44

Northeastern Moldova

The key to the operation was a device that looked a little like a lawn mower, assuming the motor was replaced by a large fan mounted horizontally and covered with black plastic grills. A pair of the devices was used to create a resonating magnetic force that matched the field surrounding the farm. Placed side by side, they created a corridor approximately six meters wide for the Whiplash team to slip through without being detected.

Once past the perimeter, they moved stealthily through the woods. While there were video cameras hidden in the trees, MY-PID had calculated a safe albeit twisted path to the fields beyond. The pattern looked like a series of drunken vees. The team had to snake through the thickest foliage single file on their bellies before finally reaching a dried out stream bed where it was easier to move.

All in all it took more than a half hour to clear the wooded area. At that point the team split into two groups. One, led by Boston, began circling to the east to cover the front half of the house and property. The second, led by Danny, continued in from the south. Danny’s group would do the actual assault.

The Predator with ground-penetrating radar provided a good view of the interior layout of the house. There were three floors above ground level, not counting the crawl-space attic. The top floor was divided into two large rooms with chairs; both appeared to be empty. The second floor looked something like a dormitory area, with small rooms boxed off on either side of a long hallway. There were staircases on each end. A total of four common bathrooms with four showers apiece were located between the rooms. All but two of the twelve people inside were sleeping in the dorm rooms, one to a room.

The other two people were in what looked like a small control room at the back of the house, directly above the basement door the Black Wolves had used to get in and out of the building. They were sitting next to each other at a pair of desks arranged in an el shape against the walls. There were no windows in the room, and the door was closed.

The basement, which appeared unoccupied, was divided into a small classroom where the debriefing had been held the night before, a workout room, and what appeared to be an armory. Besides the outside door, a single staircase ran down from above at the exact center of the building. There were no windows.

Even more important than giving Danny the location of the Wolves, the synthetic radar painted the mechanical layout of the house, showing him where the air-conditioning vents were. Most ran in the interior walls. One set, however, came through the attic where the air handlers were located.

That was the starting point for the assault on the house. After freezing a pair of motion detectors on the southwest corner of the house with blasts of liquid oxygen from a small tank—the sensors worked by detecting heat—the assault team moved next to the building. A former Delta trooper nicknamed Tiny and a Marine the team called Bean pulled special booties over their shoes and donned climbing gloves. Cautiously, they began moving up the clapboard siding. The gloves contained tiny, razor-sharp points that dug into the wood; they were surrounded by a supersticky rubberized material that made the gloves worn by NFL wide receivers look like ice packs. The booties, which were strapped tight around their shoes, were made of the same material. The two men were essentially human flies, scrambling upward.

The nickname “Bean” had been shortened from Stringbean, and it was an apt description of the Marine’s body. A quarter inch shy of six feet, he weighed 140—or at least claimed to; Boston joked that if he stood sideways he would fit through a sewer grate with no problem.

Tiny, on the other hand, looked like an artist’s conception of a typical Delta Force trooper, with a well-developed upper body that featured muscles coming out of his muscles. But the image was blown once he stood next to someone—Tiny really was tiny, and very much so, standing five-three and a half. How he managed to get into Delta, which Danny had always thought had a strict height requirement, was anyone’s guess.

The two men climbed directly to the roof, pausing to remove the gloves and booties. Bean then grabbed Tiny’s legs and lowered him from the peak, holding him as Tiny inspected the fasteners on the attic vent.

“Star driver,” whispered Tiny.

Bean pulled him back onto the roof. Tiny reached into his pant leg pocket and removed a small cordless driver, then found the star-shaped bit in the handle compartment. Bean once more grabbed his legs, and Tiny went back over to undo the vent.

The screws came out easily enough, but the vent wouldn’t pull away from the wood. The slow settling of the house over the years had pushed the roof joists apart slightly, levering the vent into the fascia. Tiny had to return to the roof for a standard screwdriver.

In the meantime, two of the people who had been sleeping on the second floor got up. Worried that the sound of prying the vent off might alert them, Danny ordered Tiny and Bean to stop and wait.

“It looks like a guard change,” Danny told them. “We’ll just wait it out.”

The two men inside took their time getting dressed; ten minutes passed before the first one went downstairs. When the next one finally went down five minutes later, Danny told Tiny to take a shot at getting the grill off while the men were on the first floor.

Tiny leaned back over the side. He levered the screwdriver in but found he had to use two hands to get the grill to budge. Suddenly it gave way. Tiny grabbed for it, but it fell to the ground with a loud clang.

Everyone froze.

Danny turned to Flash, who was looking at the radar feed on his laptop. He had the first floor.

“Nothing,” said Flash. “Looks like they’re talking. Maybe hard to hear from there.”

MY-PID, watching the feeds along with Flash, warned that someone was moving on the second floor.

“Freeze,” Danny told the men on the roof.

The man got up and looked out the window. He stared for a few minutes, then went back to bed. It was impossible to tell if he had heard anything or was merely restless.

“As quiet as you can,” said Danny. “Let’s move ahead.”

Bean lowered Tiny to the opening. He slipped in, slithering around the frame as he felt his way to the floor.

“I’m inside,” he whispered. “We need the gas.”

Bean handed down a clamp and a metal pole, which Tiny attached to the top of the frame. The pole had a small pulley at its end. Tiny set a stranded metal line through the pulley, attached a small weight, then let it fall to the ground. Sugar brought up a pair of large gas canisters and attached them to the line. Tiny quickly pulled them upward, while Sugar kept pressure on a lightweight line attached to the bottom of the tanks to keep them from swinging into the building.

Tiny had just hauled the tanks into the attic when the two guards who’d been relieved earlier finally left the room on the first floor. But instead of going to their rooms, they went up to the third floor.

“Right below you,” whispered Danny.

He watched on the screen as they sat on the couch. One of them took something from a nearby table—a remote control. They were watching TV.

Tiny was supposed to drill a hole into the metal ductwork to insert a hose for the gas. But even muffled, he worried that the sound would be enough to alert the men below. He crawled next to it, waiting to see if the men might fall off to sleep or leave the room. After a few minutes he realized that he might be able to loosen some of the screws on a nearby seam. He took out a pocketknife and went to work.