by Seth Harwood
The casita was only one story, but from it, he could see many of the others, most of them two or three stories. Few of the interiors were lit at this hour, coming up on three-thirty a.m. To the Agent, that was just fine.
He dropped to the tiles of the slanted roof, scrambling across them to the peak. From here, he could see into the central courtyard to the first of the pools. El Guapo wasn’t out for a late-night swim—no, that would have been far too easy—but a few of his men were laughing and splashing with a couple of naked women. Not a bad way to spend their time, as far as the Agent was concerned. Not a bad way at all. And it would keep them from worrying about an intruder.
A quick look around through the distance lens of his night-vision goggles gave the locations of four additional cameras around the property that were mounted high enough to see him in his current position.
Three were too far away to reliably shoot out from this distance with his Beretta and taking them out would alert the guards—one inoperable camera on an exterior wall could be discounted. A series of camera failures couldn’t.
He chose a path along the buildings close to the rooftops, preparing to move with the stealth he was known for. With training came his ability to achieve what others found impossible, even to surpass what others had come to expect from him. If he wasn’t getting better, he wasn’t alive. That was how he looked at it. He also knew to avoid the mistake of letting even his closest allies know the full extent his abilities.
He chest-crawled down the other side of the roof, closed on the next building to the north. Six feet separated the bungalow he lay on and the three-story suite of apartments he would pass by next.
But first he looked down. Sure enough, the two men he’d heard walking before were now directly beneath him. Both armed. The first held a simple AK-47 and the second had an Uzi slung over one shoulder. Only the first man, with the AK, had the gun in his hands. They stood smoking, talking softly in Spanish less than ten feet away.
The first said something about a soccer game. The second complained about his woman. The first laughed.
The Agent’s next move would be to jump the gap to the next structure, then scramble up the wall to its roof. From his location, he saw purchase on an adjacent window that he could reach by jumping, then a balcony he could reach on a second jump. From there, he could climb to the next balcony where he’d be able to reach the roof.
From that height, he knew he could see directly into El Guapo’s clubhouse, maybe even get off a shot if he was lucky enough to find the drug lord standing close to a window. The Agent knew he wouldn’t get that lucky, though. No one did. For this reason, he didn’t carry the added weight of a long-distance rifle.
He had to decide whether the two sentries below would be oblivious enough to miss him jumping through the air and landing on a window ledge above. The answer was likely to be no.
Then the second one mentioned “El Gordo,” the fat one, which had to be their nickname for the guard the Agent had already killed. When they turned toward the other side of the building, he knew his next move.
The Agent dropped to the ground behind the first guard, softly enough that the man didn’t hear him. He slipped his wakizashi out from its sheath behind his back with his right hand and wrapped it around the front of the first guard, plunging it right into his lower abdomen, sliding it across to his opposite side. Gutted, the guard gurgled and held his stomach. The man saw blood pouring onto his hands and dropped to his knees.
The second guard heard the fall and turned just in time to get the tip of the Agent’s tachi, his long sword, right across his neck. Inadvertently, he stepped forward and met it, severing his jugular. The sword continued its path as the Agent spun, pulling the wakizashi out of the downed man. He turned the short sword in his hand as he moved so that its blade extended down from his fist. In this manner, he plunged it into the head of the standing guard, puncturing the soft flesh below his ear. The man was already dead, but this move kept him from falling.
With his left hand, the Agent took the Uzi off the man’s shoulder to keep it from clattering to the ground. He then slid out the wakizashi and let his victim drop like a bundle of laundry to the ground.
He stepped back to evaluate his work: both down, no camera in sight, very little noise.
He rolled both men next to the closest wall, in the shadow of an eave. His daisho back in their sheaths, he turned his attention to the wall.
He moved: three steps to the wall, a toe kick against the gritty stucco surface, hands along the top of the window ledge, a pull-up with legs spread, a kick at either side of the window, a hold, then a jump for the balcony above. Grip the ledge and a pull-up. Two seconds at most, and his hands were on the balcony. From there, just a quick pull-up to stand on its rail, then a reach and a jump to the next balcony above and a pull-up onto it.
Parkour: a new name for an old thing the Agent called stealth.
From the ground he had confirmed that all the windows in the apartments were dark. Now all he had to do was keep quiet and watch for any movements inside.
At the second balcony, knowing he’d be visible to two of the cameras in this part of the complex, he flipped up over the rail and crouched below it. At this point, it might be worth it to take out the cameras. He peered over the rail to locate them, engaging the full night-vision distance lenses in his goggles. Both showed red recording lights. Both were scanning slowly from side to side. But there was a good enough chance that a few quick movements between here and the roof would go undetected. Dice he was willing to roll.
Standing and grabbing the molding at the start of the third floor with one hand, he swung up to the next balcony, scaled the railing from its outside without stopping, and ran up the last three feet of wall to the roof. Grasp the gutter again, get over it fast, flatten against the tiles.
Three stories now above the ground, flat enough against the slope of the roof that he couldn’t be seen, he was a shadow, nothing more: what any decent guard looking at a night-duty camera would think.
He scramble-crawled around the edge of the apartments, traversing the roof’s sides instead of its peak to avoid being detected. From the first corner to the next and then to the other two on the opposite side took five seconds, maybe six.
From there, he could see the first of El Guapo’s possible residences below. It was two stories and he could reach it by jumping, but he couldn’t be sure his landing would be soft enough to go unnoticed. Better to stay up high and play his hunches by avoiding the houses.
This one was where El Guapo’s wife was supposed to be quartered, where she put their twin babies to sleep. No, this wouldn’t be where he would be resting his head. He was too macho to sleep in a nursery.
His next move wasn’t toward the house. It was to the central guard tower in the middle of the compound—the highest point in the complex. He slid the grappling hook ejector off his hip and slid in another hook.
This grappling hook wouldn’t need to explode. The supports and struts on the tower would be perfect for the rope to drape and twist itself through. All he had to do was fire at the right angle and let the projectile’s momentum twist the rope around and through.
From below and to his left, he heard the guards cavorting in the pool. A woman shrieked her laughter. He was glad he didn’t have to watch.
In the tower there would certainly be two guards, if not more. Heavily armed. But somewhere else in the compound, in the farthest corner from his position, was a guard, or maybe several, sitting underground in a bunker watching screens. He scanned the movement of the cameras along the tops of the structures, the three of them programmed to overlap on the tower and its supports. When they all moved to the farthest point away from the tower, he fired the grappling hook from its ejection pod and watched it travel through the night. A sensor on its head transmitted a perfect trail signature to his infrareds. He saw it miss the first struts of the tower, bend and fall, hit another, spin around a third, and come to rest about ten
feet below the enclosed watch platform.
The Agent fastened the grapple cord to his harness and jumped from the roof, activating the retraction engine in the ejector. Tiny powerful motors pulled the grapple cord through the machine, lifting the Agent toward the tower’s top as he swung, racing ahead of the cameras.
He caught a tower support and slid up it until the retractor’s motors clicked and died. They were programmed to give a full-capacity pull for three seconds. All he had to do now was scale the last twenty feet of the tower on his own while avoiding the next pass of the cameras.
He cut the grapple cord and spun around the cold metal tubing of the supports, using the rubber pads on his gloves and the bottoms of his shoes to keep in place. He kept still, counted to seven, and watched through his night–vision goggles as the cameras scanned. The red lights made them easy to spot.
When they finished their circuit, he started to scale, keeping the rubber of his toes flat against the support. Hand over hand and one foot directly on top of another, he made his way up a diagonal to the tower platform.
From here, he could see the entire compound. He climbed through the supports to the tower’s far side and from there he could get a much better view of the compound’s north end. About halfway to the entrance of the complex were El Guapo’s second residence and the clubhouse where the Agent suspected he’d be.
He roped himself in against the supports, attaching his harness around two frames, then with both hands free, he swung the MP5 off his back and raised its sight to his eye. The sight had better distance detail than his goggles, but it didn’t have night vision. Still, with the lights on in the clubhouse, he could see in its windows. He scanned across the building’s length, waiting for movement. Nothing. Whoever was inside wasn’t walking past any windows.
Scanning farther west, he saw one of the compound’s other pools. This one empty of people, its water rippling gently as a robot vacuumed its bottom.
Back to the east was El Guapo’s other residence, all of its windows entirely dark. This one was still a long shot in the Agent’s view. No drug lord went to bed early, especially when light of day brought countless planes that could be taking pictures of people on the ground.
So it was the clubhouse.
Above him, at least two guards were watching, listening. They couldn’t see him in his current position, and in the darkness of the tower’s bunker, the cameras couldn’t pick him up either. He knew from his intel that they weren’t equipped with heat sensors.
His options were to proceed along the ground or set up a zip line to the clubhouse’s roof from the tower. He figured on a one-in-three chance that the zip line shot would work. It was another roll of the dice.
Along the bottom of the MP5’s barrel was the grenade launcher he had used to shoot the rope up from the beach. Like his ejector pod, this served a similar function but with a much greater range and without the retraction feature. That much didn’t matter. He wouldn’t need it here.
He loaded a traction grappling hook into the launcher. It used a small explosion to fire itself through the air and then an additional burst on impact to secure its pincers into whatever it hit. This was what he had used on the compound’s exterior wall.
He brought the MP5 back to his eye, sighted in on the clubhouse roof. When he established where his shot would have the highest likelihood of hitting a solid place while making the least noise, he prepared the cable. He estimated the distance and programmed the launcher. All that was left was to fasten the remaining end to one of the tower’s supports.
But just as he was about to fire, he heard the trap door behind him open. Someone said something in rapid-fire Spanish, and he turned to see a foot, then two legs start down the ladder.
All he could do was either take out the descending guard or make his shot and try to get off the tower.
He took the shot.
The grappling hook flew toward its mark on the clubhouse roof. It hit something, making a soft sound that he hoped only he could hear. For a moment, only the gun held the cable in place and then it detached from the MP5, and he stretched after it, holding tight, glad for his gloves.
His right foot came off the tower as he lunged, but the harness held. Now he had one foot in the air, one hand on the cable, and there was a man coming down the ladder behind him. The MP5 fell to his side and hung by its strap.
With his left hand, he lifted the tachi off his back and swept it out to his side, cutting into the back of guard’s lower leg. He connected right above the man’s boot, slicing through his Achilles tendon. Then suddenly the man’s foot couldn’t hold any weight. It slipped off the rung, and the guard began to fall.
The man let out something between a howl and a yell as he tried to grab at the ladder’s rungs with his hands. He caught nothing, though, and fell the fifty or more feet to the ground below.
The guard inside the tower responded to the noise. “Que? Henrique?”
The Agent slipped his tachi back into its sheath then grasped the cable with both hands and pulled it closer to a support. Using his left hand to hold it in place, he fastened it to the support with his right.
He heard what sounded like the remaining man above him picking up a phone to call for help. The Agent would never reach him in time to stop the call. Instead, he unlatched his harness from the tower, then reached up and flipped its nylon strap over the top of the cable with his right hand. He caught its other end with his left and jumped, hoping that the nylon strap wouldn’t burn through at this short distance and hoping that he wouldn’t need brakes at the other end.
He dropped maybe ten feet through the air as the line’s slack led him along a diagonal, then the cable went taut and he started to glide toward the clubhouse, picking up speed. The rubber on his gloves wouldn’t slow him down. He’d have to rely on the rubber soles of his shoes.
As he slid, he started to swing his body back and forth. He had to get his feet up to meet the cable at the end of his ride or he would crash into the clubhouse roof.
Suddenly the lights came on around the compound. An alarm began to blare. He could hear people shouting. Floodlights glared down on the clubhouse, the pool, and the second residence.
He swung again. If his feet didn’t catch the cable and slow him down, the only other option would be to let go and fall thirty feet to the ground. The Agent didn’t like this chance. Not one bit.
He reached up, clenched every muscle in his core and stretched his legs forward as far as he could. They hit the wire, and he held it between his feet as he pushed them together with everything he had. He could feel the leather of his shoes start to burn and pulled his feet closer in, working to position their rubber soles against the cable. He pushed his knees out and squeezed with his feet.
He started to slow.
In a moment, he stopped directly above the clubhouse roof, less than three feet from his grappling hook.
He heard guards rushing out of buildings on the ground, men yelling, instructions given in Spanish.
He let go of the cable, arching his back and pulling himself over backward to hit the roof with his hands. Then he kicked his feet over the top and landed in a crouch, ready to crawl up the roof.
He crested the top of the roof and jumped down the other side, sliding on his back along the slope toward the edge. He rolled over on his stomach and continued his slide, getting ready to catch the gutter and hold on.
When his feet left the roof and hit open air, he started to jackknife, hoping he’d hit a window with his feet and break through it without impaling himself on broken glass in the process.
He caught the gutter with both hands and heard it break off from the roof. As he looked down, he saw his legs swinging underneath him. His left foot was about to connect with a window; his right foot with a wall.
He kicked in the window with his left foot, bent his right knee, and cushioned his momentum against the wall. In the remaining moment of the gutter’s existence as part of the building, he pulled h
is left leg out of the glass, feeling several glass shards piercing his skin, and swung back out from the wall, then swung himself back toward the now-broken window and let go, straightening out his body as he did so, trying to slide in through the glass with as little damage as possible.
His landing, however, was anything but smooth.
He met a hard wooden floor with one foot, then crashed to his back, sliding forward into the room and stopping between two dumbfounded men.
Whoever they were, neither one was El Guapo.
They also weren’t armed.
The Agent took his time standing, brushing glass off his arms and nodding his head toward the window. When neither man got the message, the Agent grabbed the first by his neck and threw him out through the broken glass. When he turned back toward the second, the man was already running for the window.
They were two stories up, which wouldn’t feel good at the bottom, but the Agent liked that his appearance had been enough to convince a man that staying inside was worse.
He could hear men running and yelling downstairs.
He caught the grip of his MP5 and stepped toward the room’s door. He was in some kind of a corner office. The room was empty. Bare wooden floors. What he’d interrupted, he had no idea. From the looks of things, he had come in on two men talking to each other in an empty room.
He kicked open the door and stepped into the large room he had seen through the windows from the guard’s tower.
Four men stood in the middle of the room facing him. Each held a short-bodied MAC-10 automatic—not much of a gun, but enough. He dove to the ground toward the back of a couch as they started shooting in his direction.
Along the left side of the room, he glimpsed three men in dark suits ushering a fourth man toward the stairs. He unhooked a flash bang from his chest and tossed it over the couch toward the shooters, then touched the button on his mask that activated its sound reduction.
