by Ty Patterson
Zeb toggles the chute gently until he’s dropping slowly over the roof of Holt’s house, bends his knees, pulls both brakes, and steps out of the sky onto the house, balancing himself on the incline of the roof. He quickly unstraps the chute, pulls it down, and crumples it to its smallest. The wing suit joins the chute as he steps out of it, dressed now in his hunting gear, all black with his guns and knife strapped across his body. From his backpack he takes a long cord that he wraps around the wing suit and chute, and ties both to the chimney so that they don’t flap in the night or fall down to the ground and draw attention from within.
He double-clicks his collar mic, waits for Broker to respond and, when he does, double-clicks again to signal over and out.
He wraps another rope around the chimney of the house, wraps the other end of it around his waist, and lowers himself down the front of the house between the windows. He lowers himself down a foot and stops immediately. In all their planning, Broker and he had overlooked a simple and now glaring fact – the house clapboards are painted white, and Zeb is in black.
He wills away his anger at his mistake, knowing that Broker is watching and has caught on to the challenge. He waits a few minutes, working out various options, and then decides to take the risk and continue. The traffic is almost nonexistent, and neighboring houses are dark.
The front has six large windows, but Zeb is interested in only one – the one on the second floor that had the three blobs in it. Back in New York, Broker and he had worked out the angle at which he would have to lower himself so that the only way anyone from any window would spot him would be if they leaned far out of the window. So far none of the sentries seem to be so inclined.
He hopes his luck holds out.
He lowers himself to a few feet from the top of the window and then pulls out a telescopic wire camera. He has his Glock strapped to his left arm in case somebody decides to get a breath of night air. Broker modified the wire camera – it’s fitted with night-vision capabilities that can be turned on and off, and also a wireless capability with a limited range.
Zeb activates the wireless unit and hears an acknowledging double-click from Broker as the images come up on Broker’s monitor. He lowers the camera to the top corner of the window and positions it and finds the curtain obstructing the view. He moves the camera towards the central divide in the curtain, finds no luck there either, and moves the camera down the divide. At a narrow opening at the bottom, he gets lucky and is able to see inside, but all he sees are legs – three pairs of them sitting, two pairs facing the third – and a dim light burning in the room. The camera is on a downward angle, and he is unable to correct the angle to make it horizontal, so he moves it to the top right corner of the window. He gets lucky there and gets a clear view of Holt, with Lauren and Rory, both gagged, facing him, their profiles to the window.
Broker double-clicks, acknowledging the images on his screen.
Holt is looking straight at the camera as if he knows it’s there. Zeb keeps it still, hoping it’s too small to be detected by Holt – especially in the dark.
After his contemplation, Holt looks away and says something to Lauren, who nods. Zeb commits everything in the room to memory, where Lauren and Rory are seated, Holt’s chair – whatever the camera sees, Zeb absorbs.
He considers peering through the other windows but drops the idea immediately when he studies them. They are all dark from within and without curtains; he or his camera would be easily spotted.
He climbs back up the wall and steadies himself on the roof as he gets rid of the climbing rope, planning his entry all the while. There should be a skylight on the side of the roof facing the back.
This is his point of entry.
He moves cautiously up the peak of the roof and surveys the other side.
No skylight.
Chapter 17
He can’t tear his eyes away from the smooth downward slope of the roof. He looks away for a moment and then turns back to the roof.
Nope. His eyes aren’t playing tricks. There isn’t a skylight.
The wing suit approach was because of the existence of a skylight, which was marked on the house plan Broker found.
Clearly Holt had rebuilt the roof to eliminate that entry point. He must have considered filling in the windows, but that would have drawn attention to the house. Zeb leans against the chimney and considers his options. It’s obvious he’ll have to go in through a window – the middle window on the top floor, facing the rear, winning hands down against the other windows.
Zeb signals Broker with a small flashlight to get his attention.
Broker replies with a text message, and when Zeb answers it, back comes a string of curses. ‘I knew there would be a fuckup. It was too easy till now.’ Another string of curses follow and then a few minutes of silence.
‘Top floor has two men patrolling the front and back windows on either side of the house. These same two guys alternately patrol the middle windows too. Each man spends about ten minutes in the rear room where the middle window at the back is located. The room is without a patrol every ten minutes, so that’s your opportunity. You’ll have to use that.
‘Keep your phone powered on. I’ll message when the window is clear at the next ten-minute interval.’
‘No need. Will figure out. No more now,’ Zeb replies and powers off his mobile, removes the battery, and pockets both.
He peers down the back of the house and works out an approach to the middle window, wraps the rope around his waist, and sets down noiselessly to just above the sill of the window. He extends the wire camera and plugs it into the top left corner of the window, a corner that is usually overlooked by right-handed men, the most common handedness on the planet.
The room is dark, but the images stand out clearly, courtesy of the improvements Broker has made to the camera. He can make out furniture – a wardrobe, a bed against the wall – and in the distance the faint glow of the open door.
He waits, something he is very good at.
The guard drifts in eight minutes later and positions himself by the side of the door and stands still.
A good move, thinks Zeb, a sign of experience. An inexperienced guard would move to the window immediately. The guard drifts to the sides of the room and then approaches the window but stands a few feet and to the side, observing the world outside. All good tradecraft except for not checking outside the windows.
Zeb waits till the guard leaves and then slithers down rapidly to the side of the window. Bracing his legs against the wall, he withdraws a suction cup from his backpack, attaches it just above the sash, and cuts a circle around it with a diamond cutter. He removes the circle of glass and drops it behind his head into the open mouth of his backpack.
Most houses of that age have windows with locking mechanisms at the bottom, and luckily these windows have a simple sliding bolt screwed into the frame. It takes Zeb not more than a couple of minutes to unscrew the bolt, open the window, and slip inside.
He glances at his watch – six minutes from first tapping on the window. He can imagine Broker snorting in disgust, for Zeb has made similar entries in less than five minutes with hurricane winds eddying around him.
He mentally shrugs, moves to the far wall, and stands with his back to it a few feet away from the door. He rests lightly on his feet, becoming one with the house, his mind entering a grey zone where only motion and silence exist.
One of the sentries would be back in about four minutes by his reckoning, and a stealthy footfall outside the room signals his arrival. Lithe and wiry, the man entering the room is not Jones, the last surviving member of the Rogue Six, barring Holt himself. He enters the room slowly and immediately spots the open window and the circle cut in it. He steps forward and then turns back swiftly, spinning on his right foot, his right arm coming up with the Sig Sauer he had been holding at his side.
Zeb anticipates that move, coming under his arm and squeezing his wrist in a bone crusher with his left arm,
and renders him unconscious with two blows to a nerve center at the side of his neck. He then twists his neck sharply to break it. He searches the body, which is in its death throes.
No communication equipment, not even a wallet. Maybe Holt and the guards communicate by calling out.
He drags the body to the far corner of the room and covers it with a dark bedspread.
Zeb pauses just inside the door to listen for the other guard at the opposite end of the house.
Nothing.
Outside the room is a broad corridor running the breadth of the house, with two rooms on either side at either end of the corridor, and a large bathroom in between, opposite the room Zeb’s in. Opposite the bathroom and slightly off it is the staircase that goes to the lower floors. Zeb lies down on the floor and cautiously peers out the door and down the passage. He can see the rooms at the far ends and the door to the bathroom, but no other guard.
He slips across the passage, checks the rooms closest to him, finds them empty, as he expected, then goes to the front windows to peer across the garden and the street. All he can see is the street and a dark shadow behind it, the hedge line. He’s not sure if Broker can spot him.
It doesn’t matter.
He goes back to the door, listens, and then glances out.
No one.
He glides across to the bathroom, large and luxurious, with a Jacuzzi for four, which Broker would have commented on, makes sure it’s unoccupied, and then returns to the door.
Three long strides will take him past the staircase and to the doors of the last two rooms at the other end of the house, where the other sentry should be. He takes four, walking purposefully but not hurrying.
His luck runs out when he crosses the stairs.
The other guard steps out of the far room at the back and looks to the left, straight at Zeb. Zeb is a dark shadow amidst the dark of the house, and the guard looks back to the room ahead after his casual glance to the left. He takes a half step forward, does a double take, and spins back toward Zeb, his mouth opening in a shout, his hand lifting his gun.
In Zeb’s world, reaction times are in milliseconds, and this guard is fast.
Incredibly fast.
In Zeb’s world, incredibly fast means incredibly dead.
Zeb blurred into motion even as the gunman was turning around. His shoulder slams into the guard, knocking the wind out of him and deterring his alarm call to the rest of the pack. Zeb takes a step to the side, grabs the guard’s hair, and cuts his throat. The throat has strong muscles and tissue, and usually a sawing motion is what it really takes to cut a throat. Not now, not here. Zeb is all motion and fire, currents of energy surging through his body, centering on the blade of his knife, which goes in cleanly. The gunman’s body fountains his blood out in large spurts.
Zeb lays the body down and searches it.
This gunman isn’t carrying a mic or headset either.
He’s alert for any approaching sounds from the floor below but doesn’t detect any. The floors are thick and solid, and that’s probably deadened the scuffle.
Two down, four to go.
The plan, Broker had looked bemused at that description, called for Zeb to take out the gunmen on the top floor and then go to the hostage room to neutralize Holt. Broker would take out the other gunmen on the ground floor with his long gun as soon as Zeb entered the hostage room. The last gunman on the second floor, other than Holt, would be dealt with by Zeb or Broker as the situation presented itself.
The stairs to the second floor are wooden and thickly carpeted, with a landing between the floors.
He hugs the wall and tests the first step.
No creak.
He moves down cautiously and checks around the landing. The second floor is brightly lit but, from what he can see of it, empty.
Once he reaches the bottom of the stairs, on his right will be the hostage room, on his left the rooms the third gunman is patrolling, and in front, a bathroom.
Zeb goes down the last flight casually yet alert and slips into the bathroom opposite, his knife ready.
It’s empty.
Out of the corner of his eye, while crossing the passage, he sees someone with his back to him in the room to his right, the hostage room.
Getting to his knees, he uncoils his wire camera and places it under the door. Swiveling the lens toward the rooms with the patrol, he times the appearance of the guard.
The guard appears a few minutes later, going from the rear room to the front, and returns after ten minutes. The resolution of the image is too small for Zeb to make out if it’s Jones, but he doesn’t think so. Too short.
He turns the camera toward the hostage room and makes out the edges of a couple of chairs, but not much else. There is a faint murmur coming from that room. He waits for the guard at the other end to repeat his ten-minute routine, and when he disappears into the rear room, Zeb walks out.
He has left his backpack and his entire kit, other than his Glock, a couple of clips and his knife, in the bathroom.
He hugs the left wall so that he can get the widest angle into the hostage room, and just as he nears the door, he sees them.
Lauren and Rory are bound and gagged in two chairs facing the door at an angle. The room, what he can see of it, has a dining table and a few chairs, a bookshelf on one wall, but not much else by way of furniture. All this in a glance as he tries to locate Holt.
He pauses just outside the door, trying to figure out what Lauren and Rory, who have spotted him, are trying to signal with their eyes. They tensed up initially when they saw him and then consciously relaxed, but their eyes are giving him mixed signals.
He moves in, spots Holt, his back to the door. He’s staring out of the window.
Conscious that the guard behind him might reappear in the passage at any minute, Zeb steps into the room, moves silently to the right, close to the wall, closer to Holt. His pulse slows, stillness flowing through him.
Holt senses something, stiffens and, without looking back, says, ‘So here you are, Major Carter. I’ve been expecting you. Clearly my guys upstairs weren’t as good as I thought.’
‘Turn around slowly.’
He hears a window shatter and knows what that means. Broker protecting his back.
Holt laughs. ‘Is that what I think it is? Damn, your timing’s bad. I was planning to have some fun with the Balthazar bitch. You know, I’ve fucked so many niggers in Luvungi that I’ve forgotten what it is to have some white pussy.’
Lauren is chalk white and trembling violently.
Rory has gone into shock and isn’t reacting to much.
Zeb is breathing slowly and easily, his heart rate low. He knows what Holt’s doing and what’s coming. He has been in these situations a million times, seen many Holts.
And then a door behind the dining table opens.
Chapter 18
The Sig Sauer P229 DAK rises quickly to the gunman’s shoulder as he takes a long step in the room. At the same time, Holt is pivoting about smoothly, his right hand holding another Sig Sauer. The new gunman has to compensate for Zeb’s position, and his initial burst goes wild, over Zeb’s head.
Zeb crouches, his Glock an extension of his arm, the barrel seeing what his eye sees. His first shot drills the gunman’s left shoulder, his second shot takes out his forehead, his third burns Holt’s right shoulder, who has stepped to his left in anticipation of Zeb’s firing.
The furrow makes Holt drop his gun, but his left hand flashes to his back and sends a foot-long knife scything through the air at Zeb.
Holt’s knife buries deep in his right shoulder, making him lose his Glock, which bounces away a few feet beyond reach. He has no time to retrieve it as Holt follows up by rushing at him with another blade at the ready.
The time for active thought is gone, animal instinct doing what it does best. It shuts down his conscious thought, freezes his pain, and lets combat training take over.
Zeb dislodges the knife with his left hand an
d parries Holt’s thrust, moving to the center of the room to create more space. A feint by Holt is followed by a quick thrust to Zeb’s upper body, the knife low and wicked, and Zeb just slides back and then forward in a return thrust, scratching Holt’s wrist on the return. Holt takes a long step back, grabs a dining chair from behind him with one hand, and throws it across at Zeb. He follows the throw with a sinuous charge.
Zeb ducks easily under the chair and, just before Holt reaches him, bends to his left knee, his right leg spinning straight and around, knocking Holt’s right knee out of its socket. Holt falls heavily to his left, yet rolls back, grabs another chair by its leg, and heaves it over his shoulder at Zeb.
A wild throw that misses Zeb by a good foot and a half.
Just as he’s bending down, he senses danger behind him, and he ducks and takes a long step to the side, but his bending and twisting is arrested as an arm encircles his neck, choking him. He tries to break the choke hold, letting his knife drop, when he feels a blade pierce him from the left, between his ribs, going deep inside and upwards.
It’s a knife probing for his heart. Another gunman who has come up from behind him, who escaped Broker’s long gun somehow.
His brain kicks into high alert and starts shutting down nonessential functions in his body.
Dimly Zeb hears the sound of Holt laughing as he lies a few feet away, and that drives him to a deep, raw rage. He forces himself to go into his grey zone where the impossible happens, grabs hold of his rage, shapes it into a raw ball of fire growing tighter and harder and hotter, and then shapes that fire into a spear flowing from inside him to his arms. Instead of moving away from the knife, he pushes back into his assailant, his right hand gripping the wrist wielding the knife, and that spear of energy coils around the wrist, squeezing and squeezing until the bones in the gunman’s wrist snap.
The gunman shouts hoarsely in his ear, his knife hand falling away uselessly and his forearm around Zeb’s neck loosening.
