Текст книги "The Warrior"

Автор книги: Ty Patterson

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

Broker pushes his chair back and puts his equipment away as Zeb gets up and tells Connor, ‘Your family will be back – safe.’ Then he nods at Isakson. ‘See you tomorrow to work out the logistics.’

Bear and Chloe slip out as they leave. ‘What was that with the hang-ups? Weren’t you taking a risk?’

‘Yup,’ Broker replies, ‘but we wanted to able to pinpoint where the phone signal was coming from and needed a few cut-outs to be sure.’

He goes on to explain how they knew what to look for. ‘A couple of years back, I came across a couple of Chinese students at Stanford who had developed a triangulating software program. A mobile phone’s location can be detected within a tower’s grid by the signal it gives out. The FBI, NSA, CIA…all those guys use this to locate a phone – but it gives you a very rough location. These Chinese guys went one step ahead. They mapped this triangulation against two other signals, one – the radiation signal of the phone, the other – something called location leaks. A mobile phone service provider keeps a database of where phones are likely to be and keeps polling the phones so that it’s quicker to connect when a call happens. These polling messages were used by these two guys as the third triangulator. I bought their software before they went to market. But it does require a few cut-outs to home in on the phone.’

Bear nods. ‘So what’s the plan now?’

‘We come back tomorrow, take orders from the big cheese.’

Bear smiles at Zeb and Broker and then gets serious. ‘You’re going in tonight?’

‘Yep.’

‘I’ll tag along.’

‘Nope. I need you here.’

Bear nods, grips Zeb’s shoulder hard, fist-bumps Broker, and goes back inside the apartment.

Broker looks at Zeb. ‘How about a fancy, motivating speech?’

Zeb grunts and moves past him.

‘That’ll do,’ says Broker. ‘For a moment I thought you would bring me to tears. Where to now?’

‘Weapons, wheels, Williamstown. That’s where he is, isn’t he? His mother’s house?’

‘Right. Anyone ever tell you, you talk a lot? And what’s wrong with these wheels?’ He indicates the shiny red Jeep they have driven in.

Zeb says nothing, just taps the red paint.

‘Okay.’ He buckles up and turns to Zeb. ‘What do you think Isakson will say when he hears about this?’

Zeb stares straight ahead. ‘What do you think we’ll say to ourselves if that kid doesn’t return tomorrow?’

He revs the engine in the ensuing silence.

The first few stops are at the various caches he has in the city, and they load up with night vision, Mossberg shotguns, the AWM rifle, an Armalite, Sig Sauers, and Glocks.

‘You know that’s a residential neighborhood?’ Broker reminds him.

He answers himself when Zeb doesn’t respond. ‘The residents should have known better, obviously.’

They pack the equipment, then switch their vehicle to a Hummer Broker has customized. Zeb scans the interior, noticing the mobile and wireless communication system, radar and various switches and gadgets that would make James Bond envious.

He casually flicks one, and out pops a screen that shows a rocket launcher easing out of its recess beneath the chassis. He flicks an eyebrow at Broker, who waves his arms in the direction of downtown Manhattan.

‘The neighborhood. It’s not what it used to be.’

Broker turns serious, pulls out a map of Williamstown, and lays it out on the hood. He traces a finger around Mama Holt’s property. ‘Close to the street, six bedrooms, three stories, large windows both at the front and back, tall hedge surrounding the gardens, neighboring houses not too far off, neighbors might remember you from earlier visits…not easy, but would we enjoy it if it was easy?’ He looks sideways at Zeb, who listens calmly.

‘How many men would you have about you, in his situation?’ he asks Zeb.

‘Six or seven in the house including myself.’

Broker nods. ‘Was thinking the same. How do you want to do it?’ He rolls out the house plan and lays it next to the street plan.

Zeb examines the house plan for a long time. ‘Flat or sloping roof?’ he asks, already knowing the answer.

‘Sloping.’

‘I need some special equipment.’

‘I can get you anything, even a frigging aircraft carrier, in one hour within ten clicks.’

He folds the maps and puts them away when Zeb nods, and throws the keys to him. ‘Drive.’ And Zeb does, leaving New York behind.

They reach Williamstown at dusk, with Zeb making one pass of the street and parking in a faraway parking lot. Hoofing it back, they flit from shadow to shadow, observing the entire street, the foliage, its dark spots, the streetlights and proximity of the houses.

They hide in thick foliage by the side of the street a house away. They have a good view of Holt’s house, which has a well-lit front, darkened windows and just a smidgen of light in the window of the second floor.

‘Watch out for dogs,’ mutters Broker.

Broker takes out a pair of night-vision goggles, parabolic mics and a thermal-imaging monitor, setting the screen with a filter that protects it from detection even from six inches away.

Both of them don the mics and watch the house and imager alternatively.

‘Two bodies downstairs, four in the middle, and two more upstairs; lot of light in the front. They can be in the dark of the house, spot us, and pick us off without a problem,’ murmurs Broker as the blobs appear on the monitor. The blobs at the top and bottom of the house are moving back and forth at regular intervals.

‘Sentries covering the front and back of the house. No windows to the side of the house,’ whispers Broker.

They settle down and try to pick up any noise, but either the mics are not powerful enough or the house is well insulated, and they hear nothing. In the middle floor only one blob is pacing; the others are stationary, with two blobs next to one another. Broker taps the two blobs, pulls up his watch, and starts to time the sentries.

‘They alternate from back to front every ten minutes. Pause in front of each window, look around, and then walk back. No head popping out of a window, which is good for us, bad for them. As usual, good help is always hard to come by. One sentry either at the top or bottom is always covering the two sides. We need final confirmation, and I don’t see how we’re going to get that unless we can hear or see them.’

Broker looks at him sideways. ‘Uh-oh, don’t even think of going in the garden on a recon round. Suicide missions are so last week. They could be looking out the windows, and pop goes the weasel!’

Zeb opens Broker’s backpack, removes an earbud and collar mic, and puts them on. He hands another pair to Broker, who gives a long-suffering sigh and does the same.

‘Where?’ he asks Broker.

Broker shakes his head. ‘Cross Keys, not far from here. Driving directions are keyed in.’ He waves in the direction of the Hummer.

Zeb takes the keys and sets off, pointing in the direction of his earbud and collar mic in response to Broker’s urgent, ‘How will I know when you’re back?’

Broker settles into the darkness, takes out a range finder from his kit, and checks out the range to Holt’s house even though he has gauged the distance down to the last inch. He assembles the AWM, sights, zeros it, and lays it down again.

He then calls Bear and briefs him on the situation and in return hears an earful of curses. ‘Hold your horses. I did tell him, but you know him. Once he has a plan in mind, only changed circumstances deter him. No, you stay there.’

*   *   *

Zeb reaches Cross Keys airport and finds a Super Otter waiting for him, with its pilot leaning against the fuselage.

‘You Zeb Carter?’

Zeb nods.

‘Broker told me about what you want done. Have you done this before? It’s foolhardy to–’

Zeb waves him off, signs the disclaimer papers, and checks out the kit that the pilot has brought for him.

‘Dude, you do know what you’re doing, don’t you?’ the pilot asks, conscious of lawsuits.

Zeb ignores him and unfolds the kit and lays it on the tarmac. He inspects it fully and then folds it carefully and takes it inside the plane. The pilot has unfolded an aerial map of Williamstown and is tracing their route when Zeb rejoins him.

‘This is where I want to be,’ Zeb tells him, pointing to the exact location.

The pilot does his calculations. ‘You’re lucky it’s not very windy, but it is dark.’

‘Dark is good. Let’s go.’

The Super Otter roars to life in the stillness of the night and takes off after a short taxiing run. The pilot swings wide away from Williamstown and climbs to 13,000 feet and then takes a long circle back to Williamstown.

The pilot looks over his shoulder when he’s twenty miles away from Williamstown.

He sees Batman.

Zeb and Broker had discussed the best way to approach and enter Holt’s house and had eventually agreed, though Broker would vehemently deny it, on a wing-suit jump. The unknowns were too many to risk any other kind of approach. Holt was likely to have access to sophisticated surveillance, and the closeness of the neighborhood made even a covert approach risky. The one factor that finally got Broker to agree to what he thought was a suicidal approach was Holt’s personality. They just didn’t know enough about Holt to risk being detected in any other approach. For all they knew, Holt would kill Lauren and Rory and go down shooting, since he’d no longer have anything to lose.

Zeb has strapped up the US Special Forces wing suit that Broker has mysteriously procured and puts on the backpack that contains the square canopy parachute, reserve chute, and oxygen bottles, and adjusts the shoulder and leg straps. He then dons the helmet, adjusts the oxygen mask receivers, and after checking the suit instruments, asks the pilot the wind velocity and direction. The pilot shouts back at him and then warns him they are fifteen miles away from Williamstown.

Zeb pushes open the door of the aircraft, causing the aircraft to judder before the pilot brings it under control, steadies himself on the frame, and waits for the pilot’s signal.

The pilot steadies the aircraft, and when they hit a patch of clear sky, he lifts his thumb to Zeb.

Zeb dives into the dark and spreads the suit wide open to steady himself once clear of the plane.

In the distance he sees the taillights of the aircraft disappearing, and below, vast emptiness. The suit has a glide ratio of 3:1 and is fully equipped with a navigation system, altimeter and various gadgets to help the flight. Zeb has already fallen a thousand feet since his jump and is eleven miles from Williamstown.

At a hundred and twenty-five miles per hour, with the wind rushing in his face, darkness around him, he is alone in the universe, but then, Zeb has been alone all his life.

He plans his landing and every step he will take once he lands. After a few minutes he can see lights far below and, ahead of him, pinpricks piercing the dark, playing hide and seek with the clouds.

He steers in their direction, guided by the navigation system, and sets himself up a glide path. There is a mild headwind slowing his descent, but it will help him once he opens his chute. He makes a mental check of the weapons and kit he is carrying. Given the wing-suit approach, he has had to be very selective in what he can carry, just a couple of handguns, a knife, his cable camera, and night-vision goggles.

His suit starts beeping when he’s four thousand feet away, indicating that he is nearing the chute-opening altitude. He opens his chute at three thousand five hundred and feels the kick on his back and the slowing down of his speed as it unfolds without any hitches. He can see it above his head, a dark shadow in the surrounding darkness. Below, Williamstown is growing with every second, the lights and the town becoming clearer with every foot he falls.

He enlarges the map on the navigation system and starts toggling the chute across to move above Holt’s house. There’s a slight headwind he has to compensate for, and he descends vertically. From his surveillance and topography, he knows that the roof of Holt’s house isn’t surrounded by trees, so all he has to do is land soundlessly on a sloping roof. He can imagine Broker snorting at that – he has had far more difficult landings than this on other missions.

He clears his mind and focuses on the fast-approaching terrain below, now sharp and clear; the street lighting casting a yellow glow, a flame Zeb is rushing toward.

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.