“Here. Right. Slow.”
If the tracker was correct, then they would see the Mercedes almost two short blocks up, on the right side. “We’re only going to take one pass, so go easy—”
“You think you’re the only one who’s ever been in the field?”
Wells focused on the street. He liked what he saw. American building codes wouldn’t allow houses built as closely as these. In some cases, their eaves almost overlapped. If Witwans was inside one like that, Wells could jump roof to roof and break in from the back while Duto attacked from the front.
Duto touched his brakes as they rolled through the intersection of Octovale and Lily. The GPS showed the Mercedes just a few houses ahead. Duto eased the Audi up the street at twenty miles an hour. And—
“There,” Jacob said. The car was parked nose-out for an easy getaway, in the gated driveway of a squat yellow house. Eighty-four Octovale. The house nearly touched its neighbor to the right, but it was a relative fortress, with gated front windows, high walls on both sides, and a five-foot-tall fence in front of a short front yard. Thick white curtains blocked Wells from seeing who might be inside, but he glimpsed lights.
Then the house was behind them. Duto turned left on Kosmos, and Wells considered what he’d seen. Despite the possible roof access, the setup wasn’t ideal. Duto would have no way to reach the front door easily. The back door was sure to be locked, the back windows gated. The pack that Duto had brought from Virginia included Wells’s auto lock picker, a tool that had saved him before. Even so, Frankel would hear him enter.
“Fortress Octovale,” Duto said.
“Maybe.” Wells looked back at Jacob. “You said you wanted in. That still true?”
Jacob nodded.
“Sure about this,” Duto muttered.
Wells ignored him. “You’re going to distract them. You go next door, the house to the left, one up from Rand.”
“Over the wall?” A four-foot-high concrete wall separated that house from the street.
“That Ford is parked right in front. You step over the wall, no problem.”
“Then what?”
“Then you knock on the door, hammer it. You yell, I know you’re in there, come out. Not in English. In Afrikaans. You speak Afrikaans?”
“No problem. But Rand next door—”
“We want to make them wonder what’s going on. Get them looking the wrong way, toward you, while I’m coming from the other side. If we’re lucky, Rand will recognize your voice and stick his head out the front door. He won’t be able to see you because of the wall, but he’ll wonder why you’re there. He’ll know what you’re saying, but Amos won’t. If we’re really lucky, Amos’ll come out himself and make himself a target.”
“Don’t know who’s inside that house next door, what biscuit he got.”
“You don’t want to, you don’t have to. In or out?”
Asked that bluntly, the question could only have one answer.
“In.”
Duto made a right, north, driving slowly away from the house. “And while Jacob is yelling nonsense and hoping he doesn’t get shot, what about you?”
“I’m going to the house on the other side, one down. With the carport on the right side. I’ll pull myself up that, run across the roof—”
“They might have a biscuit, too,” Duto said. “Even a gat.”
“Thank you for that, Vinny. I didn’t see any cars, so I’m guessing whoever lives there is at work. Even if they’re home, by the time they figure out what’s going on, I should be on top of Witwans’s house.”
“Where am I?”
“The way the timing works, Jacob and I will get out of the car at Mimosa and Octovale”—the intersection almost two blocks south of the house. “We’ll walk up Octovale to Lily”—one block up—“while you circle around up to the top of the street, the Kosmos intersection. When we see you there, Jacob goes ahead of me, runs up, jumps the fence at the house on the left. Just about the time he starts yelling, I’ll be scaling the carport. It shouldn’t take me more than a few seconds to get across. By then, Vinny, you’ll have swung the Audi onto Octovale to give yourself a view of the front door of Rand’s house. If it opens and anyone comes out, you’ll honk to let me know. If it’s Amos, I’ll pop him from the roof and jump down. It’s only one story. Then I’ll grab Witwans from the house and throw him in the Audi. If Witwans comes out instead, I’ll have to decide whether to grab him right away or go in the back door. And if nobody comes out, I’m going in the back for sure.”
“What do I do then?” Jacob said.
“No matter what, you go back to the car after two minutes.”
“Let me make sure I have this right,” Duto said. “This all hinges on whether Amos opens the front door when Jacob starts yelling? What if he doesn’t? You think you’re going to get across the roof of a one-story house and then in the back door without him hearing?”
“I think Amos, who hasn’t slept all night, is all of a sudden going to have to figure out what’s going on when the neighbors start yelling and the dogs start barking. His first thought is not going to be that someone’s on the roof coming for him. If he goes outside, I can blow off his head, and if he doesn’t, I’ll just creep along the house while he’s distracted and go through the back.” Wells knew that he was trying to convince himself as much as Duto. A plan so crazy it just might work.
“Give me best case, John.”
“Best case, Jacob shouts for a minute, Amos comes out, I pop him with one shot. It takes me thirty seconds to get in the house and grab Rand, another thirty to get him to the car. That’s two minutes and one shot and we’re gone. The cops won’t even be close. By the time the first car responds, we’re at the airport. Worst case, nobody opens the door after a couple minutes and I have to go in the back and it takes a little longer.”
“Worst case, you and Rand both get killed.”
“That would be worse. You have anything better? I’m open to suggestions.”
Duto pulled over. They sat for two long minutes as cars rolled by. In the distance a train whistled, but inside the Audi no one spoke.
“SOG team would be nice,” Duto said. “Real surveillance. A magical unicorn. How did I get myself into this?”
“You know exactly.”
“True. And I still can’t figure it. If you get caught in there, what then? I grab the Mossberg and come over the fence? Not entirely senatorial. But I guess I burned that bridge a while ago.”
Duto folded his hands across his chest as the Audi’s clock counted off another two minutes. Wells wished Shafer were here. He’d understand the absurdity of the situation better than anyone. America’s fate depends on three men in Bellville, South Africa. Two can’t stand each other. The third is a civilian they met the night before. Will they kidnap the old racist drunk in time to fly him to D.C.? Or get killed trying?
But long experience had taught Wells that too much second-guessing at these moments was not just pointless but dangerous. Climbing a carport to jump a roof to kidnap Witwans might seem bizarre, but they had no better option, and no time to find one. The choices they had made over the last few weeks had led them here, and without a time machine those choices couldn’t be undone.
Wells had rock climbed a few times in his teens and twenties. The best climbers weren’t necessarily the strongest, the most agile, or even the bravest, though those qualities helped. They were the ones who resisted the temptation to look down, who spidered up the face, always recognizing where they were and looking for the best solution, and with luck, the best after that.