Constructing the bays and the units had been Tom’s idea. He’d come up with it after his visit to the Delta Force compound the previous spring.
In a matter of hours, Delta could build full-scale models of its targets so that its hostage rescue teams could rehearse their moves to perfection. There was a warehouse inside the Delta compound that was filled with modular walls, doors, stair units, and other assorted building blocks.
Did C Squadron need a second-floor apartment with two bedrooms and one bath, with the hostage held in the tiny galley kitchen whose narrow casement window looked out onto a fire escape? It would take the Delta logistics people less than an hour to fit the proper pieces together so that the entry team could fine-tune its tactical plan. Need to make entry in complete darkness and rehearse using night-vision goggles? There were ceiling pieces that could be fit together to seal out light. Want to make entry just as the sun is going down? There were spotlights hung from a grid so that every condition from dead of night to dawn’s early light could be duplicated.
Tom appropriated the concept and modified it so that he and his agents could rehearse their moves before making surreptitious entry to plant a listening device or a miniature camera. He’d assembled two dozen different types of doors, each with a modular locking system, so that he and his people could practice their lock-picking skills. There were dozens of variations: dead bolts and intergrip rim locks, chain locks, mortise locks, tube locks, sprung and unsprung latch-bolt locks, and the old-fashioned crenellated locks used on French doors.
There were double-hung windows sitting in frames so their locks could be jimmied. There were horizontal pivoting windows and vertical pivoters, too, sliding windows, sash windows, louvered windows, and jalousies. There were casement windows so the 4627 people could practice easing the glass panes out of the muntins and sash bars. There were sections of different kinds of wall mounted in frames so that he or his people could practice with the soundproof drills they used to insert audio and video devices from one apartment to the next. He had old-fashioned lath-and-plaster walls you found in European buildings, as well as the more modern Sheetrock-and-foam insulation found in the United States. There were marble wall sections, too, as well as the steel-reinforced walls favored by embassies. All in all, it was a remarkable collection. And untraceable. The building materials had been assembled piece by piece from more than three dozen separate vendors. Parked next to the scenery bays were a pair of hydraulic forklift trucks that could position the heavy elements, which fit together like jigsaw-puzzle pieces.
Even the ownership of the warehouse was untraceable. It had been bought through a series of French front companies and offshore banks. It was one anonymous structure among scores of similar buildings, located in the narrow corridor between the A1 highway that ran due north all the way to Lille and the huge Michelin tire complex. Like the tire plant, the 4627 warehouse straddled the St. Denis-Aubervilliers boundary line. That location was no accident. Tom had planned things that way: he knew that if anything went awry, the St. Denis gendarmerie would defer to the Aubervilliers cops, who would, in turn, wait for their brothers in arms across the boundary line to handle the problem. That was one thing about the French: you could trust their bureaucracy always to remain solidly bureaucratic.
The vehicles parked cheek by jowl against the western wall of the place each had legitimate registrations and owners’ certificates for half a dozen separate aliases-aliases that wouldn’t disturb police or intelligence trip wires anywhere in Europe. There were more than half a dozen of them: two Renault vans, a Citroën sedan, a big Audi saloon, and a couple of nondescript Fords. There were also a pair of panel trucks-the less dinged-up truck was a boxy van painted French blue with reflective white and orange stripes on the side panels and rear hatches. It bore the EUREC and GECIR logos, and on the sliding door white letters readÉCLAIRAGE &SIGNALIZATION. It looked exactly like the panel trucks driven by traffic-light repair crews. The other was equally unremarkable.
Reuven unlocked the Eurec van. Inside, taped to the equipment locker, was a brown manila envelope. Reuven slit the thick paper seal and extracted a compact disk. He eased out of the truck, went to the office, inserted the disk in the graphite-gray computer, and waited until it booted up.
Six minutes later, he was back, a sheaf of papers in his right hand. He whistled at Tom, who was scanning the wall sections in the scenery bays. “Take a look,” he shouted, waving the target-assessment photos in the American’s direction. “Nothing too complicated. We should have the mock-up put together within a couple of hours.”
11:14A.M. Tom went into the office and entered a six-number combination into a large safe that had been lag-bolted into the concrete floor. When he heard the electronic lock release, he punched a second six-number combination, which rendered the thermite explosive charges inside the safe inert. He pulled the double doors open.
From the top shelf of the safe he extracted a gray, injection-molded, HPX high-performance resin-shell Storm Case slightly larger than a commercial attaché. He sat the case on the floor, opened the twin combination padlocks then the twin latches, and flipped the waterproof lid up. Inside, protected by black plastic foam, were six pinhole audio/video cameras, each one two and a half inches in length. The battery compartment was just over seven thirty-seconds of an inch in diameter-roughly the same as a cut-down rollerball cartridge. And like a rollerball cartridge, the unit tapered into a slender shaft ending with the lens, which was about the same size as the head of a pin. Even so, the field of view was wide-angle, covering more than 106 degrees.
Both audio and video were transmitted to a repeater unit, also in the Storm Case, which amplified the signal before sending it on to the receiver, which could be as much as five miles away. There, the high-resolution digital pictures could be shown on a single television screen-much the same way that multiple security camera images are displayed. Simultaneously, the images were stored on a miniature flash ROM unit for instantaneous playback or transfer into single-frame photographs. The cameras themselves were self-powered by miniature lithium batteries that had a hour life. Once activated, they’d transmit 22
months.
Tom closed the Storm Case and carried it over to where Reuven squatted inside the van, rummaging through a tool chest. “You have the drill?”
Without turning, Reuven gave Tom an upturned thumb. “And the paint. And the Spackle. And the tool kit.” He reached inside his pocket and brought out a small leather case. “What do you think? I go out with just lock picks?”
Although paint, Spackle, and a sixteen-ounce hammer might appear on the surface to be incongruous with the art of spying, intelligence-gathering tradecraft sometimes requires more than SDRs and cleaning routes, spotting, assessing, developing, and recruiting; polygraphs, rabbit holes, or writing the endless series of postrendezvous reports that disappear into the black hole of Langley. Spying is more than flaps and seals-the art of clandestinely opening other people’s mail. It is more than disguise-the ability to change your appearance in plain sight. It is more than microdots and burst transmitters, spy dust, lock-picking, and all the other technically oriented, nimble-fingered sleight-of-handarcanum arcanorum normally associated with the practice of espionage.
Tradecraft is sometimes dependent on nuts-and-bolts basic handyman skills-a lot moreThis Old House orTrading Spaces than “Bond-James Bond.” Sewing, photography, carpentry, electrical work, auto mechanics, and painting-they’re all integral to tradecraft, too.