Scratching my head

So obvious, now that we see him. This will require a slight change in our program. Since RJ has decided to hide in plain site while outside the barrier, we will take advantage. In some ways this will make the things a bit easier. We know where he will be most days at 0530. But getting under his nose will be more of a challenge. We are working on scenarios. IMHO, just sitting on the curb near the cans should work, however, we are seeing an elevated level of personal and professional paranoia that we have no data to justify. It is warranted, tho. The industry he works in is heating up dramatically and the risks are unprecedented. We don't want to spook him. If he demands a relocation, we may never be able to track him. We still haven't determined how he is returning each night. The other thing that bugs me is why he has the body double living at the real site. Perhaps because that is where he, himself is expected to be, required to be? 

He's riced! Of course! Can't have the person anywhere other than where tracking says he should be. Nice. Is his double riced as well? No, that would cause confusion. Is the double his ruse or the company's? So there must be someone else keeping an eye on RJ. Perhaps lots of someones. But if we could figure out the decoy so quickly, why not others?

Too many  questions that I am not trained to answer. Too many that I don't even know to ask. this is Wil's area. Tactics are no strong suit of mine, never have been. 

Word Search

"What's missing from this picture?"

Holly asked me while studying the blueprints. Took all of a couple seconds to find our oversight: a back door... an escape route. The lab has to have one. The blueprint shows only one way in and out of an underground set of rooms. No way in hell a researcher will work in a room with only one way in or out. Too dangerous. So, it had to have been left off. And if any additional exit was omitted, what else was left off? 

Gene has a friend who is a specialist in surveillance who will be well paid to find out. We can do no more. That whole end of the building is shielded for light, heat, sound, movement, anything else my limited experience could come up with. Why they would bother to shield a building that is housed on a very secure military base is beyond me. Holly laughed and said "cause of people like us less than a quarter mile outside a silly fence".

The good news is Gene may have figured out who RJ is masquerading as... a sanitation worker. Yup, the garbage man. He thinks RJ is coming and going via a sanitation truck that shows up every morning to manage the public receptacles on the corner. 

Fool Me Once

I had my suspicions, and they are confirmed. This isn't the man we are looking for. It looks like him and to a degree, acts like him. But it's not him. I got up close Saturday. The likeness if very good. The voice sounded the same. But after reviewing all our data I started to wonder if it wasn't just a bit too planned, too methodical. But what slipped him up was watching him dance, or rather, not dance. He don't dance. He is a plant, a diversion. The man I knew loved to dance and was very good at it. This guy wouldn't even try, even when a request was made for his favorite style. The man is nervous, too, fidgety with constantly moving eyes, like he knows he has a bulls-eye painted on his back. RJ was always in such great command of his world that very little makes him sweat. That kind of control couldn't have been lost in a decade of success. But then again...why the need for a body double unless someone wants the world to believe he is here?

I can't say that we are back to square one, because we are already planted where we need to be. WK verified location and timeframe from our original information. We just need to unmask RJ. Surveillance is now 24/7 until we find how/when he is entering the complex. 

Hiding in Pain Sight

The chill of the desert is something I cannot become accustomed to no matter how hard I try and I get to bitch about it first. Every injury I've ever sustained aches daily as soon as I leave my apartment and venture into the frigid air. But I like the peace and quite out here. There have been moments during this operation that I have been able to slip away and enjoy it but our focus remains gaining the target's trust. And spring is here, the temp will get above 35 tonight and into the 50s by noon. Woo-friggin-hoo.

The first twelve weeks here were spent just setting up and learning some of his daily routines, which has proved challenging. This man is no civilian researcher, very evident in the first few days of recon. He very rarely repeats his activities, from his drive to work or to get milk, to his running schedule. He never goes at the same time or in the same direction or even the same speed. He skips days and locations. This is no random behavior either. He is very methodical. A small pattern was discovered! After weeks of placing bets on which direction he would go and plotting his behaviors, an equation emerged that seems to work using the face of a clock or spokes of a wheel plus or minus the value of a definable shifting number. We were then able to plan a little better how to put me in his path. For just a peek. We must go very slow. To date he has only seen me twice, both times near the same location, once with "Gene", my boyfriend, and once with Holly, who had the single mission of giving me something to laugh at, myself. 

He likes a serious woman who also has the ability to laugh at herself. Thus, Priscilla, Pris, is born in a tumble down an embankment into a snail-infested creek. I came out of the freezing water spitting mad but Holly and I both actually ended up laughing our asses off. I had no idea this was her plan. Smart girl.

One other interesting discovery: those days we thought he was skipping moving around out of doors are the result of his having a fully functioning lab under his condo. WK was able to get a blueprint off a gov server. 

Saturday I get to place myself and my beau across a room from him, we hope, at a public function that he is a donor for. We have no way however of knowing if he actually plans to attend, but the odds are good. Also attending is a broker for the USAF that he has worked with in the past.