Betrayal (18 page)

“Then I’ll give you my full cooperation—until a week from this Friday,” Abrams said. “If I haven’t heard the all-clear by then, I’m going to make a call to your boss.”
 

As he spoke those closing words an odd look passed between Abrams and Rollins. Cassi did not know what it meant, but she left the meeting with an unsettling impression. It was almost like she was being used …

Chapter 28

Velveteen Beach, Florida

O
DI
PAUSED
WITH
his finger on the trigger. Something did not feel right. He squirmed to adjust the pile of sand beneath his chest and then added a few scoops. He wanted to take more weight off his elbows, leaving his arms completely relaxed. Satisfied with his position, he closed his eyes and focused on the ocean’s swishy roar as he slowly inhaled and exhaled a deep breath of salty air. It was time.

He refocused his gaze on the laptop lying before him on the dune and squeezed the joystick’s trigger. Four yards to his left the rotor of a remote-controlled helicopter spun to life, kicking up a cloud of fine white sand. Odi squeezed harder and the craft began to rise. He took it straight up, easing off on the trigger only when the altimeter display on his computer screen indicated a height of forty feet. Forty was what he needed to clear the neighboring rooftops with a margin of safety.

Focusing on the screen’s main display, he watched his own prone form come into focus as the helicopter leveled off. There between the rolling dunes of Velveteen Beech he looked like a single hotdog in a sea of buns. He smiled, pleased that the hobby-shop salesman had not talked him out of an extra four-hundred bucks in vain. Even at night the picture quality transmitted from above was remarkably clear. He could trace the individual camouflage splotches on his desert BDUs.

He used the joystick’s thumb lever to orient the helicopter due south and then pushed the handgrip forward. The bird responded like a dream. It was both nimble and quick.

Odi had positioned himself three houses down from Rollins’ place where he still had line-of-sight to the CEO’s third floor across half a mile of sea-oat-covered dune. He had reconned the beach from Charlotte’s cottage using Google’s keyhole satellite shots. With those photos, it took him just ten minutes to find what looked from above like the perfect spot, and the reality on the ground had not disappointed him.
 

He had exercised extreme caution getting to Velveteen, especially for the last few miles. Odi reasoned that if he were in charge of Rollins’s security, he would have a man watching the bridge through a long-distance lens. So he parked his rental car at a motel on the mainland and crossed the river on the bridge’s scaffolding just as the sun was going down. It was the time of day when everyone’s eyes played tricks and the ground was still hot enough from the Florida sun to make infrared binoculars worthless.

Once on the island, he low-crawled sniper style most of the way from the bridge to his chosen location, taking his time, moving bush to bush when no one was around. The size of the pack he had carried would have earned him a kick in the balls from every drill sergeant he ever knew, but for this operation he needed every bit of the bulky cargo stored therein so he had risked it. If detected, he had planned to pretend to be the nephew of a local resident, a soldier on leave preparing for upcoming Special Forces training. But he made it to the beach without incident or challenge. Once settled into his pre-selected spot on the dunes, he had spent six virtually motionless hours studying his target through a telescope lens while struggling to ignore the constant nipping of sand fleas.

The presence of attentive guards working three-man shifts bothered Odi. It was not that they posed any particular threat or challenge. He had built his plan around them. Rather, he was irked because their presence reconfirmed that neither Rollins nor Abrams intended to come forward and confess. That was a disappointment if not a surprise. Ayden had predicted as much, but it still blew Odi’s mind. How could the condemned men ignore him once they had seen the explosive video of their lackey and the encore with their colleague? Odi retained hope that Abrams would come forward tomorrow after Rollins’s death, but he would not hold his breath.

Odi tracked the helicopter’s position by comparing what he saw on the laptop screen to the printout he had made from the Google satellite shot. As the neighbor’s swimming pool disappeared from the screen, he felt the thrill of the end game kicking in. A moment later the helicopter was over the target.
 

Rollins’ beach house was a beautiful three-story white structure, with multiple balconies and lots of floor-to-ceiling tinted glass. Looking at it from his flea-ridden dugout in the sand, Odi could not help remembering that he had passed up the opportunity to spend his life in one of those. He had passed on the beach to work for Potchak. The thought set his blood aboil. Only with effort was he able to push his feelings of betrayal aside and refocus his attention completely on the mission at hand.

He could see the whole oceanfront side of the mansion from his position in the dunes. When the guards were out of sight, it looked more like the setting of a romance novel than a thriller. “Except for the damn fleas,” he added aloud, swatting for the thousandth time. Once the sun had set and the lights had gone on, it had not taken him much time with the telescope to figure out which balcony belonged to the master bedroom. Now that the lights were out, he steered the helicopter to where they had been.

He tried to position the helicopter directly over the master balcony, but gusting winds were creating a dangerous stability challenge. For this to work he had to align it midway between roof and rail and perpendicular to the master bedroom’s sliding glass door. He cursed himself for forgetting to factor wind into the equation when designing the payload. If, after all he had gone through to get here he had to abort his beautiful plan on account of something as mundane as wind, he would go berserk. That would be like scrapping the moon shot for a flat tire.

Three minutes and five aborted attempts later sweat was rolling down his face despite the evening chill. After six he began to worry about running out of fuel. After seven he was weighing the risks of a frontal assault. On the eighth he managed to hold the bird in place just long enough. The instant he had the position right, he brought the bird straight down. Given the position of the camera on the belly of the craft, all Odi saw for the last couple of feet of descent was a quickly rising floor and then a close-up still shot of tile grout. Tactically, the landing was perfect. He hoped it had not made too much noise. That was another oversight, Odi realized with a groan—not installing sound. For all he knew, a guard could be studying the helicopter right now, asking his boss via radio what he should do. Live and learn.

He pushed the silver button on the joystick’s base, causing the cargo clamps beneath the helicopter to disengage. The camera jiggled a bit and Odi let out a sigh of relief. He had successfully separated the cargo from the bird that had delivered it.

Odi lifted his night vision binoculars, located the porch, and felt a wave of relief. No guard. No lights. Time for stage two.

He fine-tuned the focus on the binoculars and then, still holding them in his left hand, squeezed the joystick trigger again with his right. He watched with satisfaction as the helicopter rose straight up into the air above the roof while the image transmitted to his computer screen remained unchanged.

He continued to take the unburdened helicopter up to a height of fifty feet where, using the binoculars and joystick’s thumb toggle, he pointed its nose out to sea. He pushed forward fully on the stick, sending the helicopter racing out over the water. Without any cargo, it streaked like a missile across the sky. He let it fly until it was little more than a dot on the horizon. Then he released the trigger. The rotor stopped, and the helicopter dropped like a bagged duck into the waves. Speaking to no one but the sea, he said, “Stage two, complete.”

Odi withdrew a second remote from his backpack and lay back down between the dunes. Once settled, he returned his attention to the computer screen. He had custom built the robot that now graced Rollins’ balcony using a remote-controlled toy jeep as a base. It rolled on four suction-cup covered wheels and had lots of sophisticated robotic equipment attached. He turned on the joystick and gave it a short forward nudge to confirm that it was operational, sighing with satisfaction when the camera image moved. So far, so good, Odi thought, knowing that the real tests of his engineering prowess still lay ahead.

He used the run of the grout to position the robot so that it was perfectly perpendicular to the sliding door. Then he drove it forward. The image shook back and forth after a couple of feet and then the view jumped to show the weak reflection of moonlight off heavy glass. Odi felt the thrill of the hunt coursing through his veins. He was almost there.

He propelled the robot up the sliding-glass door to a height of six feet and then released the joystick with a silent prayer. From his practice sessions on Charlotte’s door he knew that this was a tender moment, but the technology did not fail. The robot stuck.

He toyed with the focus, trying to get a good look inside the bedroom. With the helicopter gone, there was not much he would be able to do if the robot was in the wrong place. Odi was sure that he had the master bedroom, but there was still the chance that Rollins had swapped rooms with a guard as a security measure. All Odi could do about that was hope that Rollins was too stubborn or the guards were not that good.
 

He adjusted the focus, taking the image a couple of turns in the wrong direction before finally getting it right. Once the image crystallized he felt another satisfying surge. Mark Rollins was sleeping beneath a white duvet on a raised platform bed. Odi used the computer to zoom in on the face just to be sure. The meticulously-parted dark hair and long patrician nose of the master of the house greeted him. “Bingo.”

He pressed a black button on the joystick, engaging the robot’s auxiliary suction cups. Now even with the activities to follow, the robot would not slip.

Panning back out to a wider view, he saw something that made his heart skip a beat. There was a brassiere on the floor. Unless Rollins had a habit of cross-dressing, he was not alone in that big platform bed.

Odi would not allow collateral casualties to taint what Ayden had facetiously dubbed Operation Just Revenge. He would not be able to live with himself after that. He also felt certain that his fallen comrades would not want their revenge at that price. If the woman buried beneath that king-sized duvet did not remain motionless during the next few minutes, Odi would have to abort. To minimize the chances of that happening, he decided to sacrifice caution for speed.

He pushed a yellow button on the remote control, spraying concentrated hydrofluoric acid onto the glass a couple of inches below the anchoring suction cups. Hydrofluoric acid was especially potent on glass. It would dissolve a baseball-sized hole in less than a minute, even in Rollins’ hurricane glass. The hole would both help to direct the explosion and make the entire window weak.

Odi watched the duvet while he worked. Nobody stirred. Full speed ahead. He pressed the orange button exactly sixty seconds after the yellow, holding it down. He smiled with satisfaction as the camera began to respond with a slight, rhythmic shake. The orange button controlled a pecking device, which was now double-tapping every other second against the glass. Tap-tap … tap-tap … tap-tap … After half a dozen pecks, the duvet began to stir.

“Attaboy.”

After a few more taps, Rollins rolled cautiously out of bed.
 

Odi let off on the button and the pecking stopped.
 

As Mark Rollins stood up and looked around, Odi’s eyes were drawn to the gun in his hand. “Excellent,” he mumbled. “With a nine-millimeter Beretta in your hand, you’re not feeling the need to call for help.”
 

Odi glued his eyes to the screen as Mark surveyed his room. Each time Mark turned his head from the balcony, Odi gave the button another quick press. After the third salvo Mark raised his gun and walked directly toward the camera, tilting his head from one side to the other as though trying to focus. He was probably wondering if it was possible for a seagull to fly fast enough to imbed itself in hurricane-proof glass.

Odi would have enjoyed watching the doomed man’s confused face, but he forced himself to keep his focus on the duvet. He prayed the owner of the brassiere would stay fully covered for another two seconds. She did.

Pictures of Odi’s fallen friends flashed through his mind: Adam, Derek, Flint, Jeremy, Mitch, and Tony. Finally Rollins’ inquisitive face got so close that Odi could see nothing else. He said, “You should have confessed,” and then pressed the red button.

Chapter 29