If Joe was inside, how would I even get in there to find him? I couldn’t just walk up to the guarded gate. I didn’t think there was any way to scale the fence, either. Not with the sharp wire on top. I had to find another way. Even if I got inside, I had no idea how I would get past the two guards with guns whom the boy claimed were always outside of the room where Joe was being held.
“Where in the building?” I asked the boy through the app.
He pointed. “Back right corner.”
I handed him the cash. “Gracias.”
“Tú estás loco,” the teenager said to me, shaking his head and taking the money. Then he headed off in the opposite direction of the warehouse.
I turned back to the building, wondering what to do next. I had not planned to do this part by myself. I’d expected Raul to be standing here with me with his police experience and his gun at his side. I wasn’t Jason Bourne. I knew no martial arts. I’d taken a boxing class once back in college but figured that wouldn’t help me much right now. I was just a normal husband and father who ran a software company that made pretty presentations for other companies. I felt helpless and desperate at the moment. Joe was inside. And I felt ill equipped to go in there and get him. But I sure as hell was going to try.
Then I heard a familiar voice startle me from behind.
“Kid is right. You are crazy.”
I spun around, found Greta standing there a few feet away. She wore a dark-green hoodie covering her blonde head, black jeans, and gray tennis shoes. It looked like she was carrying a small black backpack. I barely recognized her.
“What . . . what are you . . . doing here?”
I was so shocked, I could barely put a sentence together.
“I changed my mind,” she said.
“What . . . Why?”
“I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you, too.”
“But how did you even find me?”
“I told you, Alex, I did this for twenty years.”
“You’ve been following me this whole time?”
“Give or take.”
“So you know about my trouble with the police this morning?”
“We’ll worry about that later, okay? Is Joe in there?”
“According to the boy.”
She stepped up next to me, crossed her arms as she surveyed the property. I couldn’t believe she was actually standing there next to me. However, I did find something comforting about having a former CIA field agent by my side, even if she was the same age as my own mother.
“Do you have a gun?” she asked me.
“Where would I get a gun?”
She sighed, glanced in both directions up and down the sidewalk, and then pulled up the front of her green hoodie. I spotted two handguns stuck in a tight black vest holster wrapped around a gray undershirt. Pulling one of them out, she handed it to me. “You ever use one of these?”
I shook my head. “Never.”
“Well, hopefully you won’t have to today, either. Just don’t shoot me.”
She gave me a quick lesson on how to handle it. I did my best to shove it into the back of my pants without setting the gun off. This was getting more real by the moment.
“The boy told me Joe was locked in a room in the back right corner with two guards always stationed outside.”
She nodded. “Let’s circle the block and look for another entrance. I’d rather not have to blast my way through the front. If there’s going to be any excitement, let’s save it for our exit with Joe.”
I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. But I followed her across the street and up onto the sidewalk in front of the warehouse center. Then we circled the block while staying sidled up close to the security fencing. The back of the property was nestled next to another warehouse complex that was not secured by a fence. We entered the back of that property until we were completely out of view from the street. Pausing, we took a good look around. There was really no one else within our vicinity. But I was still unsure how we were going to get onto the property. We had not come across an opening anywhere.
“Let’s go in through here,” Greta said.
“How?”
Greta tugged off her small backpack. From inside, she pulled out a small black bag and unzipped it. The bag was lined with various handheld tools. She selected a pair of what looked like bolt cutters.
“Where did you get all of this, Greta? The guns? The tools?”
“CIA safe house near Catedral Metropolitana.”
She said it so matter-of-factly. Like it was normal.