by Dan Kelly
I grab my suitcase and we’re off to try to get our wrench around this nut.
The traffic isn’t too bad heading out to Dulles, so we’ve parked in long-term parking, hopped a shuttle to the terminal, checked in by nine and are now sitting in the waiting area waiting for the plane to board. It’s an eight hour flight if the weather cooperates, so we’ll be arriving in Les Escaldes, Andorra at 11:45 in the evening local time. When this is over, it’s probably going to take another week for my biological clock to get back to normal. I’m one of those people that have habitual sleep habits. You mess with them and we’re reduced to operating at half speed.
Between sips of his third cup of Starbucks Brett says, “I believe Aldrich will elect to stay at the best hotels until he locates permanent accommodations because he’s spending the U. S. Treasury’s money, not his own. This will most likely make him feel he’s continuing to make the government pay, literally in this instance, for its dereliction in the death of his son. There’s even a good chance he’ll opt to use his own name which will save him wasting a phony ID since he probably feels safe in Andorra. I’m figuring to check out the finest hotels in the three largest cities first and hope we’ll get lucky.
“Andorra la Vella is the largest city in Andorra followed by Les Escaldes and then Encamp. If none of these pan out, we can move on to some smaller cities. I’ve got a list of the ten largest in Andorra and I’m betting he’s staying in one of them. How do you feel about the game plan. You help find people for a living. When I’m sent out on a mission, I have intelligence that tells me where whatever or whomever is located so I don’t have to punt. Making the wrong guess in my line of work can get you killed, so I do my best to avoid them.”
“What you’ve planned makes good sense to me. I’ve brought plenty of pictures of Aldrich for us to hand out when the need arises and it would be a smart move to have a story prepared to explain why we’re looking for Aldrich. We don’t want to do or say anything to arouse suspicions about what we’re really up to. We don’t want the local police to give us a hard time.”
“I agree and I didn’t think about having pictures. I was counting on you to point him out when our paths cross. Having extra eyes looking for him can’t hurt that’s for sure. What’s your suggestion for an explanation?”
“We could pass ourselves off as something as innocuous as friends who have been following different itineraries and agreed to meet up here in Andorra, but we lost the information our friend gave us regarding the city and hotel he would be staying in. That kind of story would be easy to remember and to manipulate to fit into a lot of different scenarios.
“However, it doesn’t address the possibility of Aldrich not using his given name if that’s the name we drop to the people we talk to.”
“I like it. Let’s run with it. Nothing we come up with is going to cover every contingency.”
“So be it.”
Boarding soon commences and we’re in the air right on schedule. Once we’ve attained our flight altitude and leveled off Brett proceeds to tell me how he plans to get us and Aldrich out of the country.
“There are a lot of wooded areas with clearings in Andorra that are a fair distance from major metropolitan areas. Several of these have been identified as acceptable landing sites for a helicopter by our eyes in the sky. Our first choice is located outside of a place called Soldeu which isn't far from the French border. It’s in an isolated area and we’ll head for that when we have Aldrich in custody. The other sites are backups in case something goes wrong.
“When we land in another isolated area in France not far from the border we will be driven to Marseille where we will be transferred to a private jet which will fly us to Dulles.”
“The French must have people watching for things like this in cities like Marseille. How are you planning to get around this?"
“All you have to know is arrangements have been made so this won’t be a problem. I’ve worked with these people on numerous occasions and there has never been a problem.”
“Who’s providing the helicopter and the transportation to Marseille?”
“Same answer. Trust me. The diciest part of this whole exfiltration is getting out of Andorra undetected. If we’re discovered, it will create an international incident and if we’re caught we may be guests of the Andorra penal system until our government can extricate us which could take a while.”
“How are we going to keep Aldrich from giving us away. He’s not going to be a docile little lamb through all this. He’ll scream his head off if he sees anyone who might lend a helping hand.”
“That won’t be a problem either. At the appropriate time, he’ll be sound asleep. I have something special that will induce that very quickly.”
“Okay, it looks like a slam dunk if Aldrich can be taken without a fight. If he sees us coming, all of this planning will have been a waste of time because he’s vowed he won’t spend the rest of his life in prison. The lead will definitely start flying.”
“That will be his choice.”
The look on Brett’s face when he said this has me thinking that I wouldn’t want him on my tail.
The rest of the flight we talked about our careers, how we came to know the President, sports, our favorite vacation spots and other guy stuff. I even managed to doze off for a while.
When we land in Les Escaldes it’s raining and it’s quite cold which doesn’t surprise me since we’re up in the mountains. After we pick up our suitcases in baggage claim, we’re wondering if we’re going to have any luck finding a cab to take us to our hotel at this late hour, but we needn’t have been concerned as there is a shuttle waiting for us when we get outside.
We don’t know what the gun laws are in Andorra as the internet wasn’t much help in this regard and we didn’t have enough time to research the subject elsewhere. There is no way we are going to face the Crusader unarmed, so we wrapped our weapons and ammo in some protective cloth that Brett thought to bring with him which is impervious to the x-ray machines at airports, material similar to what x-ray technicians wear when you have x-rays taken in a hospital, and buried them beneath the clothing in our suitcases, so we had no trouble smuggling them into Andorra and for that I was extremely grateful.
It’s become obvious to me that Brett is no novice when it comes to putting operations like this together in short order. In a very short time he’s clandestinely made plane reservations in our given names and somehow paid for them in a way that will be off the radar of anyone who would get curious about what is going on so we could get here ASAP and other arrangements to get us out of here PDQ. He’s thought about our need for weapons and came up with a way for us to have them and he’s found a decent hotel off the beaten path to reduce the chances of Aldrich spotting us before we see him. When he tips the shuttle driver I see he’s even thought to convert some dollars to Euros to make it easier for us to get around. From what the President said, he, Brett and I are the only ones who are privy to what the plan is. That means all the prep work has been done by Brett alone.
After we’ve registered at the hotel, again using our own names, and been shown to our room we try to get some sleep. Surprisingly, we manage to get a good six hours of it. After a hearty breakfast and Brett has swallowed four cups of very strong coffee, we get down to business. The guy must have an enormous bladder to be able to drink so much coffee and never have to make a pit stop.
We spend most of the day looking for three star and above hotels and talking with the staff in each of them. We strike out. The next day we rent a car and drive to Encamp and do the same thing with the same results. The following day we drive to Andorra la Vella and on at the fourth hotel we hit pay dirt, sort of. No one at the registration desk recognized him, but the hotel’s registration records showed that he had registered under his own name for only one night, the evening of the day he called me. The concierge recognizes him because the next morning Aldrich had asked him where the closest computer store was and after he told
him Aldrich gave him a very big tip.
Brett was right on with his hunch that Aldrich will feel safe here and probably use his given name. That could be a point in our favor in that Aldrich might be easier to find because he’s not trying to hide anywhere.
We spend the rest of the day checking other hotels and we come up with nothing. Andorra la Vella is not only the largest city in Andorra population wise. It’s also the capital of the country. It attracts tourists and skiers from all over the world and it’s also a major commercial center. In addition to its 34 hotels, it has many guest houses, apartments and hostels that Aldrich could be staying at either temporarily or has already moved into on a permanent basis. Finding him is going to be more difficult than we thought. We should have started our search in this city instead of leaving it for last. With its diversity, it would be an ideal place for Aldrich to settle down.
On our fourth day we pick up where we left off. The search has become more daunting. It’s as frustrating as looking for a jet black cat in the dark must be. When the sun goes down, we’re starting to think that maybe we’re wrong in thinking he would settle down here. As we climb into our car, I suggest we find a place to fill our stomachs before we head back to Les Escaldes and Brett seconds the motion, so we begin to cruise around the commercial district looking for a place to eat.
We soon come across a section that has several restaurants and pick one of them at random. As we’re about to pull into the parking lot a small group of people come out and head for their cars. Unbelievably, one of them looks like our quarry.
“Brett, if that guy bringing up the rear of that small group of people that just came out of the restaurant isn’t our man of the hour, Aldrich has an identical twin he doesn’t know about.”
“That’s him. There are too many people around to go for him here. Let’s hang back and follow him and hope he gives us an opportunity to take him down where there are no witnesses to worry about or to get hurt in the process.”
“It would be very dangerous to assume he’s not armed, but how would someone like him get a weapon through customs or even buy one here in so short a time. Andorra must have some kind of a security process in place to check a potential buyer out and that would probably take more than a week.”
“Chet, in just about every country in the world guns are available without going through legal channels if you don’t mind paying through the nose and don’t mind dealing with some very unsavory characters. This guy is smart, so finding such a source wouldn’t be that difficult for him.”
Shaking my head in disgust I say, “Free enterprise at its worst. It’s amazing what you can buy if you take the time to look.”
Aldrich has called for a cab as one pulls into the curb and he climbs in. It takes him to a nice looking but smaller hotel than the ones we’ve visited in the city. He pays his fare, but instead of going into the hotel he walks up the street a ways and enters what looks like a bar from the outside.
Brett pulls over and parks and I say, “If this guy’s a boozer, we could be sitting here a while.”
“Aldrich has never seen me before. I’ll mosey on down and check the place out.”
Five minutes later he’s back telling me, “It’s an English style pub with dart boards, shuffle boards and a billiard table. The place is doing a decent bit of business as there are no seats at the bar and most of the booths and tables are occupied. Aldrich is sitting in one of the booths tapping away on a lap top and sipping a beer and he has his cell out lying next to the lap top. He looks like he’s up to something which may or may not mean anything.”
We settle in for what could be several hours of surveillance, but 45 minutes later Aldrich is on the move. He heads back toward the hotel but walks right on by it and heads for a park about a block away. When he gets there, he sits down on a vacant bench, pulls out his cell and taps in a number. There’s nobody around where he’s sitting, but there are people walking through the park a football field away.
Looking at Brett I say, “I don’t think we’re going to get a better opportunity than this. You’re the guru in this kind of situation. How do you want to do this?”
“I’ll get out here and stroll down and into the park and walk around behind him. If I can take him from behind, it will be quiet and quick. If for any reason he gets suspicious, he’ll most likely bolt in the direction he came from, so if you park the car right by the entrance to the park you can nab him as he comes out.”
“If that’s the way this goes, there’s going to be a ruckus which might be seen by someone and reported to the locals. I don’t know what the response time is in this city, but if someone gets our plate number things could get hairy. This rental is in your name. A screw driver is not part of my normal pocket gear and even if it was, taking the plates off the car out in the open without it being noticed would be highly unlikely.”
“Have you got a better idea?”
“I don’t know if it’s better. I’m just more comfortable with it.”
“Give it up.”
“I let you out here and park the car down the block and across the street. While you’re strolling into the park I can jump the fence and work my way around him. Parking the car away from the entrance reduces the likelihood of Aldrich spotting me and if we both come at him at the same time there’s less chance of him bolting. I can distract him by saying something behind his back and as I’m doing that you can move in on him from the front. This will all take place without any close by witnesses which we may have to deal with if I have to cold cock him out on the street.”
“I don’t have a problem with that. Let’s do it before more people join Aldrich in the park.”
The best laid plans of mice and men oft times go astray. This one takes off for Outer Mongolia. As soon as I leap the fence the doodoo hits the fan. There are a couple of cats hiding in the bushes where I land and they burst out howling like they had their tails caught in a door. When Aldrich hears this hullabaloo he turns to see what is going on and the ballgame is over. The shock of seeing me doesn’t slow his reaction time one bit. Brett is still too far away to stop him from running and he takes off like a dragster. The man can move and he quickly disappears in a maze of buildings bordering the park.
Running up to Brett I say, “This guy has got to be the luckiest man on the planet.”
“Damn it all! Now we’ve got to do this the hard way. Let’s get on with it. You go around the right side of that cluster of buildings and I’ll go around the left. Maybe we can sandwich him between us.”
As I’m slowly creeping alongside one of the buildings I’m getting the impression that this is some kind of business park. That’s fortunate because at this time of night most of the businesses will be closed and there’s less chance of anyone but us getting hurt.
Suddenly three shots ring out and I throw caution to the wind to locate Brett to see if he’s been shot or in any other way needs my help. I dash alongside the rest of the building out into a parking lot ringed by office suites with a driveway that leads out to a street in front of the complex. My eyes darting everywhere I can’t find any signs of Brett or Aldrich.
Sliding along the front of the suites on one side of the rectangle and making my way to the end, I peer around the corner and see a dead end alley with dumpsters lined along a fence. Unlike in front of the suites, the lighting is poor in the alley and I hesitate to enter to check out the area. I’d make a perfect target against the light out front. Then I hear two more shots which sound like they’ve been fired from somewhere at the end of the alley, so I get down on my belly and crawl toward the sounds, sticking close to the backs of the suites and moving as fast as I can without making any noise. When I get to the end of the alley, I come upon a big sliding door that is partially open so I look inside. I don’t see anybody, but I’m hearing shuffling sounds coming from somewhere in the back of what looks to be a huge two story warehouse.
I cautiously make my way down the center aisle of the warehouse, looking both
ways as I come to aisles that cross the main one. When I’m about two thirds of the way down the center aisle another shot is fired followed by a soft groan. Somebody just got hit. Moving more rapidly I get to the next cross aisle and find Brett hiding behind a pillar. He looks like he’s been winged as the upper part of his coat sleeve is covered with blood. It doesn’t appear to be too serious as he’s not grimacing or writhing in pain. Taking a closer look I see his Glock laying on the floor a good ten feet away from him. He must have dropped it when he got shot and dove for cover behind the pillar. Brett probably doesn’t want to try to retrieve it and risk getting shot again or if Aldrich doesn’t know where he is give his position away, probably both. When he spots me he puts his forefinger to his lips and then points to the ceiling.
