The Center by Saul Herzog

Author:Saul Herzog [Herzog, Saul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AuthorContact
Published: 2024-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

20

As Levi peered out the window of the Escalade, the unnatural blue glow of the Times Square billboards reflected off the low cloud like an unearthly false dawn. A few flakes of snow had begun to fall, giving the strange scene an even stranger tinge. He glanced at his watch. They needed to hurry. They were on a dingy stretch of West 47th Street between the Barrymore and Samuel J Freeman theaters, and the buildings rose up on each side decrepit and dirty, laced in scaffolding and green safety netting that was coming loose and fluttering wildly when the wind gusted. Scarcely two blocks from Times Square, Roth thought, and the street wouldn’t have looked out of place in a city under shellfire.

“That’s the place,” Harry said, turning into a multistory parking lot and stopping at the barrier to take a ticket.

“Let’s be quick,” Roth said, tapping his hand on his knee nervously. “Let’s move.”

Harry ascended the six levels of the parking lot about as fast as anyone would dare, accelerating along the narrow aisles, tires screeching as they took the concrete ramps from one level to the next. The lot was mostly empty, which helped, and they emerged onto a completely empty roof and came to a halt.

“Looks good,” Harry said, yanking the handbrake and popping open the trunk.

Roth climbed out after him and helped haul out the black polypropylene drone cases. “Three birds,” he said to Harry, “and three more on standby.”

They had twelve drones in the car—low-cost, commercially available models from a Californian company called Skydio. The company worked heavily with the Department of Defense as well as fifteen hundred law enforcement agencies in forty-seven states. The drones were reliable little things, weighing five pounds and capable of deployment in under sixty seconds. Once airborne, they could maintain comms within a ten-mile radius of the Escalade or anywhere that had 5G cellular coverage, which was pretty much everywhere in New York. They had a forty-five minute flight time—which was why they were setting up backups, they could swap them out when the batteries got low—and a max flying speed of forty miles per hour. All in all, they were a good choice for car surveillance, and the only upgrades the CIA had made was for piloting to be routed back to Langley. Even the off-the-rack cameras, which included infrared sensors that allowed for autonomous follow, could read a license plate from eight hundred feet.

They set them up on the ground about ten feet from the car, switched them on, and then Roth pulled out his phone and dialed Clementine’s desk. It took a moment for her to answer, and when she did, he could tell he’d woken her.

“Sorry, Clem.”

“Quite all right, dear. That’s why I’m here.”

“The drones are ready?”

He heard her rise to her feet, then she said, “The technicians are ready.”

“Tell them I have three birds ready to go. Three more on standby. I want them on the front entrance of Tom’s Diner on Times Square. It’s two blocks from my current position.

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