Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [253]
* * *
THEIR TAILLIGHTS WERE still visible as Small and Truelove stepped out of their truck, hustling to the back. Each took one of the adult bags and headed in the side door. The lobby was still empty, and they raced up the stairs, each with a heavy and limp burden. The upstairs corridor was also empty. The two retired soldiers moved as stealthily as possible into the room. There they unzipped the bags, and with gloved hands removed the bodies. That was a hard moment on each of them. Professional soldiers that they were, both with combat experience, the immediate sight of a burned human body was hard to take without a deep breath and an inner command to take charge of their feelings. They laid the man's and the woman's bodies from different countries and continents side by side on the double bed. Then they left the room to return to the truck, taking the empty body bags with them. Small got the smallest of the bags out of the truck, while Truelove got the rest of the necessary gear, and back in they went.
Small's job proved the hardest; removing the little girl's body from the plastic bag was something he'd work hard to erase from his memory. She went on the cot, as he thought of it, in her nearly incinerated nightgown. He might have patted her little head had her hair not been entirely burned off with a blowtorch, and all he could do was whisper a prayer for her innocent little soul before his stomach nearly lost control, and to prevent that he turned abruptly away.
* * *
THE FORMER ROYAL Engineer was already into his own task. He made sure they'd left nothing. The last of the plastic bags was folded and tucked into his belt. They both still had their work gloves, and so there was nothing they'd brought to be left in the room. He took his time looking around, and then waved Small out into the corridor.
Then he tore the top off the milk carton—it had been washed clean and dried beforehand. He lit the candle with his butane lighter and dripped a dollop of hot wax into the bottom of the carton, to make sure it would have a good place to stand. Then he blew out the candle and made sure it was secure in its place.
Then came the dangerous part. Truelove opened the top of me alcohol container, first pouring nearly a quart into the carton, to within just less than an inch of the top of the candle. Next he poured the alcohol on the adult bed, and more onto the child's cot. The remainder went on the floor, much of it around the milk carton. Finished, he tossed the empty alcohol container to Bob Small.
Okay, Truelove thought, fully a gallon of pure grain alcohol soaked into the bedclothes and another on the cheap rug on the floor. A demolitions expert—in fact, he had many fields of technical expertise, like most military engineers—he knew to be careful for the next part. Bending down, he flicked his lighter again and lit the candle wick with the same care a heart surgeon might have exercised in a valve replacement. He didn't waste a second leaving the room, except to make sure the door was properly locked and the do-not-disturb card hung on the knob.
"Time to leave, Robert," Rodney said to his colleague, and in thirty seconds they were out the side door and off to the street. "How long on the candle?" Small asked by the truck.
"Thirty minutes at most," the Royal Engineer sergeant answered.
"That poor little girl—you suppose?" he almost asked.
"People die in house fires every day, mate. They didn't do it special for this lot."
Small nodded to himself. "I reckon."
Just then Tom Trent appeared in the lobby. They'd never found the camera he lost in an upstairs room, but he tipped the desk clerk for his effort. It turned out that he was the only employee on duty until five in the morning.
Or so the chap thinks, Trent told himself, getting into