The detention facility – a grand name for an adobe hut at a straggling, muddy crossing of the two main local roads – was a single-storey, off-white building fronted by a slumping, shaded porch. A high stone wall ran around a compound at the rear. From her position on a small hill two hundred metres back into the woods, overlooking the site, Caitlin couldn’t see the prisoners’ enclosure, but she’d studied the satellite images closely at the pre-op briefing. A well appeared to provide drinking water, and a beaten-down path marked the circuit the inmates were allowed to walk during their exercise each day.

Assuming they were allowed any, of course. She’d half expected to see wooden poles driven into the earth for the traditional blindfold and last cigarette, complete with bloodstains from the coup de grace, but there were none. The guards most likely executed their victims in the cells and ordered any surviving captives to clean out the mess.

The wailing spiralled up through the old familiar stages.

Horror.

Denial.

Rejection.

Pleading.

Shock.

Then the abject surrender.

All in less than two minutes.

There was no way of knowing if the screamer was Lupérico. A quick recon of the former police station confirmed the position of two guards outside: only half dressed in uniform, sipping some sort of drink – probably coffee – under the portico. She thought she could even smell the brew.

Hard to get good coffee these days . . . She made a note to snag a bag of beans if the opportunity availed itself. Black tea with milk and sugar at four in the afternoon with a fistful of cucumber sandwiches just didn’t cut it. She was sure the guys on her extraction chopper wouldn’t object to a little extra cargo.

So, two men outside, at least four inside. Possibly six. Plus the three prisoners that intel said were inside, only one of whom was of interest to her.

All of Caitlin’s training, all of her experience, everything told her to wait this out, to lay up until nightfall, then strike under the cover of darkness. But she had reason to ignore the training and experience. Somewhere down there was Ramón Lupérico, the man who had released Baumer from imprisonment in Guadeloupe. A prisoner now himself, it was a righteous certainty he could tell her how al Banna had effected that release from his custody, possibly even how he then came to control the pirate gangs and jihadist militia that had infested Manhattan back in April ’07.

She did not fool herself that Lupérico would know how or why Baumer had chosen to reach out and lay his malign touch on her family, but that hardly mattered. She was here because Echelon had tasked her with securing whatever information she could extract from the target. The coincidence of her personal and professional interests created an impetus towards immediate action.