Gut Instinct

by Brad Taylor

  He lay flat on the roof, leaned over, and wrapped his hands around the top of the pipe, taking note of the location of the first anchor point into the wall.

  “Get ready for some adventure. This thing breaks and we’re in a world of hurt.”

  Brett came on. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

  3

  Knuckles slipped over the side, clamping his hands in the opening at the top like a vise grip. He hung in the air for a split second, then did a chin-up until his face was level with the roof. He placed his legs on either side of the pipe and slid down until his feet made contact with the anchor.

  He slid his hands on the outside of the pipe and began a slow descent, grateful for the gloves he’d worn, initially to prevent any fingerprints but now saving the skin on his palms.

  He shimmied down until he was at the first-floor level. He looked beneath him, then simply dropped, hitting the ground harder than he wanted, rolling with the impact into the pool of light from an outside lamp. He scuttled back into the shadows, his target door fifty feet away.

  “I’m down. Am I clear?”

  “Stand by. Let me sweep.”

  Knuckles used the time to break out the lock-pick kit.

  “Okay, the four out front are still gabbing, but you’re shielded by the secretariat building. Nothing else moving.”

  He sprinted through the light and slid into the alcove, the plan now back on its original track. He pulled the picks that had proven successful earlier on a mock-up and went to work on the lock, a grin sneaking out when it popped in seconds. Nothing like rehearsals.

  He slipped into the darkened hallway and jogged by memory alone. The National Museum office was four doors to the right. The server room was two doors beyond that, down another small hallway.

  He reached the turn and was brought up short by Decoy.

  “Knuckles, Knuckles, we got a gaggle at your entry point. Don’t know what they’re doing.”

  It hit him immediately. The rope. They found the rope. It was the one risk he had been willing to take, because he couldn’t scale the wall without some mechanical help, and the odds of someone stumbling across it in the dark were astronomical.

  Damn Murphy.

  He raced to the server room door, aiming his penlight at the keypad. “What’re they doing?”

  “More people are gathering where you breached the wall. The four out front have gone over, along with some other stragglers. They found something.”

  He punched in the keystrokes he’d gotten from headquarters and said, “They found my rope.”

  He yanked the door, but it didn’t budge.

  Shit.

  “Brett, Brett, code isn’t working. What was it again?”

  “Six-four-eight-two-pound. I say again six-four-eight-two-pound.”

  He said, “I just did that,” as he punched in the numbers again.

  The door refused to move.

  “Brett, that code isn’t right. What else could it be?”

  Decoy came on. “Knuckles, abort. They’re fanning out. They know someone’s inside.”

  “Brett, I can’t get out to Luk Luang. Stage on Phitsanulok.”

  “Ahh . . . Roger. Moving, but you realize that’s in front of the police station?”

  “No shit, now what’s the damn code?”

  Decoy said, “Screw the code. Get out of there. They’ve started to search and men are coming from the police station to help.”

  Brett said, “Try the pound sign first.”

  Knuckles did, and the door opened.

  “I’m inside. Give me a trigger when someone enters this building.”

  “Trigger now. They’re inside your building now.”

  Knuckles snicked the door closed behind him, praying that whoever entered didn’t have the combination to the keypad. He quickly analyzed the mass of blinking lights from the server rack and found the main fiber-optic hub. He pulled out the slave device and clamped it to the cable, waiting until it began blinking a steady green.

  Keeping his voice low, he said, “Slave in place. I’m coming out.”

  Brett said, “I’m staged. I’ll be coming from north to south. Heads up—this road is full of pedestrians and vendors. The street market is still hopping.”

  Which is why it hadn’t been chosen as an entry point in the first place. Well, that and the fact that climbing the wall in front of the police station didn’t seem that smart. Now it seemed a hell of a lot smarter than going out the way he’d come in.

  Knuckles placed his ear against the door and heard two voices speaking in Thai. Someone had turned on the hall light, letting a feeble glow spill underneath his door. From his earlier recce, he knew that this hallway led to a door outside. If he could just get out of the server room, he could play cat-and-mouse to the far wall of the compound, avoiding the search party.

  “Decoy, you know where the hallway to the server room exits?”

  “Yeah, I got it in sight now.”

  “Is it clear?”

  “Two men moving around to the adjacent building. Give them a second.”

  Knuckles listened again, hearing the sounds of the voices moving away, back down the main hall.

  “Your exit’s clear.”

  Holding his breath, he cracked the door and saw the men had disappeared. He left the server room and sprinted down the hall, pulling up short at the end.

  “I’m about to exit.”

  “Go. You’re clear. Move straight across to the overhang of the next building.”

  He did as directed, running blindly into the night. He reached the alcove and squatted down, thinking, One hundred meters. Only got one hundred meters.

  He shuffled the length of the alcove and peeked around the corner, seeing a parking lot with shrubbery and trees on the far side. No sign of the wall, but it had to be just beyond.

  “Knuckles, pack of guys rounded the corner from the north. They’re beating the bushes. Move.”

  He slid along the wall until he ran out of building, saying, “I’m going to sprint across the parking lot. Can I make it?”

  “You’d better be Jesse Owens, but there’s nobody to your front.”

  He took off at a dead sprint, reaching the far side of the parking lot before hearing someone shout behind him. He made it into the foliage and kept going, almost slamming into the compound wall. He immediately turned north, running parallel, trying to find a way over the fifteen-foot barricade.

  “What’s the posse doing?”

  “Looks like they’ve seen you, but nobody’s giving chase. Everyone is just gathering together.”

  Panting, knowing he sounded like a bull elephant in the brush, he saw nothing to help him over the wall and felt the panic begin to rise. Calm down. Always a way out. Just find it.

  “Knuckles, they’ve started to move toward you. Three groups of four, spread out and searching.”

  He slowed, wanting the stealth to prevent them from zeroing in on his position. He heard them yelling back and forth and saw the flashlights bobbing behind him. A building appeared out of the darkness, angled away from the wall. The farther north he moved, the more he was hemmed in.

  What if it joins the wall? He’d be trapped. He looked behind and saw that it was irrelevant. He wasn’t slipping through the cordon they had made.

  He began to jog in the darkness, the building getting closer and closer. He exited the foliage, hitting pavement, and picked up his pace. He turned to check the pursuit and ran into a metal Dumpster, the clang causing an excited rise in the voices behind him.

  He saw the flashlights begin to bounce around crazily and knew they were now closing fast, feeling the kill. He then realized the cause of the noise was his salvation. Three feet from the wall, the Dumpster stood six feet tall. He scrambled on top, heedless of the racket he made. He could clearly make out distinct voices and saw the lights less than seventy feet away. He tight-roped his way along the edge of the Dumpster, reached the side closest to the wall, and launched himself into
the air.

  He caught the top of the wall and slammed face-first into the masonry. Ignoring the pain, he pulled himself up using adrenaline alone and flipped to the far side, landing in between two street vendors.

  Free.

  The vendors simply stared, slack-jawed, making no move to intercept him. He sprinted across the street, ripping off his balaclava.

  “Brett, Brett, in position for pickup.”

  “Moving.”

  He reached the far side and slowed. He began moving north, blending in to the small stream of pedestrians still out this late. He had walked no longer than four seconds when he heard shouting behind him.

  “Brett, I got an issue. What’s your location?”

  “I see them. I’m just north. Two cops running toward your back. Want me to interdict?”

  Knuckles thought about it. Thought about the cameras all around and the fact that introducing the van would complicate matters for the inevitable follow-on investigation. They’d know he was the guy if he did something right now. Even if he got away here, they’d now have a description of both him and Brett, along with the van. That’s assuming you can get away. Not a sure thing considering the Metropolitan Police Bureau was less than one hundred yards to the south.

  “No. Let it ride. I’ve got nothing on me and there’s no way they saw me come over the wall. No reason to suspect I did anything. I’ll talk my way out. I’m going off team net and putting the cell back into OEM configuration.”

  He fiddled with his smartphone, leaving the Bluetooth in his ear, now glad he hadn’t brought the extra equipment. It would have been hard explaining why he was carrying night observation devices and a Glock, even without anything tying him to the Ministry of Education.

  He waited for one more shout before turning around with a confused “You yelling at me?” look on his face, then patiently waited for them to catch up.

  Everything was going fine, him answering the questions with his prepared explanation of why he was in the area, the men digging through his bag and only finding brochures and documents that backstopped his story. Fine until one of them pulled out his balaclava, still drenched with sweat.

  He saw the cop smile. Shit. So much for walking away.

  “Why do you need a ski mask in Thailand?”

  4

  I pulled into the parking lot at 0630, stopping right under the Grolier Recovery Services sign. Usually, the lot was full and I had to park on the other side and walk to my office. Then again, usually I was still sound asleep at this time. I saw Jennifer’s car and wondered if she’d been here for two hours, stretching and eating PowerBars.

  I entered and found Jennifer sitting on the floor, stretching her quads. I saw a half-eaten PowerBar on the desk and smiled.

  “Aren’t we the eager beaver?”

  She stood up and bounced on her toes a little bit. “I’ve been reading about running injuries. Jury’s out on stretching, but nobody says it can hurt.”

  Today was Charleston’s Cooper River Bridge Run, and it was Jennifer’s first. A few months ago she’d been attacked by a man and had taken up running as a sort of therapy to get over it. I’d encouraged it initially, until she’d gone overboard, running all the damn time like Forrest Gump. Well, that’s not true. I still encouraged it. Encouraged anything to help her get over the trauma, since my killing that asshole hadn’t been enough.

  “You still going to try to beat forty-five minutes?”

  She placed her hands against the wall, now stretching her calves. “I’m not going to try, Pike. I’m going to shatter that time. I hope you can keep up.”

  “Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself. Especially when I’m dragging your ass up the bridge.”

  Running is a mental game, and Jennifer was a gymnast, not an endurance athlete. She’d run plenty of three- and four-mile jaunts over the past few months, but I knew she’d hit a wall and wouldn’t be able to keep a forty-minute pace for the entire six miles. Especially after the long climb to the top of the bridge. Maybe forty-five, but no way forty.

  “I ran seven miles three days ago at a little under a seven-minute pace. Back and forth across the bridge. I’m good.”

  The comment gave me pause. She’s just saying that to scare you. Except that Jennifer didn’t know how to bluff. Didn’t believe in mind games. Which scared the shit out of me. Should’ve done more running.

  She said, “You ready to go?”

  “Yeah, just let me get the Taskforce phone.”

  She stood by the door as I rummaged through my desk. “What are you bringing that for? We’re still on stand-down, right?”

  Ostensibly, Grolier Recovery Services specialized in facilitating archeological work around the world. With Jennifer’s anthropology degree and my background in the military, we hired out to various clients who needed specialized consulting in anything dealing with archeological work in a foreign country, from host-nation clearances to security on-site.

  In reality, the company was a sophisticated cover for a counterterrorist unit simply called the Taskforce. It allowed penetration of denied areas when other means had failed. Our last mission had been a little bit of a doozy, with the commander of the Taskforce mandating a forced vacation because of the repercussions. As if I needed some downtime from exterminating a roach.

  I zipped the phone in a fanny pack, saying, “You never know what could pop up. A little time off is fine, but this is starting to drag.”

  She frowned but said nothing else, holding the door open for me. Our office was on Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant, and the start of the race was only about a half mile away on Coleman Boulevard, so we’d decided to park here and walk, since the entire stretch of Coleman was going to be a nuthouse of about thirty thousand people.

  We reached our corral and I began to notice all of the stares Jennifer was getting. She was wearing nothing but a pair of Lycra stretch pants, which clung to her legs like a coat of paint, and a sports bra, her midriff exposed for all to see. In my rational mind, I knew the attire was simply something she was comfortable running in and nothing different than what a host of other women around us wore, but the goggle eyes were aggravating nonetheless.

  Our connection was definitely more than that of simple business partners but still less than a relationship. The trauma she’d been through had stymied that. Having a little experience in personal tragedy, I was content to let it ride. Let her get over it in her own time. That didn’t mean I was content for her to be viewed as a piece of meat.

  Tightening her ponytail, oblivious to the stares, she said, “What’s the frown for?”

  I quickly pasted on a smile. “Nothing. It’s showtime. Get ready to rumble.”

  We heard the announcer cheer as the Kenyans were let loose, running faster than a human being should be capable. In short order, we were walking to the start line, then jogging in the massive crowd of people, Jennifer weaving in and out, trying to keep her pace but prevented by the slugs who came to run once a year.

  After about a mile of bump-and-go we reached the bottom of the bridge, the long slope to the top a daunting obstacle to the once-a-year runners. They began to walk and the crowd thinned. Jennifer glanced back at me once, then took off like a gazelle, intent on making up lost time, churning up the slope like it didn’t exist.

  Holy shit.

  The rest of the run was a blur as my vision narrowed to the small of her back, my mind ignoring the pain. I felt like I was back at Special Forces selection, willing myself forward, thinking of nothing but driving my body faster than it was prepared to go.

  We finished in 41:48. It would have been quicker but Jennifer didn’t have free rein with the crowds around. Thank God. We crossed the line and continued walking, Jennifer’s face all aglow and me trying to keep from vomiting, straining to keep upright to save my dignity. My own fault for getting lazy on vacation.

  I felt the pain in my knees and wondered how much was laziness and how much was just the march of time. Eight years ago, when I wa
s Jennifer’s age, I could have done that pace hungover while carrying a rucksack. Now, at thirty-eight, I could feel the frost creeping in. It was still outside the window of my house, but it was coming.

  We wandered around for a little bit, getting some free bananas and water at the post-race stalls, then went down East Bay Street for the after-party. Something I was hoping would make the pain worth it.

  Getting to the rooftop deck on top of the Vendue Inn, I fought through the crowd to the bar, checking the Taskforce phone out of reflex. I pulled up short, Jennifer bumping into me, surprised to see a missed call from a blocked number, which could have meant one of two things: Either I’d missed out on the credit card deal of a lifetime, or Kurt Hale, the commander of the Taskforce, had tried to reach me.

  I dialed this month’s current number, letting it bounce and hum through Lord knows how many different switchboards in an effort to confuse anyone who might have been tracking the call. Eventually, I heard a human voice.

  Jennifer started to ask who I was dialing, but I held up a finger, answering her question when she heard me speak a known phrase. Minutes later, I was connected with Kurt, and when I hung up I couldn’t decide if I was happy or incredibly pissed off.

  Jennifer had patiently waited, using the time to get some more free fruit and a couple of Bloody Marys. She handed me one and said, “So what’s up?”

  “Knuckles is in trouble. I don’t know what sort, but it has something to do with our company.”

  “Our company? Grolier Services? How can that be? He’s just a fake employee. They can’t use that without us, can they?”

  “No. Well, we’ve never really discussed it with them. We’re the first company that was formed from the ground up by operators, independent of the Taskforce. Maybe they consider it part of their stable, like every other cover organization. I won’t know until I talk to Kurt. He wants to meet in DC.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. No big deal.”