Good Christ!
Why hadn’t he seen this before? McMaster was on the Black Tosca’s payroll, and he had hired Egan to do his dirty work. With Cole Egan in the picture, the operation had just gotten a whole lot more dangerous. Had McMaster issued the warrant too? Had he lied to Hunt that the FBI was behind it? Warning Hunt about the warrant might have been a ruse to lure him in or to guarantee his trust. Did this mean that the only people he could trust were Anna and Tony Garcia? The very same people he had once betrayed? How screwed up was that? But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? He wasn’t alone. He could trust Simon Carter and the rest of his former teammates. Of that he was sure.
“We’re one mile out,” he said, looking at Anna. At her request, he had moved into the driver’s seat the moment they were out of Miami.
Anna hadn’t been the same since they had left Pomar’s condominium. He could tell something bothered her, but she had yet to share it with him. What was he going to do with her? She had spent the past five minutes typing furiously on her laptop. A video started playing.
“What are you watching?”
“Did you know the house we’re about to hit was for sale three years ago?”
“Why would I know that?”
“They were asking eleven million dollars for it.”
“Not the type of listing I usually look at. A bit outside of my budget.”
“The real estate broker who listed the house uploaded a superb video.”
That sparked Hunt’s interest. “It’s still up?”
“It is. We’re a quarter mile away. It will be on your right.”
Hunt let up on the gas pedal a couple hundred feet away from the house and let the Jeep coast by. The Black Tosca’s Hallandale Beach safe house was a huge estate. It wasn’t part of a gated community, and it didn’t need to be. It was located directly on the A1A next to similar estates. High brick walls surrounded it on three sides. The only access from the road was through a fifteen-foot iron fence secured by an electronic latch. A tank could bust through it, but not a Grand Cherokee.
“Looks like a fortress,” Anna said.
“Yeah.”
“How are we gonna go in?”
“The beach is an option,” Hunt replied.
“But they’ll be expecting that, won’t they?”
“Not only that, but they probably have motion detectors all around the back of the house, and every door and window will be wired.”
“So?”
“I’ll be fine,” Hunt said, making a right at the next intersection. “I’ll park the SUV and watch the video you found. That should give me a better idea about what to expect inside the house. Don’t worry. I’ll find a way. Trust me.”
“I don’t think you meant that.”
“What?”
“Trusting you.”
“I simply meant I know what I’m doing, Anna. Nothing else.”
“I’ll ask Tony to send some men to help out. And just so you know, I’m not staying in the car.”
Hunt thought better than to pick another fight with her. Two miles past the safe house, he made a right turn into an almost empty parking lot. He took a space between two vehicles next to a Taco Bell.
“We need new transportation. There aren’t many SRTs on the streets, and the police probably have a BOLO out on it. A BOLO is—”
“I know what it means,” Anna snapped back. “Be on the lookout.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. Relax a bit, will you? We’re on the same team.”
He regretted his choice of words the moment they came out of his mouth.
“Are we? Because last time you said that, you fucked us all.”
She had a point. There wasn’t much he could say to soothe her, so he remained silent.
“I sent Tony an email,” she told him after a moment. “He’ll be here shortly with another SUV.”
“He knows where we are?”
“He’s been tracking us the whole time.”
“How?”
“Through me, of course.”
It made sense that Tony didn’t trust him to keep his little sister safe. They both knew Anna’s safety wasn’t Hunt’s priority.
Still, Hunt wasn’t happy about this new development.
“I specifically told the both of you I didn’t want him around.”
“And you’re a fool if you thought you could keep him at bay. His daughter might be in there too. Don’t forget that.”
Hunt sighed. The sort of help he needed was trained operators, not gunslingers. “How long before he gets here?”
Anna looked at her phone. “Five minutes.”
“Show me the video.”
“Stop right there!” Anna said.
Hunt paused the video.
“Back up a few seconds.”
Hunt did. “What did you see?”
She reached over him and clicked on the play button. “Look at the door handle.”
The video focused on the main entrance. A large, modern wooden front door with no window occupied the whole frame. The door was beautiful and looked expensive.
“There’s no lock,” Hunt said. “Only a keypad.”
“Correct,” Anna said. “It’s a Schlage lock.”
“And that’s good news? The door looks heavy as hell. We can’t pick that kind of lock.”
“Maybe you can’t pick it, but I can hack it.”
“You’re serious?”
Anna flashed him a mischievous grin, but there was no warmth to it, only contempt. “You’re not the only one who can keep secrets.”
She watched the green words of code flicker across the screen of her laptop, her fingers burning up the keyboard. She brought up a hidden sign-on screen and entered a code, and just like that, she was in the security mainframe.
“I never asked you where you learned to do that.”
“And you’re asking me now?”
“I am.”
“None of your damn business,” she replied bluntly.
Anna remembered the first time she had cracked into a computer. She was fifteen and still in high school. She did it to change her best friend’s math test result. A handsome young man—Agustín was his name—who used to work for her father had patiently shown her how to do it. For close to two years, every afternoon after school, she spent half an hour or so with Agustín and watched him work. He was incredible. Within minutes, Agustín was able to hack into someone’s bank account and transfer money out of it. After moving the money around the world, it ended up in one of Vicente Garcia’s Bahamian bank accounts. For his services, Agustín—at least this is what he had told her—was getting 20 percent of whatever he sent to her father.
Then, one day, she came back from school, and Agustín wasn’t at his desk. He wasn’t there the next day either. When she inquired about his whereabouts, her father told her Agustín wasn’t working for him anymore.
“Why?” she asked him.
“He stole from me.”
Her father’s reply—the way he said it—had chilled her to the bone, but she’d summoned the courage to say, “I thought you liked him. Didn’t he make you lots of money?”
Vicente banged his fist on his desk, making Anna jump. “I said, he stole from me,” Vicente roared. “If someone steals from me, there are consequences.”
Anna, too terrified to ask what the consequences were, had run back to her room. For a while, she didn’t dare touch another computer. But when the time came to go to college, she couldn’t help herself. She hacked into the mainframes of most of the colleges she applied to just to see how she ranked among her peers. There was no need to change the rankings. She was high enough to pick where she wanted to go. She ended up graduating with a master’s degree in computer science from the Florida Institute of Technology and working for her father doing pretty much the same thing Agustín had done. But better. She beefed up her father’s network security while keeping an eye on their competitors’ vulnerabilities and exploiting them whenever she could. Aft
er a few years, though, she needed a new challenge and had gone to work for a couple of start-up companies. That was what she’d been doing when she met Terrance Davis. To be completely honest, she was as angry with herself for being so naive as she was at Hunt for his treachery.
But that was a topic for later. Now wasn’t the time to let her personal feelings or animosity toward Hunt encroach on what they needed to do. For now, Hunt was her best shot at getting Sophia back. Anna simply couldn’t imagine a world without her. She had loved Sophia from the very moment she was born. She had loved her niece every single hour of every day as she watched her grow into a beautiful young woman, and as much as she distrusted Hunt, she knew he felt the same way toward Leila. They had no choice but to work together.
Breaking through a Wi-Fi network, however strong the password, was child’s play for someone like her. She easily wiped clean all the previous passwords and reset them to the factory setting before replacing them with her own. The Schlage lock was linked to a network that gave her access to all the systems linked to that network. In this case it meant that from the relative safety of the Jeep, she could control all the interior and exterior lights, the blinds, the house’s three air-conditioning units, the security cameras, and the alarm system. She could even open the front gate.
“I got us our way in,” she said.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Hallandale Beach, Florida
Emilio looked at his watch. Hector had left for the Hypoluxo safe house ten minutes ago. He had taken with him the rest of his team and the two girls, leaving Emilio and two other local shooters behind. The inside of the house was in total blackness. He had ordered all the interior lights to be turned off. The outside lights were turned off too, so they’d be able to pinpoint exactly where the intruders came from. If anyone’s really coming, thought Emilio. Hector had said a man—the father of one of the girls—and a woman were on their way.
“He’s dangerous, Emilio, so be ready,” Hector had said.
Emilio was used to dealing with dangerous men. This one wouldn’t be any different. His orders were clear: Kill the man and the woman. Bring their bodies inside, and torch the house.
Easy enough.
Emilio had positioned the two shooters on the ground floor, both covering the rear of the house since it led directly to the beach, the most probable approach. High brick walls topped with glittering shards of broken glass protected the three other sides of the house. Six inches above the broken glass, strands of razor wire ran the length of each wall. It was a nasty but effective way to deter petty thieves—or a DEA agent. Even if the man successfully scaled one of the three walls, there was a multitude of motion detector lights positioned outside the house. Getting close to the house undetected would be impossible.
Then the doorbell rang. What the fuck?
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Hallandale Beach, Florida
Hunt spotted a dark late-model Range Rover turning into the parking lot.
“Is that him?” he asked.
“Yes.”
A moment later, Tony and Tasis climbed out of the car. Anna unlocked the doors of the Jeep, and both men joined them inside.
“Get your stuff, and move it to the Range Rover. Mauricio will dispose of the Jeep,” Tony said without preamble.
“But Tony, I thought you wanted me to help with—” started Tasis, but Tony cut him off.
“Mauricio, take the Jeep, do what you got to do, and then go back to the compound. Make sure the guys fixed Anna’s issue. I don’t want the body to pop up, so burn it if you can. I’ll call you if I need your assistance. Understood?”
Anna’s issue? Burn it if you can? What the hell is Tony talking about?
Hunt looked at Anna. She was massaging her neck. She locked eyes with him and shook her head. “Not now. Please.”
“You didn’t tell him?” Tony asked.
“Tell me what?” Hunt asked.
It was Tony’s turn to look at his sister, a scowl of annoyance on his face. “Tell him.”
Hunt didn’t like to be kept in the dark, but what he liked even less was Anna being bullied into revealing something she was clearly not ready to divulge.
“She said later, Tony. Let it go.”
Anna thanked Hunt with a small nod.
Tony’s body tensed, but he let it go. “Whatever,” he said, and then turned toward Tasis. “You can go, Mauricio.”
Hunt could see Tasis wasn’t thrilled about leaving his boss with Hunt.
“Give me the damn keys, Hunt,” Tasis said.
Hunt grabbed his backpack and the rest of his gear and handed the Jeep’s keys to Tasis.
“Okay, let’s go,” Tony said.
Tony got behind the Range Rover’s wheel while Hunt took the passenger seat. Anna settled in the back seat with her computer and mobile phone. A moment later, the Jeep exited the parking lot and accelerated away. Hunt was glad to see it go. It had become a liability.
Tony shifted in his seat and handed Hunt and Anna a small digital radio and an earpiece each. “So what’s the plan?”
“If Anna can open the front gate, shouldn’t we go in this way?” Tony asked after Hunt shared his plan.
“Absolutely not,” Hunt said. “They’d see us coming.”
“And there would be no way for me to hide the fact that the gate is being opened remotely,” Anna added.
“It would tip our hand, Tony,” Hunt explained. “Better to approach stealthily by the beach, get in position, and then let Anna work her magic.”
Tony thought it over for a minute and then said, “Are you sure they’ll come out of the house?”
“Not at all.”
“If they don’t, we’re fucked.”
That was stating the obvious. The objective was to get covertly in position with Tony at the front door and Hunt waiting by the large patio door at the back of the house. Once they were in place, Anna would remotely activate one of the motion sensors in the backyard to draw at least one man out to the back. Because Hunt wanted to get in the house by two different entry points—from the door leading to the rear terrace and the front door—they needed someone to unlock the patio door, as Anna had determined there were no electronic locks she could hack at the back of the house. The moment Hunt confirmed he had gained access, Tony would enter from the front door, the point of entry where Hunt expected the least resistance.
That was the plan, anyway.
Hunt took a gamble. A calculated one, but a gamble nonetheless. Anna told him there were motion detectors but couldn’t say what kind they were. Motion sensors usually fell into two categories. There were those that worked by infrared—heat sensors—and those that worked by ultrasound. The infrared motion detectors detected infrared energy—heat—given off by animals or humans. When there was an upsurge in infrared energy, the alarm sounded. They worked well outside in cold-climate countries, or inside any residence, but they weren’t the best in Florida. With nighttime temperatures often reaching the midnineties, the sensors weren’t effective at distinguishing a human from the ambient air. With that in mind, Hunt bet that the outside motion detectors were ultrasonic devices. If he was wrong, he’d know soon enough, and their plan would go bust.
After parking the Range Rover on a side street, they found a public pathway to the beach about a dozen or so mansions north of the Black Tosca’s safe house.
“How will you know if it works?” Tony asked.
“If no light comes on, it means it’s working,” Hunt said. A bead of sweat rolled down his back. It was a warm and muggy night. There was no breeze, which was unusual. Crouched on the beach with his back toward the ocean, Hunt scrutinized the house with his ATN night-vision monocular. Was Leila there, only two hundred feet away? He was sure that, right behind him, Tony was wondering the exact same thing about his daughter. Hunt didn’t like what he was seeing with his monocular. The house was in total darkness. Not a single light was on.
It could be a trap. He said so to Tony.
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“What choice do we have?”
“The trick is to go slowly at first,” Hunt said.
“Okay.”
“If a light comes on,” Hunt said, “run back toward the beach and get back to Anna.”
“You know I won’t do that, so stop bullshitting me.”
“If this is indeed a trap, they’ll have automatic weapons,” Hunt warned him. “We have pistols.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of super-hotshot DEA agent?”
“A bullet in the head is a bullet in the head. It doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t matter how well trained you are. If they have superior firepower and we’re outnumbered, our only chance is our stealth and the violence of our action when the shooting starts. Let’s try to keep the element of surprise for as long we can.”
Without another word, he crawled toward the house. He held his pistol in his right hand while the left held a small radio scanner. Fifty feet and five minutes later, he stopped his painstakingly slow crawl and turned on the device. They had reached the edge of the property. Hunt doubted they were close enough for the scanner to detect the motion sensors—which were generally reliable to about thirty feet—but there was no room for error, so Hunt checked anyway.
Nothing. He continued forward, stopping every five feet to check the detector, half expecting the motion-sensor-activated floodlights to beam on them. On the fourth stop—they were now well inside the property line—the scanner vibrated twice, announcing that it had found the wavelength of the sound waves the motion sensors were using. It was too dark for Hunt to see where the sensors were located, but if he had to guess, he’d say they were positioned on the numerous palm trees lined up about fifty feet from the rear of the house. Hunt matched the scanner’s frequency to the one emitted by the sensor. By squawking in the same frequency, the scanner masked any other returning waves, making Hunt and Tony invisible to the motion sensor. Hunt repeated the process three more times. He glanced back at Tony. The moonlight was just bright enough to illuminate his face. He was staring right back at Hunt, his face blank—no trace of a smile, but no anger or animosity either.
Hunt Them Down (Pierce Hunt Book 1) Page 17
