Operation: Rigid Pt. 14

I ambled along the edge of the compound's grounds, about fifty feet in from the wall, scoping out the place while trying to look like I wasn't scoping out the place. During my first week I'd spent nearly all my time around my new home. I didn't want to arrive and then immediately start prowling the grounds, afraid that'd attract the type of attention I didn't want. I smiled to myself. It would have been hard to find the time anyway, as it seemed like my cock was always in somebody's pussy... not that I was complaining. After a couple of weeks, the new had worn off me, and our fucking had slowed to something approaching normal, once in the morning and then again at night, not four or five times a day like we'd been going when I'd first arrived.

What I'd learned during my meandering amble was that Voice's compound was a fucking fortress, and I didn't mean that it was a fortress for fucking. The eight-foot-tall stucco wall that surrounded the grounds was topped with a brick similar to that which formed the patios and drives, rather than razor wire, but that didn't make it any less secure.

First, someone would have to scale an eight-foot wall. Because of the smooth stucco finish, that would require a ladder or some other tool. Before any would-be thug could possibly make it over the wall, security would know because, every hundred feet or so, there was a heavy, square, reinforcing post in the same style. On top of each of those posts were four small, inconspicuous cameras. Two were looking outward along the wall, with two more looking inward. I could tell from the angle that the outward facing cameras almost certainly had overlapped fields of view, so taking out a single camera, or even both cameras on a single post, wouldn't create a blind spot.

The cameras pointing inward didn't watch the wall, but had their unwavering gaze turned across the grounds. Those cameras certainly had blind spots, especially close to the wall, but there was no way to reach that area without being seen, as there was at least a hundred feet of well-maintained grass inside the wall, unobscured by bushes or trees.

Not only did the walls have cameras, but all the buildings, trellises, fountains, and other structures bristled with them as well. It appeared all the cameras were small, fixed mount units, and most were reasonably unobtrusive, but as I wandered around the grounds, I was certain I was always in view of at least one camera. I might be able to avoid being seen if I ducked into one of the dense planting areas, but I'd certainly be seen going in and coming out again.

Voice's compound was huge, easily five acres but probably more, comprised of large swaths of meandering grass between large, knee high, stone walled, raised planting areas. Well-maintained paths snaked through the lush, dense plantings, and there was usually a fountain, trellis, or some other garden feature tucked somewhere inside. It had rained earlier this morning, and when I'd started my walkabout, the plants had sparkled in the sunshine as if they'd been dusted with diamonds. I suspected that Voice's compound would rival any tropical botanical garden anyone would care to name.

Including those in our house, during my slow explore, I'd counted 108 cameras, not including those in the mansion or on the walls I couldn't see. Because there were so many cameras, and some of them were well integrated into their structures, I wasn't even sure I'd seen and counted all the ones in the areas I could reach. The last thing I wanted was to look like I was trying to locate all the cameras.

With so many cameras it was impossible to watch all of them all the time, but I'd bet my ass that any dozen or so cameras could be displayed at once, and I'd also bet my ass that any motion within a camera's field of view would trigger the display of that camera, and I'd further bet my ass that all of the cameras were being recorded for later review if necessary.

I hadn't thought to look the only time I'd been in the main house, but I'd seen the camera at the front door, plus those in the padded room, and considering the fact that every room in our house had at least one camera in it, it was probably safe to assume there were cameras inside Voice's villa as well. In short, in less than three hours, I'd completely given up on the half-baked idea of somehow sneaking into Voice's house and absconding with damning evidence.

I paused to watch a hummingbird dance around a flowering plant. Because of all the beautiful, but obscuring landscaping, it was impossible to monitor large areas with a single camera, and considering the number I'd counted on the grounds, I didn't think it was unreasonable to assume there were likely something around two hundred cameras silently recording everything that happened over the entire estate. There was paranoia, then there was paranoia, and Voice was obviously the latter. He clearly didn't trust anyone, even among those he allowed in his midst.

After the brightly colored bird flitted away with a bee like buzz, I resumed my casual stroll. I'd already circled the grounds once, but I didn't want to make a tour of all the cameras and then immediately go inside. I needed to start getting the eyes in the sky, and the guards, comfortable with seeing me out sauntering around, so if I decided to do something, my presence on the grounds wouldn't immediately warrant suspicion. As I approached the main house, a man stepped out, lit a cigarette, and wandered to the edge of the fenced pool area.

"What are you carrying?" I called as I continued my slow approach.

"What?" he called back.

I slowed and mimed bringing a rifle to my shoulder. "What are you carrying? I saw one a couple of weeks ago and it looked like some kind of modified HK G36."

The man held my gaze a moment and then shook his head. "Not an HK."

"Okay... what is it?"

He took another drag before blowing the smoke upwards. "A FX-05 Xiuhcoatl... military issue."

I'd had some arms training while at TTS, and I recognized the name as being the carbine issued by the Mexican military, but I'd never seen one in person. "I've heard of it but never seen one. Mind if I have a look?"

The man stared at me as he leaned on the rail, the smoke gently curling up from the smoldering cigarette between his fingers. "You're not supposed to come to the main house."

"Are you allowed to come out here?" I asked. "I just want to take a quick look. Unload it first if you're worried about me." The man held my gaze for a moment. "Come on," I said, my voice full of teasing encouragement. "I promise not to shoot anyone," I added with a broad smile.

The man took another puff before tossing his cigarette to the patio, rubbed it out with his foot, and then picked up the remains and put it in his coat pocket. He then scrubbed the area with his shoe before he started toward the gate. I moved in the same direction but didn't approach any closer to the house. He trotted down the three steps as he dropped the magazine. That went into his coat pocket opposite the cigarette butt. He stopped, cleared the chamber, picked up the bullet, and dropped the round into the pocket with the magazine as he restarted his approach.

"You know anything about guns?" he asked.

"A little. It's a five-five-six by DGIM, right?" I asked, using a shorthand for a weapon built by Dirección General de Industria Militar del Ejército, that fired the 5.56 NATO round.

I think I impressed the guy a little. "That's right," he said as he coasted to a stop and held the rifle out to me.

I took the weapon, cleared it rapidly, extended the stock, and then brought it to my shoulder a couple of times to get a feel for it. "Pretty good balance," I said as I lowered the weapon and pulled back the charge handle to peer into the chamber, glancing at the selector switch at the same time. "Clean," I continued as I released the charge handle and brought the weapon to my shoulder again. "How the fuck did you get this?" I asked, making sure my tone was full of enthusiasm and contained no trace of condemnation. Gun restrictions in Mexico were severe, and this guy had a full-auto, military issue, carbine.

"Our employer has certain connections."

I continued to hold the weapon to my shoulder as I drew a bead on the various cameras on the wall, taking care to never point the weapon at the guard or the house. "I guess so. Who is he, anyway?" I asked as I continued mentally picking off cameras.

He didn't say anything, so I brought the weapon down and looked at him. His eyes had narrowed slightly.

"Didn't they tell you not to ask questions like that?"

"Yeah... that chick that brought me in, and gave me the rules, said something like that, but don't you think it's weird? I mean, I saw him at the party Saturday, and he was wearing gloves, and strangest of all, it looked like he was wearing a fucking mask."

"Because you're new, let me give you a piece of advice," the man said, his tone firm and no bullshit. "Stop asking those types of questions."

"Okay, got it," I grunted. I glanced down at the weapon and fingered the design on the side of the receiver. "Love the snake," I said, changing the subject.

The man smiled, my comment about Voice seemingly forgotten. "That's Xiuhcoatl, the fire serpent."

I grinned. "Appropriate," I murmured as I popped the weapon to my shoulder, dropped into a combat crouch, and crept away from the man and the house a couple of steps, as I quickly swung the rifle this way and that before I straightened again. I quickly collapsed the stalk, cleared it out of habit, and handed the weapon back to him. "Nice piece. Thanks for letting me see it."

"You military?" the man asked as he took the weapon.

I shook my head. "Nope. Oil well security."

His left eyebrow crept up a fraction. "You seem pretty well trained for just a security guard."

I shrugged. "What can I say. Some of the places I've been, you can get your ass shot off if you don't know what you're doing... know what I mean?"

The man chuckled. "Yeah. I've been in a few places like that myself."

I extended my hand. "Anders. Anders Kraten. I'm here to... uh... you know."

He took my hand. The man was maybe five inches shorter than me, and probably in his mid- to late-forties. He was dressed in a dark grey suit with a white shirt, but unlike the guard that had met me at the gate, he wasn't wearing a tie. Despite the few grey streaks at his temples, he was in shape and his grip was firm.

"Yeah, I know. Virgillio Hernández. Nice to meet you."

"Same here. Thanks again for letting me see your weapon."

Virgillio grinned. "You think either of those two whores you're living with would like to see my weapon? I'd love to show it to them... either of them."

My smile didn't flicker, but I didn't like him calling Teresa and Marta whores. "I don't know. Want me to ask?"

He leered. "Sure. It's a big one. You think they can handle it?"

"I don't think there's a guy's weapon they can't handle, no matter how big." My smile spread. "It's not a rapid fire, is it?"

He laughed. "With Marta, it might be. Thankfully, it doesn't take long for me to reload it."

"I'll see what Marta has to say."

"If she does, I'll owe you one."

"Don't sweat it," I replied as I began to edge away. "Nice talking to you, and thanks again," I said as I jerked my chin at the weapon.

"Same," he said as he turned away.

I heard the magazine slam home and the charge handle snap as he reloaded the weapon. It might come in handy to have one of the guards owe me one, but I couldn't see how him owing me a favor advanced me toward my goal. I highly doubted Virgillio owing me one, extended to killing the cameras and allowing me into the house to pilfer through Voice's personal effects... or having him turning over the dirt on Voice himself. I'd still mention his interest to Marta, in case she might actually want to fuck the guy, but I had a feeling the man was going to have to discharge his weapon himself, or find someone else to fire it for him.

I grinned to myself as I ambled away. My own weapon was fully loaded and ready to fire. I hadn't been in Marta's, or Teresa's, saddle in over two days. Not because I wasn't interested, but because I'd hurt myself Saturday. I must have strained something in my stomach, either when I was battling the Octopus, or when I was fucking... whatever that chick's name was. My abs had burned like a motherfucker as I was fucking her, but I was so horned up at the time I didn't care, thinking it was the burn of a hard workout. By Saturday night, I knew it wasn't just that.

Despite Gregorio and Teresa's little interlude in the car after the show, I'd heard them fucking their brains out in Teresa's room that night, but I was too fucked up to fuck, and since I didn't hear Marta, I assumed she was the same.

Sunday, my stomach had hurt like a bitch most of the day. Monday I was better, and today, Tuesday, I was almost back to normal. Marta had also moved like she was sore on Sunday, though she was much improved by Monday, so much so that Monday evening she was back on her spinning routine. I felt well enough now that I was going to start hitting the weights again tonight, and if that didn't hurt too much, I was going to see if Marta or Teresa wanted to join me for another workout later. I grinned to myself. It was amazing how much doing even simple shit, like standing, hurt when your stomach or back was aching.

I ambled along, stopping to admire flowers and other garden features. What I knew about flowers I could scribble on the palm of my hand, but it wasn't the flowers that I was thinking about. I was turning over ideas to defeat the compound's security... without much success. The cameras were a problem, but now it was clear there was at least one guard inside the house. When I'd visited the first time, there'd also been a guard inside the front door in addition to the one at the gate. It seemed silly to have a guard inside the door with all the video surveillance, and I puzzled over whether the thug was there as extra security because I was being brought in.

My lips thinned. That uncertainty was a problem. I was completely in the dark over what to expect inside the main residence. Was there only a guard on the front gate with Virgillio inside monitoring the cameras, or were there more guards scattered about? I moved on, still thinking. Until I had an answer to at least that question, I was frozen. If I managed to get into the house unnoticed, I might be able to take one guy, but there was no way I could handle five, or ten, or fifty more guys.

I again gave up on the idea of sneaking into the main house. I was going to have to get my information some other way, but how? Literally every person I asked about Voice immediately shut me down. I could get away with asking questions now because I was the new guy, but I knew if I continued asking the wrong type of questions, pretty soon someone would start asking me some, and they probably wouldn't be nice about it.

Tough guys liked to talk about how they couldn't be broken with torture. I was under no such illusion. Anyone could be broken, and if they worked me over hard enough, I'd break, tell them everything, and then photos of my badly mutilated body would arrive on somebody's desk.

Maybe I could fuck one of the ladies that came in to cook and clean. None of them were especially attractive, but they weren't hideous. It seemed to me they had to know who Voice was, or could at least give me some hints. If I could get them to give up some piece of information in the throes of passion, or at least give me some idea of the workings inside the big house... I gave up on that idea as soon as the idea began to form. So what if they told me how many guards there were? I still had no way to defeat the cameras.

Still, maybe I could fuck some tidbit of information out of one of them. Maybe if I picked up enough scraps of intelligence, someone, somewhere, could assemble the puzzle to see the picture.

The next problem was, where could I do this? My bed was out of the question. I was told straight up the cameras were always watching and listening. Maybe we could fuck in the shower so the sound of the water would cover any whispered questions and answers. I filed the idea away as a possibility. First, I'd have to seduce one of the women, but so far they'd treated me, and the rest of my housemates, like furniture.

I rounded another thick planting of flowering shrubs. In the distance, almost at the back wall, a figure stood before another garden. I couldn't tell who it was, but they were holding something and studying it intently. As I slowly approached, I realized the figure was Valencia, and I wondered what she was doing. I hadn't seen her enter the grounds, though the compound was large enough, and with enough vegetation, we could have easily passed each other without me seeing her. As I approached, I could see that she was holding a book that she was busily writing or drawing in. I made it a few steps more before she sensed my approach. She glanced up, glared at me a moment, and then snapped her book closed as she walked briskly away.

This was the first time I'd seen Valencia at the compound since she'd shown me to my room, and I wondered if her presence meant Voice was here. I changed my course, angling in the direction she'd gone.

I rounded the island of shrubbery she'd been standing beside. Obscured from the main house by the bushes, was the large shed that contained all the mowers and other equipment used by the gardener who maintained the grounds, and beside it, sitting on a concrete pad under a cover, a diesel generator that looked big enough to power a quarter of Paso Tolome. I hadn't seen Valencia reappear as I'd ambled my way to where I first saw her, nor was she in sight anywhere around the shed or generator. I again glanced back toward the main house, but there was no sign of her.

I continued toward the building, more curious now to find out where she was and what she'd been doing, because it seemed she'd was taking pains to avoid me. I picked up my pace a little as I rounded the shed. I stopped and glanced around. I walked around the third side of the building and peeked into the shed's window, but I saw nothing that I wouldn't expect to see. I moved to the front corner and then paused again. Unless she was deliberately trying to hide from me, I should have seen her either in the large open area around the shed and generator, or on her way back to the main house.

I turned and quickly walked back the way I'd come, but when I rounded the corner, I froze as I stared down the barrel of a 9mm.

"What are you doing?" she demanded in English.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I cried over her as my hands flipped up to my ears and my heart thudded hard in my chest. "Don't shoot!"

"What are you doing?" she demanded again, her voice harsh.

"Nothing! I was just out for a walk!"

"Why were you following me?"

"I wasn't! Jesus Christ! I was just out walking around and I saw you!" She glared at me. "Can you please put the gun down?" I asked, trying desperately to get control over my voice so I didn't sound so strident. She lowered the gun, but now it was pointed at my crotch, and I wasn't sure that was any better.

"What do you want?"

"Nothing! Jesus! I told you, I was just out looking at the flowers and stuff." I paused a moment and then continued. "Can I put my hands down?" I asked as I gradually lowered my hands. "Jesus... uh... lady," I said. She hadn't given me her name and I didn't want her to know that I knew it. "You scared the shit out of me!"

She didn't object as my hands slowly came down, but the pistol pointed at my crotch never wavered. "Why were you following me?"