Guilty Minds

But my right arm was already swooping around his right shoulder and hooking his thick neck in the crook of my elbow. He flung his fists out and back at me, but it was useless. Grabbing my bicep with my left hand, I drew my shoulders back, and it tightened up like a scissor. I squeezed, compressing the carotid arteries on either side of his neck.

Within ten seconds, he slumped. He’d be unconscious for only a few seconds, really, but when he came to he’d be swimming out of a daze and sluggish. It took Merlin and me about a minute and a half to zip-tie his hands and legs, hog-tying him. I ripped off a length of duct tape and taped his mouth closed.

I left him on the ground. With the truck in the way he couldn’t be seen from inside the house.

I picked up the electronic clipboard from the ground where I’d dropped it.

One down. The problem was that we didn’t know how many guys lived or worked in the compound, how much protection Vogel maintained. But I was sure this guy wasn’t the only one.

“Ready?” Merlin said.

“Just a second.” I jumped into the cargo bay and found the Ruger 22. “Okay,” I said.

Merlin punched a number into one of the cheap mobile phones.

He waited, looked at me. I could hear the distant ringing through his phone’s earpiece.

Then came the explosion.

It was louder than I anticipated, an immense cracking, echoing boom that rumbled and roared and shook the ground. From where we were standing, we couldn’t see it, but I knew the dynamite in the duffel bag had ignited the gasoline and created a vast fireball. The early-afternoon sky, already bright, blazed even brighter, tinged with red, and black smoke smudged the sky.

Whoever was inside the house would now turn their attention to the back of the house to see what the hell was going on. Probably most of the guards would race around to that side of the compound. It was a diversion bomb, which usually worked when I was in the country. A classic and effective technique. It would buy us a few crucial seconds.

I looked at Merlin and nodded. “I’m going in,” I said. “If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, call the police.”

While he stayed back and made sure that the guard remained bound, I hoisted the second cheap duffel bag and started toward the house.

77

Slowly, as if I belonged there, as if I owned the place, I walked around the back of the truck, to the front door, pulled open the screen door, and entered the house.

I was in the small foyer. There was a painting on the wall, something forgettable, an umbrella stand, a demilune table. All very ordinary and domestic. Nothing compoundlike about it at all.

Only then did I notice the closed-circuit TV camera mounted on the wall in the small foyer, pointed at the door.

If anyone was watching the monitors, I was in trouble. Especially if Vogel was watching. Because he knew my face. And although I was wearing a UPS uniform, I was not otherwise in disguise.

But maybe no one was watching the monitors. Maybe they were all investigating the bomb.

Or maybe not. In any case, I had to move quickly. I had a choice between going left and going right, and I arbitrarily chose left. Into a small living room that stank of old cigar smoke. The walls were raised-panel wainscoting, stained dark walnut. Mounted to one wall was a huge flat-screen TV. There was no one here. I dropped the second duffel bag in front of a long black leather couch.

Maybe the bomb had worked, and everyone inside the house was now focused on the fireball out back. Distracted, at least momentarily.

But not, as it turned out, everyone.

A tall and lanky guy appeared in the doorway. In a two-handed grip he was pointing a weapon at me, matte black, a semiautomatic. It looked like another Glock. Apparently Vogel had gotten a bulk price on Glocks.

“Freeze!” he shouted.

He was the smart one. He’d immediately connected the blast to the arrival of the UPS truck. He’d figured out where the danger was really coming from.

I froze.

“What the hell?” I said.

“Get down!”

I wasn’t holding the Ruger. That was in a pancake holster concealed by my brown UPS shirt. I was holding the electronic clipboard instead.

For a split-second I considered pulling out the Ruger.

But the clipboard, used correctly, was the better weapon at that moment.

“I need a signature, right here,” I said, thrusting the clipboard at him, as if trying to show him something.

All I needed was a moment of disruption. To disengage his brain from his trigger finger for a second or two. A break state, it was called. An interruption of thought, breaking the coordination between his mind and his weapon as he figured out whether I was for real. Because even though he’d deduced I wasn’t a UPS driver, he wasn’t entirely sure.

The lanky guy hesitated for a second. He glanced at my uniform, at my clipboard, in the space of maybe a second and a half.