Carl turned his attention back to the tablet and studied the floor plan of Reyes’s house. The house was a huge mansion, and Carl tried to memorize the floor plan as he studied the tablet. He rotated the three-dimensional schematic and studied it from every angle.
The mansion was a U-shaped structure. The pool and atrium sat in the middle of the U. Several bedrooms lay on the third floor, and the office and home theater occupied the second. The kitchen and entertaining areas comprised all of the first floor. The three-thousand square foot separate garage east of the main house was nearly as big as his foothills home.
He handed the tablet back to Four and began changing into clothes provided by the CIA asset, clothes he was told resembled those seen in a recent picture of Reyes. The interior of the van was cramped with the mercs, their supplies, and weapons. Legroom was limited, and overhead room was nonexistent, so the dressing activity turned into a gymnastic contortion workout.
When finished, he wore a light pastel maroon playboy shirt under a beige sports coat. He had the shirt buttoned up because, as Agent Palmer pointed out, they had no intel on whether or not Reyes had any tattoos or scars or even chest hair. The single button of the sports coat was also buttoned to conceal his shoulder holster. He wore a fedora hat and dark-framed glasses with nonprescription lenses. He wore beige Chinos and dark shoes. The sport coat was crumpled and looked like he slept in it in the van. Merc Two said, “If the same guards are on duty now as when he left, they’ll know these aren’t the same clothes he was wearing earlier.”
“Negative,” Palmer said. “There was a shift change of the gate guards an hour after Reyes left, and there was another shift change a couple hours ago.”
Carl said, “Any of the same guards back on duty?”
“Unlikely. It’s equally improbable the guards at the gate saw what he was wearing. The gate is over two hundred feet from the house and the garage, and all of his vehicles have darkly tinted windows.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Merc Four pulled a whiskey bottle from a bag on the floor and opened it. Then she poured liquid into her cupped palm and doused the front of his shirt and jacket and a little on his pants. He took the bottle from her, put it to his mouth, and upended it.
“Jesus, Carl! Don’t drink that shit!” Four said.
“Dammit, Boss,” Two said. “We can’t run this op if you really are drunk.”
Carl looked at Four with bulging cheeks. He swished the liquid back and forth, and muscled the van’s sliding door open. It squeaked loudly on ungreased rollers. Then he leaned through the opening and spit out the whiskey.
“Christ!” Four said as she climbed over his legs to get out. Three got out of the front passenger seat and slammed his door closed. Carl climbed over the seat back and settled onto the bench next to Merc Two, as Three and Four unloaded tactical gear and supplies. Then Two ground gears and got the van moving again. They turned south immediately.
The road approaching the gate reminded Carl of so many parts of New Mexico outside of the city of Albuquerque. It was a dark rural area with only the moon providing light. The landscape he could see was minimal, mostly scrub brush and wild grasses.
Two pulled up fifty feet shy of the entry gate, and Carl made a show of nearly falling out of the passenger door. He slammed the door closed and fell against it. Regaining his balance, he staggered forward and moved to slap the front of the van to tell the driver it was okay for him to leave. He missed, then took three steps to regain his balance.
Agent Palmer’s voice teased his inner ear. “The drone’s multi-spectral sensors show two guards on patrol. One is walking the perimeter of the house, and the other is patrolling inside.”
Carl faked another swig and spilled a lot of the liquid down his front, then walked toward the gate guards, all the while looking like he was concentrating on maintaining his balance on a plank moving beneath his feet.
One of the guards started speaking to him in Spanish as he approached. He didn’t understand what the man was saying, but he heard the uncertainty in his voice. According to Garcia’s people, Alfonso Reyes was known as a brutal man with a quick temper. It was said that he was extremely unforgiving of mistakes and managed his people by playing on their fear. If true, Carl figured the guards would be unlikely to seriously challenge him and face his wrath.
“Speak English, goddammit!” He kept his voice hoarse like Palmer had told him to since there was no way he could mimic the voice of the real Alfonso Reyes. “I proclaim that today is an English day.”
He stopped a few paces from the gate. One of the guards pushed open one of the wide double gates and stepped forward. Carl took another fake swig and stumbled forward. The man reached out to help stabilize him.
“Don’t let him touch you!” Palmer said. “If he grabs you around the waist, he might feel your holster.”
Carl turned on the man and brushed his hands away, then pushed the man back toward the gate. He stumbled after him and grabbed the man’s arm for balance, then followed him through while continuing to mumble nonsense. He turned toward the carriage house that held the drug lord’s Hummers and limos, then stumbled as he and the guard made their way toward the front door of the mansion.
“The outside perimeter guard is behind the house.”
Carl and his escort approached the mansion’s grand entrance. He’d seen pictures of mansions like this one in travel magazines and in movies, but he’d never visited one. The property was well lit, and his realtor’s eye told him the house itself, not including the land or the huge carriage house garage, was easily a ten million dollar structure.
The outside of the house was tiled with small granite slabs, giving the building the same look and charm as an old turn-of-the-century museum. The huge double front door was actually gilded in gold trim. Two ten-foot posts stood guard on each side of the double entryway, and atop each post sat a golden eagle. One eagle was perched, but the other golden eagle had its wings spread as if ready to take flight.
He figured the driveway he walked on was crushed coral, likely imported from Hawaii. Carl remembered walking along Maui beaches that looked like Reyes’s driveway. The elegant path ended at a three-level set of curved polished granite steps that led up to the front porch.
Carl pushed off from the guard and made a great show of stumbling up to the front door. He stood up straight and wiped at his mouth with his left sleeve. With apparent difficulty, he got his hand on the push-down thumb lever of the door handle, and shoved the big door open. He stepped inside and closed it quietly behind him.
“Okay, I’m in,” he whispered to Palmer. He set the whiskey bottle on the floor beside the door. He scanned the foyer. It was huge, with shiny, forty-inch granite tiles decorating the floor. He’d have to be careful, or his soles would squeak when he moved or pivoted.
“Where is the interior guard?”
“Infrared scan shows the guard is moving toward you on the first floor, right wing. He’s stopping frequently, probably checking doors to the patio and pool deck.”
Through a wide window wall on the opposite side of the foyer, Carl could see the water of the pool shimmering in the light of the high moon. He also caught a hint of fragrance in the air and looked around the room. His gaze settled on a clear crystal vase with half a dozen scent sticks immersed in a golden liquid.
“The guard skipped the last two doors and is bearing down on your position. Move up the spiral stairs to the right of the foyer. Quickly!”
Chapter 54
0255 MST Thursday
Northern Mexico
His right sole squeaked slightly with his very first step, and Carl knew he could not run up the stairs. Like the floor, the stair steps were inlaid with exotic granite tiles of black, gold, and silver swirls. He tried another step as carefully as he could, but still he made noise.
“Move, Carl. Move!”
He bent down and removed his shoes, then ran upward, trying not to slip in his socks.
“Continue to the third floor,” Palmer said. “Recall that our best guess is that all the bedrooms are up there.”
He continued up the winding stairs.
“Stop and duck, Carl. The guard is coming into view.”
He didn’t stop. Instead he looked down into the foyer and saw the top of the guard’s head. The man wore all black and carried an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. Then the man began to look upward, like he’d noticed something or heard a noise.
Carl leapt the last three steps in one bound and crouched on the landing against the wall. His heart raced, and he heard it thumping in his ear. He breathed deeply to catch his breath.
“Did he see me?” he whispered.
“Standby.” Palmer paused a long time. “Remove your handgun and attach your suppressor. Quickly and quietly.”
Carl unbuttoned his sport coat and pulled the Glock-17 from its holster. He reached into his left pant pocket and pulled out a thick, ominous-looking black tube, which he screwed into the barrel of the gun. He closed his eyes and mentally cursed his luck. He had just gotten in the door and was going to have a shootout. The gamble to get off the staircase was worth it. Palmer couldn’t see on her sensors that the railing was open, and the guard would surely have seen him if he’d stopped as she suggested.
“Okay, you’re clear. The guard is moving off toward the west end of the first floor. Thermal imagery shows that six of the bedrooms are occupied in the right wing so those are likely the off-duty guards. Bobcat is most likely in one of the two occupied bedrooms in the left wing.”
Bobcat, he knew from his brief conversation with Agent Palmer before he left Virginia, was the Secret Service designation for the president’s daughter.
“Except for the guard on the first floor, the rest of the house, including the basement and wine cellar, is unoccupied.”
“Copy that,” he whispered. He stood and slipped his nonskid shoes back on. An elastic sock-like boot fit firmly around his ankles so there was no need for laces or buckles or Velcro.
“You’re doing fine, Carl.”
He found reassurance in her words. He got the feeling that she’d directed many such ops with newbies. He proceeded up the hall with the weapon in a two-handed grip, the business end pointed at the floor six feet in front of him.
He whispered, “Where are the heat signatures?”
“Both are in adjacent rooms at the far left end of the hallway.”
“Remind me again,” Carl said. “Julia and Luisa. Which one is the wife and which is the daughter?”
“Luisa is the wife.”
“Copy that.”
According to the tablet schematics, the third floor housed ten huge bedrooms in each wing, each with its own private bath attached. Carl now proceeded down the left corridor. The carpet was an expensive-looking beige material with a tight weave that seemed made for heavy foot traffic. The hallway was wide, and dark wood paneling adorned the lower thirty inches of each wall, while the upper portion was covered with light-colored, expensive wall fabric. Wall light sconces and paintings decorated the walls.
As Carl cautiously made his way down the hallway, he felt increasingly irritated. He quickly realized it was the glasses he wore to look like Reyes. The thick plastic of the stylish frames was interfering with his peripheral vision, and he kept turning his head slightly to the left and right to see what might be in the blind spots. He hadn’t worn glasses since his Lasik surgery, and he’d forgotten how much a part of his face the frames had been. Now the facial appliance was merely an irritant.
He stepped to his right, removed his glasses, and laid them gently in a huge empty vase made of some kind of crystal. The vase sat on a three-legged, antique, half-round wooden table. He sat his fedora on top of the vase, then he continued his journey toward the end of the hall.
“Wait! We have movement!”
Carl didn’t have time to even think about ducking into the closest unoccupied bedroom, because the door immediately ahead of him to his left opened suddenly. A teenage girl hurried into the hallway. Carl’s movement must have registered in the girl’s peripheral vision because she turned toward him. She took a breath to scream, but he jumped forward and clamped his hand over her mouth with his left hand. His momentum pushed her into a small table outside her door, and it banged loudly against the wall like a gunshot in the quiet house. The glass vase on the table crashed to the carpet and shattered.
In his ear, Palmer announced, “You have movement in the adjacent room, and the guard is moving rapidly up the stairs toward your location. Get out of the hall now!”
In the dimness between the pools of ceiling light, he could tell the girl he held was not the president’s daughter. She was too slender, too short, too young, and too brown. He started to yank her back into her bedroom.
“Do you have the package?”
“Negative on Bobcat.”
“The other occupant is approaching the door. Take them both in one room.”
The girl was dressed in preteen girl’s pajamas, and when he quickly glanced downward, he saw she was barefoot. If he pulled her toward the next bedroom, she’d slice her feet on the glass pieces. So he released his grip on her mouth and shushed her, then picked her up with an arm around her waist and carried her toward the door of the other bedroom. His shoes crunched over the glass fragments of the broken flower vase.
Just as the adjacent bedroom door started to open, he pivoted and rammed his right shoulder against the wood slab and forced his way in. He dumped the girl to the floor at the feet of a very surprised Luisa Reyes. The woman stumbled backward and started to scream, but Carl stuck the business end of the silencer right in front of her face and made a shushing sound at her.
Luisa held her scream and did that cross-eyed thing, focusing first on the black weapon and then on Carl. A fleeting look of familiarity mixed with confusion flashed across her countenance. Then he reached behind him with his left foot and kicked the door closed.
He said, “You scream, you die. Now where is the American girl?”
Luisa spoke harshly in Spanish and knelt beside her daughter and hugged her. Both stared up at Carl in confusion. The guard called from the hallway, and both ladies glanced at the door behind Carl. He lowered the gun away from them and squatted. He looked Luisa Reyes in the eye and repeated the question.
Luisa looked him up and down, no doubt noticing how similar he looked to her husband. Her gaze took in the wet whiskey stain on his shirt and pants, then she started talking again in Spanish.
“Mr. Garcia,” he said quietly. “I don’t think these folks can understand me. Can you translate for me?”
The girl said, “I speak English.” Carl looked at her, and she looked at her mother, who nodded. “They kept her in the cellar, but now she’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
Palmer said, “The guard is coming up the hall. He’ll be at your door in ten seconds.”
Julia said, “They took her.”
“When? Where?”
The girl shook her head. “They left last night. We don’t know where.”
“Palmer, did you copy that?”
“Affirmative.”
Carl heard the guard hollering. The door knob moved, but the door didn’t open. The door was locked from the inside. He heard the sound of fist pounding on the massive door. Only the front gate guards knew he—as Reyes—had returned. The inside guard and the guys who had been asleep in the other wing didn’t know. He was in serious trouble.
Palmer said, “We have multiple heat signatures moving in the east wing of the house. You need to get out of there fast!”
Chapter 55
0257 MST Thursday
Northern Mexico
“Get out? How the fuck am I supposed to do that?” In an instant the whole op was screwed and Carl had no idea what to do. “C’mon, Palmer, I need instructions!”
“Stand by. We’re working on it, but stay calm, Carl.”
“Calm?” he whispered harshly
. “These guys have AKs, and there’s fucking ten of them! Send in the mercs!”
“They’re too far away and won’t get there in time, so take a deep breath and trust me. I’ll get you out.”
This was precisely why he’d initially thought getting personally involved in the rescue effort was a bad idea. He didn’t have field experience. He couldn’t think on his feet in a combat scenario. He didn’t know how to improvise on a mission. Sitting in an op center somewhere watching it happen on a TV monitor and giving orders to mercenaries was one thing. Actually being in the shit was an altogether different scenario. The covert kids practiced for years how to do that stuff, and now Carl, with all of his thirty days of experience, felt paralyzed with indecision and fear.
What should he do? What could he do? He damn sure couldn’t shoot his way through almost a dozen guards.
In his earpiece, he heard Palmer, her analysts, and the mercs chattering about options, but he could only see one card to play. From his position in a squat, Carl pivoted to face the door and aimed. To Julia he said, “Tell him I’ll shoot you both if he doesn’t back off.”
Luisa and Julia traded words, and the girl said, “My step-dad hates my mom, and he hates me too. He’ll just tell them to break the door open.”
They exchanged more whispered words in Spanish, then Luisa shouted something at the door and the banging stopped. She stood up, as did the girl and Carl, then Julia started ruffling up her mother’s hair. The woman had long luxurious black hair that reached to the middle of her back. The woman kept whispering instructions, and the girl grabbed hold of her mother’s full-length nightgown and pulled, and Carl understood what they were doing.
Luisa rocked forward when Julia tugged, but the gown wouldn’t tear. Carl stepped forward and grabbed the silky material. He yanked downward, and the gown ripped, exposing Luisa’s front. For a brief second he saw her from neck to navel, and he wondered how any man could possibly hate such a beautiful woman.
American Terrorist Trilogy Page 27