We reached the tip of the lake and I saw two police cars stop outside the entrance, men in uniform spilling out. I stopped running, saying, “CallAaron. Tell him to come by and pick us up. Give me the hotel key card. I’m going to call Knuckles.”
We let the policemen run by us and exited the stone portal just as Aaron pulled up. We piled in the back, and I dialed Knuckles.
Jennifer said, “What happened?”
I held up a finger, telling her to wait. Shoshana said, “Drive, drive.”
Knuckles answered and I said, “Fierro Hotel. Find it and go stage. Clandestine assault. I’ll give you the rooms as soon as I can, but get over there and get ready.”
To his credit, all he said was, “On it. We’re rolling now. Standing by for the rooms.”
By the time I’d hung up, Shoshana had given the bare bones of what had happened. Jennifer said, “So are we blown? Did anyone see you shooting?”
I said, “No. Everyone near there ran off at the first shot. Without a complete forensics examination, it’ll look like the cops got in a shoot-out and both sides lost.”
Aaron said, “Why did he do this? Was it a premeditated attack? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Shoshana said, “I think he panicked. I saw his aura change when he laid eyes on me. He recognized me from our operations before. We pushed it too hard at the Islamic center after following him through the Iguazú Falls. He thought he was being followed. I think those two policemen were just patrolling the park and when he saw them, he thought they were there for him. He panicked. The first one didn’t even get his pistol out of his holster.”
I said, “Get back to our hotel. I’m calling Creed.”
It took a couple of minutes to get him on the line, and by the time I did I felt our chances of wrapping this up beginning to slip away. I cut short his pleasantries and said, “I’m about to put your skills to the test, no fucking around. Don’t worry about being sneaky, I don’t give a shit if the target computer system knows they’ve been penetrated. Use brute force or whatever you need to do, but I need this information immediately.”
He said, “What is it? That all depends on the security they have. If youwant some government database, that’s going to be a lot harder than a convenience store.”
“It’s a hotel. I’m going to pass the phone to Shoshana and she’s going to give you the name and some information from a Brazilian passport, just like the ones that rented the other rooms. I need to know the rooms that the passport has rented, and I need it within the next ten minutes.”
He said, “Will do. Are you tied into the Argentinian police down there now, or do you want Wolffe to alert them like last time?”
I said, “Fuck no, I’m not alerting any Argentinian police. All that got us was a dry hole last time. Don’t say a damn word to Wolffe. We’ll do this on our own.”
Chapter 57
Knuckles sat in the passenger seat in his vehicle, staring at his phone and willing it to ring. It had taken longer to find a spot to park his vehicle than it had to find the hotel. One quick Google search and they were in business, with the hotel less than two miles away. The hard part had been locating a place to stage the vehicle which could plausibly be used for exfil with detainees.
The priority was the Ghost, but if anybody else was rolled up, they were coming too. The Taskforce could sort out any claims of kidnapping or breaking international law later—after they were all hogtied in the back of the Rock Star Bird and flying over the Atlantic.
They’d done a drive-by of the hotel, which was just a slice of a building attached to other establishments to the left and right. It rose eight stories, but was small, with maybe six rooms max on a floor and resembling a boutique hotel in SoHo, New York City.
In a perfect world, Knuckles had hoped to use the hotel parking garage, figuring it would have direct access without having to traipse through the lobby, but Hotel Fierro had no garage. If you brought a car, you were on your own in finding a place to park.
They’d circled the block, finding a parking garage about five hundred meters from the hotel. Not ideal, but with three men they could maintain security with one man at the vehicle, another in the hotel, and a third shuttling detainees.
Brett and Veep appeared in the garage, jogging over and sliding into theback seat. Veep began digging through a backpack and Brett handed him a key card, saying, “Got two rooms, no issues, so you can come back with us without looking weird, but they now have my passport information if this goes sideways.”
While Knuckles had been looking for a staging base, Brett had gotten online and reserved the rooms, solely to get access to their room security locks. Veep took the key card and began using the Flipper Max to duplicate it. In thirty seconds, the light went green and he said, “Got a master. We just need the rooms.”
Knuckles said, “Still waiting. One of you get eyes on the front door, make sure the Ghost doesn’t walk right out of it while we’re waiting.”
Veep exited the vehicle, tapping his ear and saying, “Check, check.”
Brett said, “We got you five-by.”
As they watched him walking out to the street, Knuckles asked, “What are we looking at?”
“It’s narrow. Thin. Both the lobby and the room floors are tight. The good news is there aren’t but five rooms on a floor. Getting from any room to the elevator will be quick. The bad news is there are only two ways out of the place: the front door or through a garden in the back. There aren’t any side exits to slip out of. If we use the front, we have to walk right by the lobby desk. If we use the back, it’s going to look fishy. It’s not something a guest would do.”
“We’ll make that call when we’re done. If it’s only the Ghost, we go out the garden and never look back. If it’s more we’ll have to make a judgment call.”
