Search and Destroy by JT Sawyer (top non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

I’ll need to hide in plain sight.

He had done it before in numerous countries where the agency wasn’t supposed to be operating, but then he’d had an elaborate cover identity, resources, and Vogel always watching his back.

Shepard had a dozen retired colleagues in the region, but he had no desire to get them entangled or put their lives at risk. He needed to go it alone and stay off the grid as much as possible. Easier said than done since there were cameras and phones everywhere, not to mention that he’d need to access the internet to further his investigation. His biggest challenge would be getting around the city. At some point, he’d have to steal a vehicle, but for now he would have to rely on the local buses, which weren’t equipped with cameras, and look up postings on Craigslist for people searching for rideshares. As he had learned repeatedly during his team’s annual urban survival course, Craigslist is an evader’s best friend.

But first, he had to get out of his clothes and modify his appearance then find a place to hole up for a few days.

He and his SD unit had spent two weeks with a trio of old-school spies that Patterson had hired to teach urban tradecraft and countersurveillance. These were men who had perfected their skills during the height of the Cold War, when they operated unsupported in foreign countries and where disguise and civilian concealment were critical to survival.

The two things they had ingrained in him were that your choice of clothing was situational and that you should never sleep in the same place more than two nights when you think you’re being watched. The places to consider were international hostels and the larger homeless encampments.

The latter wouldn’t provide him with the access to the city and internet that he needed, so a hostel was the answer for now. These were ideal, since they were low budget and used to dealing with patrons who paid in cash; had a mixed age group of international travelers who were bent on sightseeing, not being glued to the news in their room; and were located in heavily congested urban areas where you could blend in better and have access to numerous escape routes.

The added bonus with hostels was that you could often hitch a ride with a fellow traveler out of the city, which meant not dealing with the security staff and monitors in Greyhound and Amtrak terminals.

Shepard and his team had employed and perfected their urban escape and evasion in many countries over the years, but he never thought his skills would be put to the test on home soil.

He only had sixty dollars in his wallet, and his credit cards were worthless or had been closed out by the agency by now. He glanced down at the gold Rolex on his left wrist, dreading the thought of parting with it but knowing it would draw attention. He unclasped it and slid it into his pants pocket.

The next thing he had to do was change out of his tacti-cool pants and don some assorted garb that would enable him to fit into a handful of settings. If he was on the run, then his disguise efforts would be minimal, but staying in one place required more elaborate outfits.

A few blocks later, he entered a second-hand store and selected three types of outfits. The first was for blending in as an average Joe, which meant a pair of jeans, t-shirt, sweatshirt and tennis shoes. He sized out what he needed and then grabbed a few different baseball caps and a pair of sunglasses.

The next outfit was formal business attire. He located a dark blue suit coat, a white button-up shirt, a blue tie and a pair of gray dress slacks then found some black dress shoes that weren’t too badly scuffed.

The last outfit was semi-casual and involved finding a polo-type shirt and tan slacks. His ankle-high hiking shoes would fit two of his outfits, with the black shoes being reserved solely for the suit. When he was done, he headed to the fitting room, trying on the outfits, then changed into the jeans, t-shirt and tan baseball cap. He made sure the shirts were XL to conceal the small drone and his HK pistol and spare magazine.

At checkout, he explained to the girl behind the counter that he was traveling and had clumsily spilled a Coke on himself while eating at the Mexican restaurant in the plaza across the street, so he swapped out his other clothes. He added a tattered daypack to the purchase then stuffed everything inside.

He was in and out in twenty minutes. Cal kept his hat low as he made his way towards a pharmacy next door. He bought a dozen power bars, caffeine pills, black hair dye, water bottles, and an office stapler.

Stepping outside, he googled the locations of the hostels in the region then stripped out the SIM card and ground it up under his heel before dumping the stolen phone in a storm drain in the street.

26

FBI Headquarters, Washington, DC

Carter kept her fists balled to contain the lingering tremble in her hand that was as much from the recent adrenaline dump from the gunfight on the bridge as it was from the fury racing through her system at Shepard forcing her to choose between saving her partner’s life and shooting the fugitive before her. It was her hesitation that angered her the most.

I could have killed him and still saved Tremblay. Why did I hesitate?

From the beginning of this investigation, things hadn’t added up, and they made even less sense with the recent revelation about Shepard’s history as an operative with the CIA’s Special Activities Division.

Those guys are heavy hitters. Why would he be working with Burke unless it was on some top-secret program for their operators, not some bogus shit for our embassies. Were Burke and his people killed