The Devils Teardrop

contentment in anyproduct filled with microchips. He scanned one of three portable video monitors in front of him. Then he typed on a laptop computer and read the screen. “Zip,” he responded. If there was any living thing larger than a raccoon for a hundred yards around the ransom bags Geller’s surveillance equipment would detect it.
    When the mayor had given the go-ahead to pay the extortion money, the cash had made a detour en route to the drop. Lukas and Geller had had Kennedy’s aide shepherd the money to an address on Ninth Street in the District—a small, unmarked garage that was up the street from FBI headquarters.
    There, Geller had repacked the ransom into two huge Burgess Security Systems KL-19 knapsacks, the canvas of which looked like regular cloth but was in fact impregnated with strands of oxidized copper—a high-efficiency antenna. The transmitter circuitry was in the nylon handles, and batteries were mounted in the plastic buttons on the bottom. The bag transmitted a Global Positioning System beacon cleaner than CBS’s main broadcast signal and couldn’t be shielded except by several inches of metal.
    Geller had also rewrapped forty bundles of hundred-dollar bills with wrappers of his own design—there were ultrathin transmitting wafers laminated inside them. Even if the perp transferred the cash from the canvas bag or it was split among accomplices Geller could still track down the money—up to a range of sixty miles.
    The bag had been placed in the field just where the note had instructed. All the agents had backed off. And the waiting began.
    Lukas knew her basic criminal behavior. Extortionists and kidnappers often get cold feet just before a ransompickup. But anyone willing to murder twenty-three people wasn’t going to balk now. She couldn’t understand why the perp hadn’t even approached the drop.
    She was sweating; the weather was oddly warm for the last day of the year and the air was sickly sweet. Like fall. Margaret Lukas hated autumn. She’d rather have been lying in the snow than waiting in this purgatory of a season.
    “Where are you?” she muttered. “Where?” She rocked slightly, feeling the pain of pressure on her hipbones. She was muscular but thin, with very little padding to protect her from the ground. She compulsively scanned the field once more though Geller’s complex sensors would have picked up the unsub long before her blue-gray eyes could spot him.
    “Hmm.” C. P. Ardell, a heavy-set agent Lukas worked with sometimes, squeezed his earphone and listened. Nodded his bald, pale head. He glanced at Lukas. “That was Charlie position. Nobody’s gone off the road in the woods.”
    Lukas grunted. So maybe she was wrong. She’d thought the unsub would come at the money from the west—through a row of trees a half mile away from the expressway. She believed that he’d be driving a Hummer or a Range Rover. Would snag one of the bags—sacrificing the other for the sake of expediency—and disappear back into the woods.
    “Bravo position?” she asked.
    “I’ll check,” said C. P., who worked undercover often because of his unfortunate resemblance to a Manassas drug cooker or a Hell’s Angel charter member. He seemed to be the most patient of all the agents on the stakeout; he hadn’t moved his 250-pound frame an inchsince they’d been here. He made the call to the southernmost surveillance post.
    “Nothing. Kids on a four-wheeler is all. Nobody older than twelve.”
    “Our people didn’t chase ’em away, did they?” Lukas asked. “The kids?”
    “Nup.”
    “Good. Make sure they don’t.”
    More time passed. Hardy jotted notes. Geller typed on his keyboard. Cage fidgeted and C. P. did not.
    “Your wife mad?” Lukas asked Cage. “You working the holiday?”
    Cage shrugged. It was his favorite gesture. He had a whole vocabulary of shrugs. Cage was a senior agent at FBI headquarters and though his assignments took him all over the country he was usually primary on cases involving the District; he and Lukas worked together often. Along with Lukas’s boss too, the special agent in charge of the Washington, D.C., field office. This week, though, SAC Ron Cohen happened to be in a Brazilian rainforest on his first vacation in six years and Lukas had stepped up to the case. Largely because of Cage’s recommendation.
    She felt bad for Cage and Geller and C. P., working a holiday. They had dates for tonight or wives. As for Len Hardy she was