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“When are we leaving?” Letty asked.
Johnson glanced at her watch. “A little before seven o’clock tonight. You fly into Orlando. Rod’s truck will be in a parking garage there. We’ll text you the parking-lot space. On your new-old phone...”
“Why are we driving, anyway? We could fly all the way...”
“We need you to be on the road, we need you to have legitimate gasoline and motel receipts scattered around the truck, weneed you to go through Gainesville, to look at it, we need you to see the highway, I-10, we need you todriveinto Pasadena. We want you to push it: it’ll be something like thirty-six hours on the road, you should be able to make it in three days. You’ll be pretty far south, so you shouldn’t run into any snow in the mountains... if there are mountains. Every time you stop at a McDonald’s or wherever, grab the receipts and throw them in the back of the truck.”
“Will Rod try to wrestle me into bed?”
“No. But here’s a warning for you: don’t keep yourselftooseparate,” Johnson said. “Rent one motel room, get two beds. Get to know what his underwear looks like. You need to have some degree of intimacy. Not sex, but you need to know him. You need to create a persona that might be sleeping with him.”
Letty nodded: “Got it.”
“By the way, I love that cane,” Johnson said. “You really look helpless.”
“That’s not the entire point,” Greet said.
“What’s the entire point?” Johnson asked.
“She’s been stick-fighting with a former Delta operator,” Greet said. “She could kill you with it.”
“As the Delta guy told me, I might not be able to pack a gun,” Letty said to Johnson, “but who’s gonna take a cane away from a gimp?”
Johnson smiled: “I like that.”
When Johnson had run outof things to talk about, Letty took Greet aside and asked, quietly, “What do you think of Baxter?”
“He’s gonna be a load,” Greet said. “I feel for you. But he’s nothing you can’t handle. I can’t promise the same about these hackers. They’ll be smart and wary. And probably horny, so keep yourknees together. Going deep doesn’t mean you have to screw anybody.”
Letty nodded: “I’d already figured that out. Screwing: optional.”
“Something else,” Greet said. “I don’t trust the fuckers from the NSA and I don’t trust the fuckers from the FBI. You feel like you’re getting in a jam, if you even get a hint of that, I’ll put Kaiser on a plane and you can have him in six hours, armed to the teeth and off the books. Don’t mention it to Johnson.”
“Excellent.”
“Got both guns?”
“Is a frog’s ass watertight?” Letty asked, adding: “Sorry. I hang around cops. I might need help getting the guns on the plane. I don’t want to check them.”
“Got you covered on that,” Greet said. She looked at her watch. “I’ll walk you through the back door.”
Letty spent the tag end of the afternoon cleaning out her refrigerator and purse, packing, talking to the apartment manager, paying rent in advance.
Greet picked her upafter dark, drove her to the airport, then literally walked Letty through a back door at Reagan National, a door reserved for security personnel, obviating any problems with the two pistols, the ammo, or the five-inch switchblade in Letty’s duffel bag.
Nobody asked about the black camera bag slung over her shoulder. The bag contained a diminutive Panasonic GX8, equipped with a single zoom lens equivalent to a 24mm–120mm lens on a full-frame camera, and a pair of Leica Ultravid 8x20 binoculars. Letty had learned that decent optics came in handy when sneaking around.
She carried the cane, but wasn’t yet hobbling.
“I gotta get Kaiser to train me on the stick-fighting stuff,” Greet said.
“Oooh, sexy. Discipline me with the stick and then take me to bed,” Letty said, pitching her voice into a plea.
“The shit that comes out of your mouth sometimes...” Greet shook her head.
Greet watched them from the gate as Letty and Baxter boarded an American Airlines flight to Orlando, called “Be careful,” and raised a hand as Letty disappeared down the jetway. Letty and Baxter sat in separate rows, ignoring each other until they touched down in Orlando two hours later.
They found Baxter’s truck in a parking structure, exactly where the NSA spooks said it would be. As they walked out to the truck, Letty made an effort and said, “Warm and damp.”
