He liked the “sir.” That’s what happened when you made people nervous. “Can I count on you to make things happen tonight?”
“Of course,” he said. Then, after a beat: “What things are you talking about?”
“I want the entire compound assembled for the executions, and I want it on a live Internet feed. Route it as we did before.”
A long moment passed in silence. Copley turned to see Franklin just standing there. “Brother Franklin?”
He seemed startled. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll see to it. What time?”
“Eight-ish? After the trial.”
Franklin clearly wanted to object, but he swallowed his words. “Both of them, sir?”
“One at a time, of course. What do you think would make the best drama for television, a mother watching her son die first, or the other way around?”
There was that look again.
“I can count on you, can’t I, Brother Franklin?” The action of the Barrett made a loud clack as it slid closed.
“Always, Brother Michael.”
“Then who do you think we should send to God first, the woman or the boy?”
Franklin searched a long time for the right words. “I’m sure that any decision you make will be the right one, Brother Michael.”
That unsettled, appalled look would soon be shared by the entire world, Copley thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY – FOUR
Nothing happened at the mansion for an hour and a half. Literally nothing. The sentries didn’t change, and no one left or arrived. From this distance, with the equipment they had available, there was no way to monitor what might be going on inside, but Jonathan’s instincts told him that they were in a lull.
It was possible that they’d missed their precious cargo completely, but thoughts like that were self-defeating, so he pushed them away. If they’d blown the mission, they’d blown it. For the time being, until he had data to the contrary, this was their plan.
As the sun dropped, it took the temperature with it, and under a new moon without a cloud anywhere, they were staring down the maw of double awfulness: frigid temperatures and a bright starlit sky.
He’d switched to night vision about fifteen minutes ago, and the view was like green daylight. Once Venice had the coverage she needed and she’d successfully overridden the video feed, they would move into the house and liberate their precious cargo.
“Cars coming,” Boxers said into his earbud. The sudden noise startled him.
“A bunch of cars,” Venice corrected. “I thought nothing was supposed to happen till seven.”
“Damn bad guys didn’t read the playbook,” Boxers mocked. “What’re you thinking, Scorpion?”
Jonathan answered with a question. “Mother Hen, do you have enough to cover an entry now?”
“I could use more,” she said.
“With all this activity out in the front yard, we’re missing the perfect opportunity to enter through the back,” Boxers said. “Distracted guards are my favorite kind.”
“Understood,” Jonathan said. “We wait till Mother says it’s okay to go.” He shared Boxers’ urge to move, but he stifled it. You had to take a longer view of these things. The video loop was as much about their escape as their entry, and he was rolling the dice that five minutes wouldn’t make a lot of difference one way or the other.
Jonathan counted seven cars in total. Most were pickup trucks or SUVs, but there were a couple of beat-up sedans in the mix as well. The headlights flared his night vision, so he flipped the goggles out of the way. In the starlight, though, while he could see people moving, he couldn’t get enough detail for a hard count.
“Big Guy, how many people do you see?”
“I don’t have the angle for that,” he said.
“I want you to know that I’m feeling very left out back here,” Gail said.
“We’ll be there soon enough,” Jonathan promised. “How are we coming, Mother?”
When she didn’t bother to reply, he knew that she was lost in concentration. A minute later, she said, “Okay, team. Go.”
Three minutes later, they’d all gathered in the rear of the mansion. They reviewed the plan one more time, and when Jonathan was satisfied that everyone knew what to do, they moved toward the house. Having studied the architectural plans, they’d decided to make their entry through a door that led to a back hallway near the kitchen. Stealth mattered tonight, and that meant subtlety.
For now.
The first order of business, then, was to find the electrical service and wire it with explosives. If the moment came when they wanted darkness, they would want it right by-God now, and detonating cord with a wireless initiator would do the trick.
They found the meter on the black side, in the corner nearest the red side. Gail and Jonathan took defensive positions, their backs to the building, rifles at the ready, while Boxers set the charges.
When the Big Guy was done, he turned and gave a thumbs-up. “Let’s go in,” he said.
The three of them moved in a deep crouch to stay below the level of the windows as they made their way along the back of the house to the door they’d selected as the point of entry.
“How sure are we that there are no alarms?” Boxers asked into the radio.
Venice answered, “I’ve deactivated all the alarms for now. Windows, doors, the whole nine yards. Besides, who keeps the intruder alarm on when people are arriving for a meeting?”
That was good enough for Jonathan. He stooped to his haunches and unslung his ruck. While he and Boxers were cross-trained in everything-except for flying aircraft, which was the Big Guy’s exclusive purview-their job functions broke down roughly along the levels of violence required. Boxers was the breaker of things and the blaster of holes.
Jonathan found the fiber-optic cable he’d been looking for in its designated pocket in his ruck. Just to make sure there wasn’t a crowd of people waiting on the other side of the door, he used the point of his KA-BAR to dimple the weather stripping at the base of the door and threaded the spaghetti-size cable into the space beyond.
Turning his head, he noted that both members of his team were watching him work. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “Look out for bad guys.”
“And if we see them?” Gail asked.
“Try not to shoot.”
The cable he threaded under the door contained both a camera and a transmitter, tuned to his PDA. He flipped his NVGs out of the way, cupped his hands around the screen to shield the light wash, and took a tour of the room beyond. It took the better part of a minute for him to fuss with the exposure enough to get a clear picture of the dark space.
“Looks empty to me,” he said. “All I see is a lot of closed doors. There’s light at the far end of the hallway, but I don’t see any people.”
Now for the burglar stuff. Jonathan kept his lock set in a leather pouch about the size of a very thin pack of cigarettes. He thumbed the cover flap out of the way and found the Y-shaped tension bar and the rake, a three-inch steel rod with a serpentine squiggle at the end. He put rotation pressure on the keyway of the dead bolt, and then dragged the rake along the top and the bottom to dislodge the pin tumblers. In short order, all of the pins moved, and the lock turned. It took even less time to pick the knob lock.
The door floated inward.
“Peeping Tom and burglar,” Gail whispered with an admiring smile. She adjusted her M4 in its sling. “Let’s go.”
Jonathan put a hand on her chest. “You’re out here for external security,” he said. “We need eyes outside, and Big Guy and I have done this together a lot of times.” He sensed that he’d just hurt her feelings, but he didn’t care. Not now. If there was fallout, they could deal with it later.
She said, “Keep in close contact, okay?”
