Liberty by Stephen Coonts

wise. The fewer heads moving about on top of this building, the better.
    Another hour passed.
    Fedorov was beginning to hope that nothing would happen, when he spotted a truck creeping without headlights slowly down the side street opposite the building, heading this way.
    He spoke to the Egyptian, motioned to him to come look.
    Zuair was beside him when the truck stopped short of the intersection. In the scope Fedorov could see the glow of the engine’s heat. The range was only about fifty meters; as he aimed the rifle his head and shoulders must extend well above this wall and be silhouetted against the night sky—easily visible—if the bad guys just bothered to look.
    â€œThis may be it,” he murmured. God, he hoped it wasn’t! At that location, he was the only Russian who would have a shot. If he left any of these men alive, they might hunt him. He remembered in exquisite detail the dark stairway that he had climbed to the roof, the wooden doors leading off the three landings. He had to go down that stairway to get off this roof.
    A man got out of the passenger door of the truck cab, walked slowly to the corner, looking around. Fedorov could see him plainly in the scope. “One man, no uniform. No visible weapon.” The man flattened against the building, eased his head around the corner to look down the street at the warehouse.
    This corner fronted on the only street out of this district. This idiot Zuair had a hideout on a dead-end street! Terrorists were like that, Fedorov well knew—cunning and murderous and sometimes amazingly stupid.
    â€œHe’s going back to the truck,” he whispered, his eye glued to the rubber eyepiece. The soft rubber atop the stock felt hard against his face. Behind him he could hear
Zuair doing something. He looked back. The Egyptian was unwrapping the bundle.
    Fedorov concentrated on the picture through the scope. His hands shook and his breath came quickly, as if he were running. The entire picture in the scope quivered. He rested the handguard of the rifle on the wall before him to steady it.
    â€œHe’s reaching into the truck … other men getting out. They are armed! Four of them.”
    â€œThis is it!” Zuair hissed.
    â€œWatch this! This is pretty neat,” the technician said. He used a trackball to zoom the camera in on a couple walking out of Union Station. The images were displayed on a giant vertical monitor mounted against the wall. The zoom continued until the faces of the man and woman filled the monitor. They paused and embraced, and she said something to him.
    â€œI don’t read lips,” the technician said wistfully, “but, boy, if I did!”
    Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington were standing in the command center on the fifth floor of the District of Columbia police headquarters. The technician was showing them the camera system that monitored public places throughout Washington. “We have over two hundred cameras installed and more going up every day. The new ones are digital, merely broadcast a signal, so there are no wires. The cameras are expensive, but the installation is cheap. We just install them on light poles or rooftops or cornices, wherever we can get electrical power to them, and control them from here.”
    The video feed from the cameras was displayed on dozens of monitors stacked like boxes against the wall. Then there were the large, thin plasma monitors, a wallful of movie screens—Jake stood mesmerized as he watched the intimate moment outside Union Station.
    The couple kissed tenderly, then the woman walked
toward the cab stand. The man watched her go. The camera followed the woman.
    Jake turned and surveyed the command center. He counted—there were forty video stations angled around the wall of floor-to-ceiling screens. The FBI and CIA both had command stations here. The officer in charge sat in a soft armchair on a raised platform beside a teleconferencing