‘Still alive?’ Zapatero mused. ‘Of course I hope she is, but nothing has been confirmed one way or the other.’ He turned his gaze to Federico, who was staring fixedly at the silverware laid out on the table in front of him.
Managua put down the BlackBerry. Zapatero could see the girl’s face staring up at him but he, too, turned to see what Federico would do. Would he pick up his knife or his fork? Pick up one, and the girl would be allowed to live, at least for the time being — and, no doubt, to satisfy Managua. Pick up the other, and she would be disposed of.
Federico drummed the fingers of his right hand on the table, his thumb nearest the fork, his pinkie nearest the knife. He took a sip of red wine, enjoying the attention and his role as final arbiter between life and death. That was what it was all about, thought Zapatero. For Managua it was an appetite. But Federico was the one who had sanctioned it. He had brought along the first girl, and had let things get out of hand when she had tried to escape from the bedroom. He could have called a halt to it at any time. But he hadn’t. He enjoyed the power too much.
‘I think it is mostly likely,’ Federico began, his hand shifting slightly, ‘that she will be returned to her family.’
‘Alive or dead?’ Zapatero asked, unable to endure any more tension. After all, he would have to call Hector and alert him to the decision.
Forty-five
Twilight. Apart from the gardener and a few flitting shapes at the rear of the house, they had seen no one all day. Rafaela had called to say that she had scoped out the two other likely locations and come up with as much as they had: nothing. There was no sign of Charlie Mendez, and no sign of the girl. She had also told Lock how her boss had put her in charge of the hunt for Julia.
Lock walked to the back of the room, picked up his light canvas jacket and put it on. Ty reached into one of the black canvas bags, pulled out a radio and threw it to him. Lock caught it one-handed.
‘You sure this is a good idea?’ Ty asked.
‘Nope. But it beats sitting here watching leaves float to the bottom of a swimming pool.’
‘Want some company?’ Ty said, shifting in his seat.
‘On my signal,’ said Lock. He tucked a baseball cap on to his head, the brim low, checked his weapon and dialled down the volume on the radio. He walked out of the apartment.
He took the steps two at a time, eager to get as much distance between himself and the apartment door before someone saw him. He had no need to worry. The communal stairs and ground-floor hallway were empty, apart from a couple of bags of rotting garbage placed outside one of the doors. He picked the bags up as he passed, a good neighbour on a mission, and headed out into the street.
It was quiet there too. A dog skulked uncertainly near a tree while simultaneously eyeing a nearby fire hydrant. Decisions. Decisions. Lock knew how he felt.
The high wall of the narco-mansion was to Lock’s left. He stayed on the opposite side of the street but walked parallel to it, still carrying the bags. At the end of the street there was a narrow alleyway with a dumpster. He dropped the bags into it. As he wiped his hands on his jeans he looked across at the front of the house. The wall here was broken by high metal railings that ran for about eighty feet before the wall began again, took a ninety- degree turn and continued to circle the house.
A solitary armed guard, wearing black trousers and a black T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a local security company, stood at the gated entrance looking bored. He was completely disengaged. He didn’t even register Lock’s presence. In terms of actual bodies, that seemed to be it. Lock walked back in the direction he’d come. Dusk was giving way to night, and as the light died, so did his patience.
The recon had provided him with one interesting piece of information. Just as there was no way to glimpse the house from street level so there was no view of the street, or the street side of the wall, from the house. The cameras, apart from the ones at the front to monitor arrivals and departures, didn’t record what happened outside the footprint of the grounds.
He keyed the radio. Two minutes later Ty emerged from the apartment block and joined him beside the wall. Lock vaulted up, Ty giving him a boost. Then Ty returned to the observation point from which he could warn Lock of any approach.
Lock sat astride the wall for a moment and looked down into the grassy yard with the swimming pool. The rear of the house was closer than he had anticipated. The rooms were dark. He scanned for cameras and lights. There was a single fixed-mount camera looking out over the pool and two motion-sensor lights, both attached to the house. A set of french windows was the sole entry point to the rear of the house that he could see.
Slowly he lowered himself into a row of shrubs. He tried not to make his movements too sudden or abrupt, while at the same time trying to limit the amount of time his back was exposed.
With a dull thud, which seemed thunderous to his ears but was probably no louder than a cat’s landing, his boots were on the ground. He stood still for a moment, his legs partially camouflaged by a bush, and listened.
Twenty feet away he heard scuffing. He hunkered down into a squatting position, his hand moving to the butt of his SIG Sauer 226. A Mexican male in his early forties sauntered around the corner, an AK47 hanging as casually from a leather strap at his side as if it was a man-bag. Lock could track his progress by the glowing red tip of his cigarillo. He was carrying about fifty extra pounds and was clearly relying on his weapon to get him out of any trouble.
He wandered over to the edge of the pool, unzipped his trousers and proceeded to urinate into the shallow end. He sighed with satisfaction, zipped up, wiped his hands on his shirt and continued his patrol.
There was more good news. Neither of what Lock had suspected were motion-activated lights had switched on.
He waited a few more minutes, then broke cover, moving slowly towards the rear of the house, careful to skirt the area covered by the fixed security camera. From its height, the lens and the angle it was sitting at, he had estimated its coverage — and peeing in the pool was an off-camera activity.
The up-lighters at the bottom of the pool were bright enough for Lock to take a closer look at the frames surrounding the windows. The depth and composition of the glass told him it was blast-proof. He kept moving, staying close to the building out of the camera’s range. At the doors, he cupped his hands over his eyes and peered inside. There was a large living area, with a drop-down viewing screen. The remnants of a party — empty glasses, bottles and drug paraphernalia — covered a low wooden coffee-table.
From nowhere, a light snapped on. He hugged the wall beside the windows, pulled out his gun, and held it by his side. Seconds passed before he realized that what he had thought was a motion-activated external light was in fact the main light in the living room. If whoever had switched it on hadn’t seen him, it was by pure dumb luck. Or they had seen him and were raising the alarm. He risked taking a peek, craning his neck to the window and looking inside.
Separated by a few inches of bomb-proof glass and less than fifteen feet of carpet, he found himself staring straight at the missing girl. She was wearing a long floral dress and looked drained but in reasonable shape. Better yet, standing behind her, weatherbeaten but still clearly recognizable, stood Charlie Mendez. Between them was the bodyguard.
Lock ducked out of sight, a shiver of excitement running through him, like an electric current. He got it now. He understood why Brady had risked everything. There was no feeling like this.
He keyed his radio and spoke to Ty. ‘I got them both inside.’
Forty-six
Back in the apartment, Lock weighed the options. A hostile extraction, where you take someone who is either unwilling to leave or being prevented from doing so, is hard to pull off and it sure as hell required more than two bodies. But that was all they had — three, if they counted Rafaela — and Lock was a firm believer in working with
