‘Considering what?’
Ty pulled her to the rear of the truck. ‘He needs our help.’
Carrie took a breath and centred herself. ‘OK. What kind of help?’
Ty had already decided to feed it to her piece by piece. ‘You have a car here?’
‘No.’
He produced a set of keys. ‘Damn, have to use Lock’s then.’
‘Ty, what’s going on?’
‘Where’s the dumb dog he left you with?’
‘In the truck, asleep.’
‘We’ll need to take her with us.’
‘Where? Where are we going?’ She glanced back at the news truck. ‘I’m on duty here. I can’t just pick up and leave.’
‘Ryan needs you to do this.’
‘You still haven’t told me what it is he wants me to do. And I’m not going anywhere until you do.’
Ty rested his hand against the spare tyre on the back of the news station’s RV. ‘Second thoughts, we can use this too. Kill two birds with one stone. You can get your story while I make my pick-up.’
‘Are you deaf? I’m not going anywhere until someone tells me why.’
‘Then a lot of people are gonna get killed.’
‘Fine, but you at least have to tell me where we’re going.’
Ty waved over Carrie’s camera guy. ‘Saddle up.’ Then he turned back to Carrie. ‘We’re going to enforce some corporate accountability.’
Seventy-two
Mareta watched the dark shapes flitting periodically across the wall of monitors with about as much interest as a retired cop relegated to the graveyard shift at an out-of-town mall. She palmed some painkillers, checked the time-code running at the bottom left of the nearest screen, swivelled on her chair, and shot the guard nearest to her in the face.
Josh stirred in his sleep as Richard handed him to Lock and rushed towards the dying man. A spurt of blood covered Richard’s face — unfair reward for an act of compassion.
Lock put his hand behind Josh’s head and pressed the little boy’s face tight to his chest. Even with children’s seemingly endless capacity for absorption, there were some things better left unseen.
Lock could feel Josh’s arms and legs stiffening as he watched Richard tend to the dying guard. He stretched out as best he could, catching Richard’s eye as he did so.
‘Let the kid go, Mareta. He’s been used enough already.’
‘I won’t harm the boy.’ Mareta paused. ‘So long as my demands are met.’
‘This country doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.’
‘Correction. It’s not seen to. There’s a difference.’
‘Look, you have me, you have him,’ said Lock, indicating Richard.
She swivelled round on the chair, the suddenness of the movement leaving Lock’s heart in his mouth. ‘This situation is not of my making,’ she said.
There was movement outside the control room. One of the detainees, a young Pakistani the others called Khalid, led in three of Meditech’s guards at gunpoint. Their uniforms were torn, and one of the men’s eyes were closing from the beating he’d taken. Mareta buzzed the door open and they were pushed inside, forced to sit on the floor.
‘OK, I make you a deal,’ Mareta said. ‘Once your friend delivers his cargo to us, the boy can leave. But in the meantime, for every hour that passes, one of these men will die.’
Lock knew that arguing would get him nowhere. ‘I already explained to you that this would take at least two hours. The travel time alone will be that, never mind the actual extraction.’
Mareta seemed to mull it over. ‘Then only two of these men will die.’
Seventy-three
Two German Shepherds prowled the fence surrounding Nicholas Van Straten’s Shinnecock Bay estate, white teeth bared. Ty reached down into a brown paper bag, came up with half a dozen hamburger patties they’d picked up on the way from a bemused fast-food operative, stepped back and lobbed them over the fence. The dogs sniffed at them suspiciously. Then one of them, presumably the alpha male, cocked his leg and took a leak on them. The other one followed suit a second later.
So the dogs had been trained to eat only what they were given by their owner, usually achieved by a rather crude form of aversion therapy involving beating them with a stick any time they got close to food not delivered by him.
‘Plan B it is then,’ Ty said, walking back to the car. He opened the back door and Angel bounded out.
Carrie followed. ‘Whoa, where are you taking her?’
‘Oldest trick in the book. Don’t worry,’ he said, patting Angel on the head, ‘she likes bad boys.’
Carrie folded her arms. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Well, she followed Ryan, didn’t she?’
Carrie looked around. ‘I shouldn’t even be here.’
‘Price of getting the scoop of the century.’
He took Angel off her leash and she wandered over to the fence. ‘Go on,’ Ty whispered, before turning back to Carrie. ‘What’s the way to a man’s heart if not through his stomach?’
‘That’s so disgusting.’
‘Hey, it was your boyfriend’s idea, not mine.’
The Shepherds were frantic now, wet black noses pressed against the fence. Bared teeth and barking had given way to quivering tails and yelps of desire. Much to Ty’s relief, Angel reciprocated, seemingly pleased with the attention from not one but two strapping Germans. One of the Shepherds began to paw at the ground near the fence, clods of earth flying up. The other joined it, and soon both dogs were engaged in a race to see who could tunnel their way to Angel first.
It took the two dogs just under ten minutes to dig a hole under the fence big enough so that they could squeeze through to the other side. They didn’t even give Ty or Carrie a second look as they sniffed around Angel.
Ty set to work cutting a hole in the fence with a pair of wire cutters, then turned back to Carrie. ‘You clear on what you have to do now?’
Carrie started the walk back to where the news truck was parked short of the compound’s gates. ‘It’s hardly rocket science,’ she said.
The two dogs snarled and Ty glanced over his shoulder, worried that they’d lost interest in Angel. He was relieved to see that they were facing off at each other, presumably to see who got the first shot. Angel sat watching them, wagging her tail. Ty left Carrie to enjoy the live show and slipped out of sight into the undergrowth.
As he made his way towards the mansion, he ran through in his head the security systems in place. The dogs were the most noticeable and in all likelihood the most effective deterrent, especially to the casual intruder. Mounted on the exterior of the house were motion sensors. Infrared lights and CCTV cams allowed a three-sixty view of the area surrounding the house to the member of the security detail in the ops room, a converted space next to the utility on the ground floor. Anyone escaping detection on their approach would then face wireless contacts on all points of entry, and further motion sensors in every room, except the four bedroom suites and hallways. No one wanted Van Straten getting up to take a leak in the middle of the night to the whoop of a
