The old woman screaming again brought David back on task and he began looking around in earnest for any cameras or additional minders. He easily picked out the camera under the eaves of the FOP that was pointing towards the safe house. It was tucked up tight to the building where Shields had no chance of seeing it. While he was checking out the camera, he was surprised to see a pair of binoculars protrude from the second floor window of the FOP. David had known there had to be more than one man watching the safe house, but he wasn’t sure where that man might be until now. It had been sheer luck that he spotted him. The man had been careless and leaned too far out the window, giving himself away.
“One, Two,” Montoya called out to David.
“Two, One. What’s up?” David replied.
“Just passing the first corner on the safe house block and we have a party going on. Three locals exchanging spit in a bottle and lots of gossip. Seems they are some of the minders watching our friends and our friends are about to go out for the night.” Montoya quickly painted the scene that was unfolding a half a block away.
“Roger, Two. Three minders drinking together and talking loud, that’s a good pick up of intelligence. Keep on your rounds. I’ll take our friends if they decide to go out. Listen up team—be aware there is a second miner in the FOP, second floor, window over the door.” David informed the team and four “Rogers” came back over the comlink. Several minutes passed with David watching the street, checking the doors and windows for more minders, but he found none. He was able to confirm, however, the man in the doorway—the one hiding in the shadows—was a indeed a minder. About every ten minutes he causally spoke into his wrist, tipping David off to the fact that he had a two-way wrist microphone.
The man didn’t seem all that interested in watching the safe house, though. He spent most of his time reading the newspaper and then making notes on it. He was either playing the horses, or he was doing a crossword puzzle, David couldn’t tell which. He knew it was standard tradecraft to look like you’re not paying attention, but this guy really wasn’t paying attention. He’d go several minutes without looking up, and when he did, it was just for a second, then right back to his paper. Despite David purposely staring at him, he hadn’t noticed David at all.
“One, Three,” Shields called in.
“Go,” was all David said.
“You’ve got two guys coming towards you. They just stepped out a door four doors behind you. They’re splitting up now. One is stopping several feet behind you and the other looks like he’s coming to see you. He hasn’t taken his eyes off you since he came out of the door.” Shields stopped talking as the two men stepped up to where David was sitting.
“Señor, I would like to see your papers,” the man stated authoritatively as he stuck out his hand. The men had taken the typical front and back positions on David so if he tried to run, they could cut off the escape routes. David had done this often enough that he wasn’t at all intimidated. He quickly pulled out his papers and handed them to the guy.
“The guy behind you has a gun,” Shields shared with David in soft whisper over the comlink. David nodded slowly letting Shields know that he had heard him.
“What are you doing here?” the official checking his papers snapped curtly through tobacco stained teeth and an acne pocked face, without looking up.
“I’m here to work on the docks. I start tomorrow, I hope. I was restless, so I went for a walk. Next thing, you know, I found myself here,” David worked his cover story.
“Who told you to come and work on the docks?” he asked next. David gave him the same name that he’d given the clerk at the hotel. It seemed to satisfy the guy, but then again, he seemed to be on a power trip, and David just wasn’t acting as afraid as he should have apparently. “Which hotel are you staying at?” the man asked next while staring into David’s eyes. The man’s partner kicked David’s chair for emphasis.
David glanced at the guy behind him before answering, then did his best to act a bit flustered. “It’s a little place over on….Oh, I don’t remember the street name, but it’s only a couple of blocks away. It’s a…small place. The, ahh… The Paradise Palace. Yes, that’s the name. I only just found the room an hour or so ago,” David acted as though he was suddenly nervous. The man continued to glare at him as the man behind him kicked his chair once more.
The guy tossed David’s papers back at him and growled, “I will be watching you. Something isn’t right and I will find out what. It’s late. Get back to your hotel. You will need your rest for tomorrow. You will be worked harder than you have ever been worked in your life. Now, go!” the man ordered.
“Aw, leave him alone, Pepe. He’s a new customer for me and I need the money.” It was the old woman and she wasn’t acting the least bit intimidated by the security man. “You go on and find something else to do. This man isn’t causing any trouble. He’s having a cerveza is all, and more importantly, I am making extra money.”
Pepe, to David’s surprise, stepped back and gave the woman a hurt look. The woman stared at Pepe, jerked her head to the side and Pepe and his buddy left without saying another word.
“Thank you,” David said quietly and the woman looked at him with a stern look on her face as she spoke.
“Pepe knows better. My brother is his boss and he’s been told to leave my patrons alone. But don’t think you can cause any trouble. There are six men hidden nearby that will treat you very badly should you be a troublemaker. Now do you want another cerveza?” she asked in such a way that David knew he had no choice.
“Sí” David answered and smiled at the woman, while wondering if there really were six men watching nearby.
“What was that all about?” Shield’s asked as the woman stepped away.
“That was a ‘welcome to the neighborhood, now go home’ speech from the local security guys,” David shared.
“Why’d they take off when that woman walked up?” Shields inquired.
“It turns out her brother is their boss, and they’re not supposed harass her customers. Did you see what door they went in?”
“The same one they came out of—four doors behind you. Whoa, hold on, there’s movement next to the safe house. Someone is walking between the buildings, and they’re heading towards the front,” Shields informed him.
“Gotcha,” David replied. He watched very closely as the figure stepped from the shadows across the street and walked straight up to the inattentive minder. One of the men in the safe house stepped out on to the balcony and watched the two men closely.
The woman returned with David’s beer and held out her hand. David quickly gave her a hundred pesos only to have her tilt her head sideways and look at him with that stern look again, so he gave her another hundred pesos. She seemed comfortable with that as she turned and walked back to the register, the whole time yelling for her daughter to move away from her boyfriend.
Bringing his focus back to the two men next door, David noticed no telltale signs of either man being armed. There were no wrinkles at the small of their backs or anywhere at their waists. There were no bumps at the ankles of either man. If they were carrying, they had it very well hidden.
The men continued to talk for about two minutes until the new guy shook hands with the minder and walked off in the opposite direction of the café. The minder quickly slipped his hand into his pants pocket for just a moment, then took a quick look around and went back to reading the paper. After a couple more minutes, he folded his paper and went inside the building, leaving no one on guard duty. That was a drug deal David thought. He wondered why Pepe hadn’t raced out and pulled his security act on that guy.
Across the street, the vacationing terrorists were talking loudly in Arabic as they exited the safe house and stepped into the street. They were saying something about women or whores rather, and how cheap they were as they turned towards the hotel district. David waited a couple of minutes before he stood, leaving a generous tip on the table and began following t
he four men down the street. David had walked exactly four doors back towards the center of town, when Pepe and his friend burst out of the doorway, stopping David by blocking his way.
“So you’re headed back to your hotel now?” Pepe inquired as he shoved his hideous crocodile smile filled with tobacco-stained teeth into David’s face. David leaned away as if cowering, though he was just avoiding his bad breath. When he glanced towards the doorway they had come out of, he got his first good look at Pepe’s partner. He was also smiling, if you wanted to call it that. The effort to smile appeared to hurt the man physically. The smile itself was less than perfect, with more gaps than teeth. When combined with his pained expression, it gave him an overall look of macabre jack-o-lantern.
“Sí” David stated while acting intimidated, in the hopes that it would satisfy Pepe’s ego and he’d go away.
“Don’t think that because that old battle ax stuck up for you anything has changed. I am watching you. I will be following you. I will discover what you’re hiding, and I will put you in jail.” Pepe stood there eyeing David menacingly. David looked back and forth between Pepe and his sidekick, “Jacko,” David’s new name for him, doing his best to appear cowed by the men. Finally, Pepe stepped aside allowing David to leave, but as David passed him, Pepe gave him a swift kick in the ass. Both Pepe and Jacko laughed loudly as David hurried along.
“I can take them both out if you’d like,” Shields offered.
“No, not now,” David replied as he started to walk faster. “So where are our friends?”
“They are about two blocks ahead turning to the right where the big hotels are,” Shields replied.
“Try to keep an eye on them while I try to catch up,” David ordered as he picked up his pace until he was almost jogging.
“One, Three. I’ve got minders exiting the FOP, and they’re headed in your direction. I lost our friends in the buildings somewhere in the tourist district, so maybe if you wait, they can show you where our friends are,” Shields offered.
“Yeah, that might be the ticket. I’ll stop once I reach the district. What about my other two friends? Have they followed me?” David inquired.
“No, sir. They went back inside and haven’t come back out.”
The group of vacationing terrorists had gone straight to the largest hotel in the city which fronted on the city’s central park. David surmised this because the minders didn’t hesitate when they arrived in the district. They went straight there.
David stopped at a small café that appeared to be a local’s hangout across the street. There were men sitting around drinking and talking quietly. A couple of the guys sat at the bar watching two older men involved in a game of dominos at a nearby table, and the bartender was watching a soccer game on a flat screen plasma TV.
David wondered if the guy had a satellite. He found it bizarre how in the third world, as we Americans call it, the people could live in mud huts, but they had to have new TVs and a satellite dish. They’d sleep in hammocks, go without shoes, have no car, struggle to have enough food to eat, but they pulled out all the stops when it came to having television. That made a statement all its own, and it wasn’t a good one from David’s point of view.
Montoya had continued walking the neighborhood surrounding the safe house, searching for minders while listening to what was happening with David. All of the homes and businesses were closed up tight and few people were on the street making his job easy. He took advantage of the darkness and the lack of public street lighting to check a couple of buildings for signs of life. Each one he checked was vacant. In fact, all of the surrounding buildings were vacant except for the safe house, the minder’s post, the café and the office of the local security creeps.
Reaching the far end of the block, Montoya turned into the alley behind the safe house and began his recon of it. As alleys go, this was definitely one of the darkest he’d ever seen. He also doubted there were many that were dirtier, although one or two in Calcutta or Karachi might come close. There were no lights at all, and even if someone were home in one of the buildings, none of the buildings had any rear-facing windows through which the light could shine into the alley. Trash was scattered along the walls of the buildings in big piles here and there. Several times, rats as big as house cats raced ahead of him as he slowly walked down the alley. Luckily for Montoya, the rats had a healthy fear of man.
The rats scurrying about prompted Montoya to put on his night vision goggles which he had brought along just to be prepared. He was glad that he had. He hadn’t gone more than fifty feet after putting them on when a strange noise caught his attention. He froze in his tracks. He stood listening intently, but still couldn’t quite make out the sound or exactly where it was coming from because the sound was echoing off the walls around him.
He tried to place the sound but all he could think of was a feral pig. That got him thinking it might be a rabid feral hog. Out of fear, Montoya reached for the small of his back and gripped the Glock. He’d hunted feral hogs back home, and he wasn’t about to walk this alley unprepared. Searching the alley through the near daylight illumination provided by his NV goggles, he found the source of the noise. There, a dozen feet away in a doorway, was a man rolled into a ball, sleeping.
Montoya slowly and cautiously approached the sleeping man. Stopping half a dozen feet away, he watched the man for several seconds, making sure he was indeed asleep. The rhythm of his snoring convinced Montoya that he really was sleeping, so Montoya stepped a little closer to get a better look at the guy. His clothes were fairly clean and his hair was neatly trimmed, but the man’s body odor—oh my God! It was overpowering, even from six feet away. It turned Montoya’s stomach. Yeah, Montoya decided, this guy was a minder, a drunken minder, but a minder just the same. Montoya wondered if he had been one of the party guys at the other end of the block that he had seen earlier, but he wasn’t about to get close enough to make a positive ID. Damn, the man stunk.
Montoya continued down the alley, stopping behind the safe house momentarily, taking the opportunity to relieve himself on a large pile of trash next to a utility pole. The safe house, like the other buildings, had no rear-facing windows. In fact, on the rear wall of the building, the stucco finish hadn’t even been applied. It was just plain block that had been spray painted with gang signs. Apparently, kids are into tagging the world over, Montoya mused.
There were no fire escapes or ladder systems to the roof of the safe house, and the fence that had once limited access to the side yard had collapsed long ago and lay tangled in the weeds of the unmaintained yard. Montoya could see through the side alley to the street with a clear view of the stairs that led up to the second floor, confirming that there was little security beyond the minders.
The only light in the area was from a small porch light on the second floor landing of the safe house, and after a few moments, Montoya continued down the alley to the area where he had seen the three party guys. They had apparently moved on as there didn’t appear to be anyone around as he walked up.
Just as Montoya was about to turn around and return to the safe house, a man stepped from deep in the shadows of a doorway on the right, ten feet ahead, carrying a half empty bottle in his hand. Montoya quickly turned his back to the man and pulled off his night vision goggles, tucking them smoothly into the waistband of his pants as he turned back towards him. Montoya stepped back a step, acting as if he was scared and unsure of where to turn.
“What are you doing there?” the man asked, slurring his words as he spoke. Montoya almost laughed as the man rocked slightly from side to side and front to back as he battled to remain standing. Montoya quickly adapted and replied with some slurred speech of his own and a slight body sway to match.
“I hada…hada to pee!” Montoya mumbled in slurred Spanish as he took a step forward, closer to the man.
“You shouldn’t batter know than to have be here!” the man was shouting, his arms cart-wheeling around him in exaggerated motions. He was
trying to act menacing, but with his arms flailing about for balance and the incoherent speech, it wasn’t very convincing. It took all of Montoya’s self control to keep from laughing at the guy.
“Oh, hey, I’m sorry! I’m snew in sown. I didn’t know this arena was oft limitsits.” Montoya tried to act cowed by the man by backing up and lifting his arms as his slurred words spilled out.
“You sink…you thin you caan pee anyfair? This isn’t soome fram. I don’t see no animules here! Where are your paaaayapers?” the man demanded, still struggling to stand. Then suddenly, he stumbled forward with his hand stretched out, trying to focus on Montoya’s face and using Montoya as a bumper to stop himself.
“Uh…paypers!” Montoya patted his pockets exaggeratedly while making an inept attempt to find them. Finally, after a couple of minutes of weaving and mumbling to himself as if he had forgotten the minder was there, Montoya pulled the papers from his back pocket and handed them over.
The man struggled to read the papers. He turned them first one way and then the other. Seeing the sorry state the guy was in, Montoya reached out and steadied him by holding his shoulder a couple of times as the man studied the papers in his stupor. Finally, he shrugged off Montoya’s hand while shoving the papers back at Montoya with a look of disdain. Then abruptly, he turned around and stumbled back towards the doorway that he’d been hiding in.
“Say, hey, could I have ah dink, my friend?” Montoya asked.
“What? You want a dink?” The man stopped, turned around and stumbled back towards Montoya. “You think I’m snere to give nou a drink? I should refort you. That’s what I…I a…should dooo!” the man sneered at Montoya, but then suddenly the minder changed his mind. “But sayunce you are here, meester fammer,” he slurred as his sneer turned to a slack-jawed smile, “I will be gregraatoast and let you have a…have a dink, because I am a powful man and I can be genurserous to levser men.”
Reprisal!- The Eagle Rises Page 23
