Ramsland’s Beretta went into the waist pack before securing his Predator knife into its ankle sheath. He lowered himself to the top of the wall, crouched down, and looked toward the house.

He waited thirty seconds.

No movement. All quiet.

To avoid making scuff marks, he kept his boots away from the wall as he lowered himself to a hanging position. Using his knees to make a whisper-quiet landing, he dropped the last two feet. He knelt behind the hedge and pulled the dead bodyguard off of the first dog. He put a gentle hand on its shoulder, removed the dart, and broke its needle off before securing it into his waist pack. He repeated the procedure for the second dog. Both animals would fully recover in a few hours. The guards weren’t so fortunate.

He picked a guard’s radio, turned the volume to zero, and clipped it to his waist pack under the ghillie suit. Using his NV goggles, he moved in a low crouch along the base of the wall toward the west end, where it turned 90 degrees to the south at the property corner. From there he paralleled the wall through a landscaped area of ferns and small palms. Close to the house, he pivoted his NV goggles up. He no longer needed them. Dozens of small, solar powered landscaping lights lined the walkway.

Without raising any suspicion, he wanted to lure the third bodyguard into the rear yard. There were two exits out to the pool area, the sliding glass doors in the middle of the house and a side door just ahead. He wasn’t sure how much time he had. If the third bodyguard had seen his friends head down to the wall before disappearing out of camera shot, he’d be coming out to investigate why they hadn’t returned.

Doing his best imitation of bodyguard two’s accent, he intermittently hit the transmit button while talking. “Can you bring me out a pack of cigarettes?”

The response came a few seconds later. “Repeat. You were broken and unreadable.”

He said the same thing again, but added, “Dropped the radio.”

The tone was annoyed. “Be right there.”

The sliding glass doors or the side door? He waited a few seconds before hustling up to the rear wall of the house. All bets were off if the interior guard hadn’t immediately stepped away from the bank of television screens. His sprint toward the house would’ve been seen.

Ramsland would know soon enough.

If his mark appeared at the sliding glass doors, he’d have a twenty-five-yard shot. Not impossible, but he’d have to shoot center mass. He wouldn’t risk a head shot. It made tactical sense to halve the distance. Ramsland crouched below the windows and moved along the wall toward the sliding glass doors.

His answer arrived.

The side door opened and closed behind him.