Read Online Countdown: H Hour by Tom Kratman - Free Book Online

place. “The house is bugged,” he said. “Presumably by our principal. We’ve shunted the furniture around a little, enough to place one flat surface by the right side of the door to any bugged room. Some already had tables. There’re a couple of crossed pencils on the tables of any room that has a bug.”
    Semmerlin nodded, unsurprised. Franceschi, new to the regiment and the team, but formerly of Australian SAS, looked a little nonplussed. In a reasonably understandable accent, he asked, “Our own employers spy on us?”
    “Usually,” Terry replied, with a grin. “We tend to work for the very rich. They don’t trust us peasants for beans. And with good reason. Hell, you’re one of them, or you were. You should know that.”
    “Hey,” the Aussie objected, “I’m trying to rise above my roots. Besides, ‘Australia, as everyone knows, is inhabited entirely by criminals.’ ”
    “Fuck. Next you’ll be quoting Monty Python at us.”
    “I have a vewy good fwend in Wome . . . ”
    “Fuck.”

    EDSA, Pasay City, Manila Metro Area,
    Republic of the Philippines

    The EDSA, the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, was the major highway and ring road encircling Metro Manila. It was just off of there that Pedro let off his two passengers.
    Lox waited until the taxi had disappeared into traffic before asking, “First question; did any of you mention how many of us were coming?”
    Graft thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No; we mentioned ‘the team’ but not how big it was.”
    “Good. Just FYI, we don’t have a lead and, at the moment, I’m not looking for one. We’re going to get another car, buy a dozen throwaway cells, contact a realtor, and buy or rent us a safe house for the other half of the team.”
    “Bad principal?” Graft asked.
    “Let’s just say a different class from us, and to her we’d be pretty expendable. Let’s also say that Terry thinks better safe than sorry.”
    “Fair enough,” Graft agreed. “Gotta love a paranoid CO. But it’s going to be a bitch to find a safe house here. It’s not like the old days, when this place was crawling with flyboys and squids. The other half of the team is going to stick out.”
    “Wouldn’t help if they were still here; we’d stand out among them, too. And an expat suburb won’t do for the same reason.”
    Graft shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose so. So we need a cover story for why there are half a dozen unusually well built gringos in one house in Manila.”
    “The whores?” Lox suggested.
    “Nah. People who come here to run the hookers come singly or, at most, in trios. Six is just too many.”
    “Crime?”
    Again, Graft thought not. “Our people even look like they’re involved in any kind of crime and we’ll attract the kind of attention we really don’t need. Someone’s going to want their cut, and we won’t have any cut to give them.”
    “Well what then?” Lox asked, with exasperation.
    “Dunno. Let’s get a car and go find that real estate agent. Maybe something will suggest itself.”
    “Better make it an SUV,” Lox said. “And we’d better make it quick, since the other six are coming in this evening.”

    South Green Heights Village, Muntinlupa City,
    Manila Metro Area, Republic of the Philippines

    “It’ll do,” Graft agreed, once the realtor had stepped away to lock the place up.
    Lox shook his head. “You’re just tired because, after two and a half days of continuous house hunting, this is the first one we’ve seen that isn’t awful.”
    “No,” the master sergeant disagreed, “I’m serious. This one will do.”
    “This one” was a smallish mansion, on about a one and a half acre lot. White stuccoed and with square, fluted columns, the place boasted seven bedrooms, plus maid’s quarters, a head-high surrounding wall, also white and stucco, plus sufficient messing facilities and a living room large enough for group planning. The furniture was sparse, but the house itself was pretty plush. A