The guard shut the cover and strolled along the fence, moving right to left. None of the motion floodlights came on. Halfway along the fence, the guard stopped before the inward-facing camera for a count of three, then walked on and disappeared around the opposite corner of the building.
Watching the process told Fisher much: The guard’s failure to stop at a second control panel meant the alarm override for the floodlights was on a delay; the inward-facing camera was a checkpoint; and the guard’s lack of NV goggles meant his stroll along the fence was to check for breaches. The lawn, the hedges, and the edge of the cutback weren’t his zone of responsibility.
The motion lights were the easiest to disable. Fisher pulled the SC-20 from his back holster, settled it into the crook of his arm, and took aim. He fingered the ZOOMtoggle once, then twice, centering the reticle on the light. He fired. With a tinkle of glass, the light shattered. He adjusted aim, fired again, and killed the next light. He reholstered the SC-20.
Next he pulled a scopelike object from his belt, attached it to the pistol, and flipped on the power switch. With a faint hum, the camera jammer powered up. Despite the jammer’s obvious benefits, Fisher tried to avoid using it for two reasons: One, it consumed a lot of power, and he wasn’t fond of carrying any more battery weight than necessary. And two, using it required precise and unwavering aim. One tremble of the hand or misstep of the foot and you risked dropping the interference. He checked his OPSAT, watching the fence cameras go through their rotation, watching their cones overlap and separate . . . overlap and separate. . . .
From behind the hedge came a twig snap as Stumpy passed by.
Overlap and separate . . . overlap and separate . . .
Now.
He rose into a crouch, took aim on the camera nearest him, pulled the jammer’s trigger, and started walking forward. He kept his pace steady, his aim level. The camera made a rapid tick-tick-ticksound as the jammer scrambled the circuits.
When he was three feet from the camera, he released the jammer’s trigger and flattened himself against the fence. Safe. For now. Surveillance cameras didn’t cover close-in, horizontal surfaces very well; the mechanics of their motion usually left a blind spot along a wall or fence.
He waited for the cameras to complete a rotation, then mounted the fence and climbed to the top, where he flipped onto his back and shimmied over the razor wire until he was lying spread-eagle, back arched. He said a silent thank-you to Kevlar and RhinoPlate: handy against bullets and razor wire alike.
In one fluid motion, he pushed off with his feet and swung his arms up and over. The sudden momentum, combined with the spring of the wire, vaulted him backward. He did a full reverse somersault and landed on the grass in a crouch, then stepped to the fence and froze beneath the inward-facing camera. He waited until it panned away, then sprinted to the building, around the corner, and down the wall to the next corner, where he stopped and peeked around.
He was at the edge of a short dirt road. To his left, fifty feet away, was more hurricane fence; to his right, an open-fronted twelve-stall garage; the first six stalls were empty, the last six filled with jeeps like the ones he’d encountered on the beach road.
He felt the OPSAT vibrate on his wrist. He checked the screen:
INCOMING VOICE TRANSMISSION . . . RECEIVE ON ENCRYPED BUTTON FOUR.
Button Four was reserved for heavily scrambled and encrypted voice comms. What could be important enough to break radio silence? He keyed his subdermal. “Up on secure button four.”
43
THEREwas a five-second delay; then Lambert said, “Sam, we’ve picked up a stray radio signal from inside Shek’s compound. It’s coming from somewhere in the main house. Tell him, Grim.”
“It’s a burst transmission on a dedicated CIA operations carrier frequency. Don’t ask me how or what—I’m working on it—but it looks like there’s a good guy on the inside.”
“The CIA is running an op on Bai Kang Shek? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe not,” Lambert agreed, “but that’s not our worry. Bottom line, if we’ve got an asset on the inside, let’s see if we can use it.”
“Langley may not like that.”
“I’ll worry about Langley. You worry about finding that agent. Grim’s updating your OPSAT.”
Fisher checked his screen. He waited for the rotating DATA UPDATINGcircle to stop, then scrolled and zoomed the island map until the pagoda filled the sreen. In the northeastern corner of the building wasaaflashing yellow dot.
“I see it,” Fisher said.
“Since we don’t have interior blueprints, there’s no way to tell where exactly that is—upstairs, downstairs. . . .”
“I’ll figure it out. We don’t know if this is an informant, a case officer, an agent—nothing?”
“Nope,” said Lambert. “Use your discretion. Whoever it is, if they’ve got the inside scoop on Shek, get it. Whatever it takes.”
Curveball,Fisher thought. He loved surprises as much as the next guy, but preferred his at Christmas and on birthdays, not in the middle of a mission. Then again, as the saying went, covert ops were about expecting—and handling—the unexpected.
HEducked into the garage. The dirt floor smelled of oil and gas. He picked his way along the back wall and stopped behind the third jeep. He lay down on his back and squirmed under the chasis. From his pouch he pulled a quarter-sized plastic disk. Inside it was a six-gram wafer of WP, or white phosphorus, which when ignited burns at five thousand degrees Farenheit. If necessary, this would provide a spectacular diversion as the WP ignited the fuel tank and the rest of the jeeps exploded in domino fashion. He peeled back the adhesive and stuck the disk to the gas tank, then punched the correct screen on the OPSAT and checked the disk’s signal.
He wriggled out and trotted to the garage wall and peeked around the corner. The road was bordered on both sides by outbuildings and ended at a circular driveway before the pagoda. All the outbuildings were dark, save for the third one on his left, where a light showed in a curtained window. From inside Fisher could hear strains of Chinese guoyuemusic and male laughter.
Off-duty guards or compound staff?he wondered. If the former, it would be good to know where reinforcements would be coming from in an emergency.
He creeped across the road until he could see through the curtain. He pulled out his binoculars and zoomed in on what looked like a card table. A hand moved into view and slapped down a mah-jongg tile. There was laughter and clapping. The owner of the hand stood up. Fisher saw a hip holster with the butt of a pistol jutting from it. That answered the question: guards.
Fisher considered his options, and quickly dismissed his impulse to plant wall mines. One on the door and one on the window would almost certainly wipe out everyone inside, but it would also draw down on him the remainder of the security force. As usual, less was more. No footprints.
He moved along the back of the guard quarters, paralleling the road until he reached another line of hibiscus hedges that bordered the turnaround. He dropped flat and peered through the hedge. Here he had a unobstructed view of the pagoda.
The overhead surveillance photos hadn’t done it justice. Like a wedding cake with successively smaller layers, the pagoda’s six stories formed a sixty-foot-tall truncated pyramid. Seeing it up close, Fisher now had a sense of its grand scale. The lower level measured hundred feet to a side, or ten thousand square feet; the next level was half that, and so on to the top level, the tip of the pyramid, which was no larger than an average-sized bedroom.