Page 33 of Into the Gray Zone

She said, “How long should we wait?”

He looked at his watch and said, “At least until it hits twenty-two hundred. We want to attack the lull between people getting ready to party and people coming home from the party.”

Nadia had shown them the room number on the key she had recovered but hadn’t let them take it. She’d told them that she couldn’t hide the existence of the key completely, as she was part of the investigation, but she could delay its “discovery.” All she wanted was for Jennifer and Brett to inventory the room, complete with photographs, but not remove anything. Nadia planned on comparing what the official investigation found with what they found. If their findings were the same, then her fears about an insider threat would be unfounded. If they were different, she’d have to deal with it somehow.

Nadia was going to hold the key until the following morning, then make an excuse that it had been overlooked in the initial confusion. Once the key was introduced, there would be an official race to search the room, so they only had a single night to get in.

To complicate matters, Kerry Bostwick had checked in to the Hyatt today, which meant the real purpose of their mission had begun. Pikehad decided that since the actual meeting wasn’t until tomorrow, he could handle securing the principal with Knuckles and Veep, letting Brett and Jennifer conduct the break-in.

The initial plan had been to simply go into the hotel like they were staying there, then pick the lock. In and out in thirty minutes. Easy, breezy. They’d reconnoitered the hotel and realized that plan wasn’t going to work.

The Beachcomber Inn wasn’t a resort like the Grand Hyatt, to say the least. A four-story wooden structure a couple of blocks off of Tito’s Lane, it was painted a garish blue and white, with each room having a wooden balcony complete with carved railings painted like a circus tent. Surrounded by a fence, there was a single entrance with a tiny lobby mostly taken up by the reception desk, and nobody was allowed past the desk without a key, apparently because the manager had had enough of people coming to sell either drugs or their bodies.

As the tourist season hadn’t truly started yet, the hotel was nearly empty, and they’d toyed with simply renting a room and using that as a lily pad for the break-in, but decided against it, as they didn’t want their names and passports associated with the blitzkrieg of the investigation that was coming the following day. There’d be no way to explain why they had a room in the hotel when they were known to be staying at the Grand Hyatt. That coincidence, coupled with the fact that they were witnesses to the assault, would put GRS squarely in the crosshairs of the investigation, something that most definitely couldn’t be allowed.

They’d left the hotel, with Jennifer forcing Brett to circle the property, snaking through the narrow alleys that ran up both sides and taking a circuitous route back to Tito’s Lane. They’d returned to the Hyatt and told Pike their findings, whereupon he’d just tried to call the whole thing off, saying, “Not our mission, and I’m not spending any more time on it.”

Jennifer had said, “We don’t have to go in from the front door. There are other ways.”

“How?”

“The building is set back from any major roads. Outside of the road that goes by the entrance, there are only little alleys. Easy to get to the side without being seen.”

“But you still can’t get past the front desk. Who cares who sees you coming to the building?”

“Every room has a balcony, all the way to the top.”

Jennifer had already discussed her plan with Brett, and she knew just by mentioning the balconies, Pike would guess what she had planned.

He raised his hands and said, “Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Koko. You want to scale the building and break in from the outside?”

“Yeah. Our guy’s room’s on the third floor, with a large balcony like all the others.” She knew Pike wasn’t hesitant because she was talking about climbing the outside of a building. He understood her skills and had forced her to use them on much worse structures than this hotel. More so than anyone else on the team, she was a bit of a savant when it came to climbing, and the balcony ascent would be easy enough. No, Pike’s reticence was from something else.

When he didn’t immediately answer, she said, “Pike, it’s a cakewalk. Brett can pull security, I climb to his room, do the inventory, then get back down. Like thirty minutes max.”

He said, “Look, I get that you can do it, but we have a mission here. This is Nadia’s problem, not ours. Let’s focus on the meeting tomorrow and let the RAW find the terrorists. We stopped the assault, and that’s good enough for me.”

“What if she’s right? What if it wasn’t a random LeT terrorist attack? What if it was something more? Something to do with the meeting tomorrow?”

She saw the wheels spinning in his head and waited. Pike finally looked at Brett and said, “You’re good with this? You think it’s worth it?”

“Yeah, I looked at the building. Jennifer could do that handcuffed, and I’m bored sitting around this place.”

Pike smiled at that, turning back to Jennifer and saying, “And you?”

A little defensive, she said, “And me, what?”

“Younevervolunteer for anything. In fact, you’re always telling me to stop when I want to stretch things. We have absolutely no sanction from the Oversight Council here for this, and you know it.”

She grew a little miffed and said, “Since when do you care about that?”

He laughed and said, “Since when do younot?”

She started to retort but he held up his hands in surrender, saying, “Go, go. Get your climbing jihad on. Far be it from me to squash your initiative.”

Six hours later, she was sitting with Brett in a seedy beach bar with neon lights and watery daiquiris.

Brett glanced around the room and said, “I don’t know why anyone calls Tito’s Lane the hot spot for nightlife. Looks more like Tijuana. You’d have to be living on spare change to party here.”

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