by Hilton, Matt
‘OK, I see it, but this isn’t the way we’ll be going in,’ I said.
‘Just wanted you to get an idea of the scale of the place. I did my recce from further up on the hillside where you can see down into the grounds.’
At the foot of the plaza a number of pedestrians moved along the cross street on which we stood. It was almost as if there was an invisible barrier that forbade them from marching up the hill, and I guessed that the locals knew the approach to Casa Molina was out of bounds. If we tried to get much closer a guard would be dispatched from the gatehouse to dissuade us. Even from where we stood, like two guys in innocent conversation, I could make out a turreted structure to the left of the ornate gates. The turret looked to be a couple of hundred years old, but had been recently modified to include a broad, smoked-glass window behind which I could make out the silhouette of a man peering down the plaza. That the guard would have easy access to a weapon was a no-brainer. Covering my scrutiny with a less than subtle tilt of my head, I searched beyond the gate and high walls to where a large house stood astride the foot of the hillside. It was a rambling hacienda-style building, added to over the years so that it now boasted three wings as well as the original central structure. The roofs were a collection of flat terraces and pitched clay tile. Two figures patrolled the terrace, their attention on the grounds at the back. Velasquez had estimated that there were around a dozen people inside: it looked to me as if it could comfortably accommodate a hundred or more.
Earlier I’d put down Velasquez’s trepidation to the fact that he was looking at the plan from a police officer’s perspective, and I’d brushed off his concerns. Molina’s house wouldn’t pose a problem for Rink and me in the normal sense; we’d infiltrated heavily guarded terrorist compounds on more occasions than I could recall. But this time I had to consider a major factor. Then we’d been on seek and destroy missions; this time it was about securing and protecting a child’s life. Fighting our way out past determined guards and an enraged father might indeed prove nigh-on impossible. I thought about Kirstie. If her boy was killed in the firefight, it would destroy her. But only after she’d clawed out my heart with her fingernails.
I have a natural ability that I’ve taken care to train to a point where I can mentally snapshoot a scene, which I can later recall in minute detail. Not that I have a photographic memory, something that only features in spy novels and sci-fi movies. I have to make a conscious decision to remember a place or face, and so I trailed my gaze over the scene now, noting every feature of the house and grounds, mentally painting a picture in my head. Satisfied, I nudged Velasquez and we walked away, heading for adjoining streets that would take us up towards the heights behind the house. Up there we’d have to be careful, because unless Molina was a total idiot, he’d know that his home was vulnerable to surveillance from above, and would have extra watchers in place to guard his back.
Actually, it appeared that his defensive ring also extended to these adjoining streets, because as we ambled upwards, circumventing the grounds, we passed at least three guys we pegged as Molina’s footsoldiers. They weren’t dressed or armed like guerrilla fighters, but their body language gave them away. Velasquez had said that the guards looked alert to him – if not alerted – but he’d only checked out those men inside the property. These ones, the pavement artists, were as jumpy as fleas as they scanned the faces of pedestrians or those in vehicles. Perhaps it was because Velasquez looked like an ageing homeboy that we were spared their scrutiny. Having lived in sunny Florida for the best part of two years, my sun-darkened face unshaven, my hair under a ball cap, and my clothing a little scuffed up, I resembled a passing local myself. If any of them got a look at the colour of my eyes, they’d make me for a Yankee – an odd irony – so I kept my gaze averted as we plodded upward.
We made it to the heights above the compound, finding a gap between two houses that offered a view downhill from where we could see the layout of Molina’s house and the wall around it. I counted three men patrolling the rooftops, one of whom occasionally scanned the hillside with a handheld scope. We didn’t fear discovery, but there was only a short window of opportunity before one of the outer ring of guards began questioning our presence. If they were worth their salt. I did my memory-snapshot trick again, and just as we were about to move off, something important caught my attention.
A car had entered the compound via the front gates. It came round the side of the house and parked in a wide space at the back where Molina’s small fleet stood ready to transport him wherever he desired. Two men got out. I could have done with a loan of the rooftop guard’s spy scope, but I could see enough to recognise one of the men.This time it wasn’t a face from my para days, but a more recent encounter than that. Some of the answers to the questions I’d been asking began to fall in place.
The tall white man, dressed in a black suit and white shirt, grinned a rictus smile as Jorge Molina came out to greet him. They shook hands before Molina waved him inside, out of the beating sun. The second man followed them unbidden; simply muscle along for the ride. Then they were inside and out of sight.
‘This complicates things.’
‘Say what?’
‘What looked difficult before has just gone up a notch or two,’ I said cryptically.
Velasquez was used to my odd English ways, and didn’t question me further. ‘That’s why I like working with you, Hunter: never a dull moment. Sure beats patrolling a fucking shopping mall.’
On the way back to rendezvous with the others, I formulated a get-in plan, but still didn’t have a clue how we’d make it out safely with a squalling child in our arms. Not now that our supposed allies had turned up to warn Molina we were in town.
Chapter 18
‘You sure you know what you’re doing, brother?’
Crouching on the hillside above Molina’s house, I looked across at Rink who was practically invisible against the night sky. It was six hours since I had perused the site with Velasquez, and darkness had fallen abruptly. A low-lying bank of clouds shrouded the moon. All I could discern of Rink were the whites of his eyes, and a faint scar on his chin given him two years earlier by a madman’s knife. His teeth weren’t visible because he was hitting me with a concerned frown, his lips downturned in that great sad-faced fish way he has.
‘It’s a bit late to back out now.’
‘I’m not talking about the plan,’ he said. ‘I’m talking about Kirstie.’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’
‘I’m talking about the canoodling you were doing earlier.’
‘Canoodling? Now there’s a word I’ve never heard you use before.’
‘It’s your goddamn Brit slang rubbing off on me. You know what I mean.’
‘That wasn’t canoodling. She was upset and I gave her a little reassurance.’
‘By sticking your tongue down her throat?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Would’ve been if I hadn’t had the good sense to bang on the van and bring you to your senses.’
‘Jesus, Rink, what’s the problem? You keep telling me to get myself a good woman. I thought you’d be happy for me.’
‘I didn’t tell you to jump into bed with Walter’s granddaughter.’
So that was what he was concerned about. Hell, he was allowing his enmity towards Walter to colour his view of Kirstie. That wasn’t like him.
‘It’s almost incest for Christ’s sake,’ he growled.
If we hadn’t been poised to enter an enemy stronghold, possibly on a suicide mission, I might have taken him to task for that comment. All right, I did look on Walter Conrad as something of a father figure, but it wasn’t as if we shared blood.
Rink’s never backward in berating me. He sees it as his duty to keep me on the straight and narrow, and will often rein me in if he thinks I’m overstepping the mark. Christ, maybe that made Rink a surrogate mother. I thought about suggesting as much but he might take it the wrong way.
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br /> ‘Lay off, will you, Rink. It was a kiss and cuddle, nothing more. Jump into bed . . . hell!’
‘OK, OK, I exaggerated, but you know what I mean, brother. We both know how impulsive you are. You’ll let your feelings for Kirstie affect the outcome of this mission. I know it. You know it.’
‘Can’t afford to, Rink. This is about the boy. Benjamin. And if you’re finished doing your agony aunt bit, let’s go get him.’
‘Lead on.’
I was happy to be moving, especially when it shut Rink up from here on in – at least on the subject of my love life. Now he was my brother-in-arms, just the way I liked it.
We were both dressed for purpose in black trousers and shirts, black boots, and our faces blackened with greasepaint. We moved down the hillside, a pair of ninja warriors assaulting the shogun’s pagoda. Earlier I’d noted a tight angle in the wall where the compound had followed the contours of the cliff, and saw it as our best opportunity to enter the grounds undetected. There were CCTV cameras mounted on the walls, but where the wall made a tight wedge there was a blind spot. We could drop into the grounds between the cameras, then make our way across the parking lot to the rear door where Molina and his guests had entered the house.
Further up the hillside were clusters of houses, but lower down the cliff face was bare of habitation. The terrain was formed of jagged boulders interspersed by narrow gullies, and we were able to follow the course of one of those without fear of meeting a civilian. Anyone lurking among the rocks would prove unfriendly, so we moved with intent. We were heading into the compound with a shoot-to-kill mentality.
We didn’t surprise any watchers in the gullies.
Approaching the wall, I paused about fifteen yards out as Rink ran directly to it, planted his back to the rough adobe and cupped his hands. As soon as he was set, I jogged forward and stepped into his hands and he boosted me up on to the parapet. I flattened, checking that I was in the dead arc between the scope of the cameras, and that none of the guards had noted my presence. There was no call to arms, so I hooked my knees round the top of the wall, riding it like a stunt horse while I reached down and linked forearms with Rink. He swung up with ease and spread his bodyweight along the top, facing me. After a quick check around, he swung off the other side and I helped lower him to avoid too much noise when his boots hit gravel. I then swung off the wall, into the stirrup of his hands and then to the ground. We both went to a crouch as we pulled out our weapons and searched the compound for movement. One man was moving along the terrace roof with a flashlight in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He wasn’t shining his torch in our direction, a good sign.
Earlier, Harvey had worked his wizardry on his laptop, finding old blueprints of Molina’s place on a site about historic houses of Hermosillo – long before the Molina family took control of it. The charts only showed floor plans of the original structure, so there were rooms in the three newer wings that we had no idea about. However, the door to which we headed was located in the original building, so we had a basic idea of what was inside. The first thing we expected to find was a guard or two.
Crossing the parking lot, we passed the cars, including the one in which Molina’s surprise visitor had arrived. Rink crouched by the back left corner, jabbing his KA-BAR knife through the tyre. Then he repeated the process on the front. While he was engaged with this task, I was busy disabling Molina’s fleet. Best-case scenario was if we could put all of Molina’s cars out of commission, but there would be other vehicles at the front, or maybe parked out of sight in the large garage I could now see butting close to the right back corner of the compound. The first part of our escape plan was on foot, and the last thing we needed was to be run down by a vehicle full of gunmen.
But that was for the future. First we had to spirit the boy out of his father’s clutches without alerting the household. Constrained by laws, there was no way we could have contemplated our actions. To sneak the boy out it was inevitable that some of the people inside would not live to see the dawn. But, recalling the crimes these men were responsible for, I’d no qualms about dropping a few of the sadistic butchers. In my mind’s eye I caught a fleeting image of the two kids who had been disembowelled and hung from a bridge. The vision firmed my resolve.
Using hand-speak, Rink indicated that he was going to enter the house first. I nodded, then covered him as he approached the door. Rink’s a big man, but he moves with the grace of a hunting cat. I watched him, conscious of any movement in my peripheral vision. Subtle movement is easier spotted in the periphery than searched for head-on. I caught a tiny object arching past to my right: the extinguished stub of the rooftop guard’s cigarette. I couldn’t see him on the roof, but there was a faint glow of his flashlight sweeping towards the wall where we’d entered. We were already under his line of vision, so I checked for soldiers on the ground. There was a low mumble of conversation from somewhere round the corner to our left. I moved quickly to join Rink by the door, placing my back to the jamb while I covered the space behind us.
Rink held up his left hand, three fingers extended, and began a countdown, lowering each digit in turn. As his hand formed a fist, he leaned into the door and used the same hand to twist the handle. Rink nudged open the door as I turned to cover his entrance. As soon as he was in and in a covering position, I followed, going to one knee and bringing up my SIG. We were in a broad vestibule, hardwood parquet flooring underfoot. The walls were tall, with embossed picture rails high towards the ceiling. No paintings hung from the rails. The space looked utilitarian: the tradesman’s entrance. Doors to the right indicated storage rooms. They were scuffed near the bottom, possibly where cleaning trollies were wheeled in and out without much care for the paintwork. There was a whiff of bleach in the air. Rink closed the outer door, then moved down the passage, staying close to the left wall so he could see each of the doors clearly; no one was about to surprise him by bursting from hiding in any of those rooms. Reaching the far end, he halted, alert to anyone approaching while I came more slowly. I checked each door along the way. My assumption had been correct – the cleaning staff used those rooms for storage.
Rink was facing another door. A heavy one, controlled by a sturdy spring mechanism at the top and solid enough to double as a barrier against fire. On the far side I guessed we’d enter the house proper, and from what I could recall of the blueprints there was another passageway running left to right beyond it. Originally the sitting and dining rooms took up much of the space towards the front of the house, but these could have been relocated once the three extra wings were added. It was doubtful that the rooms here had been adapted to accommodate a young child, but you never could tell.
Rink listened closely, before teasing the door open inwards, towards us. He slipped through the gap, checking both ways. He had his left hand down by his thigh and I watched the instructions he signalled with his fingers: all clear, move right. I advanced out into the hall, turning to the right and sweeping the space with my gun. The area was clear of guards or household staff. Good in a way, bad in another. I expected more resistance. Now that the man responsible for sending Marshall, McAdam and the others after us was here, Molina must be on high alert. Had we walked into a trap?
Our plan to snatch Benjamin was rushed and a successful result depended on its apparent bravado. Ideally, we could have done with more assets, more equipment, and a better get-out plan – a helicopter to fly us all back over the border would have been ideal – but we must make do. Because we were concerned that Molina might be aware of our presence in the country, we’d decided on getting in and out again before he’d made full preparations to deter us. It took a lot of guts, and not a little stupidity, to hope we could sneak into his house without encountering his gunmen, but luckily I’d plenty of both. If this was a trap, we’d just have to spring it.
With everyone’s agreement, including Kirstie’s, we’d decided on the best approach to getting Benjamin away from Jorge Molina unharmed. Trying to snatch the
kid while he was outside the walls of Molina’s home would surely mean a gunfight, whereas by invading the enemy nest we stood a chance of spiriting him away without exposing him to gunfire. But would that idea hold up if Molina had been informed we were coming? Had he pulled all of his guards round him and his boy? I really hoped not.
From a distant room there was the murmur of conversation, dulled by the intervening walls. I couldn’t make out words, but the voices helped smooth over any concern that we were walking into a trap. Surely the talkers wouldn’t advertise their position like that . . . unless they were bait? No, I didn’t think that was the case. Perhaps McAdam had reported back to his employer and they’d assumed that we had been frightened off by their surveillance. Or my old para mates had a different agenda than any of us had realised. When I’d mentioned ‘the woman’ to McAdam he hadn’t admitted any knowledge of Kirstie Long, so there was always the chance they’d no idea why we were here in Mexico.
Then why attack us in the desert? Why follow us in Hermosillo?
To hell with the ‘whys’.
I moved on, checking doors as I progressed. Rink was mirroring my actions along the opposite spur of the hall. I came to another closed door, this one at the end of the passage and blocking my way. I leaned close, listening. When no sound came back to alarm me, I pushed open the door and found myself in another short passage at a right angle to the first. This was a later addition to the house, and led to the last of the three wings. If looked at from the front of the house, the wing was furthest to the left. The mumble of conversation was more muted now, meaning that I’d already passed their position. I could hear a TV playing somewhere above me. Unless Jorge Molina had a love of Disney cartoons, the television was playing in a child’s bedroom.