The colonel was sitting in a car that had been parked fifty feet away from the safe house. The soldier delivered Ellie to him and indicated that she should get into the back. She did as she was told.

“Thank you, Colonel,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

Valencia nodded. “We don’t know how many are inside,” he said. “They’ve got two guarding the door.”

Ellie looked through the windshield and saw them: two young men wearing football shirts were ambling back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the house.

“What’s your plan?” Ellie asked.

“Hit it hard and fast. Don’t give them the chance to react.”

“What about my friend?”

“Male, late middle age, gringo with a scar on his face, dark hair and blue eyes. I’ve given them his description. They’ll do their best, but, you know, something like this? There’s going to be a lot of noise and confusion. I can’t promise.”

Ellie didn’t protest; that really was the best that she could have asked for. Milton had put himself into this mess. She would do her best to get him out of it, but whether he made it or not was largely going to be up to him.

Valencia took a radio from the dash and thumbed the transmit button. He spoke quickly and in hushed tones, his Spanish too fast for Ellie to translate. She heard check-ins from the members of the team that had been deployed around the property, and then the soldiers manning the cordon that had put a stop to the cars, trucks and buses that would otherwise have continued up and down the road. It was early in the morning and traffic would only have been sparse, but the sentries would notice its absence eventually.

There was one pedestrian. The man ambled along the street, descending the hill and passing around the corner. He was dressed in shabby clothes and was shuffling along. He slowed his pace as he reached the corner, looked down at his foot with seeming annoyance, and then dropped out of sight behind a parked car as he made to fasten a lace.

She leaned forward. “Colonel?”

Valencia held up his hand to ask for silence, his posture rigid and a nervous tic pulsing in his cheek. He took the radio, pressed the button to transmit, and spoke with clear certainty.

“Vamos, vamos, vamos.”

103

Chase watched from across the street. A team of four soldiers scaled the walls of a building near to the property where Milton was being held. They used grappling hooks, tossing them onto the roof and then hauling themselves up after them. The four figures—all men, he thought—met in the centre of the roof and waited there, crouched down low.