“And there would be no way for me to hide the fact that the gate is being opened remotely,” Anna added.
“It would tip our hand, Tony,” Hunt explained. “Better to approach stealthily by the beach, get in position, and then let Anna work her magic.”
Tony thought it over for a minute and then said, “Are you sure they’ll come out of the house?”
“Not at all.”
“If they don’t, we’re fucked.”
That was stating the obvious. The objective was to get covertly in position with Tony at the front door and Hunt waiting by the large patio door at the back of the house. Once they were in place, Anna would remotely activate one of the motion sensors in the backyard to draw at least one man out to the back. Because Hunt wanted to get in the house by two different entry points—from the door leading to the rear terrace and the front door—they needed someone to unlock the patio door, as Anna had determined there were no electronic locks she could hack at the back of the house. The moment Hunt confirmed he had gained access, Tony would enter from the front door, the point of entry where Hunt expected the least resistance.
That was the plan, anyway.
Hunt took a gamble. A calculated one, but a gamble nonetheless. Anna told him there were motion detectors but couldn’t say what kind they were. Motion sensors usually fell into two categories. There were those that worked by infrared—heat sensors—and those that worked by ultrasound. The infrared motion detectors detected infrared energy—heat—given off by animals or humans. When there was an upsurge in infrared energy, the alarm sounded. They worked well outside in cold-climate countries, or inside any residence, but they weren’t the best in Florida. With nighttime temperatures often reaching the midnineties, the sensors weren’t effective at distinguishing a human from the ambient air. With that in mind, Hunt bet that the outside motion detectors were ultrasonic devices. If he was wrong, he’d know soon enough, and their plan would go bust.
After parking the Range Rover on a side street, they found a public pathway to the beach about a dozen or so mansions north of the Black Tosca’s safe house.
“How will you know if it works?” Tony asked.
“If no light comes on, it means it’s working,” Hunt said. A bead of sweat rolled down his back. It was a warm and muggy night. There was no breeze, which was unusual. Crouched on the beach with his back toward the ocean, Hunt scrutinized the house with his ATN night-vision monocular. Was Leila there, only two hundred feet away? He was sure that, right behind him, Tony was wondering the exact same thing about his daughter. Hunt didn’t like what he was seeing with his monocular. The house was in total darkness. Not a single light was on.
It could be a trap. He said so to Tony.
“What choice do we have?”
“The trick is to go slowly at first,” Hunt said.
“Okay.”
“If a light comes on,” Hunt said, “run back toward the beach and get back to Anna.”
“You know I won’t do that, so stop bullshitting me.”
“If this is indeed a trap, they’ll have automatic weapons,” Hunt warned him. “We have pistols.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of super-hotshot DEA agent?”
“A bullet in the head is a bullet in the head. It doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t matter how well trained you are. If they have superior firepower and we’re outnumbered, our only chance is our stealth and the violence of our action when the shooting starts. Let’s try to keep the element of surprise for as long we can.”
Without another word, he crawled toward the house. He held his pistol in his right hand while the left held a small radio scanner. Fifty feet and five minutes later, he stopped his painstakingly slow crawl and turned on the device. They had reached the edge of the property. Hunt doubted they were close enough for the scanner to detect the motion sensors—which were generally reliable to about thirty feet—but there was no room for error, so Hunt checked anyway.
Nothing. He continued forward, stopping every five feet to check the detector, half expecting the motion-sensor-activated floodlights to beam on them. On the fourth stop—they were now well inside the property line—the scanner vibrated twice, announcing that it had found the wavelength of the sound waves the motion sensors were using. It was too dark for Hunt to see where the sensors were located, but if he had to guess, he’d say they were positioned on the numerous palm trees lined up about fifty feet from the rear of the house. Hunt matched the scanner’s frequency to the one emitted by the sensor. By squawking in the same frequency, the scanner masked any other returning waves, making Hunt and Tony invisible to the motion sensor. Hunt repeated the process three more times. He glanced back at Tony. The moonlight was just bright enough to illuminate his face. He was staring right back at Hunt, his face blank—no trace of a smile, but no anger or animosity either.