She said, “I got you. Linkup is to the left, outside the cable car. I’m going to hang back. You see the ticket counter?”
“Yeah. I see it.”
“That’s where you’ll go in. Show them the ticket, then go to the left. When the guy makes contact, just say, ‘I have what you want.’ Do you understand?”
“Yes. Yes. I get it. Jennifer, I can’t do this. What if he puts a knife to my chest?”
She heard herself from years ago, when she had first started operating, when she was the one saying the same thing to Pike. Now she was the protector, and Dunkin was the protected. It actually brought a smile to her face, because she had grown comfortable in her skills.
“Dunkin, they aren’t going to threaten you in front of the cable car entrance. It’s surrounded by tourists. Just do what they want. The mission is to extend the timeline. That’s it. Whatever it takes. Pike is about to dock at Manly, and he’ll handle what we both want. You just need to make the meeting.”
Dunkin said, “Okay, okay.” There was a pause, and then she heard a muffled command. Then, through Dunkin’s radio, “Yes, that’s me. I’m here for Nicole.”
She raced up the stairs, reached the path to the cable car entrance, and saw a line of people waiting to board, the cars rolling in every five seconds in an inexorable tide. She scanned left and right, and found Dunkin talking to a man right outside the entrance.
She said, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You’re secure.”
She heard, “I have the drive you want, but I’m not giving it to you unless I get proof Nicole is alive.”
There was a response that she couldn’t hear, and then Dunkin said, “I’m not leaving this zoo. Take the drive. It’s encrypted, though. If you want the results in it, you need to release Nicole. That’s the deal.”
Jennifer went higher on the path, standing on the curb to see over the crowds. She saw Dunkin talking to an Asian man, his hand outstretched holding the thumb drive. She said, “Be cool. It’s working. Be cool.”
She heard something else garbled from the man, and then Dunkin saying, “Why can’t we do this here? I have the drive.”
And she felt her first bit of panic. She said, “Dunkin, don’t listen to him. He’s lying to you. Do not leave this area.”
She heard “Yeah, I can go into the park, but I’m not leaving it. Understand that. If you want the thumb drive, I’m not leaving the park. Where do you want to go?”
Some more mumbling came through the radio, and Dunkin said, “I will do that, but no games. If you want the encryption, you need me.”
Jennifer saw them enter the line for the cable car. Oh no.
“Dunkin, Dunkin, don’t get in the car with him. Don’t do it!”
She watched him enter the line and darted forward.
“Dunkin! Don’t get in that car!”
She heard him whisper, his face away from the man he was with, “This is the way to save Nicole. It’s a five-minute ride. I reach the top and pass the drive.”
He entered the car, just him and the man with him.
She knew she’d lost. She said, “Dunkin, watch his hands. Watch his hands.”
She joined the line, able to cut forward as a singleton, just like a lift at a ski resort. She entered the car directly behind him, joining a family of three.
I crawled up the slope to the target house, pulled out a scope, and took a long look at the front of the house from the woods. Into the radio, I said, “Same story. We’re good. No activity. No outside security.”
I scrambled back down the hill, hitting the concrete stairwell that the tourists used, seeing my team in a security position, all of them covering 360 degrees without appearing to be doing anything other than standing around.
I said, “Okay, this is it. Everyone in here is hostile. If it’s not Nicole, it’s dead.”
They nodded at me, and we went up the concrete stairs to the outside of the gate that led to the house. I took a breath, and then Veep flagged me.
A couple of kids were coming down the stairwell, laughing and talking. I said, “Keep moving. Look natural.”
We resumed walking up the staircase, and they spilled past us without even registering we existed.
On the net, I said, “Parents? Where are the parents?”
We kept walking, and Knuckles said, “I guess this isn’t the U.S. No parents.”
I said, “Reverse. Breach now. Follow the plan.”
The floor schematics from the Roomba had shown us that the majority of the living space was on the final, bottom floor—the one that overlooked the ocean. In between was a second level with a kitchen and laundry area, with the top area being a couple of extra rooms that had no view of anything. Which is where we’d determined Nicole was being held. But it wasn’t where we were going to focus our efforts.
We knew that these assholes had a lot of manpower behind them. The fight Jennifer and I had in the alley attested to that. I figured the team was at most ten strong, but had hoped that at least four of them were out hunting Dunkin, which left six for us. The only way we would win was with what we called relative superiority. It sounded like some counterterrorist commando secret, but it actually came from Clausewitz. As in Carl von Clausewitz.
Back in the day when we were fighting with pikes—no pun intended—he had determined an immutable truth: Where an absolute superiority is not attainable, one could produce a relative superiority at the decisive point by making skillful use of what one has.
And that was the secret of what we were about to do. We would hit them with overwhelming force, using speed, surprise, and violence of action. We were only four men, something they could easily overcome by their numbers—if they knew we were coming. But that wouldn’t happen. When we entered, we’d take them on as a team, attacking each threat with relative superiority. And we would win.
It might seem counterintuitive, but we weren’t initially focused on the hostage—we were focused on the threat. If we could eliminate it, then we could take our time with Nicole. We figured she was at the top of the house, in one of the small rooms, which meant the men were in the lower level. So we were going to flow in at the middle level, with three going down and one going up.
Three on six wasn’t good odds, and some on the team wanted to stick with four, but, while we believed Nicole was most likely chained to a bed by herself, we couldn’t guarantee that one guy wasn’t up there guarding her. Which meant one person had to go up and clear all by himself.
Veep had volunteered, and I’d let him take that mission. If he found her secure, he would immediately join the fight. If he didn’t, he’d clear the room of threats and still join the fight, so the loss of manpower was measured in seconds.
Knuckles cracked the gate next to the concrete stairs, an old, worn-out section of fencing with a rusty latch, and we flowed down the small walkway to the house. We stacked on the door, Knuckles pulling security with a pistol while all of us dropped our bags and started withdrawing folding-stock Sig Sauer MCX Rattler rifles.
Designed for close-quarters combat, chambered in 300 Blackout, they were short-barreled and integrally suppressed—meaning with our subsonic ammunition, they were quiet, along with being incredibly reliable, the system having endured a grueling life in combat with special operations to prove its worth.