Sam turned the car around, parked at her curb behind a worker’s truck, chambered a round in her pistol, and set the safety. Then she got out of her car.
Her legs felt rubbery and her heart pounded. She made her way up the drive, and several crew members stopped to watch her. “Morning ma’am,” one of them said when she cleared her throat.
“Morning,” she said, surprised at how steady her voice sounded given the turmoil going on in her chest. “Just got off the phone with the immigration guys. Apparently they’re doing a random inspection of the job site. I have no idea why they picked my house for this, but they insisted. Anyway, they said 8:45-ish. If you guys want to take a powder, or if you have to drive somewhere or something, I understand.”
The foreman stepped up to speak privately with her while mild mayhem broke out among the rank and file on the construction crew. “We carpooled, and not all the guys have their green cards on them,” he said slowly, looking at her in a knowing kind of way.
“No problem,” Sam said. “Do what you have to do. I think the immigration laws are messed up anyway.”
“Thank you, ma’am. We’ll make the time up at the end of the day, I promise. I know you want your house back.”
It took only a few moments for the men to pile into the back of two pickup trucks. “I really appreciate the head’s up,” the foreman said to her as he drove off with a truck full of migrant workers. “We’ll be back soon.”
No rush, Sam thought to herself.
She felt her heart rate slow a bit, until her thoughts returned to what might be lurking inside her house. She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and ducked beneath the protective plastic that stood where her front door used to be.
Once she was out of view of the street, Sam drew her pistol. She made her way slowly through the entryway and went up the stairs, pausing to clear each closet along the way. She took her time clearing each of the upstairs rooms, finding nothing out of the ordinary.
She made a point to check for Brock’s suitcase, which she found in its normal spot. She surveyed his clothes; while she didn’t keep an inventory of his socks and underwear, it didn’t look like his drawer was missing any items. If he was on the run, he hadn’t taken the time to prepare, she thought.
Either that, or he had a hit-and-run kit stashed somewhere.
Of course he did, she realized. Right next to hers, in the panic room.
She shook her head at her own stupidity, then made her way slowly downstairs to the kitchen. She was only a couple of steps past the breakfast nook when she saw the dark crimson stain on the hardwood floor.
She felt her breath quicken. Blood wasn’t a new sight for her, but Brock’s blood was something else altogether. She wasn’t prepared for the effect it would have on her, and she felt tears welling in her eyes.
Several deep breaths later, she continued on her slow search of her own home, taking her time and leaving all of the doors open as she searched them.
Sam noticed that the butcher’s knife was missing from the Wusthof block on the marble countertop. Not a good sign. She forced herself to remain calm.
Minutes later, she had completed her sweep of the inside of her house, stopping to check the doors leading to the backyard. All were locked, and she didn’t open them, though she glanced between the curtains to search the yard for signs of a struggle. Or bastards hiding in the bushes, she thought, tightening her grip on the pistol.
Finally, there was no place left to search but the basement vault. She had the grim task ahead of her of sifting through hours of video footage to see what had happened to Brock, hoping for a clue to his whereabouts.
She steeled herself, typed in the nine-digit access code, heard the latch retract, and slowly opened the door.
She’d only opened the door a foot when her blood froze and her heart leapt into her throat.
Protruding from the darkness of the panic room was the barrel of a large caliber handgun, pointed at her face.
45
It’s damned sweaty in this country, Quinn observed to himself.
It was late fall further up in the northern climes, but in Caracas, just seven hundred miles north of the equator, soggy and sultry was a year-round reality. Three thousand feet of elevation took the edge off of what would otherwise be a vicious tropical heat, but Quinn was still uncomfortable in the midday warmth.
He stood atop a building wearing overalls and a bright orange vest. He had an earpiece in his ear, with an integral microphone that picked up the vibrations of his skull when he spoke. A thin cord connected the apparatus to a radio transmitter on his belt.
He pretended to be working on a large air conditioning unit on the top of the building, but even the most lenient supervisor would be unimpressed with his work ethic. He kept taking breaks to peer over the edge of the roof.
His young apprentice was no better, one of the twenty-somethings from Fredericks’ soiree earlier in the week. Operation Syphilis, Phase Two, was underway in earnest.
Quinn chuckled to himself. Phase Two. Like a real VIP assassination. Only it’s being run by Fredericks the Clown.
“Check in,” Quinn commanded, peering over the rooftop down to Urdaneta Avenue, which led to El Palacio de Miraflores, the daytime hangout of El Cucaracha.
Even the codename of the target was a Fredericks-ism. Cucaracha, the Spanish word for cockroach, demanded the feminine definitive article, La. La Cucaracha, it should have been. But Fredericks had shoved the masculine definitive, el, in front of the word. Quinn hated shit like that. It was so annoyingly common.
“High Two,” said a voice on the radio in response to Quinn’s command. The voice had come from the twenty-something next to him on the roof, who was staring at the innards of the air conditioning unit like a pig studying a wristwatch.
“Stroller One and Two,” said a female voice, still seductive despite the radio’s static. Quinn searched until he found them fifteen stories below, walking along the Urdaneta Avenue sidewalk. He bristled to see the hot young thing whom he badly wanted to know in the biblical sense holding hands with another of the twenty-somethings. Quinn was certain Fredericks had arranged the assignments purely to thwart his libido.
“Copy, Strollers. Cruiser?” Quinn said, holding the earpiece in place instinctively but unnecessarily.
“Cruiser’s up.” The old man. Quinn saw him at the other end of Urdaneta, sporting a ridiculously long, white beard and a bowler hat, hunched over a walker and hustling along like an Arctic glacier.
“Needles has you loud and clear.” Quinn couldn’t see her. She was the frumpy middle-aged agent, seated at a bus stop bench on the near side of the avenue just beneath Quinn’s building. She was knitting. Perfectly frumptacular.
“Moped loud and clear, too.” The red Vespa was just visible, idling at the curb nearest the Palacio.
“Movement,” someone said, and Quinn’s eyes snapped to the Miraflores Palace’s gates. They were indeed in motion, retreating into the wall far more rapidly than might befit a stately entrance and exit. The no-nonsense gate’s operation was no doubt engineered to cope with the violence of one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Caracas had hovered near the top of the list of the world’s best places to become a murder victim for the last seventeen millennia. Or something like that, Quinn thought.
“Steady and ready,” Quinn said. It was a stupid thing to say, really. If he hadn’t said it, would his agents have freaked out? Fallen asleep? Doubtful.
“Buggies,” Moped said, as the first of the black limousines poured from behind the palace gates. “They don’t screw around,” he editorialized, impressed by how quickly the entourage charged into the intersection.
“Photos,” Quinn said. Again, it was a silly thing to say. Photographing the security detail was the point of the day’s op. Would the team have forgotten to properly position the cameras hidden in various spots on their disguises, had he said nothing to them? Probably not, but if they screwed it up, it wouldn’t be because he fa
iled to remind them.
The whole thing was over in a little over a minute. Eight limousines in all, splitting into four groups of two, each traveling a different route. It was an age-old technique designed to keep would-be assassins from knowing the precise position of the likely mark.
Quinn was also certain the photos would reveal no giveaways in the limousines themselves. They were all probably exactly alike, each of them an identical million-dollar armored Mercedes able to withstand a grievous roadside blast or multiple hits from any projectile smaller than an RPG.
“That’s a wrap,” he said as the last of the limousines disappeared into the city. “Don’t get nabbed on the way to the debrief.”
Quinn couldn’t figure out why it was seventy-five degrees outside, but ninety degrees in the stuffy apartment. The problem was made worse by the bevy of video equipment now set up on the countertops.
Fredericks’ body odor dominated the little kitchen, and, to a person, each of the operatives made a face of disgust upon entering the debriefing as they ran into a wall of middle-aged, overweight stench. “Couldn’t you find a more uncomfortable safe house to hold us hostage in?” Quinn asked Fredericks, who ignored him.
“Thanks for making it back so quickly,” Fredericks said as the last of the team assembled. “Countersurveillance reports that you’re clean, except for an interesting episode with a white sedan that I’ll tell you about in a little bit. First, let’s have your assessments.” He looked at Quinn expectantly.
Quinn cut to the chase. “A handshake and a hug at the front door, or nothing. I don’t see a way in past all the security without a small army.”
“Concur,” said the older gentleman, his gratuitously long beard and bowler hat now removed and stored safely back in the wardrobe department. “Everything was armored and well-manned.”
Moped spoke up next. “They have entry and exit procedures wired like clockwork. There’s no margin.”
Fredericks looked at the attractive young female agent, who nodded her assent. “Plus the route surveillance team. We spotted at least three pseudo-pedestrians. Maybe four. Wired and packing.” Meaning, the foot surveillance team was connected to the main security team via two-way radio, and they were carrying handguns.
Fredericks nodded. “That checks with my assessment as well. Mary, tell them what you told me a minute ago.”
The frumpy-looking lady nodded, then spoke in a slow, matronly tone. “They were watching you two up on the roof, from a white sedan. The driver got out to snap a few photos of you. Strangest thing, though, the back seat looked like it was configured for hauling perps. It was sealed off by plexiglass like a cop car, and there was a guy inside who looked like he was along for the ride.”
She handed over a smart phone displaying the photo she had taken, which Fredericks connected to the large video monitor using a converter cable.
“Thank Facebook for the facial recognition database,” Fredericks said. “The Agency made them a strong offer.”
The comment drew knowing smirks from the crowd at the table. They assumed, correctly, that the offer went something like this: we’re the CIA, so give us your shit. It was surprisingly compelling despite its lack of subtlety.
The computer crunched piles of digital data that characterized the backseat passenger’s facial features, then compared the data to Facebook’s hundreds of millions of faces.
It took a little under a minute, which astounded the older spooks in the crowd, but didn’t faze the twenty-somethings in the least.
Quinn read the facial recognition report and shook his head. Peter Kittredge.
Fredericks whistled. “Our newest friend,” he said, throwing a knowing glance at Quinn.
The hint wasn’t lost on Quinn. Fredericks wanted Kittredge killed, and he wanted Quinn to arrange it.
Quinn had already spoken his mind in private to Fredericks, and he decided to make his position a bit more publicly known as well. “He’s in perfect position. We couldn’t have planned it better, and he happens to be an expert on the topic we’re going to see Cucaracha about. Let’s just use a little finesse.”
It was an incongruous thing to hear from Quinn, a mountain of a man with feral, mismatched eyes and a steroid-enhanced physique. He looked like he was far more accustomed to pulling arms and legs free of their joints than finessing anything, but his strength and brutality always played second fiddle to his instincts and intellect, which were nearly flawless. If there was ever a born operative, it was Quinn, and despite their good-natured mutual disdain, Fredericks respected his opinion.
“Okay. But that little faggot makes me nervous.”
“Let the record so reflect,” Quinn said. “And you’re not allowed to say faggot any more. Didn’t you attend the sensitivity training?”
“Find him. I’ll need some assurance from him,” Fredericks said.
“Obviously. I didn’t think you wanted to swap recipes.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Quinn saw the attractive girl laugh. He thought for the second time in as many days that maybe he had a chance with her. He’d have to deal with the Kittredge thing as quickly as possible, and maybe he could schedule some time to go over case notes with the girl, to hear her thoughts. And then maybe he’d get to hear her moans. He smiled inwardly.
Fredericks’ nasal voice brought him back. “So it’s settled, then,” the fat case officer was saying. “We ride in on the ambassador’s coattails, spin a yarn, hand him the pen full of Ebola, and ride off into the sunset.”
“Hepatitis,” Quinn corrected.
“Right. What did I say?”
“Forget it.”
“Surveillance schedule stays unchanged for the moment,” Fredericks said. “I have to talk to the embassy fucktards and the Washington fucktards. Then I’ll contact you guys. Stay available.”
Recognizing that the meeting had ended, and eager to depart the lethal radius of Fredericks’ hygiene problem, the Operation Syphilis team cleared the cramped kitchen.
“Take a shower, Bill,” Quinn offered on the way out. “You smell like a dead goat.”
46
Kittredge didn’t have a terrific feeling about the way the day was progressing. He’d started with an extremely pleasant liaison with Maria, a very heterosexual encounter that he’d thoroughly enjoyed, to his enduring surprise.
But then the phone had rung and the day had gone rapidly to shit.
He sat glumly in the back seat of the sedan and stared at the back of Alejandro’s head through the plexiglass. He’d seen a similar view once before, when he was seventeen years old and caught behind the school with a joint. The policeman had hauled him away in a cruiser to make a point, then dropped him off at home without so much as a word to his parents.
Kittredge didn’t have a great feeling that this particular trip in the back of a converted police cruiser would end quite so plummy.
Alejandro had made one stop so far, and Kittredge was having a difficult time wrapping his mind around its purpose. Alejandro had stopped the car at the curb on Urdaneta Avenue, gotten out, snapped a few dozen photos of the surrounding buildings, random passersby and a passing motorcade of limousines, then returned without so much as a word.
Kittredge had asked him politely about the stop, but hadn’t received even a head nod to acknowledge his presence, much less an answer to his question.
It was clear from Maria and Rojo’s comments that his current status as persona non grata was a direct result of his having called the hospital the night before to inquire about Charley’s condition. He wasn’t sure what else they expected him to do, though. It wasn’t as if he had the ability to stop by Charley’s room and see for himself, and he didn’t trust the VSS to shoot straight with him.
Sure, Maria had engineered his escape from what he assumed was a CIA-orchestrated attack. For that, he was certainly grateful.
On the other hand, Maria had confirmed his suspicions that El Grande and his pack of heavies was behind Charley’s rearranged c
erebral cortex, and possibly responsible for ransacking his and Charley’s Caracas apartment.
All in all, Kittredge figured, he could be forgiven for hedging his bets and searching for a neutral point of view on Charley’s status.
Kittredge realized that he had run headlong into the fundamental question inherent to the clandestine world, the question of who the hell to trust, and when to trust them.
And, he thought, perhaps the more important questions related to how far one should trust them, and when to stop.
He was certain that he lacked the sophistication to make solid judgements of that nature, at least at the moment. More accurately, he figured, he just lacked the training to spot the signs that gave away a sudden change in rules and roles.
But that was certainly something that could be learned, he thought. How did humans become good at anything? Practice, patience, and persistence. He had felt extremely alive during a few of those crazy, breathless moments over the past week, and he wouldn’t mind cultivating a little more of that kind of excitement in his life.
And the pay was actually pretty good, when people didn’t steal it from him.
He just wasn’t sure it was a forgiving enough field to accommodate on-the-job training. He was a lightweight in every sense of the word, and the only reason he was still alive was because, at various times, the Agency and the VSS wanted him alive.
Still, that was something. He was useful, maybe only by virtue of his various affiliations with the embassy, the Agency, and the ragtag Venezuelan guerrillas, but useful nonetheless.
For the moment.
He worried that he might have worn out his utility with the VSS. Alejandro was anything but friendly, and they had clearly segregated him from the rest of the entourage, stuffing him in the back of what amounted to a paddy wagon. He hadn’t seen a black Suburban since they left the bank building, so he had no idea where Rojo, Maria, and the other security guards might have gone.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 26