Open Season by Cameron Curtis (early reader books TXT) 📗

Line-of-sight FM band radios. Another high frequency set like your ManPacks, but not as lightweight or compact.”

“Assuming they don’t disable all our comms, we have to hold for twenty minutes.”

Stein looks at me over her shoulder. “Do you want me to arrange artillery support?”

The woods are thicker than I expected. Deep and dark, mystic hollows and shadows. The road covers flat terrain. Everywhere, the wooded hills overlook the road. Elevated positions from which to mount ambushes.

At last, a clearing. There, at the end of the road, a large, two-story ranch house. Four-car garage, broad picture windows, a wide porch. Outbuildings. A woodshed. Cords of firewood piled high. An axe, its blade buried in a chopping block.

My God, a swimming pool. No weird amoebic shapes. This one’s rectangular, thirty yards long by twelve wide. It’s got lanes. The owner had it built for workouts. Attached to the main house, yet separate, a pool house. I’m guessing more of an oversize maintenance shed. The driveway is wide and paved.

On three sides, the house is set back from the woods. Especially the front, where the land has been cleared to make way for the road and the drive.

The side with the pool—sucks. A wooded hill overlooks the house. I’ll have to look at the interior to see which rooms are exposed to fire.

“Stein,” I say. “We don’t have the men to cover this place.”

“We have a force multiplier—Technology.”

The sun is going down. I want to take Robyn someplace six men can secure. No good. We’re here, and it’s Stein’s show.

We pile out of the Suburbans. Five CIA contract security. Five suits. They sling MP5s across their chests. Reach into the vehicles, cram spare magazines into their jacket pockets. They look impressive. The MP5 has served law enforcement and commando units well for decades. But it remains an oversized, selective-fire pistol.

Stein introduces the men. Adcox, Jimenez, Nellis, Orcel, Franz.

“Adcox is the detail lead,” she says.

I face Adcox. “You guys been here before?”

“This morning.”

“What do you think?”

“We’re thin on the ground, but the security system is solid.”

He hasn’t challenged Stein. Not good.

“You have any long guns?”

“No. MP5s and SIG P226s.”

“NODs?”

Adcox shakes his head.

The driver looks Hispanic. “You Jimenez?”

The man straightens. “Yes, Sir.”

I point to the hill overlooking the pool. “Hold that elevated position. Right now. Check in every ten minutes.”

Adcox looks to Stein. Should they accept my authority? She nods.

“Jimenez,” I say.

The man faces me.

“If anyone comes tonight, that hill is the first piece of real estate they’ll want. Stay sharp.”

Jimenez nods, strides across the pool deck, and climbs the hill.

I turn to Adcox. “That hill is outside the effective range of your weapons. From there, one man with a long gun can cut you to pieces.”

Adcox looks uncomfortable, says nothing. He leans into our SUV, pops the dash. He finds a walkie-talkie, turns it on, and hands it to me. “Spider One radio check,” he says into his mike.

My radio crackles to life.

“Alright,” I say. “Let’s see this technology.”

The living room and library are open-plan. They extend the width of the house, and half the length. The décor is modern, with comfortable bean bags scattered on the floor, some pulled around the fireplace. A pile of logs on a shiny metal support. A metal bucket of tongs and pokers. The back wall of the room is lined with bookshelves, a huge study table, and a sophisticated sound system with speakers hanging from the ceiling.

“Not much,” Stein says, “but it’s comfortable.”

I wonder how much this pad set the Agency back.

Wide picture windows grace the front of the room. Smaller windows on either side. Adcox sits behind three laptops arranged on the library table. Next to the laptops sits a high-frequency radio built for desk or vehicular installation. It’s a nice piece of equipment. At 400 Watts, way over-powered for this application. This piece has a range of at least three thousand miles.

“Here’s technology,” Stein says.

“Comms, you know about.” Adcox lifts a mobile phone lying next to the radio. Points to the three laptops. “The first two laptops here are Wifi’d to cameras that cover the access road and 360 degrees outside the house. The split-screens are labeled by camera unit. We can adjust camera angle from the keyboard. The third laptop is Wifi’d to motion sensors that ring the property. Trigger height is set to two feet. We don’t want small animals to set off false alarms.”

I squint. One screen, displayed in the center of a nine-screen montage, shows the junction of the main road and the access lane to the property. Cars are passing in both directions. Should one of them turn towards the house, the operator on duty will see it.

“Where do you plan to post the men?”

“Two six-hour shifts, I reckon. Three men on, three off. The three men off serve as a reserve. One man on the hill, one in front by the vehicles, and one in back at the tennis courts.”

“Tennis courts.”

“It’s a plush pad.”

“Okay. I’ll lend a hand.”

There is a wide opening in the back wall next to the library. Stein leads us through. The kitchen on the left is as big as the library, with a large table in the middle that can be used to prepare food, or for casual dining. On the other side of the house is the formal dining room. It doesn’t look like it gets much use, but the table, the silver, and the place settings are impeccable. Between the kitchen and the dining room is the stairwell leading to the second floor.

The kitchen is the point of vulnerability. There is a door at the back that leads into the pool house. Another door leads onto the pool deck. It’s dark outside. Stein and Robyn stand by the center table, looking out at the pool. I reach for the switch and turn off the lights in the kitchen.

“Keep the interior lights turned off,” I say. “Stay away from the windows.”

For the first time, Stein looks at the hill that overlooks the pool. She