The crowd was enormous and the SOS team was moving in on its first target. Despite her small stature, Vanessa managed to make her way through the masses without being jostled or bumped. She liked to tell the team that her reflexes were razor sharp “for an old broad.” This usually caused all of them, even Felix and Uly, to laugh nervously, for Vanessa was quite deadly. Boone also said she had an uncanny ability to read people, often referring to her as “the human lie detector.”
But another skill she possessed was her tracking ability. With her white hair, lined face, and nonthreatening demeanor, she was invisible to almost everyone. Especially her targets. Until it was too late for them. Once she latched on to someone, they had to be as good at shaking a tail as she was at following them. There weren’t very many people in the world that good.
The guy was about twenty yards ahead of her. She was glad X-Ray was able to confirm his identity. It made her completely comfortable using any means necessary to deal with him. Vanessa had done a lot of dangerous things in her time, but she considered terrorists the worst kinds of cowards. She had no regrets about taking this guy out.
She couldn’t yet see Uly over the crush of the gathering audience. Tracking a suspect in a crowd this size was difficult and dangerous. It required staying close enough that they didn’t get lost among all the people, but not so near they sensed your presence.
Vanessa always kept her wardrobe flexible, usually wearing a windbreaker tied around her waist or a sweater around her shoulders. She would keep a couple of collapsible hats in her pockets along with some scarves and sunglasses. It allowed her to quickly alter her appearance, making it more difficult for her targets to realize they were being followed.
Vanessa was reasonably sure the suspect was not giving her any thought at all. Off to her left she finally spotted Uly, who held his phone to his ear to disguise the fact that he was on the prowl. Normally Boone wouldn’t send Uly or Felix into a crowd like this because they were so easily noticed. But he didn’t have any choice.
Vanessa shortened the distance between her and the suspect when she saw him reach into his pocket.
Moving quickly, she closed on him. With his back to her, Vanessa twisted at the waist and drove her fist into his kidney. The sudden shocking pain caused him to straighten up and throw his head and shoulders back. Before he could cry out or react to the pain, she drove her thumb hard into the large nerve bundle below his left ear. The blow staggered the man and rendered him temporarily paralyzed.
Uly suddenly appeared and, acting as if he were the suspect’s drunken friend, hooked his arm around the man’s neck and said loudly, “Dude, you’ve got to slow down, the party’s gonna last all night.” Vanessa had already veered away, swallowed up by the mass of people. And to the passersby, the two men appeared to be a couple of wasted partiers. In fact Uly was squeezing off the man’s air supply until he lapsed completely into unconsciousness. “Whoa. We gotta find you a seat, bro,” he said, continuing the charade. He staggered toward a park bench with the unconscious man in tow, and sat him down. The bench was occupied by a couple of concertgoers. When they saw the gigantic Uly dragging a fully grown man toward them, they hurried away. Without further fanfare Uly surreptitiously cuffed the man’s wrist to the bench. Uly quickly emptied the suspect’s pockets of his phone, wallet, and car keys and drifted off into the crowd. The whole incident had taken seconds and no one in the crowd paid any attention.
One down.