Читать книгу The Doctrine of Presence - Benjamin Vance - Страница 11

Caracas and Barcelona, Venezuela and Port of Spain, Trinidad were our entry points with final destination, Maracay. There, we stayed at a nice hotel near Bolivar Plaza and the Arc Angel and acted like tourists. We had one meeting. Gimp was with us. We were thankful he could come, although he made the apparent mistake of bringing his girlfriend. As it finally happened though, we were all glad she was there.

Fredo rented a four-wheel-drive Suzuki diesel SUV. It was a wonderful little tug, but would not comfortably seat over four humans, so when more than three people rode, Gimp normally rode on a pad in the cargo space with his wheels on the luggage rack. The first night, Fredo, our advanced guard, parked it at the local restaurant and bar which prepared the meals for the fifty or so guards at the facility. The rest of us came later … much later, by taxi. We watched, listened, planned and tried to have fun, but did not make our move until the fourth night.

By then we pretty much knew the layout of the place by heart and the moves of the two drivers even better. One of them seemed very predisposed to the ladies, so Gimp developed a plan to use his girlfriend, Lidia to our advantage. The guards always visited the bar for a couple of beers while the restaurateur and his help loaded the evening meal into clean warmers, and then loaded the truck. It wasn’t even guarded during the process. Once the truck was ready, a cook notified the guards, who reluctantly took over and drove back to the compound.

Even though the country is, at heart, very conservative, some of the outfits the young girls wore to the bar at night were something else, or perhaps not much. The young men were attracted like bees to honey and of course it worked in our favor. Lidia Melendez, who had been wearing t-shirts, Levi-shorts and sandals most of the time, came in wearing a diaphanous, sequined, turquoise bibbed nothing of a dress, with obviously nothing but a thong underneath. She had us old guys averting our eyes most of the evening, and every young stud in the place asking unsuccessfully for a dance.

Very close to the time the truck normally left, Lidia took a shine to the less timorous of the two guards. She lured him into the women’s restroom in the restaurant; she didn’t know a word of Spanish, but he didn’t seem to care. Once in the bathroom where Leo waited, only Lidia returned. She had a kiss for Gimp and they left, ostensibly to catch a cab.

Next thing I know, Gimp is standing at the table where Greenie and Fredo are sitting. He was early so he must have been in pain or mad. They offered him a seat and he refused. As planned, he began to badger Fredo a bit, just enough to gain the attention of most clients while I slipped out the side door into the Restaurant. I went into the women’s bathroom, locked the door, and Leo and I stripped the unconscious guard and injected him with a large dose of barbiturate; a job Leo could not do alone. I bundled up the driver’s pants and put them in a scummy dumpster outside the restaurant while Leo went into the men’s restroom to wait on the second, and much taller, guard.

Once both guards were neutralized with barbiturate and naked, with one sitting on the other’s lap face to face in a locked crapper stall, Fredo dressed in the taller guard’s uniform and we simply drove off with the mess truck. It was loaded up and waiting outside as usual. Fredo and I were in the front seat; Leo was hidden in the back with the food. Greenie and Gimp would create a diversion to hopefully get the three of us in the gate.

Greenie and Gimp drove up to the guard gate, with us about a mile behind. They both smelled of alcohol and were singing and laughing and asked the gate guards where they could find some girls and Bolivar Park. The guards were nice, but firm. About two minutes into their discussion we drove up behind them and Fredo honked the horn. At that point, the hungry guards ran out of patience and pulled Gimp, who had been driving for some reason, from the car. We were terrified, but only for a moment. One guard got into the SUV and turned it around to give us free entrance to the facility. The unoccupied guard gave us a wave and Fredo gunned the truck into the facility grounds. We had only a vague idea where the mess-hall was, but Fredo found it perfectly. It was dark and we were in, but worried about Greenie and Gimp.

The two were hopefully going to cover our asses from a geological rise about two hundred meters uphill from the facility grounds. Fredo said it gave a fine view of the entire facility. Apparently it did. I’ll never divulge how Gimp got his pimped-out Bushmaster carbon 15 R97F, into the country. It had something to do with his wheels and the carbon construction of the R97F.

Fredo parked the truck near the mess hall and honked the horn. In a moment the cooks and helpers disgorged from the building and started carrying the meals inside; Fredo left. However, before the truck reached the mess hall Leo and I, dressed in tight urban camoflage, jumped out and looked for the building which housed the targets. It wasn’t hard to find, but there were still people inside. We checked with our guys on the hill … they were already getting into place. We checked with Fredo … he was on the way. Greenie whispered that Fredo was rounding the building to our right.

He came around the building and was suddenly met face-to-face with a female employee coming out of a door on his end of the cinder-block building. Fredo didn’t hesitate; he decked her and caught her when she crumbled. He quietly surveyed the interior of the door she came out of and effortlessly pulled her back in. He let us know there was a fifty foot corridor she had walked from. It had only one door at the other end; a bad place to enter.

He came to our position and we silently checked windows with small extending mirrors. We decided there were three women and one man still in the building. We could not see any of the special equipment and were in a time constraint. The guards in the bar would not wake for hours, but if someone found them they could put two and two together and we would be up shit creek. We made the decision to go in as quietly as possible. We let the hill crew know and made our entrance. No one screamed at the sight of three ski-masked and camouflaged intruders because Fredo immediately informed them that it was an exercise.

The man was skeptical and demanded we remove our masks. We roughly herded them into the nearest small room at knife point, took away their cell-phones, and any other electronics and valuables and wire-tied their hands and feet; tied them together back to back. Fredo asked the gentleman where the targets were. He refused to say and Leo tightened his ties then slapped him in the mouth. He whined, bled and told us exactly where the lab was. We taped their mouths and moved silently on.

The lab was easy to find, but there were two more employees inside, both women with their purses, obviously preparing to leave. Fredo gave them the same speech and they relaxed and smiled at each other until we pushed them to the floor and wire-tied them and taped mouths. One of the ladies actually kept smiling at Fredo and sticking her chest out during the action. I went to get the lady that Fredo decked, and dragged her back to the bunch, still out cold but breathing. In the meantime, Fredo found the right equipment and rigged his little remote incendiary magnesium masterpieces and triggering cellphones among the controls. Leo guarded the prisoners with the lights out.

Once everyone was accounted for, we pulled and pushed everyone to just inside the exit door so no one would be in danger from the fire on the opposite side of the building. One of the women made the mistake of attempting a taped-mouth scream. It was cut short by the impact of Leo’s boot to her face. All she did was exhale into unconsciousness. No one else tried to scream, because we taped every mouth copiously. For crying out loud, that other woman had parted her knees, was still breathing hard and her eyes were blinking suggestively at Fredo when Elvis left the building.

We lay in the grass outside the first perimeter panting with exertion and adrenalin. Leo used his night vision scope to find the cut in the wire where Greenie left a small infra-red diode. Once found, we easily made our way through the opening and started up the hill toward Greenie and Gimp. We heard the quiet zip of a bullet and heard the vague rattle of metal behind us. Someone had dropped a rifle and we wondered why, but didn’t linger.

When we reached the SUV in the dark we were all three out of breath from the added stress and exertion. Gimp whispered, “Sorry Daiwee, I had to drop a guard, he came around the building alone and was un-slinging his weapon. Had he shot, the jig would have been up.”

I agreed with him, but felt the sting of guilt that I thought always came with taking human life. Gimp and Greenie were ready to go. Lidia was well on her way to the airport in Maracay for a trip to Willemstad, Curacao and then on home by herself. We would stay at the Hyatt, Santa Barbara Plantation, if we were lucky. From there, we would gradually go our separate ways to Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Miami. We would not meet again until we reached home ourselves.

We left the SUV parked in a vacant area of the Airport lot. Gimp’s beautiful little AR-15 and ammo were left in a canal close to the airport. We sweated the lift off from Maracay until near international waters. Then Fredo dialed some telephone numbers on his cell. We later learned the receiving numbers went out of service immediately and violently after the calls and no one was hurt, except the unfortunate guard at the facility.