Pirate - Duncan Falconer [4]
He was in a comfortable position, his back against a rock, knees bent up in front of him, elbows resting on them, supporting a thermal imager in his hands. He was looking through the electronic optical device at a house half a mile away. It was one dwelling among a cramped collection of them, practically every one small, single-storey and built of mud bricks or concrete blocks. He slowly scanned the village, pausing each time the imager picked up a human form.
A mile beyond the village the land abruptly ended in a dead-straight horizontal line across his entire panorama, beyond it a vast black ocean and a lighter cloudy sky.
Stratton lowered the optic, letting it hang from a strap around his neck. He picked up a large pair of binoculars and took another view of the area. There was enough light coming from some of the houses for the glasses to be effective. Headlights suddenly appeared beyond the village, coming from the direction of the highway that followed the coastline. He shifted the binoculars on to them.
‘Vehicles approaching from the south-east,’ a voice said over Stratton’s earpiece. ‘Looks like two Suburbans.’ The communications were encrypted and scrambled should anyone else try to listen in.
‘Roger,’ Stratton said as he watched the two pairs of headlights bump along a gravel road. The vehicles drove into the village, lights occasionally flashing skywards as they bumped over the heavily rutted ground. They came to a halt outside the house Stratton had been watching.
He switched back to the thermal imager and focused on the lead vehicle. He could see the bright white of the car’s brake discs and exhausts. He watched as the Suburban’s rear doors opened. A couple of men climbed out. The thermal imagers graded them down the scale from the superheated components of the car. The bodies were lighter than the buildings behind them and the ground under their feet. Stratton could see the men’s hands and their heads, brighter than their clothing. Both men were carrying rifles, the cool metal almost black in their white hands, but just as visible because of the contrast.
One of the men went to the front door of the house. As he approached, it opened and two men came outside. There appeared to be an exchange of words. One of the men from the house walked to the Suburban and looked to have a conversation with someone in the back.
‘Do you have eyes on?’ the voice asked over Stratton’s earpiece.
‘Yes, though I can’t identify anyone. But it’s the right time, the right place and they look pretty cautious,’ Stratton replied. ‘I’d say it’s safe to assume our man’s there.’
‘Enough to do the snatch?’
‘Why not? It’s like fishing. If we don’t like what we catch, we can always throw it back.’
‘Is that what you normally do?’
‘If there was a normal way of doing things like this, everyone would be doing it.’
Stratton picked up a large reflector drum lens on a tripod with a device attached to the optic and looked through it. Because the image was highly magnified, it took him a few seconds to find the vehicles. He saw a man climb out of the back of the lead Suburban and talk with the one from the house. Stratton pushed a button on the device, which took several still recordings of the man. They were all of his head but more of the back than the front or sides.
The man walked towards the house. Just before going in he turned to the vehicles as if someone had called to him. Stratton quickly recorded several images of the man before he turned and entered the house.
Stratton viewed the images he’d taken and selected several of the man’s face. He downloaded the images on to the satellite phone attached to the lens. He scrolled through the address book, selected a number and hit send. A few seconds later a window confirmed that the file had been sent.
He took up the thermal imager again, carried on scanning the