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“You probably have guests you need to get to the airport. We don’t want to keep you.”
“I’m by myself. I’m just delivering food. It’s no problem for me to take a look. My cousin is a mechanic in town.”
“I apologize,” Ryan said.
Whether it was her statement, or the gun she produced, it didn’t matter. The effect was what was desired. The young man stopped and froze in place.
“Turn around,” Ryan ordered. “Hands on your head.”
“You’re robbing me?” he asked, as he turned and did as she had instructed.
“Not exactly.”
As Ryan kept him covered, Harvath rushed forward, cuffed his hands, and placed him in their vehicle. Waiting inside were Sloane Ashby and Chase Palmer. They listened carefully as Harvath asked the young man a quick series of questions regarding Phil Durkin’s home and security measures. The young man was frightened and answered as best he could. Ryan tried to calm him down.
“Just answer our questions and everything will be okay. No one will hurt you.”
The young man gave descriptions of everything he was asked until Harvath was satisfied that they had everything they needed.
“Let’s roll,” he said.
Nodding, Ashby and Palmer climbed out of the 4x4 and jogged back to the Land Rover. It was time to go to the next phase.
As they got the Kau Tapen Lodge’s Land Rover back on the road, Harvath alerted the rest of the team.
“Boardwalk,” he said over the radio. “All teams, Boardwalk.”
CHAPTER 70
As Ashby drove, Palmer sat in the backseat and organized the trays of hot food. If it had been him, he would have hired a local to do his cooking for him instead of having his di
Durkin, though, must have seen things differently. The hired help liked to talk. That was a potential liability he couldn’t afford. Not when he was on the run and knew people would be looking for him. Having the food prepared and brought over, while expensive, did have several advantages, not the least of which was that access with the outside world was limited.
As they closed in on Durkin’s small ranch, Ashby gave a SITREP over her radio and then asked for radio silence, as she didn’t want any distractions at the gate.
Pulling up to the wooden doors, she brought the vehicle to a stop and waited. Two burly men in ponchos stepped out of a stone guardhouse and motioned for the windows to be rolled down as they approached. Palmer had peeled back the lids on several of the trays so that the odor of food would permeate the Land Rover.
Even standing outside the vehicle in the rain, the men smelled like coffee and cigarettes.
The man on the driver’s side asked where the other delivery boy was. Ashby answered that he had the “Chilean flu” and pantomimed drinking a large glass of booze. The man chuckled and asked her where she was from. He wanted to flirt a little bit with her. His buddy, on the other hand, wanted to eat.
“She’s from the lodge, via the kitchen,” the other guard said. “Go see her when your shift is over. The food’s getting cold.”
Palmer laughed, though he shouldn’t have. The line was not meant for him to hear. He was a servant and should have remained invisible. It was good-natured ribbing between to comrades. His interjecting himself had made it about the man’s machismo.
“You think something is fu
“No, señor,” he replied.
“Why are you laughing, then?”
Shit, Palmer thought to himself. This guy is bored and itching for a fight. He needed to come up with something quick.
“I laughed because she doesn’t work in the kitchen, she works in the bar. And it’s her fault our colleague has such a bad hangover.”
The man on the passenger side laughed himself. “See? There you go.”
Palmer looked at the man on the driver’s side. “There are two things you can never trust a woman with: alcohol and guns.”
The gruff man seemed to like this joke and smiled. Reaching his hand in the window, he touched Ashby a little too close to her breast and said, “And what would a little girl like you do with a gun?”
Ashby pumped the gas as she took her foot off the clutch, which caused the Land Rover to leap forward a couple of feet. It also caused the overly friendly gate guard to snatch his hand back out of the window. The man on the other side of the vehicle found this quite amusing and laughed even louder.
“Okay,” the first man growled as he caught back up to the Land Rover, “you can go in. Make sure you tell them to bring us our food.” He added, pretending to put his hand back in, “I’ll make sure to come see you later at the bar.”
Ashby gu
As they drove into the courtyard, she activated her radio and a
Palmer smiled. “Come to think of it, maybe this phase should have been called Community Chest.”
She flipped him the middle finger. “We’ll deal with your alcohol and guns comment later,” she said. And then, playing on his nickname, she added, “Ass Kisser.”
He smiled as she brought the Land Rover to a stop outside the stone home’s heavy wooden front doors.
“Just like we rehearsed it,” she stated as she turned off the ignition and they both hopped out.
Removing trays of food, they walked up the front steps. Ashby went first, followed by Palmer. Before she even reached the doors, they were opened for her. Two more men stood there.
Ashby offered the trays to the taller of the two, but he shook his head. “Kitchen,” he told her.
She started walking in the most likely direction and the other man put his hand out to stop her. He peeled back the lid on the top tray each of them was carrying, while the taller man gave them a quick pat-down.
When the taller man tried to give her a second pat-down, she sidestepped him and asked, “Where’s the kitchen?”
The man grunted out directions and he and his colleague went back to their posts as she and Palmer walked down a wide hallway toward the rear of the house.
The rest of Durkin’s pals, four more men in total, were gathered around a large TV, watching soccer and drinking beer. The man himself, though, was nowhere to be found.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Palmer said. “Should we prepare eight plates? Or will there be others joining you?”
“Leave the food in the kitchen,” one of the men said with a dismissive wave. “We’ll get it ourselves.”
A voice from Northern Virginia came over their earpieces. “We’re picking up one additional heat signature in the northwest corner of the house.”
“Understood,” said Ashby. Quickly, she and Palmer unpacked the food, along with their weapons, which had been sealed in Ziploc bags and hidden inside.
With Palmer acting as a screen, she assembled a plate of appetizers and wrapped her suppressed weapon in a linen napkin underneath. She waited until the intensity of the soccer game began to pick up and then stepped into the television area.
“Who wants some?” she asked. “Compliments of Kau Tapen Lodge.”
One of the men turned to tell her to shut up, but upon seeing her, his pockmarked face spread into a lascivious grin and he beckoned her over.
His attention flitted back and forth between the soccer match and the attractive young lady carrying a plate of hot food.
Something wasn’t right, though. Was it the look in her eyes, or was it the fact that he could only see one of her hands and the other was hidden behind a napkin?
Ashby knew she was in trouble when the man gave up any pretense of watching the match. As his grin faded and his eyes narrowed, she saw his hand go for his gun. It was on.