When she didn’t bother to reply, he knew that she was lost in concentration. A minute later, she said, “Okay, team. Go.”
Three minutes later, they’d all gathered in the rear of the mansion. They reviewed the plan one more time, and when Jonathan was satisfied that everyone knew what to do, they moved toward the house. Having studied the architectural plans, they’d decided to make their entry through a door that led to a back hallway near the kitchen. Stealth mattered tonight, and that meant subtlety.
For now.
The first order of business, then, was to find the electrical service and wire it with explosives. If the moment came when they wanted darkness, they would want it right by-God now, and detonating cord with a wireless initiator would do the trick.
They found the meter on the black side, in the corner nearest the red side. Gail and Jonathan took defensive positions, their backs to the building, rifles at the ready, while Boxers set the charges.
When the Big Guy was done, he turned and gave a thumbs-up. “Let’s go in,” he said.
The three of them moved in a deep crouch to stay below the level of the windows as they made their way along the back of the house to the door they’d selected as the point of entry.
“How sure are we that there are no alarms?” Boxers asked into the radio.
Venice answered, “I’ve deactivated all the alarms for now. Windows, doors, the whole nine yards. Besides, who keeps the intruder alarm on when people are arriving for a meeting?”
That was good enough for Jonathan. He stooped to his haunches and unslung his ruck. While he and Boxers were cross-trained in everything-except for flying aircraft, which was the Big Guy’s exclusive purview-their job functions broke down roughly along the levels of violence required. Boxers was the breaker of things and the blaster of holes.
Jonathan found the fiber-optic cable he’d been looking for in its designated pocket in his ruck. Just to make sure there wasn’t a crowd of people waiting on the other side of the door, he used the point of his KA-BAR to dimple the weather stripping at the base of the door and threaded the spaghetti-size cable into the space beyond.
Turning his head, he noted that both members of his team were watching him work. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “Look out for bad guys.”
“And if we see them?” Gail asked.
“Try not to shoot.”
The cable he threaded under the door contained both a camera and a transmitter, tuned to his PDA. He flipped his NVGs out of the way, cupped his hands around the screen to shield the light wash, and took a tour of the room beyond. It took the better part of a minute for him to fuss with the exposure enough to get a clear picture of the dark space.
“Looks empty to me,” he said. “All I see is a lot of closed doors. There’s light at the far end of the hallway, but I don’t see any people.”
Now for the burglar stuff. Jonathan kept his lock set in a leather pouch about the size of a very thin pack of cigarettes. He thumbed the cover flap out of the way and found the Y-shaped tension bar and the rake, a three-inch steel rod with a serpentine squiggle at the end. He put rotation pressure on the keyway of the dead bolt, and then dragged the rake along the top and the bottom to dislodge the pin tumblers. In short order, all of the pins moved, and the lock turned. It took even less time to pick the knob lock.
The door floated inward.
“Peeping Tom and burglar,” Gail whispered with an admiring smile. She adjusted her M4 in its sling. “Let’s go.”
Jonathan put a hand on her chest. “You’re out here for external security,” he said. “We need eyes outside, and Big Guy and I have done this together a lot of times.” He sensed that he’d just hurt her feelings, but he didn’t care. Not now. If there was fallout, they could deal with it later.
She said, “Keep in close contact, okay?”
“Deal,” Jonathan said. He turned to Boxers. “You ready?”
“Oh, my, yes,” he said.
Because of their relative sizes, it always made sense for Jonathan to lead on any entry. He pushed the door open, took two steps inside, and dropped to a deep crouch, his M4 trained on the hallway ahead. The last thing he wanted at this point was a gun battle-that would almost surely cause the Nasbes to be killed. Two seconds later, Boxers was in and the door was pushed closed again.
This was where it got tough. Absent any useful intel, Jonathan and Boxers had become little more than well-armed burglars. They would have to feel their way into this new environment, using the ancient floor plans as a template, but anticipating that everything about them was wrong. They didn’t know where the bad guys were, and, even more critically, they didn’t know where the good guys were-assuming that they were here at all.
Their advantage had been whittled to nothing more than superior marksmanship.
For the better part of a minute, they stayed frozen in the hallway, listening and watching. With buds in both ears-the right one for the radio traffic and the left to monitor any audio feeds they might get-it could be difficult sometimes to pick up distant conversations. You had to adjust to the ambient noise, and then react as much to background anomalies as to actual sounds themselves.
In this case, he heard the people arriving in the front of the house, but their conversations were an indiscernible rumble.
“Can we at least get some cover?” Boxers whispered over the radio. In superquiet environments like this, the radio was the most efficient way to communicate. The mikes they used could pick up the faintest whispers, yet still be decipherable in the middle of a firefight.
“I think we need to split up,” Jonathan whispered.
“And I think one of us just had an aneurism,” Boxers replied, “because I could have sworn that I just heard my boss suggest that we split up. That ain’t happening.”
“We’ve got to. We’ve got to search the house, and we need to find out what’s going on at this meeting. Together we make too big a footprint. Separately, we can stay out of sight easier.”
Boxers made the growling noise that usually meant surrender. “Promise no shooting without me,” he said.
“Not if I can avoid it. You stay on this level with the guests. I’m searching for the basement.”
Boxers didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue. “Shout if you need me, hear?” he said.
Jonathan crossed his heart. “Got it. And no killing people just because you’re bored.”
The second door on the left led to the basement. Boxers was with him step-for-step until that moment, and then, after they parted with a knuckle knock for luck, Jonathan was on his own.
The stairs were finished with lush carpets, and the walls on either side were decorated with artwork that Jonathan could not have cared less about. He noted with interest what appeared to be drops of blood on the walls. When he touched one, it smeared, and he became even more convinced that he was in the right place.
He descended along the side of the risers for the same reason every teenager who ever returned home after curfew did: the farther you stay from the center of any board, the less likely it is for it to squeak. He chose the left side so that his right hand-his preferred shooting hand-could remain on the grip of his M4.
He moved slowly, taking one step at a time, pausing between each to listen for any noise that might indicate trouble.
Patience was a great asset to soldiers and burglars alike, and perhaps the single most distinguishing trait that separated professionals from amateurs. The slowness was agonizing; the temptation to just get it over with overwhelming.
It took every bit of five minutes for Jonathan to reach the carpeted floor. Now he knew that the floor plans were a waste of paper and electrons. The place was fully furnished down here, complete with a pool table, a bar, and a big-screen television. A man cave. And it was entirely unoccupied.
It also took up only about a quarter of the total footprint of the house, maybe less. That meant that there was more to the place than what he could see.