Читать книгу Five-minute Mysteries 2 - Ken Weber - Страница 8
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Recovery at Dusk
The place was easy to find. After all, a pink-stucco villa in the middle of a rainforest is not easy to hide. Not that Selim and his band of cutthroats would even have tried to hide, for in this remote part of Sumatra they were in total control. What had been difficult, however, was getting to it. And getting to it unseen. Salah Selim and his people used a helicopter. There was a landing strip, too, for fixed wing aircraft, but Stan Livy and his recovery team had to come in the hard way, first by boat and then on foot.
They’d done it, though. Two days on the river and then a week of slashing through the undergrowth had brought them to the opposite edge of the valley, where they had hidden all day with binoculars fixed on the villa. Now getting out. That would be a different story! On the way out, they’d have the little girl with them, assuming the recovery went well. Timing would be crucial. On the way in, there had been some stretch to allow for things to go wrong, things that escaped their careful planning. But on the way out, they had to coordinate with the aircraft that would pick them up.
Be that as it may, Stan Livy thought to himself, that was then. This was now and, so far, everything had gone without a hitch. He was certain they had come in undetected. The four of them took turns all day watching what they could see of the activity at the villa and Stan had concluded that everything was what he called “site-normal.” With the exception of one new member, this team had worked together many times recovering kidnap victims, and they could tell when a site was anticipating a rescue. Stan, in particular, had studied the villa with great care through the glasses. He’d wanted desperately to get closer, but a single glance from the valley side where the team had stationed itself made it clear that they dared take only one chance to get close, and that would be when they went in to recover.
Yes. So far without a hitch. Stan didn’t like thinking that way, for overconfidence could jinx an operation. Still, it had gone smoothly. The new team member, the Dutch woman who spoke such precise, textbook English, had worked out just fine. She’d paddled against the current and hacked at the vines as hard as any of them without a sign of slacking. And her presence was a huge benefit. Crucial, in fact, for she had actually spent time at the villa working as a domestic, undercover for the Indonesian police. More important, her information was proving very accurate.
“The security system,” she’d told them before jump-off back in Jakarta, “is comprehensive, but it can be penetrated. The compound is surrounded by a masonry wall, as you might expect, on top of which are motion-response cameras and barbed wire. The wire is electrified at key points – around the generator, for example. Guard patrols are somewhat haphazard during the day. After dark, however, they’re frequent and regular. No one has ever tried to breach the security, and Selim has no reason to believe that anyone ever will. For all intents and purposes, he is the warlord in that part of the island. That might explain why he has the girl there instead of out in the rainforest, where he keeps the businessmen he takes for ransom.”
Stan looked up at the sky and then back over his shoulder. Although the day still had enough brightness to hold the compound in its fading light, the jungle growth behind him was now completely dark. At this moment he was within a two-second dash of one of the entrance gates in the wall. The team had crossed the valley at early dusk, and everyone was in place. Getting close had worried Stan considerably, but, like everything else, the approach had been smooth as silk. What had concerned him most, naturally, was being seen, and for just a second his stomach had lurched when the sound of a horse’s hooves came from along the wall to his left as he reached his pre-planned spot. It was not a guard, though, but an old man on what looked like an even older pony, accompanied by a pair of scrawny dogs. The quartet plodded slowly across the road that led out the gate, and on down along the wall.
Stan keyed a button twice on his handheld radio and whispered, “Sully! The noise coming at you! Not security. Repeat, not security!” Then he keyed the button once and whispered, “We’re go! On my signal. Wait for it!”
He looked over his shoulder again, then rose slowly to his knees, one eye on the camera above the gate to see if it was picking him up but it was pointed across the valley. For a second he wondered if it could have ... no, not possible; they’d kept well hidden in the trees. He looked one more time at the ink sketch on the back of his hand, where the Dutch woman had drawn a layout of the villa. With his right index finger, he stroked the pair of stun grenades clipped to his vest, and with his thumb checked the Uzi. He took a deep breath, waiting for just a bit more adrenaline. It was time.
That brief pause, as it turned out, was what saved Stan and made him call off the operation, for in that pair of seconds he realized that for the first time in the operation – the first time he knew of – there was a hitch.
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Stan Livy has become aware that something is not as it should be, and therefore calls off the operation. What is the “hitch” he discovers?
