Page 126 of Into the Gray Zone

This plan is getting better and better.

She went to the edge of the balcony and looked up the side of the building, spotting the large veranda jutting out into the night sixteen stories up. She studied the walls and found the potential climbing route she’d seen earlier on the tablet, a zigzag of concrete going back and forth down the side of the building, making a design that could only be perceived from the ground. On the tablet it had looked about an inch thick and solely for aesthetic purposes, but she suspected it was more. The design extended down to the balcony of the first residential level—the one she was on—and she was relieved to see it was at least a foot in width.

Rising at about a fifty-degree angle, it would allow her legs to do the work, with the only tricky part being climbing over to the top when the concrete conducted a switchback in the other direction.

She crossed the balcony rail and put her left foot on the ledge, the concrete cool to the touch. She followed with her right, then let go of the railing, crouching down and grabbing the edge with her right hand, her left flat against the glass of the building.

She hesitantly scooted forward, then began gaining confidence. Inshort order she was scrambling up the side of the building like one of the baboons she’d seen in Delhi. She reached the first switchback and stood up, pressing her hands against the higher shelf. She glanced below and immediately focused back on the shelf, the earth so far away it was dizzying.

She cinched her hands on the edge of the higher shelf and shinnied herself up, sliding her legs over like she was mounting a gymnastics beam. She took a breath, calming herself, and pulled her knees up underneath her, then began scampering again.

She made it to Thakkar’s residential rooms on the twenty-first floor in fourteen minutes, the large veranda stretching out one floor above her. Unfortunately, she was at the end of her concrete highway, the shelf’s final turn going to ninety degrees and running under the large plate glass windows of a bedroom.

She looked up again, seeing the veranda tantalizingly close, but far enough away that it might as well have been on the moon.

She studied the windows, seeing that the metal ribs holding panes in place were a little farther apart than a large doorway, maybe four feet total. She stood up on the shelf and put her hands out until her palms rested on the metal, pressing against the ribs. They held. She placed her bare feet against the metal and tested the ribs with her full weight, hanging in space like a giant spider in a web.

She slid her hands up, then her feet, moving inches at a time, chimneying her way to the top. She came level to the lower shelf of the veranda and saw she was going to have to make a dynamic move to reach it, leaving the safety of the window to launch herself in the air. If she missed, it was a long way to the ground.

She grasped the outside rib with her right hand and turned her body until her left foot was straight up and down on the left rib. Shebent her leg like she was cocking a spring, then pushed off with all her might, sailing through the air and catching the floor of the veranda.

The momentum swung her body underneath, but she held on. When she swung back, she chinned herself up until she was at waist level. She grabbed the top of the glass railing with her right hand, then her left, and pulled herself over.

She scuttled to the side to get out of the light spilling onto the veranda from the cathedral-like den. She crept forward, seeing Nadia and Annaka sitting on a couch, several security men in black uniforms in the room. On the far side she saw Jaiden talking to another man, this one in a red uniform.

She keyed her radio and said, “Pike, I’m up. I have both hostages in sight. Approximately five security.”

Pike said, “Holy shit, Koko, you made it! That’s a record.”

“You didn’t think I could?”

“Well, let’s just say I thought it was iffy. So itisthe twenty-second floor. What about the suspected IEDs?”

She scanned the room, going from left to right, but saw nothing. She started back the other way and spotted something black taped to a pillar, a cord coming out of it. She followed the cord to another fixture, this one also on a pillar. She kept tracing, finding one black blob after another, ending up at a final package near a doorway, this one having a square top. She saw it had some sort of box affixed to it, a blinking red light flashing intermittently and what looked like a small spiral antenna sprouting from the center.

She said, “Pike, Nadiawastrying to warn us. The room’s rigged to blow, but I don’t think the IEDs are anti-personnel. They look like they’re positioned on support structures, like they want to drop the roof.”

“How are they initiated? Trip wires?”

“No. It looks like it’s command detonated. The last in the daisy chain has an antenna.”

“Figure out who’s got the detonator. We’re out of time.”

“How the hell am I going to do that?”

“I don’t know, but we’re coming in now. I can’t wait anymore.”

Chapter74

Nadia saw the house security men starting to fidget nervously, pacing about with their weapons, but didn’t understand why. She assumed they were taking their cues from Jaiden, who was becoming more agitated by the minute. The American’s escape had seemed to break something within him, as if it had taken a leg out of whatever he had planned.

He began speaking into his radio, waving his hands in the air while he walked in a circle. She couldn’t completely hear what he was saying, but it had something to do with the defenses on the roof. He turned to one of the red-uniformed men who had been with them since the kidnapping and handed him the detonator, pointing at the ceiling with his hand.

He spun on his heel to leave the room, and his cell phone rang. He put it to his ear and talked for a good three minutes, then went to a security monitor on the wall. She stared at it and saw a vehicle outside the gate. He said something on the phone, and Nadia saw a hand come out of the driver-side window.

Satisfied of the identity of the vehicle, he clicked his radio, talking to the guards at the gate. Nadia saw the gate begin to slide open, wondering who was joining them.

Jaiden gave instructions to the other red suit, and the man left in the elevator. Jaiden went to the stairs leading up to the mezzanine, presumably checking on whatever the people on the roof had told him, leaving the single red uniform holding the detonator.

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