“Agreed.” Sam nodded. Moose had coordinated everything they needed for this mission. He would not let them walk into a cartel nest.
Angel added in his Latin accent, “Does not fit the way W operates either, based on what little we know of him. This mansion is privately owned by a man who lives here with no staff.”
“Livedhere. He’s likely dead,” Blade interjected. “W would send in an advance team to secure the property before he arrived.”
A grim truth. Sam had heard bits and pieces about the owner. Poor schmuck had built a multi-million-dollar business in the US housing industry and walked away from the civilized world to clean up an abandoned property out in the middle of nowhere.
Why? Because, in one day, he’d lost his wife and two children, who were caught in the crossfire of two gangs.
Poor bastard had no other family and snapped.
That’s why Sam would never get involved with anyone. Any op could go badly, and he wouldn’t return. Why put a woman through that? He’d already let two women down and that alone had broken him. Why risk failing someone else?
He’d hit his limit.
“Let’s sync and get this show rolling.” Nitro gave them the time on his watch.
Sam, Blade, and Angel signaled they were good.
“Only one guard has passed the front of the house since we arrived,” Angel pointed out.
Sam tracked the heavily armed guard walking east to west in front of the wide steps to double mahogany doors. Lights were on in two upstairs windows at the east end. Most of the ground floor had the soft lighting of a house gone to bed.
Why did that look right and wrong at the same time? Sam muttered, “Seems like there should be at least two covering an exterior area that wide.” It wasn’t as if anyone on this planet had intel on how W ran his operations. “Could be to make them look vulnerable with more guards hidden inside.”
A trap if anyone was expecting company.
That was almost impossible, based on how fast the FALCA team had gone wheels up on short notice. They entered the country on a private jet as five businessmen here for holiday.
Nitro studied the scene for a long moment. “Or W is overconfident someone wouldn’t find this place so quickly after the kidnapping. He’s not known for staying anywhere long for that reason.”
Sam concurred. Moose had been digging nonstop for any intel on the kidnapping when he came up with this lead after decrypting dark web chatter, a place where he kept a secret presence. Logan immediately reached out to his people in US intelligence. They had teams in four different countries following tips and other intel on the kidnapped senator. The multiple leads could be a smokescreen to confuse everyone, but that would not stop any of them from going after the senator.
When Logan confirmed to military intelligence that he had a team ready to go wheels up and a rundown of their plan, he was asked to execute the extraction, but it would be off the books.
Most of what HAMR Brotherhood did was off the books.
That was the beauty of not being part of a large military force tasked with protecting the entire US.
Blade scratched his neck. “W is an ultimate prize, but if our package is still breathing when we extract him, anything else is a bonus. Right?”
Grunts of agreement followed.
It wasn’t as if they weren’t going in, but the single guard brought back a niggle of Sam’s misgivings. He had no idea why since everything had run smoother than expected.
The helicopter hadn’t crashed. That had been reason enough to feel positive. They’d even made it here eight minutes ahead of 20:00 as planned.
Still, the senator had been taken from a hotel in Virginia almost forty hours ago. An eternity with most kidnappings, but this was no standard snatch and grab.
Not if W was at the wheel.
Nitro gave the signal to head out. Everyone had a job.
Each of them would clear one side of the structure. Then Angel would deactivate any alarm system, if one had been installed, and send two clicks five seconds apart through their comm units before they entered on the ground level.
Nitro and Blade would insert past Angel who stayed in the downstairs at the front doors while Nitro searched the upstairs east wing and Blade went through every first-floor room.
By the time Sam heard the “all clear” clicks, he would have taken down anyone outside the west end of the building and entered the garage to disable the vehicles. Then he’d clear the west wing, which intel indicated had no bedrooms.
