Eddie, who had his car parked in front of the Bistro, smiled. As he squeezed his large body behind the steering wheel of his heavily modified and reinforced 1964 Citroen 2CV Special Edition, he departed with the words, “Good luck!”
The next morning at the breakfast table Tony, Nancy, Christina and Sarah discussed what to do next. Sarah commented, “If we and our friends weren’t criminals, the easiest thing would be to go to the police and let them do whatever has to be done.”
“I don’t see myself as a criminal,” Nancy protested.
Nobody replied.
“Well,” Nancy modified her position, “at least I think I’m a good criminal.”
“Good or bad, “Christina added, “Sarah’s right, we can’t go to the police. I suggest we drive to the address Eddie gave us and see what it looks like, but make sure that we stay well clear of the farm.”
“Let’s do that after breakfast,” Tony agreed. “More than anything else we need to take along two good pairs of binoculars. I know a place where we can buy them.”
They bought the binoculars and arrived in the vicinity of the farmhouse two hours later. The house was located two miles from the edge of a village. A road led from the village past a driveway that led to the farmhouse. The driveway was approximately two hundred yards long. The area was flat and anybody approaching the farmhouse, especially on the driveway, could easily be spotted.
Coming from the village and driving another three hundred yards past the driveway, there was a small nature reserve consisting of bushes and trees. Nancy drove the car without slowing down past the driveway and past the nature area. Another mile and she was out of the sight of the farmhouse. Tony checked on Google Maps to see if it was possible to approach the nature reserve from the side opposite the farmhouse. There were two tracks and Tony guided Nancy. Fifteen minutes later they parked the car and crossed the nature reserve on foot. At the edge of the reserve, on the side towards the farmhouse, they hid behind several dense bushes and Tony and Christina took the binoculars and looked at the house.
For thirty minutes nobody said a word. While Tony and Christina focused their full attention on the farmhouse and its surroundings, Nancy and Sarah paid attention to their immediate surroundings to ensure they were not suddenly surprised by someone who might be in the area. After thirty minutes they switched roles and Tony and Christina handed the binoculars to Nancy and Sarah.
Tony and Christina moved a few yards away and quietly discussed what they had seen, while at the same time observing their surroundings.
One hour after their arrival all four of them shared what they had seen. Tony made notes. Four times they stopped talking about what they had seen and had another good look at specific features of the house and its surroundings. They then returned to their car and drove back to their hotel in Paris. They knew what had to be done.
50
The previous weeks had been busy ones. In anticipation of a confrontation with their enemy they had acquired two Toyota 4WD Landcruisers, machine guns with ammunition, hand grenades and shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapons, referred to SMAWs.
On the drive back from the so called farmhouse they had decided what to do. They knew that the driveway to the house was virtually impassable. Coming in from the road there were infrared security barriers which would sound an alarm inside the house the moment a vehicle entered the driveway. On the remaining stretch of the driveway there were two more security features. They couldn’t be certain what these features were. It could be that there were metal spikes that emerge from the surface of the driveway and stop every car in its track, but it could also be worse. In Tony’s opinion it was likely that the security feature closest to the house consisted of explosives that could tear a vehicle into pieces of metal and plastic.
They decided that they would drive the two Landcruisers and one hired sedan to the farmhouse so that they would arrive in the area by two am. The sedan would enter the driveway, however, there would be no driver in the car. The car’s steering wheel would be locked into a straight ahead position. Nancy would drive the car and would jump out of it just before the infrared alarm barrier. The car would trigger the alarm and continue its journey along the driveway towards the house. It would drive in first gear and whether or not it would also manage to trigger the subsequent one or two security features didn’t really matter. It was important that it triggered the alarm and drew the attention of the people inside the house towards the driveway.
If in the process of this initiative the sedan was blown up, that would be okay. If the sedan however was not blown up by the subsequent security features on the driveway, then Nancy would use her mobile phone to trigger a detonation of the sedan with a charge of explosives inside the car. Whichever way, at some stage the sedan would explode.
Parallel with the activity on the driveway, the two Landcruisers would approach the building from the left and the right sides of the driveway. There was a meadow on one side and a field on the other. Tony would drive one Landcruiser across the field and Christina and Sarah would be in the other Landcruiser. They would stop the Landcruisers approximately fifty yards from the building. The day was cloudy and with a bit of good luck the night would be dark and they hoped that the Landcruisers, with their lights switched off and with the explosion and the hullabaloo on the driveway, would not be noticed.
Equipped with machine guns and hand grenades Tony would now dash towards the house from one side and Christina and Sarah from the other side. Their objective would be to enter the building, hopefully still unnoticed. However, should they be noticed, at whatever stage, they would try to fight their way inside the house. With the element of surprise on their side, they were confident that their chances of success were sufficiently realistic. Of course, there was no guarantee, but that was nothing new in their profession.
Throughout the attack they would be in contact with the help of a sophisticated communication’s system. Each one of them wore a microphone and earphone.
Nancy, once the sedan on the driveway had turned into a fireball, would dash towards Tony’s Landcruiser and grab a machine gun and two shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapons (SMAWs). She would then approach the house, how close she would be able to get she would have to decide during the actual raid. It was likely that floodlights would come on and that the area in front of the house would be the most dangerous place to be.
As far as Nancy’s involvement was concerned, the idea was straightforward: if Tony, Christina or Sarah needed a diversion or assistance, they would tell Nancy. A shot at any part of the building with one of Nancy’s SMAWs should be a hell of a diversion. All Nancy would have to know was which part of the building she would have to aim at. The objective was to kill the enemy, and not to endanger the lives of their friends.
In the event that Tony, Christina or Sarah were injured in a fight inside the building, this could be another situation that might require Nancy’s involvement, albeit a less desirable one.
The obvious objective of the attack was to free Mike, Mike’s mother, Vanessa, Steven and the elderly lady. The best case scenario would be one that enabled Tony, Christina and Sarah to enter the house and find the hostages before anybody discovered that they had entered the house. The worst case scenario would be one in which they were already discovered when they approached the building with the Landcruisers. They anticipated that the reality might turn out to be somewhere in between. They were confident that their friends were inside the house, but this was not certain either. That they weren’t there represented another possible scenario.
In the event that they encountered Alberto (or his other self Gabriele, should his personality have changed), they would try to take him into custody. This might enable them to exchange him for their friends whether they were inside the building or later somewhere else.
There were other aspects to their operation, but in essence they decided to act now, to use the element of surprise and move and act quickly and ruthlessly i
f this was required.
51
They started the journey with the two heavily armed Landcruisers and the sedan at midnight. Shortly before two am they were at their agreed destinations. The sedan with Nancy stood in a parking area in the village. It would take her four minutes to drive the car to the T-junction where the driveway entered the road that led to the village on the right and past the nature area on the left. It would then take Nancy another ten to twenty seconds to put the car in a position that would make it drive along the driveway straight towards the farmhouse. Tony had worked on the car so that it was possible to lock the steering from within the sedan with a simple pull on a wire. The moment the car commenced its journey towards destruction Nancy would switch its lights on and get out of the car; for Tony, Christina and Sarah the lights would be the sign that the operation had commenced.
The Landcruisers were located five hundred yards to either side of the so called farmhouse. Their lights were switched off and the eight cylinder petrol engines were idling and hardly making a sound. It was a dark night and the building lay in front of them like a dark shadow.
They had agreed on one addition to their plan. Nancy had taken one SMAW along in the sedan. She would take it out of the car and place it on the side of the road before the car commenced its lonely journey towards the house. Once the car was on its way she would take the SMAW and aim it, with her back towards the house, towards a small rocky outpost, just a few boulders really one to two yards above ground. These boulders were situated almost in a straight extension of the driveway, at a distance of perhaps fifty yards from the T-junction where the driveway entered the road.
Nancy would have her mobile phone in her left hand, the SMAW on her right shoulder and her right hand index finger on the trigger of the SMAW. It was dark and she hoped that she would see the boulders. If she didn’t, it wasn’t crucial. The idea was to simply create another diversion for the people in the farmhouse, a diversion that was further away from the house than the exploding car, but in a straight extension from the house to the exploding car. The second explosion caused by the SMAW was meant to make it easier for Tony, Christina and Sarah’s to get to the house without being noticed.
Nancy would turn her head and upper body sidewise and watch the sedan driving away from her. If there was no explosion caused by the security features on the driveway by the time the car had travelled half the distance of the driveway, she would trigger the explosives inside the car with her mobile phone. She would then continue to look into the direction of the house and arrange for the second explosion at the rocky outpost area to take place as soon as she could see people in front of the house. The time between the explosion of the sedan and the second explosion at the rocky outcrop was the time for the Landcruisers to drive to within fifty yards of the house.
52
Nancy was sitting in the sedan. The village was quiet. They had agreed that she would leave the village and commence driving towards the driveway at quarter past two. She was clear about what she had to do. She had handled the SMAW and was comfortable with its pipe-like shape and weight. She had never fired such a weapon, but she had a good idea about the recoil she had to expect. There was no hurry; she still had ten minutes.
She thought that she should be nervous, but then it occurred to her that she had never been nervous in dangerous or critical situations. Besides, she had an unusual relationship to life and death, especially in situations where the distance between these two opposites, as many people might argue, seems smaller than at other times, at less perilous times.
She wished she had spoken to Tony about this. There has been an opportunity on their flight from New York to Paris. Tony was the only man she had ever met who had the ability to totally focus on what another person was trying to say. Other men she had met were good at listening, but they always seemed to listen with a mind that immediately compared whatever was said with its own ideas about the world or about how the world should be. Tony could switch off his own mind. When he listened he tried to become part of the mind of the person he was listening to. He could understand topics from two perspectives: from his own perspective and from another person’s perspective. Understanding something from another person’s perspective, Nancy thought, enables him talk in a context that makes sense not only to himself but also to the other person. Maybe that’s why he is such a good conman. He could go inside other people’s minds. He is not guided by his own wishful thinking; he is guided by other people’s realities.
I should have given him a chance to understand my thinking about death. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe I am afraid of my own thoughts. Maybe I am afraid that I am right. If I was wrong that would be okay. Everybody I know is wrong about what they think about death. No, that’s not correct either. Some people don’t think about death and some say there is nothing to think about because there is no answer. But there is an answer, there is only no certainty. Not yet.
But there is a very likely way to arrive at certainty. But this is not what I should think about now. This is something I should have discussed with Tony.
What’s the time? A few more minutes. My task is easy. Well, at least as far as I can see it. Once the SMAW ammunition has exploded and obliterated the rocks, things will become unpredictable. But up to that moment, when the rocks are no longer what they have been for thousands of years, life is predetermined. But maybe that’s what life is anyway. Predetermined. Who says that our planing is really our planning? We say it. But who are we?
Who am I? That’s what it all boils down to, doesn’t it! I mean, that’s what it all boils down to in the first instance. There could then be a second instance and a third one and so on. Or maybe there is only the first instance? Maybe there is death and death is the first instance and then all will be revealed? But what then? This possibility seems kind of boring. Be dead and be all-knowing and be bored for all eternity. This sounds so boring, it might actually be funny. What’s the time? Time to go.
So far so good. Nancy had positioned the sedan so that it should head straight into the house at the end of the driveway if nothing interfered. She had placed the shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapon at the edge of the road. The weapon was ready; all she needed to do was lift it on her shoulder, aim and pull the trigger. The car door was half open, she pushed the clutch and shifted the car into first gear, switched on the lights, full beam, let the clutch come slowly and stayed in the moving car for two or three yards before she stepped out and closed the door.
She bent down, picked up the SMAW and lifted it onto her shoulder. With her left hand she took her cell phone out of one of her pockets. She found the boulders, aimed at them and turned her head and the upper part of her body towards the farmhouse. When the car crossed the infrared beam that constituted the first safety feature, several lights in front of the building came on and from inside the building she could hear a faint sound.
The building was two hundred yards from where Nancy was standing. She was far outside the area that was covered by the light. She kept looking towards the house. There was light coming from some of the windows. People were getting up. She couldn’t hear them but she knew that some were swearing and as they slipped into their trousers, which was probably all they did in a hurry, they were trying to fully wake up and orientate themselves. The sedan was still driving leisurely towards the house. The alarm was still sounding and Nancy was confident that nobody would hear the sound of the two Landcruisers. Each of them had to cover a distance of approximately four hundred and fifty yards. As long as the alarm was making its noise and the sedan had not yet driven half the distance of the driveway there was no need for Nancy to blow up the car.
The sedan came to a sudden stop. Nancy concluded that it had run into an obstacle; perhaps the spikes, the second safety feature, had been actuated. Two people appeared in front of the house. Nancy pushed a button on her cell phone and at the same moment the sedan was converted into a massive fireball. That’s impressive, Nancy thoug
ht, I’m glad I’m not closer to it. A real firework. Tony can be proud of his work. After the noise of the explosion had died down she could hear voices from the direction of the house. It sounded like lots of voices. Good, she thought, lots of voices and chaos that’s good; if it were only one voice that gives orders that would be a worry.
There were now at least five or six people in front of the building. Nancy turned around and waited a few seconds until her eyes had sufficiently adjusted to the darkness and she could just make out the shadowy outline of the boulders. She aimed, pulled the trigger and was surprised by the recoil of the unfamiliar weapon. It nearly threw her to the ground. She regained her balance, dropped the empty weapon to the ground and started running on the road towards the village. As she ran she counted slowly to fifteen. At the count of fifteen she turned right and ran parallel to the driveway on a field towards a spot where she expected to find Tony’s Landcruiser.
53
At a distance of approximately five hundred yards from the farmhouse Tony had been waiting in his Landcruiser for the headlights of the sedan. His eyes were focused on the area where he knew the driveway joined the road. Christina and Sarah had been doing the same on the other side of the house. When the full beam of the headlights became visible both Landcruiser started to move towards the house. Less than twenty four hours earlier Tony, Nancy, Christina and Sarah had thoroughly studied the field and meadow landscape around the house with their binoculars. They had not seen any obstacles and did not expect any surprises, but nevertheless in the darkness and without lights they could not drive as fast as they would have preferred. On the other hand, this had an advantage; the engines of the Landcruisers were not as noisy as they would have been at full speed.
An Almighty Conspiracy – A novel, a thriller, four people doing the unexpected Page 20