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“Not rude,” he said. “But not possible.”
“DNA?” Elle asked hopefully.
David gave her a tiny smile before folding his arms and turning back to Joe. “We scouted the perimeter. There are fourteen active guards, more on rest. There’s a blind spot in the southwest corner. We can go up and over the wall there, but we’ll need to talk to someone first, find out where the woman is being held.”
“She’s in the basement,” Elle said.
Joe smiled when sharp eyes zeroed in on the bubbly, blue-haired woman.
“Southeast corner of it.” Elle beamed at David. “She’s currently lying on a bare mattress. I don’t know if she’s asleep or unconscious. Thinking about any other options gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“You’ve got eyes in there?” David was fast reassessing his first impression of Elle.
“It’s amazing what you can buy online these days,” Elle said. “They even sell drones. Teeny-tiny ones that fit in the palm of your hand.”
“A drone won’t get you that information. Especially a commercial one.” The guy wasn’t fooled, though—he’d learned fast that all was not as it seemed with their resident hacker.
“No.” She twirled one of her blue bunches. “But it did manage to locate the connector box for the internal security feed, and then Ryan there”—she gave Ryan a finger wave, and he saluted her—“climbed a tree, scaled a wall, did a bungee jump—who knows what he did—but he got the hardware I gave him inside the box. From there on in, it was child’s play to hack their system.” She smiled again. “And while I was doing that, I had my drone scope around. Did you know that there is a state-of-the-art warehouse about a mile from here that’s loaded with weapons? Maybe, after we get out of here, you could call up your boss and get someone to drop a little bomb on the building, because I think these guys might be planning to sell those arms to other bad guys. Just sayin’.”
David took a step towards Elle, as though fascinated by her. “You hacked a state-of-the-art closed system?”
“Like it’s hard.” She gave a snort. “Now, about that DNA…”
With a shake of his head, David looked at Joe. “Lake didn’t tell us you had this kind of skill on your team.”
“Lake Benson tends to keep a lot of secrets,” Joe said drolly.
Elle jumped up to sit on the bonnet of the vehicle they’d liberated from outside someone’s house. It was old, but Ryan had checked the engine and it was in good condition. It would get them back to the chopper. They’d been forced to land several miles outside of town, so as not to alert the compound to their arrival.
“Elle, bring up the compound diagram,” Joe said.
Sitting tailor style, Elle put her laptop in the cradle of her legs, and her fingers flew over the keyboard. She turned the screen when she had what she wanted.
“I can give yo
u a ten-minute window on security, but that’s it,” she said.
“How you going to do that?” David asked.
“I’m going to force their system to reboot, which will buy you the time you need to get Alice. During the reboot, the surveillance cameras will freeze on their last image before the system shuts down. You’ll be invisible to the system for the duration, and all alarms will be disabled.”
“You sure you aren’t CIA?” David said with admiration.
“I eat CIA hackers for breakfast. Oh! That reminds me. Snack time.” She reached into her pocket and came out with a Snickers bar. “Never thought you’d be able to get these in Peru.” She held it out to them. “Want some?”
They shook their heads, but Ryan leaned in for a bite, because Ryan never turned down an opportunity to eat.
“We go in here,” David said. “You and Ryan can take point. You get the woman out. We’ll cover you.”
They spend a few more minutes going over the plan before David’s team opened a bag filled with weapons for Joe and Ryan to choose from.
“Can I get that gun?” Elle pointed to the biggest one.
“Do you know how to use it?” Joe asked.
“No.”
He shook his head, reached into the bag and came out with a Taser. “Anybody gets close, zap them.”
