Dark Watch

“Nada,” Juan answered, noting that once he was outside the truck his phone could connect to the nearest cell tower. “We’re good to go. We’ll grab a couple hours of sleep. The van carrying Rudolph Isphording should be in position no later than eight fifteen. I want us ready by seven thirty. Has Julia checked in?”

Hali nodded. “She called me when you were in the truck. Isphording’s wife is out cold, and she’s on her way back to her hotel. She’ll be waiting at the prison at seven and will report in as soon as the van leaves the gates.”

“Okay, good. She’ll shadow them into the city. Linc, you’ll wait with the truck behind the construction site. The crash car’s in position?”

“Parked it myself,” Kasim said. “And I triple-checked the cables are in the back.”

Juan nodded. He’d expected no less. “Now, up until tonight the only thing illegal we’ve done is impersonate a lawyer’s wife, and even that probably isn’t against the law. Come tomorrow morning, however, we’re going to break about every law written into the Swiss penal code. If this operation goes south, anyone who gets nabbed is looking at a few decades in Regensdorf prison.”

His people understood the danger. It was what they were paid for, but Juan always reiterated the risks before they went into action. Hali, Linc, and the other Corporate mercenary, an ex-pararescue jumper named Michael Trono, looked primed.

The following morning broke gray and cold. A light drizzle had begun to fall by the time the team reached their prearranged staging posts. The few people out on the streets were huddled in trench coats or under umbrellas. Rather than a problem, the foul weather was a blessing because it seemed to have delayed the morning traffic.

Juan had little trouble breaking into the construction site. After all, it was his third incursion, and hot-wiring the big engine that powered the crane was a snap. The climb up the tower left him wet and shivering but, fortunately, the crane’s cab had a heater. He fired it up and drank coffee from a thermos as he waited. Around his neck dangled infrared goggles.

Julia checked in again, informing the team that the armored van bearing Rudy Isphording into the city would be there in another ten minutes. From his vantage high above the streets, Juan would be able to see them five blocks before they reached the construction site. Linc had parked the tractor trailer behind the muddy area. Juan could see smoke pumping from its stack as Linc waited with the engine idling. Hali and the others were in the crash car, a small van they’d bought secondhand from a moving company in Lucerne. Juan couldn’t see them but knew they also had infrared goggles as well as gas masks.

The chairman scanned the work zone once more. Piles of building materials littered the site alongside overflowing trash containers the size of trucks. Excavators and bulldozers remained silent. There was no activity around the construction trailer because no one had yet shown up for their shift. If they held to the schedule the Corporation team had observed the past week, the first worker wouldn’t arrive until a half hour after the snatch had gone down. The seven-story building was dark in the murky storm, a skeleton of steel and concrete. From the high vantage he couldn’t see where he and his people had wired it to blow.

His cell rang. “Juan, it’s me.” Julia Huxley. “Isphording’s van just stopped. One of the cops in the lead car got out to confer with its driver. Hold on. I think it’s okay. The cop’s getting back into his car. All right, they’re on the move again. You should see them in a second.”

Far down the street a police car came into view followed by the armored van and a second cruiser. They didn’t have their bubble lights or sirens on and crawled along with the regular traffic.

“Okay people, it’s almost showtime,” Juan said over his encrypted phone’s walkie-talkie mode.

He wiped the sweat from his hands and let them rest lightly on the crane’s joystick controls. Although he’d never operated a tower crane, and the height made depth perception a bit tricky, he’d run more than his share of derricks and cranes over his years at sea to feel confident he could manage the behemoth. He’d already swung the hundred-foot horizontal boom over the street, and the trolley where the cable descended was positioned directly above the roadway. The heavy steel hook was lowered to within fifty feet of the cobbled street.

“I got ’em in my mirror,” Hali announced from the crash car.

“Goggles on, everyone.” Though distorted, Juan could make out details well enough, most notably the infrared strobe lamp they’d mounted on the crane’s hook. Invisible without the goggles, the IR lamp glowed like a flare through the sophisticated optics. This was similar to the technology that allowed stealth fighters to drop bombs with pinpoint accuracy in any weather.