“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Ty squinted tiredly at his watch. “Almost thirteen hours, but I’m going to wait until you go in so this old engine starting up won’t rattle the neighborhood. You probably don’t want the kidnapers looking out the windows while you’re trying to sneak up on ’em.”
“Good thinkin’, man. Thanks, again,” Steve told him, then turned quickly and faded into the darkness under the trees lining the road.
Steve’s team had worked closely together for nearly eight years, with all of the same men remaining on the job. One or two had been nominally wounded on more than one occasion, but so far they had not lost a single man as a result of being killed in the line of duty. When Steve recruited his team, he and his trainers at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), near Brunswick, Georgia, had really done their homework. Two years worth of homework in fact, training Steve as a Federal civilian, finding the men for his team and convincing them that civilian government work was more rewarding than their current military life.
Knowledgeable of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, these fraternity brothers are able to perform seamlessly and communicate in several ways. Line of sight communications could be exploited by a system of precise hand signals, adapted from American Sign Language, with the team relaying messages down the line from one man to the next. Messages to all were conducted via a series of specific clicks on their two-way radios, similar to Morse code, and heard only through their earpieces. They communicated silently, safe from the eavesdropping enemy.
It didn’t take long for the team to take up their designated positions. By means of four vantage points, with each commando having a different view of the house through their infrared headgear, they obtained four head counts for comparison. Conferring, they concluded there were four people in the house: Mike slumped in a straight back chair in the middle of the living room with one figure continuously pacing around him, and two people reclining in the two main floor bedrooms. No one was on the second floor, making a stealthy attack much easier. Gliding through shadows and sidling up next to the outside of the house, the commandos utilized miniature cameras to examine doors and windows for booby-traps and as possible entry points. From a window, the kitchen door could be seen clearly with no signs of danger from entering that way. Following a stealthy check of doorknobs, no open portals were found and it appeared the kitchen door would be their best bet.