Dante changed directions toward the front desk as the couple walked across the lobby, toward the front doors. As they did so, all three men, even the one that had been faking sleep, watched the couple walk out. The two sitting looked at the third man by the door, who gave a subtle shake of his head.
As the fake sleeper readjusted himself in the chair, for an instant Dante could see the outline of a pistol in the man's belt, under the jersey. A jolt of electricity spiked down Dante's spine. He glanced at the other two, looking for the tell-tale bulge of weapons. Now that he was focused, Dante noticed that the other two were also armed.
Senses now fully awakened, Dante surreptitiously scanned the lobby again, looking for anyone else that was suspicious. He hadn't spotted anyone else by the time he reached the front desk, but his instincts told him something was going to happen, and soon.
He exchanged pleasantries with the desk clerk, picked up a copy of a newspaper from the rack, folded it under his right arm and walked back toward the elevator. As he did so, four more Middle Eastern men walked in, and immediately the gunman by the door stepped away from the brochures and started talking to the largest of the four newcomers. Dante continued walking, appearing to ignore the discussion by the front door. He palmed his cell phone and pushed the preset for Danielle. She answered on the second ring.
"Yes?"
"We may have a problem."
"What is it?"
Dante walked up to the nearest of the two elevators and pushed the button. “There are seven men in the lobby, all Middle Eastern, three of them armed."
"Let me check the hotel security camera."
Dante heard her tapping on the keyboard. One of the first things she had done when the team had taken the rooms was to hack into the hotel's security system.
"Okay… Where are you now?"
The elevator's signal dinged and the doors opened to Dante's right. He waited until the half a dozen people got out of the car before he stepped in and pushed the "6" button, the phone still held to his ear.
"On the elevator," he said. The door closed and the car started rising.
"I have you and I have our guys," Danielle reported. "A couple of them just went into the restaurant and two more into the gift shop. One's heading for the bathroom and the other two are sitting in the lobby, far apart from each other."
"Setting a trap?"
"I have no idea, but I'm calling the others right now."
From his location at a table just inside the hotel restaurant’s entrance, Wahid Tamrez could see most of the lobby and the two men he'd left sitting there. He was seated with Dahab, one of his most trusted men. They'd both ordered coffee, and to satisfy his sweet tooth, Dahab also ordered biscuits. Neither man said much to the other as they waited for their prey.
One of Hassan's secrets of success was that he had contacts everywhere in South Africa and beyond, and at all levels of society. Hotels were one of the best places to pick up valuable information and to scope out targets to either rob or kidnap for either ransom or the underground slavery market. It hadn't taken too long once word got out that Hassan was looking for six individuals when a clerk from the Cape Africa Hotel called.
The employee described the six people as “definitely Americans”—four men and two women, one of the women being black — and how all six had come in early that morning after what one of them described as, "One hell of a night on the town." He had also said that four of them had since left, and he didn't know when they would be back.
Tamrez had wanted to kill the two who were already up in the rooms, then take out the others as they arrived, but Hassan vetoed the idea when Tamrez called to report his progress.
"I don't want to take the chance any of them will get away," Hassan said. "Wait until they they're all in their rooms at once, then get them. If we kill two of them first, the others may get suspicious if they call their associates and receive no reply. Don’t do anything to spook them. And remember, make sure one of them is still alive for questioning, especially if they are American.”
The possibility that Americans were involved worried Tamrez. He knew the Northstar Venture had a valuable cargo, but for once, Hassan had not told him what that cargo was. If the Americans were interested in SeaStar Ventures, which almost certainly meant they were interested in the unknown cargo, then that could lead them to Hassan's connections with the ICA.
As he sipped his coffee, Tamrez considered the clerk behind the front desk. The man had run up a gambling debt of over fifty thousand rand in one of Hassan's establishments, and was eager to do something about it. In return for clearing his debt, the clerk had agreed to signal Tamrez when the other Americans arrived.
Under the circumstances, Tamrez had decided to let the targets go up to their rooms, then go up and kill them there, out of sight of the public. He would lead a team to hit all three rooms at once, killing them before they could react. Then they would escape down the fire stairs and drive away before the police showed up.
To steer the authorities away from investigating the coming massacre, Tamrez decided to use a trick he'd learned in the past. One of his men was carrying a briefcase with half a kilo of heroin, twenty thousand U.S. dollars, a testing kit, syringes, and a few pairs of latex gloves. Once the targets were dead, they would disperse the briefcase's contents and the room to make it look like a drug deal gone bad. With a little pressure from Hassan's agents inside the SAPS, the matter would be dropped and the case listed as “gang violence."
Tamrez waited with the patience of a long-time predator. His men were spread out all over the place outside. The net was cast. If things went right, it would all be over with in less than five minutes.
Now, all he needed was for the Americans to show up…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Using the conference call app on their smart phones, the four OUTCAST members in the field listened to both Danielle and Dante's descriptions of the hotel situation.
"Any chance we're being paranoid?" Liam asked.
"Not from where I'm sitting," Naomi replied. "According to Ashcroft, Hassan has eyes everywhere, and we know for a fact he had people watching Ashcroft’s house."
"And they're armed," Dante added. "Just pistols as far as I can tell, but they might have heavier firepower hidden nearby. A couple of them were carrying briefcases."
"Dani," Tanner said, "are there any other guests who might have something these guys would be interested in? Or is it only us?”
Danielle’s reply was immediate. "I've checked. Mostly tourists and businesspeople that are in fields not usually associated with criminal activity. There's ten or twelve Arabs loitering around the hotel, which is a hell of a lot for a robbery or kidnapping."
"Then it’s us," Tanner said. "We have to assume that. Let’s talk strategy."
Stephen chimed in for the first time. "They could try hitting us in the lobby.”
“I don’t think so," Liam said. "They'd want to get all six of us at once. If they try and hit us in the lobby, it would alert Dante and Dani and give them a chance to get away, right?”
"We can't be sure of that," Stephen said. "They could easily stage it as a terrorist attack. A lobby full of people would handicap us more than it would them. They don’t care about mitigating collateral damage."
"Assuming they just want to kill us," Liam continued, "they want to do it fast. The police are already on high alert after last night, so a prolonged gun battle is out. They might think we'll be easier to surprise in our rooms than in the lobby."
"I think they'll wait until we’re in our rooms and hit all three rooms at once," Tanner said. "They want answers to who we are and how much we know. They may want prisoners, but they also want our technology, especially any computers we have."