Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough leverage available to do any real damage. A thumb in the eye socket was an option, but sound was the main problem at this point. Rapp managed to use his beard and hair to spin him around and clamp a hand over his mouth. At that point, it was just a matter of getting hold of the knife.
Ten more seconds and it was over. Rapp kept the back of the man’s head pinned securely against the bars as blood cascaded from the gash in his neck. When he finally went still, Rapp let the body slide into the mud and turned his attention to the lock. The mechanism wasn’t particularly sophisticated, but the overall build quality was depressingly solid. Prying it open with the knife wasn’t going to happen and a search of the dead man turned up no keys. Just a half a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
Rapp needed something stiff enough to work the lock mechanism but soft enough that he could fashion it with the knife. Materials at hand were limited. Rocks were hard, but not easily carved into a pick. The jungle foliage was easy to carve, but too flexible to move the heavy tumblers.
He pulled off one of the man’s boots and pried apart the sole, hoping to find some kind of plastic stiffener, but it was just rubber and leather.
Why did everything have to go the hard way?
He pulled the man’s leg inside the cage and yanked back on it, using one of the bars as a fulcrum. The quiet snap of bone sounded immediately, but he kept pulling until the jagged fracture popped through the skin.
Surprisingly, the knife was razor sharp, and it took only about fifteen minutes to fashion part of the man’s fibula into the appropriate tools. Once the lock had dropped off, Rapp swapped clothes with the corpse and shoved it in the cage. It wouldn’t fool anyone who was really interested, but it’d be enough for someone casually glancing through the trees as they passed.
A quick recon of the compound confirmed his first impression—minimal physical or electronic security, but a lot of armed guards. None looked particularly attentive, but their sheer number made getting by them unlikely even in the remaining darkness. Quietly killing a couple more was definitely doable, but how high a body count could you run up in a popularity contest? It wasn’t really his area of expertise, but he guessed that anything over zero was a move in the wrong direction. So he waited.
Dawn brought what he was looking for: a fairly sloppy changing of the guard. Taking advantage of a temporary gap along the northeast corner of the compound, Rapp slipped out of the jungle and through a door partially hidden by foliage.
It opened to a storage room and probably provided access for deliveries. Past the well-stocked shelves was another door that led to a spacious industrial kitchen. There were a couple of pots steaming on the stove but no sign of the cook, so he crossed the tile floor into an airy dining room.
Human activity continued to be nonexistent as he crossed a surprisingly tasteful living room and entered a hallway at the back. Most of the doors were open and led to stylish bedroom suites that looked like they’d never been used.
He slipped into one of them and locked the door. A quick search turned up a closet full of designer clothes, some of which still had the tags hanging from them. As luck would have it, he and Esparza were around the same size. The loafers looked a little small but would undoubtedly be more comfortable than the guard’s damp, torn-up boots.
The bathroom was behind a massive stone barrier that doubled as the headboard of the bed. The back wall was constructed entirely of glass and looked out into dense, flowering jungle. Rapp spotted a switch set apart from the ones for the lights and flipped it. The glass turned opaque.
This was more like it.
CHAPTER 32
RAPP pushed his hair from his face and examined himself in the still steamy bathroom mirror. With a belt, Esparza’s designer slacks stayed up and the fact that he wore his shirts loose allowed them to accommodate Rapp’s broad shoulders. The loafers were definitely on the tight side but that was probably a good thing—they’d stay on if he had to run. But that wasn’t the goal. If there was any running happening today, his