Takedown (An Alexandra Poe Thriller)

by Robert Gregory Browne

  These guys weren’t fooling around.

  Deuce held his breath and remained perfectly still, wondering if they’d stay where they were or go off road.

  And if they did, then what?

  He couldn’t allow himself to be seen or this op was blown. It was bad enough that the gray-haired guy had noticed the glint of sunlight off the camera lens, and Deuce cursed himself for being so careless. Like Alex and Cooper, he had spent time in the military—a stint in Kabul with the US Marines—and he should’ve known better than to make stupid mistakes.

  He heard voices. Radios squawking. More guards approaching. One of the two on the road turned in his direction and stepped into the underbrush.

  Wonderful.

  The guard was getting closer, but making the rookie mistake of looking into the distance instead of down at the bushes directly around him. He wasn’t checking his flank, either, and if circumstances were different, Deuce would’ve had him on the ground by now.

  The guard took another step forward and Deuce’s heart stopped.

  The SIG and holster he’d lost lay in the dirt only three yards away, a foot or so from the guard’s boot. Another step and the guy would trip over them.

  Finding that gun would prove that what the gray-haired man had seen was a real concern, not just a trick of light. That someone might still be hiding nearby. And if the guard came to that conclusion and kept looking, Deuce would have no choice but to deal with him.

  Preparing himself for the worst, he watched as the guard continued to inch forward, looking as if he were about to take that fateful step. The gun was right in front of the guy, partially covered by leaves, but plainly visible in the sunlight.

  Then a voice blared out of the radio, telling everyone to report in.

  The guard stopped, and took another quick look around before pulling the radio from his belt and thumbing the call button.

  “All clear,” he said as he turned and walked back toward the road.

  Seconds later, several more all clears were transmitted, then a voice said, “All right, false alarm. Return to your positions.”

  Deuce quietly exhaled as the guard joined his partner and two others who were now waiting on the road. They had a brief conversation, and one of them laughed, then they headed as a group toward the house.

  Deuce waited a full ten minutes before he climbed out of the bushes, grabbed his gun and holster, and hightailed it back to his car.

  CHAPTER 15

  ALEX HAD ALL but given up on trying to remember Uncle Eric’s last name when something Warlock said triggered it.

  They had returned from the rock star’s suite, a frustrated Warlock blathering on about how he didn’t appreciate being left hanging in that bathroom, and how he wished he could’ve gotten a better video feed into Favreau’s suite. “The luck we’re having, Freddy boy’s bound to get skittish and play rabbit before we find out how he plans to deliver those codes.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Alex had said. “One way or another.”

  But the word “rabbit” remained in her mind, niggling at her for several seconds. And then, without warning, the name she had been seeking surfaced in a flash—

  Rabbit. Hop. Hopcroft.

  Eric Hopcroft.

  She wasn’t sure what else she may have said to Warlock, because the moment she remembered that name, she snatched her backpack off a chair and carried it into the nearest bedroom.

  Behind her, Warlock said, “Why are you going into my—” but his voice disappeared as she closed the door.

  As she sat on the edge of the bed, she pulled her computer tablet from the backpack and brought the device to life, tapping the icon that gave her immediate, encrypted access to Stonewell’s databases.

  Stonewell International had been collecting information in the field for over thirty years, enough to fill a warehouse full of databanks, and unfettered access to this resource was the main reason Alex was willing to put up with McElroy and participate in ops like this one.

  After she logged in with the proper decryption key, she called up the search menu and typed in the name HOPCROFT, ERIC.

  The search engine took only milliseconds to deliver a profile photo of the man from her mother’s wedding video, accompanied by identifying text:

  NAME: Eric Arthur Hopcroft

  DOB: 3/18/56, San Gabriel, Calif.

  DOD: 8/17/01, Republic of Yemen

  Date of death?

  That would explain why she hadn’t heard anything about him after all these years. The odd thing was, he had died only a week before her mother was killed.

  A coincidence?

  Alex searched for the cause of death and saw two words that momentarily froze her.

  Gunshot wounds.

  She called up the summary and read a brief report claiming Eric Arthur Hopcroft had been on a field assignment for the CIA when he was gunned down by two unknown assassins in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. The nature of his assignment was currently classified.

  So Uncle Eric was CIA.

  Okay.

  But why had he been at her mother’s wedding?

  Was he on assignment then as well?

  And what was his relationship to her father? Her dad had always treated Hopcroft as his best friend.

  Alex thought of the many times the man had come to their house. Holidays. Dinner parties. Weekend barbecues. He’d even shown up at one of Alex’s piano recitals, back when her parents shared the delusion that she had some musical talent.

  But why?

  Had he come because of Dad, as she had always believed, or because of Mom?

  It was possible Uncle Eric had been a friend to both her mother and father, and might well have been the reason they met, but something about this situation didn’t feel right. Especially when she factored in Hopcroft’s profession.

  So, why had he attended her mother’s wedding?

  Was it an official visit? A clandestine one? Personal?

  And why had he been killed only days before the bombing of the cafe in Lebanon?

  What, if anything, was the connection?

  Contrary to what Alex had hoped, there were even more questions flooding her brain now, and as she tapped through the pages of Hopcroft’s file, she saw nothing that helped her. He was long dead, and any answers he might provide had been buried with him.

  Feeling depressed, she sighed, closed the file, and logged off the database.

  It was times like this that she wished she was still in Baltimore running skip traces and bagging local fugitives, back when she had adjusted to the idea that she would never again see her father, and the memories of her mother were simply reminders that she and Danny had once been loved.

  Now she felt as if she didn’t know her parents at all, that they had been strangers who had merely pretended to be part of their happy family.

  How had it all gotten so complicated?

  By the time she returned to the living room, Cooper was back, and Deuce was just coming in, looking disheveled and dirty. His expression was as serious as Alex had ever seen it, no trace of his usual, easygoing grin.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Cooper said.

  “You don’t want to know. But it looks like Valac’s a guest of Pappy Leo and has an army protecting him.”

  “Pappy Leo?” Alex said.

  “Leonard Latham. King of St. Cajetan. That’s what the locals call him.”

  “He’s staying at Latham’s place?”

  “I couldn’t get a face shot to confirm, but my gut tells me it’s our man.”

  As Deuce set his camera on the end table, Alex noticed several cracks in the lens.

  She grabbed it and tilted it up. “What did you do? Fall on it?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” he said, taking control of the camera again. He flicked open a compartment on the body, ejected an SD card, and handed it to Warlock. “I’d lay odds that if you do a facial scan and ID the gray-haired guy outside the strip club, you’ll find Reinhar
d Beck on his list of known associates.”

  “I’ll get it started,” Warlock said, moving to his laptop. “But this isn’t like what they show us on the telly. It could take some time.”

  “That’s fine,” Cooper told him. “In the meantime we’ll operate on the assumption that Deuce is right.”

  Alex frowned. “From what I read about Latham, he’s a bit eccentric, but I don’t see him as the type to be hanging out with a known terrorist.”

  Cooper shrugged. “Maybe he’s getting a thrill out of it. Or maybe Valac is using an alias and Latham has no idea who his guest really is.”

  “A guy who just happened to show up with an army?”

  “I’m guessing most of them are Latham’s men. A typical show of power. I don’t imagine people call him the king of St. Cajetan for nothing.”

  “You should see his house,” Deuce said. “Big plantation style.”

  “How many men are we talking?” Alex asked.

  “At least half a dozen. Probably more. But the good news is, they’re not that competent. If they were, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”

  “Where you spotted?” Cooper asked.

  “No, but it was close enough to get me sweating.” Deuce looked at Warlock. “You have any luck rigging Favreau’s suite?”

  “Luck isn’t the word I’d use,” Warlock said.

  “So what word would you use?”

  Alex told him about the snafu and the workaround, and Deuce plopped heavily into a chair. “Well, isn’t that wonderful. If we tell McElroy any of this, he isn’t gonna be happy.”

  “I’ll deal with McElroy,” Cooper said, then turned to Warlock. “Are you online with that feed you managed to run?”

  “Watch and weep.” Warlock tapped a key on his laptop and gestured to the center screen, where a high-angle shot of the living room in Favreau’s suite appeared. The problem was, there was enough snow and horizontal interference to make it nearly impossible to see. “Our boy Freddy’s one paranoid little wanker. I don’t know many blokes who travel with a perimeter alarm and a jammer in their kit.” He smiled. “Besides us, that is.”

  Cooper pointed to the monitor. “Is that the best you can do?”

  “I’ve been trying different frequencies, but it looks as if he’s running interference on all of them.”

  Alex studied the screen and was reminded of the scrambled adult cable stations she’d stumbled across as a kid. You could see movement, but it required some imagination to fill in the blanks. She thought she saw Favreau crossing toward an alcove in the wall that mirrored one in their room.

  She gestured to the screen. “I think he’s headed for the safe.”

  Deuce leaned forward in his chair and squinted. “Or doing a mean mambo.”

  “He could be keeping the codes in there.”

  “Or storing them in the cloud,” Warlock said, “with industrial-grade encryption.”

  Cooper shook his head. “He’s got no control over the cloud. And a guy who goes to this much trouble for security is worried about getting ripped off. I don’t know about the safe, but I’m guessing they’re somewhere in that room.”

  “So we’re back where we started,” Alex said. “We still need access.”

  Cooper nodded. “Which means we have to up our game. It’s time to play dress-up.”

  Her expression blank, Alex said, “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to hear you say that.”

  Deuce grinned. “At least it ain’t undersized hospital scrubs.”

  CHAPTER 16

  IT MAY NOT have been undersized hospital scrubs, but the on-camera attire Stonewell had chosen for Alex was unambiguous in its message: Alexandra Barnes, travel correspondent extraordinaire, was not a modest woman, and what she may have lacked in talent was surely made up for by what little she seemed to wear.

  Thanks, guys.

  The suitcases they’d sent were full of bikinis and tight cutoffs and evening attire that straddled the line between Madonna and whore. All of it may have been appropriate for an island vacation, but Alex was more of a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl. The last time she’d worn a nice dress was at a law enforcement cocktail party three years ago, so slipping into a Terani red strapless mini that hugged every curve had her feeling self-conscious.

  When she stepped off the elevator and walked into the hotel lobby, Cooper, Deuce, and Warlock all stopped what they were doing and stared at her for an excruciatingly long moment.

  “Easy boys, it’s just a dress.”

  It took Cooper a few seconds to find his voice. “I guess that’s where we’ll have to disagree.”

  Warlock had sense enough to keep his mouth shut, but his face said it all as Deuce whistled. “Wow, kid, you clean up good.”

  “Thanks…I think.”

  The three of them were in costume as well, which meant they wore basically the same things they’d been in all day. Cooper, the “producer/director,” had added an electronic clapboard to his ensemble, while Deuce and Warlock had chosen job-appropriate accessories to enhance their wardrobes—a hefty video camera balanced on one shoulder for Deuce, and a long pole with a microphone mounted on the end for Warlock.

  Cooper seemed to be having a hard time taking his eyes off Alex. She rarely regretted being female, but at moments like this, she hated it. This dress made her feel more like a display piece than a human being.

  She said to Warlock, “What’s going on with Favreau?”

  His gaze shifted to the upper right corner of his glasses. “He’s heading for the elevator as we speak.”

  Warlock had managed to hack a line into the phone in Favreau’s suite, and they’d heard him make a dinner reservation at the Cajetan Cafe for nine p.m. He was dining alone, so they had figured this was their best chance for Alex to make her move.

  They got into position near the elevators, Deuce pointing his camera in Alex’s direction as Warlock held the boom mic above her head. To a professional crew, they probably looked like amateur hour, but the Internet was undemanding, and everyone else was bound to think they knew what they were doing.

  “He’s on his way down,” Warlock said.

  Cooper got in front of Alex and held up the electronic clapboard. “Alex in Wonderland, take one.”

  He clapped the board and stepped away. Alex took a breath, focused on the teleprompter mounted on Deuce’s camera, and began to read the copy, doing her best to sound like a semi-talented talking head with some major T&A appeal.

  “I’m Alexandra Barnes, and we’re here in the lobby of the Hotel St. Cajetan, an Art Deco masterpiece that boasts over three thousand rooms, two casinos, seven restaurants, and an old-world Caribbean vibe that has most visitors believing they’ve been transported to the island via time machine.”

  The elevator doors behind Deuce and Warlock slid open, and a small crowd of passengers that included Frederic Favreau spilled out. They all looked at the camera and boom mic, and began to buzz a little as they filtered past. In Favreau’s case, it was his eyes doing the talking, taking in Alex in much the same way Cooper’s had.

  So far, so good.

  “On our visit here,” Alex continued, “we’ll be showing you every facet of the hotel and its luxurious accommodations, as well as the must-see beaches and landmarks around the island that make St. Cajetan one of the most popular vacation destinations for millionaires and billionaires from around the world.”

  She offered the camera her best fake smile and held it until Cooper said, “All right, cut it.”

  She briefly made eye contact with Favreau, trying to show a hint of interest, then turned to Cooper. “I feel like we need one more. What do you think?”

  “I think it was fine and I’m beat,” he said. “If we need any retakes we can do them in the morning.”

  Alex was about to reply when she turned and saw that Favreau was already halfway across the lobby, headed for the Cajetan Cafe.

  “So much for attracting his attention,” she said quietly.

 
; Cooper smiled. “Believe me, you got it. I thought his eyes were gonna pop out of his head. Not that I can blame him. Deuce is right, you do clean up good.”

  “My eyes are up here, Shane.”

  His gaze shifted. “Hey, what can I say? I’m human.”

  “Let’s concentrate on Favreau, okay? I’ll give him a few minutes then make my entrance.”

  Favreau was in the middle of his dinner by the time the maitre d’ sat Alex at a small table across from him. It had taken a fifty-dollar tip to get the table she wanted.

  As Favreau looked up, the maitre d’ draped a napkin over Alex’s lap and said, “Will you be dining alone this evening?”

  “Yes.”

  He handed her a menu encased in leather. “Enjoy your meal.”

  She stopped him before he could leave. With Favreau within earshot, she wanted to sell her cover while she had the chance. “Excuse me, but my producer would love to include your cafe in our profile of the hotel. Who would he contact to arrange a tour of the kitchen?”

  The maitre d’ seemed unimpressed. Maybe she needed to slip him another fifty. “The general manager. He’s available during office hours. Is there anything else?”

  She told him no, thanked him, and when he went away she opened the menu and pretended to ignore Favreau as she read through her options. Several times, she felt Favreau’s gaze on her but she kept hers on the menu. The man wasn’t exactly eye candy, and according to Stonewell’s information, had come to expect to pay for the women in his life. So she couldn’t make it seem too easy for him. Sure, Alexandra Barnes could be bought—but not too cheaply.

  When she finally looked up from the menu, Favreau was concentrating on his meal again. She let him catch her watching him before she looked again at the menu and pretended he wasn’t there.

  She counted to sixty, then put the menu down and called across to him. “Excuse me.”

  He had just taken a mouthful and seemed surprised she had spoken to him. He swallowed and said, “Yes?”