was displaying the leader's feed, while smaller screens showed the other five. All the cameras were in night vision mode, rendering video in shades of green. Her left ear was fitted with an insert that gave her two-way comms with the team leader, though she had no intention of speaking and interrupting his concentration.
Now they were behind the house, spread out and moving in closer. One man took each side of the house, while two covered the front and two the back. The men on the sides had the advantage of hedgerows that separated the yard from the houses next door. The leader was in front of the house, which was lit sufficiently by a pair of floodlights along the eaves to cause the camera to switch out of night vision mode. The ghostly green became a color picture with amazing clarity in such low light. He gave a hand signal and the other man on the front side moved in a crouch toward the house. When he reached it, he knelt and retrieved a black cordless drill from his gear bag, then fitted it with a long drill bit and began drilling through the cement-board siding. Meyer hoped and prayed that the drilling was quiet.
After a couple minutes, Drill Man withdrew the drill, removed the bit, and stowed it in his bag. From the bag, he pulled a case about the size of two packs of playing cards laid end to end. He opened it, removed what looked like a coil of wire, then straightened the coil and connected one end to the case itself. As Meyer watched him fiddle with the device on camera, another monitor in the console suddenly came to life. "Can you put that picture on a bigger screen?" she said.
Console Agent pressed a couple buttons and the lead agent's image was replaced by the fiber optic camera's feed. Meyer literally held her breath as she saw the view passing through the wall. Suddenly, the screen showed a carpeted floor. As Drill Man manipulated the snaky camera shaft from outside the house, more of the room came into view. It was a living room. The camera had entered the room at the left end of a sofa that was backed up to the front wall of the house.
Over the next few minutes, three more monitors came to life. She hadn't realized they were inserting multiple cameras but she was sure glad to see it. The three new cameras showed two bedrooms and one bathroom, all of which were empty. Four cameras were of course not covering the entire house—rooms were going unexplored—but the microphones on the cameras were listening to a house that was largely dead quiet. The one exception was the original camera, the one in the living room. The shaft wasn't long enough to get past the sofa, so they couldn't tell who was on the sofa, but someone was because the microphone was picking up the sound of someone snoring.
Meyer's earpiece clicked and she heard the team leader's voice, just above a whisper. "Agent Meyer, can you see the cameras?"
As Console Agent had instructed, she reached to her ear and switched a tiny switch to the up position to enable two-way comms. "I see them. Other than the person in the living room, the house looks empty."
"Roger that. Now that the cameras are transmitting, we're going to move into concealment positions and watch for activity. Hopefully the unknown in the living area will move about at some point so we can get a view."
"Understood. Standing by."
She switched the earpiece back to listen-only mode and settled in for a wait, trying to make sense of the empty house. Flatt seemed certain that the workers from what he called "the bunker" left there everyday and returned to this house for the evening. So where the hell were they?
CHAPTER 116
SPACE
I WAS STILL STARING at the paused frame of the surveillance video. Still trying to process the implications of what I saw. I like to think I'm a pretty sharp investigator, but I did not see this coming. My email notifier dinged and I loaded my inbox. It was from Meyer.
Other than one person we've not yet ID'd, house is empty. Can you think of anything else Daria Bodrova might have said that would indicate an alternate location?
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT, which meant the bunker workers should be in the Green Mountain house. Unless they had some emergency work and were still slaving away in the bunker. If I had my own computer, I could've instantly brought up the bunker cameras and answered that question. And if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass all the time. It took almost ten minutes of trial and error, but working from memory I was finally able to get into the camera
s. The computer room was empty. The corridors were empty. Had something spooked them into moving the workers to a new location? An idea hit me. I clicked the REPLY button on Meyer's email.
DARIA DIDN'T MENTION another location, just the bunker and the GM house. Have your people made any progress on identifying the occupants of the buildings on the other side of the Strip, where the rape videos track back to? I also have new information you need. Call SPACE and ask them to ring the house phone at the fifth floor elevators. Should be secure.
I SENT the email and switched back to the LAX surveillance image. There on my screen, in a crisp hi-def image, holding a sign that said ANYA & DARIA while grinning at them with his tombstone teeth, was Detective Ronnie Huddleston of the Las Vegas Police Department. Ronnie Huddleston who had blown Sam off when he took the rape videos to him.
CHAPTER 117
LAS VEGAS
COURTNEY MEYER
HER PHONE VIBRATED AND SAID, "Incoming email." Meyer opened the inbox and then the email, which was from Flatt. As soon as she read it, she looked up the number for SPACE and asked to be connected to the house phone Flatt had specified.
After several rings, someone said, "Hello?"
Meyer recognized the voice as Nichols. "Mr. Nichols, please tell Mr. Flatt I'm on the line."
"Hold on."
As soon as Flatt came on the line, Meyer said, "Isn't that house phone in the field of view for a camera?"
"It is, but I have to tell you something."
"What is it?"
"I heard you met the LVPD detective, Huddleston, right?"
"Yes. He's unprofessional and boorish."
"Worse than that. He's involved in all this, on the wrong side."
Meyer paused a moment, then said, "How so?"
"When Daria and Anya Bodrova got to Los Angeles, he was the one waiting for them. He's the one who gave them their tickets to Las Vegas."
Meyer paused again, trying to absorb this. "How do you know this, Mr. Flatt?"
"Call me Sam. I can't say right now, but the evidence I've seen is irrefutable. Believe this, Agent Meyer."
"Is that evidence something you can email me?"
"I can't do that. It's why we had to talk by phone instead. You're gonna have to trust me for now. If that asshole shows up, you cannot divulge anything important to him, and you cannot tip your hand that you know about him."
She drew a breath to tell him that he was in no position to dictate to an FBI agent what she could and could not do, but changed her mind. The man's daughter was missing; no need for her to create more tension. "Alright, Sam. Anything else?"
"That's all I have new for you right now. What about your people and the buildings across the Strip? Surely these people don't have that many places they can shuffle in and out of with over a dozen people without attracting a little attention."
"I haven't heard back on that, but I'll follow up soon."
"What about the house?" Flatt said. "Any development there?"
Meyer hesitated. Why was she sharing information with a civilian as if he were a part of the investigation? It violated a laundry list of Bureau regulations.
"Agent Meyer?"
Because sharing is a two-way street and this guy uncovered more in a couple weeks than we did in over a year. "Nothing n—"
"We have action," Console Agent said, pointing at the screen of the living room camera.
"Hang on," Meyer said into her phone.
On the screen, a pair of feet came into view. A man's feet in leather loafers, walking right to left across the camera's field of view. As soon as he was left of the camera's position, the view began to move. "Are those cameras remote control?" Meyer said to Console Agent.
He nodded and kept watching the screen.
The man on screen would be out of view soon, even with the camera lens tracking left. "Can't they move the camera faster?" she said.
Console Agent shook his head. "We're beta testing these cameras for the manufacturer. They're slow but we're thrilled just to have a high-res probe camera that's remote-capable at all."
Meyer reached out and tapped the screen for the bathroom camera. It was the one on the left end of the house and that's where she bet he was headed. "Make this view bigger, please."
The larger primary monitor switched to the bathroom view just as the man walked in and turned on the light. The camera had a full frontal view of him and Meyer couldn't believe her eyes. She reached up and switched her earpiece to two-way comms, then said, "This is Meyer. Be advised that the subject inside the house is our primary suspect, Max Sultanovich. Do you copy?"
The team leader's voice came back immediately in her ear. "Copy. Do you want to take him down?"
"No. Take no action. Repeat, take no action."
"Confirmed. Standing by."
CHAPTER 118
SPACE
AFTER TALKING BRIEFLY AGAIN with Meyer, I tried to process what I'd just heard taking place over the phone. Sultanovich, the evil seed at the center of this whole thing, was in the house. Alone. I had a strong feeling he was the one who had given the order to take my daughter. He also might know where she was, along with the other two groups of hostages he had created. He and I needed a bit of quality time together. Going there now wouldn't accomplish anything with the house surrounded by FBI agents. To get access to him, I saw two options.
One, if I stayed on Meyer's good side until he was arrested, she might let me talk to him. The problem with that was that he would be in FBI custody. It would be tough to pull off the kind of conversation I wanted to have, and even if I locked myself in the room with the bastard and got the information I needed, I'd be arrested myself and unable to help Ally.
Two, after they arrested the asshole, I could hit the transport before they made it to a detention facility. Not practical. I had no weapons and no time to plan; if it went wrong and I was caught, I'd be in the same situation: Unable to help my daughter.
There had to be another way. I paced the restroom, thinking it through. What was Meyer's play with Sultanovich? Only one thing made sense as a reason for her not to move on him immediately. She was hoping he'd lead them to the bunker workers, or Anya and whoever else was being held with her, or both. Smart move on her part, given her restraints of having to follow laws, rules, and regulations.
For the time being, I needed to forget about getting to Sultanovich, and instead concentrate on where Ally and the other hostages might be. Where would they keep her? With the bunker workers? No. They knew I'd discovered the bunker; they'd seen video of me inside it. And they would know I had seen all the computers there and could surmise that there were workers to run those computers. These bastards would put Ally with Anya and the other hostages who were being held as leverage against the computer workers.
So where the hell was that? My mind cycled through the leads I had on that. They weren't in the house on Green Mountain. That left the location where the rape videos had been recorded. That thought, combined with my belief that my baby girl was in the clutches of these sadistic animals, flipped my stomach and made my heart. I took a couple deep breaths and re-calmed myself.
The data on the electrical power was the key. That camera had been plugged into one of the buildings across the Strip when those videos were shot. That was the lair. Instead of twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the FBI to get official records on the occupants of those buildings, I went to work on Google. First I pulled up a map of the area and got the street addresses for the buildings of interest. All three buildings were part of a complex that rented various types of office space. Each one was two stories. Then I did a search for businesses located at those addresses.
I scanned through dozens of business names, clicking through to their websites, looking for anything that might stand out or connect. Toward the bottom of the third page of Google results, an entry caught my eye: THE MEADOWS MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT GROUP. When I clicked through to their website, I found a single page proclaiming great expertise in "videog
raphy and entertainment for the greater Las Vegas area." This was a cookie-cutter site, something thrown together just to have some kind of online presence.
Time to pay this video and entertainment mecca a visit. I opened the restroom door and asked Nichols to step inside.
CHAPTER 119
LAS VEGAS
MAX SULTANOVICH
MAX FOUND a blanket in a closet and tucked it around Tatyana where she lay sleeping like a little angel on the couch, as she had been since the girls left. He sat back down and soon dozed off again himself, only to wake with a start from an outlandish dream minutes later. In the dream, Mikail was some stupid combination of alive and dead, driving a purple car that flew a meter above the ground. It was in a field of golden wheat and Mikail was trying to run Max over. Max ran, hearing the sound as the mature stalks of wheat slapped the bottom of the flying car. The slap-slap-slap got closer and closer, and just when Max was sure the car was about to take his head off, he awoke. He couldn't get peace from his worthless son even with the sonofabitch dead.
He got up and walked into the kitchen. After a bit of searching, he found some tea and put a pot of water on the stove. While he waited for it to boil, he pulled the phone from his pocket and dialed. When the other party answered, he began a conversation in Ukrainian. It went from calm to heated, Max pacing the kitchen, his face hard and red, spittle flying. After a few minutes, Max calmed and eventually wrapped up the conversation. He closed the phone and looked at the pot of water, which was now at a full boil. He laid the phone on the counter, hung a couple tea bags in his cup, and poured the water. Sniffing the aroma of the steaming cup, he returned to the sofa in the living room and picked up the laptop they had provided for him.
CHAPTER 120
OCEAN SHORES, WASHINGTON
MATT DECKER
DECKER WAS HOME, getting ready to eat dinner when the phone rang. He glanced at the screen and saw it was Abdul, calling from the office. When he answered, Abdul said, "Need your thoughts on something."
Unallocated Space: A Thriller (Sam Flatt Book 1) Page 25
