CHAPTER 35

CHICAGO

John Vaughan sat in a plush leather captain’s chair inside the most comfortable surveillance vehicle he had ever seen and wondered what Paul Davidson’s problem was.

Josh Levy, the owner of Surety Private Investigations, Ltd., and Davidson’s boss when he was moonlighting as a PI, couldn’t have been more personable, polite, or professional if he had tried. He was a handsome, well-dressed man in his late fifties and very experienced in private investigative work. There was no question in Vaughan’s mind that Levy had easily spent over a hundred thousand dollars on his surveillance van. It really was decked out like a limo inside and the electronic equipment rivaled anything the CPD or the FBI owned. Unless this guy had a DVD carousel loaded with animal porn, Vaughan couldn’t find anything even remotely questionable about him. It was beyond him why Davidson so disliked doing surveillance with his boss.

“Is the temperature okay for you?” asked Levy. “There’s plenty of juice left in the batteries to run the air exchangers.”

As the man bent down to flip a switch, Davidson looked at Vaughan and rolled his eyes.

“The air’s real good, Josh. Thank you,” said Vaughan, ignoring Davidson.

Levy righted himself, leaned over, flipped open a mini-fridge and pulled out a cup of yogurt. Davidson tapped Vaughan on the shoulder with the back of his hand.

“Anybody want one?” asked Levy.

“No thanks, Josh,” responded Davidson. “We’re all good.”

Vaughan watched as Levy peeled back the lid and licked the yogurt from the top. When he was done, he placed the lid on the narrow counter beneath the surveillance equipment and went to work folding it into eighths, before dropping it into a Ziplocked garbage bag hanging from the wall.

While he was fishing a spoon from a drawer near the fridge, Davidson tapped Vaughan again and rolled his eyes. The Organized Crime cop looked back at him and shrugged. He had no idea what Davidson’s problem was.

Levy took a bite of his yogurt and then picked up the copy of Mohammed Nasiri’s picture. “So this is our guy, but we don’t know if he’s inside the mosque. Correct?”

“That’s right,” said Vaughan. “Based on the calls we’ve made, he hasn’t gotten on any airplanes out of town.”

“But he could have hopped on a bus, a train, or borrowed a car and left.”

“That’s correct.”

Levy took another bite of yogurt. This time, he licked both sides of the spoon afterward. “Why do you think he’s inside?”

Vaughan could feel Davidson’s glance, begging him to notice how Levy was licking the spoon, and he tried to ignore it. “We saw a lot of this stuff in Iraq. They know we won’t come into a mosque unless we’ve got a mountain of overwhelming evidence. Especially in the U.S., it’s political suicide. The mosque is a sanctuary for these guys. We’d never in a million years think of doing in a church or a synagogue what they do in their mosques.”

“Nor would any priest or rabbi put up with it,” added Davidson. “I can’t imagine what my priest would say if I told him, ‘Father, we’re going to go shoot up a girls’ school, plant a few roadside bombs, and be back for lunch. Don’t let anyone into the room downstairs where we keep all of the rifles and grenade launchers, okay?’”

Levy chuckled, though they all appreciated the fact that the reality of it wasn’t that funny. “I guess that’s one of the many differences between Islam and the rest of the world.”

“You can say that again.”

Vaughan looked at the monitor feed for one of the infrared cameras mounted in the van’s side-view mirrors. “In Iraq, we’d know guys we wanted were inside a particular mosque, sometimes we’d chase them right up the front steps, but then we couldn’t do anything. We’d have to wait until Iraqi soldiers got on site.”

“Iraqi Muslim soldiers,” added Davidson for clarification.

“Exactly. We infidels couldn’t go inside. At least we couldn’t lead the charge.”

“Why the hell not?” asked Levy, as he took another bite of yogurt.

“Because nobody wanted it to look like we were waging a crusade against Islam.”

Levy licked both sides of his spoon once more and said, “That’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard.”

Vaughan nodded. “I agree.”

“So they think we’ll treat their mosques here in the U.S. the same way we do in Iraq?”

“Up to now, that’s exactly how we’ve treated them. It’s not just hands off, it’s hands way off.”

Levy shook his head. “Political correctness is going to be the death of Western civilization.”

“I hope you’re wrong, but there’s no question that our enemies are using political correctness against us.”

“You can say that again,” replied Davidson. “Muslim ‘honor’ killings are becoming an epidemic in the U.S., but do you think it gets reported by the media? No. Wife and child beatings are through the roof, but the media ignore those as well. Point out what’s wrong with Muslim culture and you’re automatically labeled a racist. It’s like shunning the guy on the Titanic who says he sees water in the forward bulkhead.”

Levy finished his yogurt and placed the empty cup in the bag and zipped the top shut again.

Vaughan checked his watch. “The evening Ishaa prayers will be over soon.”

“Think Nasiri will stick his head out?” asked Davidson.

“You never know. Terrorists make a lot of stupid mistakes.”

“Not this guy,” said Levy.

Vaughan and Davidson both looked at him. “How would you know?” asked Davidson.

“If he’s up to what you think he is, you have to assume he didn’t get his job by being stupid. And if he felt the heat was so intense that he had to flee to the mosque, even a storefront mosque, then you have to give him enough credit that he won’t pop his head out until he thinks he can get away with it.”

Vaughan nodded in agreement.

“Which means,” continued Levy, “that eventually we’re going to have to do more than just sit outside here watching the front door.”

He was right, and neither of the other two men in the surveillance van could argue with him.

“What are you thinking?” asked Vaughan.

Levy tapped two black Storm cases with the toe of his boot and said, “I think we’re going to have to get more aggressive with our surveillance.”

CHAPTER 36

Levy opened the cases and showed his guests what he had brought. Vaughan reached down and plucked out a wireless camera embedded within a hard, black baseball-sized shell. “What’s this?”

“Brilliant Israeli military technology.”

Davidson looked at it. “Then how come it says Remington on the side?”

“Because they licensed it for the U.S., but couldn’t get it off the ground. I bought this sample kit from the rep.”

“How does it work?” asked Vaughan. “You just drop these where you want them?”

“Better than that. You can actually throw them. When they stop rolling, they right themselves on those little stubby feet on the bottom. You can toss them on a roof, over a wall, anywhere.”

“And those are fiber-optic cameras in the other box?”

Levy nodded. “If you’ve got balls big enough to get close to the door or drill down from the ceiling, then we’ll really get a good view inside.”

“What are the baby wipes for?”

“You should see how dirty this stuff gets,” he said as he pulled another one of the camera balls out of its case.

As he did, Davidson jabbed Vaughan in the ribs and raised his eyebrows as if to say, See?

Vaughan waved him off. All he saw was a guy who was particular about how he ate his yogurt and who liked to keep his gear clean. Big deal. In fact, he’d take Josh Levy over most of the sloppy cops he’d been forced to sit through stakeouts with.