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subordinate was taking such liberties. She was the most junior officer in the room, but clearly she was no shrinking violet.
    A communications specialist answered on the intercom.
    “Commo.”
    “Where are we in accessing local police, D.C. Metro, and civilian camera networks?”
    “We’ll be up on all systems by tomorrow at seven a.m.”
    “And facial recog?”
    “Ready to go. Once we have the feeds, we’ll get to work. It will be a slow process. A lot of cameras for the computers to look at.”
    “I understand. Are we monitoring first responder bands?”
    “Uh . . .”
    “Do it. Police, ambulance, fire. We need to be on the lookout foranything anomalous in the District involving a single subject fitting his description. If he’s a lone wolf, he might steal a car, break into a building, rob a pawnshop in the burbs. Hell, if he’s been on a cargo ship for that long he might hire a hooker or get himself busted in a massage parlor.”
    “We’ll get on it immediately.”
    The room was quiet. Then Carmichael looked to Mayes. “All right. I’m sold. Suzanne is in the Working Group, in charge of the tactical operations center. She runs defense, and she is subordinate to you on offense. She sees primary intel on Violator, beginning with everything we know about his actions in the past two years.”
    Brewer cocked her head. “You said he’s been on the run for
five
years.”
    Carmichael stared her down. “You get two years. That is plenty of background for you to build a profile of his modus operandi.”
    Suzanne Brewer let it go. “Thank you, sir.”
    Carmichael addressed the entire table now. “Listen up. Violator has been running from us for a long time. Suddenly he’s right back here in our midst. This gives rise to the possibility he has transitioned from defender to aggressor. That should be extremely disconcerting to you all.”
    He pointed a finger at the map. “The quicker we can find him out there, the better. The longer he’s free on the streets, the more time he has to set up an operation to go on the attack.” He shook his head. “We are not going to give him that time.”

5
    C ourt Gentry stood in the darkness, a light rain falling on his head and shoulders, the back of his jacket soaked from leaning against the steps of a rusted playground slide. He shifted his feet back and forth for warmth and blew into his hands.
    As he stood and shivered in the tiny park he watched a young white man in a red parka standing on the porch of a dilapidated single-story home across the street. The man lit a cigarette and looked around in all directions, his eyes searching for anyone watching him. Court was just one hundred feet away but he might as well have been invisible. The man looked through him and continued his scan, then he left the porch and headed down the street.
    Court kept his eyes on the man until he disappeared around the corner a block to the south.
    When he was out of view, Court turned his attention back to the house. Sandwiched between a pair of low-rent and low-rise apartment buildings, it had whitewashed wood clapboard walls and a small front porch, accented by a black metal door that looked like it could withstand a direct hit from an antitank missile. There were two security cameras visible on the property, one watching over the driveway to the right of the porch, the other pointing straight down to the front door to record anyone who approached.
    A tall wooden fence rimmed with barbed wire enclosed the small backyard, and an angry dog back there barked and snarled at any sound on the street.
    Court blew into his hands again while he took in the scene. The inner-city location, the beat-up house with the fortified access point, the rough-looking skinny white boys coming and going.
    There was no mystery as to what he was looking at.
    This was a stash house for a drug ring.
    Thirty minutes after his run-in with the would-be muggers on 8th Street SE, Court had seen a man selling packets of