34

Vau waited until 2.30 in the morning before making his move on the Grand Cherokee.

He’d brought his bunch of skeleton keys, with a wedge and a flexible car antenna for back-up in case he couldn’t get inside in the conventional way and needed to break in through a side window. Either way would leave no traces. Sabir’s Cherokee was a few years old, fortunately, so didn’t have the most up-to-date remote keyless entry and remote start and alarm. That made things a lot easier.

Still, it stuck in Vau’s craw that he was expected to go to all the trouble of breaking into the car when it would be just as easy to attach the tracker to a protected piece of the underbody – he could have been in and out in two minutes, with no one any the wiser. Instead, here he was having to risk himself, in a well-lighted place, where anybody could decide to exit their motel room in search of the ice dispenser or a bag of potato chips from the vending machine.

He hunched down by the driver’s door, with the car between him and the trio’s motel room, and set to work. As he was inserting the fifth key out of a total of fourteen possible keys, the door to Sabir’s room opened, and the man himself came out.

Cursing, Vau ducked down beside the Grand Cherokee and stretched himself flat on the ground. Then he eased himself underneath the chassis skirt, using his back and buttocks as leverage.

I wished this on myself, Vau muttered under his breath – bloody wished it on myself. It’s not even the fucking crack of dawn yet. Please God the bastard doesn’t go for an early morning spin. Those sixteen-inch whitewalls will squish me like a rotten tomato.