One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [146]
“Are you burned? Did Carlos suspect anything? Do anything when he saw you?”
“No, not really. I think I’m fine there. I’m pretty sure he thought I was a local. I didn’t say anything, and neither did he, so I didn’t give him any reason to think I was anything but a Bosnian.”
“Good. I think we drive on with the plan. We wait for him to check his e-mail tomorrow. While he’s in the café, I’ll crack into his room and see if I can spot the device, or come up with anything else that screams WMD. Run me through what you saw for security. What were the door locks like, did you see any cameras, was there a lot of traffic, basically anything you can think of that might interfere with me getting in.”
Jennifer sat for a moment, collecting her thoughts. When she was ready, she gave me a fairly detailed description of everything she had seen. I expected her to have tunnel vision, focusing on her survival after the contact with Carlos like most civilians would have, but she was able to clearly describe the exact number of doors in the hallway, the type of lock, the direction the doors opened, and even give a fairly good description of the old man she had inadvertently run into, to include what she could see of the layout of his room. I had gotten less information from trained operators in the past.
“So, you’re positive you didn’t see any cameras? Anything being fed to the front desk?”
“No. There’s nothing like that. I’m sure of it. The hotel’s fairly rundown. The only thing I saw was an old guy at the front desk, and he didn’t even look up when I entered.”
“You’re positive that there was only one lock, and it was like ours here in the hotel room?
“Well, I’m positive that’s true about the guy’s room at the end of the hall. I can’t say for sure about Carlos’s room, since he was standing in front of his door when I went by, but if all of the rooms are the same, then it has a lever, and a keyhole above the lever. That’s it.”
“And it looked just like our door lock?”
She pointed at our hotel room door. “Down to the engraving on the plate.”
“Okay. I think I can get in with our key.”
“How? Just because it looks like our lock doesn’t mean our key will fit. I mean, really, I’ve seen enough Magnum PI episodes to know that won’t work.”
“If our key will fit into Carlos’s keyhole, it will work. It won’t open it, you’re right, but I’m going to take our key and make a ‘bump key.’ If I do it right, we should walk right in.” I grinned. “Trust me.”
87
We attempted to have a normal evening at a local restaurant. Jennifer was subdued throughout the meal and I could tell that something was eating at her. When we got back to the hotel, she asked, “What are we going to do if you don’t find any WMD in his room?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it, and don’t have an answer. Let’s take it one step at a time. Right now, I just want to build the bump key and go to sleep. We’re both exhausted, and it might be the only rest we get for a while.”
Jennifer nodded absently. “Yeah, I could use the sleep.”
“Look, quit worrying. We can’t do anything right now and it’ll just keep you awake all night.”
“I know, I know, but ... Pike, I’m scared. I really thought I was going to die today. I have never been so terrified. This guy plans to kill a lot of people. I don’t think I realized what that meant until I thought he was going to kill me.”
Here it comes. She’s seen the elephant. Need to give her some confidence. “Quit it. Fear isn’t bad. You just have to manage it, like you did today. This guy is going to try to kill a lot of people. We’re going to stop it. Right?”
She stared at me, like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how. I’d seen it before. Soldiers who had a near-death experience and wanted to talk, but didn’t know what to say. Her next question threw me completely off.
“What was Heather like?”
I sat in silence for a second or two, wondering where this was going.
“I ... I can’t sum that up in a sentence. Why