I left him on the ground. With the truck in the way he couldn’t be seen from inside the house.
I picked up the electronic clipboard from the ground where I’d dropped it.
One down. The problem was that we didn’t know how many guys lived or worked in the compound, how much protection Vogel maintained. But I was sure this guy wasn’t the only one.
“Ready?” Merlin said.
“Just a second.” I jumped into the cargo bay and found the Ruger 22. “Okay,” I said.
Merlin punched a number into one of the cheap mobile phones.
He waited, looked at me. I could hear the distant ringing through his phone’s earpiece.
Then came the explosion.
It was louder than I anticipated, an immense cracking, echoing boom that rumbled and roared and shook the ground. From where we were standing, we couldn’t see it, but I knew the dynamite in the duffel bag had ignited the gasoline and created a vast fireball. The early-afternoon sky, already bright, blazed even brighter, tinged with red, and black smoke smudged the sky.
Whoever was inside the house would now turn their attention to the back of the house to see what the hell was going on. Probably most of the guards would race around to that side of the compound. It was a diversion bomb, which usually worked when I was in the country. A classic and effective technique. It would buy us a few crucial seconds.
I looked at Merlin and nodded. “I’m going in,” I said. “If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, call the police.”
While he stayed back and made sure that the guard remained bound, I hoisted the second cheap duffel bag and started toward the house.
77
Slowly, as if I belonged there, as if I owned the place, I walked around the back of the truck, to the front door, pulled open the screen door, and entered the house.
I was in the small foyer. There was a painting on the wall, something forgettable, an umbrella stand, a demilune table. All very ordinary and domestic. Nothing compoundlike about it at all.
Only then did I notice the closed-circuit TV camera mounted on the wall in the small foyer, pointed at the door.
If anyone was watching the monitors, I was in trouble. Especially if Vogel was watching. Because he knew my face. And although I was wearing a UPS uniform, I was not otherwise in disguise.
But maybe no one was watching the monitors. Maybe they were all investigating the bomb.
Or maybe not. In any case, I had to move quickly. I had a choice between going left and going right, and I arbitrarily chose left. Into a small living room that stank of old cigar smoke. The walls were raised-panel wainscoting, stained dark walnut. Mounted to one wall was a huge flat-screen TV. There was no one here. I dropped the second duffel bag in front of a long black leather couch.
Maybe the bomb had worked, and everyone inside the house was now focused on the fireball out back. Distracted, at least momentarily.
But not, as it turned out, everyone.
A tall and lanky guy appeared in the doorway. In a two-handed grip he was pointing a weapon at me, matte black, a semiautomatic. It looked like another Glock. Apparently Vogel had gotten a bulk price on Glocks.
“Freeze!” he shouted.
He was the smart one. He’d immediately connected the blast to the arrival of the UPS truck. He’d figured out where the danger was really coming from.
I froze.
“What the hell?” I said.
“Get down!”
I wasn’t holding the Ruger. That was in a pancake holster concealed by my brown UPS shirt. I was holding the electronic clipboard instead.
For a split-second I considered pulling out the Ruger.
But the clipboard, used correctly, was the better weapon at that moment.
“I need a signature, right here,” I said, thrusting the clipboard at him, as if trying to show him something.
All I needed was a moment of disruption. To disengage his brain from his trigger finger for a second or two. A break state, it was called. An interruption of thought, breaking the coordination between his mind and his weapon as he figured out whether I was for real. Because even though he’d deduced I wasn’t a UPS driver, he wasn’t entirely sure.
The lanky guy hesitated for a second. He glanced at my uniform, at my clipboard, in the space of maybe a second and a half.
I turned my left foot and flung the clipboard at his eyes. He jerked his head away. I thrust my left arm over his right, clamping down hard, while with my right hand I grabbed the barrel of his gun. I twisted it clockwise, up and away. He screamed as his trigger finger snapped.
Then I lunged at him, knocking him to the carpeted floor, my knee at his throat. I had his gun now and jabbed it into his forehead. He screamed again, said, “Jesus, no!”
“Where’s Vogel?” I said.
“His... his wing.”
“Where?”
He thrust his thumb to his right, my left. He indicated a set of double doors.
“Turn over. I said turn over.”
I shoved him, and he complied. I yanked out a couple of the heavy-duty cable ties, but apparently he wasn’t finished. He reared up, jerked his right hand back toward me, and I smashed the barrel of the Glock into his left temple.
He slumped immediately. He was dazed, semiconscious. I secured his wrists together, then his ankles. He didn’t fight me anymore.
These particular zip ties he wasn’t going to escape from.
Then I got up and went to find Vogel.
78
From the Google image I had a good sense of the house from above. I knew that the house rambled, and that there was a lot more to the house than the few rooms I’d passed through.
If this guy were telling me the truth, these double doors led to Vogel’s own wing. His residence, maybe.
Maybe.
Holding in my right hand the Glock I’d taken off the lanky guy, I opened the double doors with my left. Ahead I saw a long, broad hallway, with more wood paneling, chair-rail height. Here the wood was painted off-white, to match the walls.
On the right was what appeared to be a bedroom. The door was open, the light off. The bed was unmade.
On the left was another room, a study or office. More fancy woodwork here, and a long desk, cherrywood with scrollwork on the legs. On top of it, piles of papers. Cables and cords everywhere. In the corner of the room, a printer on a smaller table. The window had a view of the front yard. I could see the nose of the UPS truck. Here the lights were on. As if Vogel had been working there and left abruptly.
And then I saw Vogel.
And he saw me.
He was about thirty feet down the hallway from me, wearing a blue button-down shirt and a pair of dress slacks. He looked like he was about to put on a tie and go out for a meeting with a client.
I spun the Glock toward him. Vogel’s right hand was moving behind him, to where he probably had a weapon holstered, and I said, “Don’t.”
Vogel smiled. His right hand stopped moving.
“What are you going to do, Nick?” he said. “Shoot me?” He smiled.
I came closer, the Glock pointed at his center mass.
He’d raised an interesting question. Was I really going to shoot Vogel? Or maybe shoot him in the leg, wound him?
“Release Mandy and you can walk away,” I said.
He laughed. “Don’t insult me.”
“I’ll throw you a phone. You call your guys, tell them to let her go. It’s your only play, Vogel.”
He smiled, shook his head, as if this was the stupidest idea he’d heard in ages.