Inside Outt

buffet breakfast in the InterContinental’s restaurant—omelettes, exotic fruits, and several cups of Costa Rica’s justifiably famous coffee. Ben had a feeling the rest of the day would be nothing but granola bars, and wanted to make sure they had plenty to run on, through the night if necessary.
    When they were done, they headed over to Nico’s residence. Ben had briefed Paula on their cover for action—the story they would tell if anyone questioned their presence. They were Americans thinking about becoming part of the large Costa Rican expat community and were examining possible neighborhoods. They’d only break out the FBI credentials if it became necessary. Better to try something less remarkable first.
    Both the residence and office were in Los Yoses, about a kilometer from Spoon, each within walking distance of the other. It all fit: the regular appearances at Spoon, and Juan Cole’s “luck” in finding Larison there; Larison getting off the bus early in Barrio Dent to draw his pursuers away from the real locus of his interest in San Jose.
    They started with a drive-by of the residence, a condominium on a narrow two-lane street just south of the main thoroughfare. The condo, gated, fronted with palm trees, and obviously deluxe, was eight stories tall and looked new. Everything else on the street was low-slung and slightly ramshackle. Directly across the street from the condo was an enormous construction site—from the size of it, the future home of another fancy collection of condos.
    The street was on a short block open at both ends and with no turnoffs in the middle—the horizontal bar in an H. Ideally, that meant two sentries at each of the two possible access points—each end of the horizontal. The sentries’ job would be to warn the primary snatch team of the target’s approach. The reason for two was security in case of opposition. One sentry you could do. Finishing off two before either got a warning off was far more difficult, so the preference was always to use two on whatever point of access the target might use. The primary team would have line of sight to the building entrance or other X where they intended to actually do the snatch. If the snatch was clean, the sentries would move out fore and aft as the primary team left the scene with the target secured. If the primary team encountered opposition, the sentries could close with flanking fire.
    Larison would know all this, just as Ben did. So the question was, what would I do if I were him? And the best way to answer that, Ben knew, was to look at the street as Larison knew it—as someone who had repeatedly walked it.
    They parked on the main thoroughfare about a kilometer away and got out, baseball caps pulled low over sunglasses against the inevitable security camera tapes police would be examining if there were violence in the area. The sky was uniformly gray, the air heavy with humidity and the weight of impending rain. Despite Los Yoses’s urban density, they were surrounded by the cries of birds and the buzz of tropical insects. By the time they reached the condo, they were both sweating.
    Ben looked up and down the street. You wouldn’t want to approach from either end. You might be able to drop both sentries, but probably not before they got off a warning to their counterparts opposite and to the primary team. No, the way to achieve maximum surprise here was to initially bypass the sentries. Start from the inside and work your way out.
    He crossed to the opposite side of the street and stood in front of the construction site, his back to the front of Nico’s building. Paula came up alongside him.
    “What do you think?” she said.
    He looked around the site. It sloped steeply from where they stood all the way down to the opposite block. So far, the only completed work was a foundation and a couple of skeletal concrete floors. But that, along with the foliage around it, would provide a lot of concealment. The downside was the uphill approach, the possibility of being pinned down from above by anyone who spotted you. But in Ben’s mind, the concealment was the key. That, and the lack of any better alternatives.
    “I think he’ll come from here,” Ben said. “That’s what I’d do.”
    “So where do we wait?”
    “I want to see the office before I decide that. But if we set up here, I’m thinking we’ll park on Nico’s street. Not at the end, where Larison would be looking for sentries; not in front of the