“I disagree,” Jonathan said. “All we know is that Neen dropped him off there. Other than that, we’ve got only conjecture.”
“And what about the mom, Christyne?” Gail asked. “Nobody even mentioned her.”
“Baby steps,” Jonathan advised. “Explore the lead you’ve got, and hope that the others fall into place.”
“By sheer dumb luck?” she asked with a chuckle.
“In a perfect world, no,” Jonathan said. Her negative tone was beginning to wear on him. “But if the best I can catch is pure dumb luck, then I’ll take it.”
Boxers said, “I recognize that look, Dig. What’s the plan?”
Jonathan looked at his watch. “We know that the meeting of the elders-whatever the hell that means-takes place a little over five hours from now, at seven.”
Venice said, “Digger, do you agree that the conversation we eavesdropped on said that the meet was going to happen in Copley’s house?”
“I do,” he said.
“Good,” Venice said. “Because when he built the place twelve years ago, he used an architect and a professional engineer. And wouldn’t you know it? He had the decency to file all the plans at the assessments office at the courthouse.”
Jonathan grinned, yet again amazed by Venice’s capabilities to ferret out information. “Are you telling me you have drawings?”
He could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “I’ve got floor plans, electrical, HVAC, sewerage, you name it.”
Gail scowled, as if to say, Is that even possible?
“Only a fool bets against Venice,” Jonathan said.
“This is unbelievable!” Venice howled from Fisherman’s Cove. “Copley likes to buy his furniture from a place called Colony House in Falls Church. I can send you purchase orders, if you’d like.”
Jonathan assured her that that would not be necessary.
It took a few minutes for the floor plans and other architectural drawings to transfer, but once they did, the first stage of their plan became obvious. Jonathan discussed it with his team, spending the better part of an hour working through the details and the possible complications-of which there were too many to count-but when they were done, everybody had a job to do.
They’d changed into black, despite the brightness of the day.
Camouflage was a particularly difficult challenge in the wintertime, given the absence of leaves on the trees. Throw in the fact that every breath you took launched a cloud of condensation into the air, and blaze orange was as good a color as any to stay invisible.
Rather than trying to blend in with their surroundings, then, Jonathan’s team had opted to blend in with their adversaries. They’d still make every effort to remain invisible, but on the off chance that they were spotted, they hoped that the spotters might see armed people in black and assume that they were friendlies. It was a high-risk bet, but sometimes you just had to play the hand you were dealt.
They drove from the command post to a side road near the Copley house, but far enough away to remain undetected. Following their GPS, they hiked a quarter-mile due west to the fence line. From there, it would be another quarter mile to the house itself.
Contrary to Jonathan’s conservative survival plan, they forwent the heavy body armor that he generally would have insisted upon-ditto the Kevlar helmets-in order to match the kit worn by the resident guards. Jonathan also left behind the twelve-gauge Mossberg shotgun that he would normally have worn slung under his armpit, and the bandolier of ammunition that went along with it. You never knew what kind of spotters they had deployed, and that kind of accoutrement was just too easily identified.
There was a limit, though, to the extent Jonathan would go to blend in. They would each carry their M4 carbines, which looked enough like the M16s used by the staff to pass a cursory glance, but he insisted that each of them carry a full load of ten extra mags of ammunition, for a total of three hundred rounds. It bulked them up on their web gear, but ammunition was the one thing he would never scrimp on. They each carried a sidearm, as well. Jonathan had his Colt 1911. 45, Boxers his Beretta nine millimeter, and Gail her Glock. 40. Sidearms were the most personal of weapons. The smart warrior carried the one with which he was most comfortable. Gail’s years in the FBI had made the Glock. 40 second nature to her.
Jonathan also insisted on night vision. The violent side of his world was inescapably tied to the night, and the ability to navigate where others were blind was the single greatest playing-field leveler. Each of them, then, carried a rucksack that contained night vision, glow sticks, a couple of general-purpose charges with initiators, plus a supply of Pop-Tarts-a high-sugar and high-carb source of emergency food in case their PCs hadn’t been fed in a while.
The hike through the woods was entirely uneventful. They walked cautiously, trying to make as little noise as possible in the dried leaves and underbrush, but daytime stealth was different from nighttime stealth. The trick was to look as natural as possible while still trying to remain undetected.
They spread out, too, keeping fifty yards between them both laterally and longitudinally. Boxers led, with Jonathan bringing up the rear. They kept in contact with each other and with Venice-“Mother Hen”-via encrypted radio.
“Hey, Scorpion,” Venice said through Jonathan’s left earbud. “I’ve got more good news for you. The house has got security cameras, and they beam their signals to a security company via the Internet.”
Jonathan pressed the transmit button in the center of his chest. “How is that good news?”
He could hear the pride when she said, “Because I own the Internet. I’m working right now to record empty fields of view. If you can give me a half hour, I’ll be able to loop the recordings and route the fake images to the transmitters.”
Amazing, Jonathan thought. “What are their fields of view?”
“Assuming that they use only one company to monitor, it appears that only the house itself-the perimeter and the interior-are monitored.”
“The fence line?”
“Absolutely.”
“Mother Hen, you’re my hero,” Jonathan said. He knew that Venice would take it as the high praise that he had intended.
Ten minutes later, Jonathan, Boxers, and Gail all arrived at the fence that surrounded Michael Copley’s sprawling home. The fence was nothing special-chain link, but of a gauge more suitable to a secure military facility than, say, a swimming pool. A Y-shaped bed of barbed wire capped the fence. If the links proved too tough to cut- and Jonathan guessed that they would-those same links would be that much easier to climb, and provide that much more stable a platform to take out the barbed wire with a pair of snips.
“Sure is a lot of sunshine out here,” Boxers grumped as they hunkered together in some bushes at the base of a very significant oak tree.
Jonathan looked at his watch. It was almost four o’clock. “Not for long. Give it another hour.”
“Bullshit,” Boxers said. “I’ll give Mother Hen the thirty minutes she needs to cover my ass, and then I’m going to work.”
Watching Jonathan and Boxers interact with each other-the lighthearted banter in the face of impending danger-Gail realized that she didn’t belong here. She would never be a full-fledged member of the team. These two men shared so much history-so much past pleasure and pain-that she couldn’t hope to become a part of it.
Everything about this operation felt alien to her. In her ordered world, formerly defined by the rule of law, planning meant everything. You didn’t make a move without a piece of paper telling you it was approved, and you didn’t fire a shot unless you were one-hundred-twenty-percent sure that it was defensible in court.
Even the sole focus on the rescue of the precious cargo was unique to her experience. During her days with the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, the primary goal hadn’t truly been the liberation of the hostages. Rather, it had been to lawfully ensure that the bad guys did not get away, and that the legal case you built against them would withstand the scrutiny of the bad guys’ legal defense team. They worked very, very hard to make sure that the hostages remained unharmed, but at the end of the day, it was a better career move to convict a kidnapper for murdering a hostage than it was to reunite a hostage with his family and then have his assailant walk on a technicality.
Gail was surprised by how rapidly her heart was hammering in her chest. She didn’t dare contribute to her
