The Recruit: A Taskforce Story (4 page)

Decoy came out of the bathroom and heard, “Sir, you sure about this? I’m on an orientation deployment. This is pushing it big-time.”

Decoy paused, not wanting Knuckles to see him, unsure of what was being discussed. He heard, “Yeah, Decoy’s solid. Like I said he was. But this is a little much. We don’t even have a team. It’s now four o’clock in the afternoon here. Not a lot of time to plan.”

Decoy slid back inside the door, stretching his ear. “Yeah, yeah, we have the kit. I can do it from a technical perspective. But I have no backup. This cover you’ve given me is so shallow that all it will take is a cursory Google search to expose us. We get caught and we’ve got nothing to fall back on.”

Decoy came out and closed the door loud enough for Knuckles to hear. He looked up and said, “Okay, sir. I got it. I’ll get it done.”

“What’s that all about?”

Knuckles rubbed his forehead and said, “Your best intentions have put us in a world of shit.”

“What’s that mean?”

“The Oversight Council wants us to go in. They want to implant stay-behind listening devices. Get some intel for future operations. Thanks to your little booty call.”

Carly had called back less than two hours after lunch. Knuckles had answered the phone. A little exasperated, she’d said, “Linda Devoire is an alias for a German national who’s been tied up in revolutions all over the damn southern hemisphere. She’s not American.”

Surprised, his mind spinning over the news, both because of what it represented and because the girl on the other end knew it, he kept to his cover. “Whoa. Good thing we talked to you first. So I guess we won’t be using her backyard.”

“No, you won’t. And I want to know how you found her. People have been looking for her for ten years.”

“Ten years, huh? How do you know that? Working in the Consular Section?”

He heard a little steel come through the phone. “Don’t fuck with me. I don’t dance. You are not a cellular infrastructure company.”

“And you don’t work for the Consular Section, do you?”

He heard nothing for a few seconds, then, in a much calmer voice, “Yes, I do. And I made a huge mistake running this name. I did it unofficially, tainting the computers. The search criteria are all logged, and now I can’t bring it higher without getting fired. I’m praying it gets buried in a ton of other searches while I figure out a way to get it in the system. You guys have screwed me. Who are you?”

“I’m sorry. We had no idea who she was. We’re exactly who we say we are. We’re down here at the behest of the ambassador. Doing cellular infrastructure research for disaster preparedness. I appreciate the help. We’ll look elsewhere for a suitable site. I want no part of some fight with a German revolutionary.”

She’d hung up, and Knuckles had fed the information into his own proprietary Taskforce system, which had spiked. The combination of a bunch of guys associated with the Shining Path entering the house, an envelope of greenbacks, and a German revolutionary—all within spitting distance of the US embassy—had caused their mission to go from orientation to operational.

He put the phone on the nightstand and looked at Decoy. “We’ve been given a B&E mission. Tonight.”

Trying for nonchalance, but feeling the pressure, Decoy said, “How hard can that be? Sounds like fun.”

“No way will it be fun. It would be a cakewalk with just the female, but we know there’s a bunch of indig there. It’s mission impossible now.”

“So we don’t go. You keep talking about the cover; surely the Oversight Council sees that.”

“Yeah, they do. I told Kurt I’d give it a go, then pull back if it was looking bad. Apparently, this is dovetailing with some OGA reporting. Something’s up, and the confluence of reporting has got their panties in a knot.”

“OGA?”

“Other Government Agency. Meaning CIA. Jesus, do I have to spell it out like you’re a civilian?”

Decoy bristled and slapped the wall, saying, “Enough of that shit. I don’t get your secret acronyms and I’m now an idiot? Fuck that. Give me the damn tech kit and I’ll get in. What matters is skill, not your knowledge of the black-arts secret language.”

Knuckles saw he was genuinely aggravated and backed off, a little ashamed at his superior attitude, knowing Decoy was right.

He said, “Okay, okay. I’m with you. But we’re going to need some
serious
skill here. In and out without a blip. You saw the house. We can’t get through the front gate without compromise. What are your thoughts?”

Slightly mollified, but not completely, Decoy said, “Bring up the SD card from the camera. I’ll show you how to get in. It won’t be through your stupid cover crap. No bullshit ice-cream truck charades. It’s going to be straight SEAL. A stalk from the beach.”

Knuckles pulled up the photos of the terrain and said, “What beach?”

Decoy sat down on the couch next to him and said, “Okay, no real beach, but the only way into that place is the exact spot we were faking for our cellular survey. Down the valley, through the scrub, then up past the swimming pool.”

He pointed to the outside wall on the lower half of the terrain.

“We get over that, then stalk to the inside. Look at the terrain. Look at the cover. We can do that.”

Knuckles liked what he saw, the bushes overgrown and choppy, the terrain sloping down and giving anyone concealment to approach.

Decoy said, “Or we could dress up like meter maids and knock on the front door, pretending to be Peruvians. Maybe rub a little shoe polish on our face and hunker down so we look the type. Your call, Mr. Top Secret.”

Knuckles took the dig and said, “I think your first course of action is better. But don’t get all high and mighty about the acting. You apparently can’t see it when it’s staring you in the face.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Carly? Your booty call? She’s no consular employee. She works for OGA. You want me to spell that out for you again?”

Knuckles turned around, the Night Observation Device on his head making him lean back as he craned to see Decoy without bumping the window. He saw a single flash of infrared and pushed the truck farther into the brush. He felt the tires grind against a stone and stopped, turning back around. He was rewarded with two flashes. Meaning it was hidden.

He exited, dragging a small rucksack full of audio devices. Decoy met him on the rocky track. Really a goat trail.

“About a half-klick walk. Straight up.”

Knuckles looked past his outstretched arm, the night a hazy mix of green from the NODs. He saw the lights of the house on top of the ridge, beacons that caused a whiteout when caught directly in the tube. Below it, only about two hundred meters away, was the wall that skirted the compound.

Knuckles pulled on a black watch cap, like a burglar from a 40s movie, and said, “Let’s get this done.”

While they could have opted for multicam or some other high-speed clothing—things that would make their infiltration easier—they’d opted for nothing more than dark attire. Subdued browns and blacks. Jeans and long-sleeve shirts.

Knuckles knew that, like everything else in his Taskforce world, the operation on the X was only a small part of the mission, and they couldn’t afford to be caught, before or after, dressed like commandos. They might be forced to flee on foot and would need to blend into the nearest neighborhood to seek refuge.

Everything was a trade-off, and more than one mission had been compromised following successful execution because of Murphy’s Law.

Knuckles said, “Okay, first things first. We get over the wall, use the draw to get close to the guesthouse, and set up the laser mike and relay. From there, we enter the main house. You good on the lock?”

“No sweat.”

“Even under NODs?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m good. Worked it in the closet of the hotel today.”

After the mission shift from the Oversight Council, they’d spent the remainder of the day conducting a reconnaissance of the house, using the same vantage point they’d found earlier.

Knuckles had taken high-resolution pictures of every lock he could see, then sent Decoy back to the hotel to build mock-ups and practice cracking them. Knuckles had spent the rest of the time studying the terrain.

He’d discovered that the squad of Peruvian squatters was crammed into a guesthouse. Situated on the outskirts of the main house like the short end of an
L
, it wasn’t physically connected, and the woman was the only human in the expansive primary residence.

He’d watched the comings and goings and had determined that the squatters weren’t allowed to leave, with the exception of some sort of squad leader occasionally approaching the main house. Apparently, he was the only one authorized to bug the German national.

The compound itself was large, with a swimming pool in the cup of the
L
, a garage set back from a sliding iron gate at the front, and over a half acre of landscaping spilling down a hillside. Landscaping that had seen better days.

The area was becoming overrun, leading Knuckles to believe the woman was renting the place and didn’t care, something that would help with the infiltration later in the night.

After the sun had set, he’d come back to the hotel to find Decoy looking like a mad scientist, NODs on his head and a ton of lock components lying around. They’d selected what they thought they’d need from the electronics they’d brought, then had impatiently watched the clock until three in the morning. When it came, they’d slipped out the back of the hotel, following Decoy’s GPS route through the scrub, threading between the mansions in the hills.

Knuckles locked the truck, shouldered his pack, then screwed a suppressor on a Glock 30. He said, “All right, Romeo. Your beach landing.”

Hoisting his own pack, Glock in hand, Decoy grinned and said, “Let’s see if you still remember how to patrol.”

They slipped through the scrub, reached the wall, then climbed over, one man pulling security while the other moved. Once on the inside, Decoy began slinking at a pace like drying paint. Slowly, ever so slowly advancing on the first location. The guesthouse.

He paused in the rocks, an overgrown bush hiding his form. Once a cultured piece of landscaping, it had returned to the wild, growing with abandon in the hardscrabble ground.

He whispered, “Got an angle to the window. I say set the laser and repeater here.”

Knuckles said, “Let me check the Wi-Fi.”

He pulled out a small device, let it register, then whispered, “We got signal. Encrypted.”

He pushed a couple of buttons on the device, then set it on the ground, saying, “It’ll take a few minutes to crack. Break out the laser mike.”

Decoy pulled out a small device that was the size of an overgrown pencil, and a pad about three inches across. He mounted the device to a standard portable camera tripod and aimed it at the window of the guesthouse. He pressed a button, the laser light springing out in the glow of his NODs. He worked the beam until it reflected off of the pane of glass and was caught by the pad at their location. He backed his hands away from the tripod, seeing the beam still hitting the pad.

He said, “Okay. It’s set.”

Knuckles ran wires from the pad to a box the size of a hardback book, then extended an antenna. He picked up the original handset and said, “Hack done. Type this in.”

Decoy leaned over the keyboard of the book device and said, “Send it.”

N-A-Z-C-A 4-6-8-9

Decoy watched the screen for a second, then smiled. “Nothing like US technology. We’re in.”

Knuckles nodded, his own grin breaking out. He draped the tripod and other equipment in burlap and foliage and said, “Okay. Now the easy part.”

They began the stalk to the main house, moving so slowly it made Knuckles think of a glacier. Or an operation he’d conducted in the Hindu Kush stalking a Taliban killer of men. Eventually, they reached the sliding door opposite the small pool. Knuckles took a knee, waited a beat for anything to appear, then whispered, “You’re up.”

Decoy slid forward, pulling a sleeve from his pocket and extracting two tools. He focused on the lock for all of five seconds, then turned back to Knuckles, nodding up and down in an exaggerated manner.

Knuckles hissed, “Yeah, you have the door. Open it.”

Decoy looked back at him, the night vision on his head making him appear like a bug. He whispered, “When I nod, it means I’m done. It’s open.”

He slid the glass pane of the door to the right.

“Did you want me to bring some red carpet? Because that wasn’t on the packing list.”

Knuckles said, “Okay, okay. Rehearsal worked out. Don’t get cocky.”

Knuckles slid through the door, hearing, “Cocky? You haven’t seen that yet.”

They entered into a large sunken den, the house using the slope of the terrain. The sliding door was at ground level, but it was necessary to take a small staircase to reach the main entrance. At the front door, another set of stairs led to an upper split level with a four-foot wall that allowed anyone from above to view the den.

Knuckles pointed to a wide-screen high-definition television above the fireplace. Decoy went to it and began slaving to the Wi-Fi embedded in the system, turning the television into a giant microphone. Knuckles began implanting devices called spiders, very small widgets that would reflect audio back to the TV, which would then funnel the transmission through the house’s Wi-Fi to the collection device outside.

Finished with the lower room, they moved to the stairs, ignoring the bedrooms in the wings. They climbed slowly, guns out, NODs reflecting the infrared beams in stabs of illumination. Knuckles swiveled left and right and saw it was a media room overlooking the den. A secondary place for entertaining. Knuckles flared his IR pointer, illuminating another TV and giving Decoy an unspoken command, then began moving to the chairs, planting spiders.

A brilliant blast of light flashed across the room, like a lightning bolt, and Knuckles realized it was from car headlights coming through the windows, blinding his NODs. He crouched below the wall, seeing Decoy do the same.

The lights stayed on the front door, spilling through into the anteroom, and he heard a door open from one of the bedrooms beneath them.

Shit
.

Decoy whispered, “We going hot? We never talked about rules of engagement.”

“No. Not going hot. ROE is self-defense only.”

Decoy hefted his Glock and said, “Roger that.”

Knuckles heard the padding of feet, then the front door open. There was a conversation in Spanish, a woman’s voice followed by a man’s, then the footfalls of many more men.

Another truckload of indig.

Knuckles whispered, “Did you lock the sliding door after we entered?”

“Hell no. Why would I do that?”

“I have no idea, but I was hoping you were that stupid.”

Decoy grinned and said, “Maybe next time.”

They heard the passing of feet, and Knuckles said, “Going to the guesthouse. Hopefully, she doesn’t wonder why the door’s unlocked. You done with that TV?”

“Yeah.”

“We hear them exit, and we haul ass out the front.”

“What if someone’s at their vehicle? What if they didn’t all come in?”

“We deal with it.”

Decoy crept up to the entrance of the stairwell, Glock at the ready.

They heard the sliding glass door close, and the conversation of the woman faded.

“Now.”

They slipped down the stairs, opened the front door, and exited, keeping to the shadows. Decoy raised a hand, then pointed at the cargo truck blocking their escape. Knuckles nodded, and they sidled toward it. They reached the cab, finding it empty.

Knuckles pointed to the east, down the road. Decoy nodded, and began moving, weapon at the ready. After five hundred meters, he held up, pulling into the brush at the side of the road.

“You do realize that by coming out the front, we have a four-mile walk back to our truck, right?”

Knuckles pulled off his NODs, stowing them in his pack, and said, “You want to go back for the shortcut?”