One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [57]
“Please,” Sayyidd said, “he’s only one man. An infidel at that. We can defeat him just as we defeated the soldiers of the Great Satan. We now know what he looks like. God willing, the rest will be easy.”
Bakr didn’t believe it would be as simple as Sayyidd said. They still had to beat Miguel’s enterprise to the punch.
“We’ll need to be quicker than Jake. Once he finds the location of the package we’ll have little time to intercept it. Does this scanner work on batteries?”
Sayyidd said, “No, it doesn’t, but it has an adapter for a car cigarette lighter.”
“That’ll work. Let’s wait inside the car Miguel gave us. Once we hear the location, we’ll need to move immediately while Miguel and Jake are coming up with a plan. You’d better pray that Allah is really looking out for us, or we’ll be the ones begging for the pain to end.”
34
I looked closely at the chain-link Cyclone fence, trying to determine if it was electrified or wired with sensors. After convincing Jennifer that this recce wasn’t stupid, it would suck to get caught like an amateur before even observing anything of value. I saw nothing to indicate that the fence had any electronic monitoring at all.
Following the directions from the man on the phone, we had driven out of the city and into the countryside, leaving all traffic behind. We had found the road leading to his estate, the pavement winding away into the hills behind a ten-foot gate. I realized that the only way I was going to get any intel was on foot, so I pulled up another quarter of a mile and hid the Jeep on the side of the road in a turnout. I left Jennifer in the woods and told her I would be gone no more than an hour. She just about lost her mind, but I didn’t give her enough time to protest before moving off into the cover of the woods. Hopefully, she wouldn’t get in the Jeep and leave me stranded.
I approached the fence and sat for another couple of minutes, watching the road on the inside that paralleled its path. Satisfied that I was alone, I vaulted over the top and raced across the road into the wood line on the other side. I continued moving uphill until I came to a large open field falling away from the high ground. In the center was the house of El Machete.
House wasn’t the right word. This was a gigantic fortress-like compound protected by an eight-foot brick wall. All it needed was a moat with a drawbridge. The centerpiece was a three-story mansion fronted by a circular drive. Next to the main building was a one-story bungalow that looked like a residence or guesthouse. Adjacent to the guesthouse was some sort of warehouse or garage, with multiple vertical doors and several chimneys. All told, the compound inside the walled area was probably three hundred by five hundred meters, with several other outbuildings. Machete clearly had money.
I glanced at my watch, thinking I’d better start heading back before Jennifer got antsy. When I looked back up, I saw a man round the corner of the wall dressed like a modern-day ninja. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. He looked like he had gone to Commandos Are Us and bought out the store. He was outfitted from head to toe in every conceivable type of black Velcro tactical gear, complete with a black balaclava hiding everything but his eyes. All of his equipment was state of the art, including the Heckler and Koch 416 rifle he had slung over his shoulder. The 416 had been developed jointly with H&K and U.S. Special Operations as a replacement to the M4 carbine, the shortened version of the M16 A2. Both fired 5.56mm, looked the same, and in fact, the H&K was designed the same to cut down on any learning curve for soldiers who were used to the ergonomics of the M4. It also allowed any components used on the M4 to directly transfer to the 416. The primary difference was that the 416 operated with a push rod piston instead of a gas tube like the M4, making it much more reliable. The weapon was fairly new and very expensive.
The