W. Griffin: The Hostage

"Got it, sir," Kensington said.

"How big is the antenna?" Howell asked.

"A little larger than a satellite TV antenna," Kensington answered. "Eighteen, twenty inches in diameter."

"There's a backyard at my house," Howell said. "Fenced in. Would that work?"

"Where's your house?" Castillo asked.

"In Carrasco, not far from Yung's apartment."

"Okay, you are now our base station radio operator. Kensington will go with you, set it up, and show you how it works."

Both men nodded.

"Jack Britton, who knows how to operate a Car 4, and I know is pretty good at running around in the dark, gets suited up. Tony, you want to go?"

"Absolutely."

"I would like to volunteer, sir," Corporal Lester Bradley said. "I have never fired the Car 4, but I shot Expert at Parris Island with the M-16, and with the Beretta, and in Iraq I was the designated marksman of my fire-team. I used a bolt-action 7.62? 51mm sniper's rifle for that, sir. Essentially a Remington Model 700 modified for Marine Corps use, sir."

"You were a sniper in Iraq?" Sergeant Kranz asked incredulously.

"We don't have snipers in the Corps, Sergeant. But the better shots are issued a sniper's rifle and are assigned as 'designated marksmen.'"

"We have a Remington, right?" Castillo asked.

"I do, sir," Kranz said.

"Well, Lester," Castillo said, "you're just the man I've been looking for. What you're going to do is take Sergeant Kranz's rifle, make yourself a suitably camouflaged firing/observation position… We have binoculars, too, right, Kranz?"

Kranz nodded. "And the night-vision goggles. The new ones, the really good ones."

"Make sure that Corporal Bradley knows how to use them," Castillo ordered. "He's going to guard the Ranger while we're at the house."

"Sir, since it's Sergeant Kranz's rifle," Bradley said, "maybe he'd prefer to guard the helicopter, and I could go on the assault team."

"In special operations, Bradley," Castillo said, very seriously, "we operate on the principle of the round peg in the round hole, not personal desire. Sergeant Kranz is not the best man to guard the chopper. You are."

"Aye, aye, sir," Bradley responded with not much enthusiasm.

"Ricardo, you want to go with us?" Castillo asked. "I realize you haven't had much training in things like this."

Please say no. If anything goes wrong, you'll be the first one to take a hit. And I really don't want to have to tell Abuela about that. That would be even worse than having to tell your father.

"Nothing like this, I suppose," the young DEA agent said. "But I have had training."

"The DEA school… is there such a thing?"

"Yeah, and that's tough. But what I meant was that when I was at A and M, in the Corps, I went through the Ranger Course at Benning and Hurlburt Field one summer. Don Fernando can tell you that's rough. Yeah. I really want to go. Don't worry about me."

"Okay. You're on."

He glanced at Fernando and saw that Fernando's eyes were on him. Castillo shrugged slightly. Fernando tipped his head slightly.

He's thinking exactly what I'm thinking.

It's one of those things. It has to be.

"That makes seven on your assault team, right?" Darby asked. "Plus Bradley at the helicopter. That's eight. You have enough black suits, weapons, night goggles, etcetera?"

"Where do you get eight?"

Darby ticked them off on his fingers: "Kranz, Kensington, Yung, Britton, Santini, Solez, Munz, and you." He held his hands up, with five fingers on his left hand and three on his right extended. "That's eight. When I took those bags from Fort Bragg out to the house, I counted equipment for six-shooters."

"That's the trouble with you agency people," Castillo said, with a smile. "You assemble a few facts and immediately draw the wrong conclusion. Or usually, conclusions, plural."

Darby rearranged his extended hands and gave him the finger. Twice.

"What Colonel Munz and you and I are going to do, Alex, is drive sedately up to the door of Shangri-La in a car."

"You're just going to drive up in a car? Where, question one, is the car coming from?"

"Howell will rent it for us this afternoon from Hertz at the airport. He will use his credit card, thus keeping your name off the books."

"I have a car that you can use, Mr. Castillo," Howell said. "A five-year-old, powder blue Peugeot."

"Better yet," Castillo said, "things are going so well, I'm waiting for that famous other shoe to drop. Would your car be the sort of car used by Uruguayan bureaucrats on official business, Mr. Howell?"

Howell nodded. "That's why I bought what I did, actually."

"Alex, you will drive Mr. Howell's five-year-old, powder blue Peugeot to Tacuarembo early tomorrow afternoon; there's no sense you being there any sooner than, say, half past five or six…"

"And when I get there, then what?"

"Go to the Hotel Carlos Gardel. If it doesn't have a bar, it has to have a place you can have a cup of coffee. Munz and I will meet you there, say, at eight or eight-thirty. We will be wearing suits and trying to look as much as possible like Uruguayan bureaucrats. Don't recognize us. Finish your coffee and leave. Go to the car. We'll find it. It's powder blue, right? That should make it easy to find."

"And then?"

"We drive out to Shangri-La, quickly flash our badges to whoever answers the door. Eventually, we will get to Mr. Bertrand, who will be informed that there seems to be some irregularity with his passport, and might we have a look at it?

"If this goes as I hope it will, Lorimer will open his safe-saving Yung the difficulty of blowing it open-to get either his Lebanese passport or money to bribe us with, probably both. Once the safe is open, Munz will put handcuffs on him, and I will begin to explain to him what happens next, and the wisdom of his cooperating. Once we get that far, you, who will have been waiting patiently outside, will drive the powder blue car back to Montevideo.

"Anybody around, seeing the car leaving, will presume we're in it," Castillo went on. "As soon as they see you leave, while Britton, Yung, and Solez are cutting the telephone line and/or any cables leading to any transmitter antennas, Kranz and Kensington will come into the house, put plastic cuffs on anybody in the house, and make sure there's nobody lurking around who can cause trouble. They will then go outside to make sure there are no visitors, or that we're warned if there are. Ricardo, Britton, and Yung, who should be in the house by then, will herd everyone we've cuffed into a bedroom, where they will be attached to the furniture with more plastic cuffs.

"When that's been done, leaving Ricardo to watch those cuffed, Britton and Yung will start to search the house for anything interesting that Lorimer didn't choose to put in the safe.

"That's in Munz's area of expertise, too, so he'll help with that. I'll sit on Lorimer.

"Just before dawn, we take Lorimer out of the house and head for the helicopter. By the time we get there, there will be enough light to take off. The way I figure it, we'll have anywhere from a half hour to an hour before those cuffed manage to get loose, or someone comes in to make breakfast, or whatever, and discover Jean-Paul has been kidnapped by-this is important- Spanish-speaking people, two of whom look like cops/businessmen/bureaucrats and the rest like those people one sees in thriller movies. Those balaclava masks really scare people."

Darby thought the scenario over carefully.

"You don't need permission to speak, you know, Alex," Castillo said after a very long thirty seconds.

"Jesus, Charley," Darby said, smiling, "this might just work."

"And nobody gets hurt," Castillo said. "I want everybody to keep that in mind. This is not an assault. The only man at Lorimer's estancia who deserves to die is Lorimer, and unfortunately I need the sonofabitch alive. The primary purpose of the black suits and the balaclava masks and all the weapons is to scare everybody into behaving while we're there. And the masks will make everybody hard to describe to the local gendarmes when they finally show up and start asking questions."