Checkmate (13 page)

He rolled the guard’s body into a corner and covered it with a pile of painter’s tarps. He rechecked his OPSAT, then walked to the closet’s opposite wall, felt around until he found what he was looking for, and pried back a hidden access panel, revealing a crawl space roughly two feet by two feet. He crouched down and stared down the length of it.

“Waypoint two,” he radioed.

He crawled inside.

 

 

 

TRUE
to the schematics, his NV and IR checks of the crawl space revealed neither cameras nor sensors, and after twenty feet the tunnel ended at a second access hatch. He worked the release pins, then carefully set aside the hatch, crawled through, and pressed himself against the wall. He replaced the hatch and glanced upward. Twelve feet above his head a camera hummed, slowly turning on its mount.

He was now at the lowermost level of one of the Burj al Arab’s six elevators—one of only two that remained inside the structure during their ascent. The other four left their interior shafts at the lobby level and rose along the hotel’s exterior, providing breathtaking views of Dubai, the Persian Gulf, and to the north, Iran.

He stared up the one-thousand-plus feet of the shaft. Lit only by maintenance lights spaced every ten feet, the shaft itself seemed like a skyscraper rising into the night sky. The optical illusion gave him a momentary wave of vertigo. He shook it off and keyed his subdermal. “Waypoint three. Calling the elevator.”

“Roger,” Grimsdottir replied. “Remember, Sam, you’ll only have twenty seconds.”

“Yep.”

The dozens of cameras located throughout the shaft were equipped with NV, laser-based beam sensors, and infrared cameras. If something moved or gave off heat, it would be detected. Knowing his chances of successfully climbing one thousand feet of elevator shaft while playing cat-and-mouse with the sensors were nil, he’d turned to another rule from the special operators credo: KISS. Keep it Simple, Stupid.

In this case, the simple solution came from the secret vaults of DARPA. Like most DARPA inventions, this one had an official moniker that involved a lot of incomprehensible letters and numbers, and like most DARPA inventions it also had a nickname: Shroud.

Essentially a heat-dissipating and radar-reflective blanket, the Shroud could for short intervals defeat infrared cameras and sensors. There was a catch, however. The user had to remain perfectly still and the coverage lasted only sixty to seventy seconds before his body heat overwhelmed the Shroud’s dissipaters.

Fisher scrolled through the OPSAT’s menu until he reached a screen showing an overhead view of six squares surrounding a central, larger square—the hotel’s six elevators and, at the center, the hotel itself. He tapped one of the squares.

 

 

 

Sam punched “Yes,” then entered his floor number.

Two hundred feet up the shaft he heard a distant buzz, followed by a metallic clank as the car’s gears engaged. An electrical whirring filled the shaft.

 

 

 

As the car dropped toward him, the maintenance lights blinked out one by one as the car passed each floor. Moments later, the car appeared out of the darkness, slid smoothly past his face, and stopped.

“Ready to ride,” Sam radioed. “Work your magic, Grim.”

“Stand by.”

Seven thousand miles away, Grimsdottir would be at her computer, threading her way through the hotel’s security intranet and loading her own algorithm and taking temporary control of the shaft’s cameras.

This was the one and only drawback of security cameras running in random-offset mode. Guards in the security center had no point of reference, no way of knowing whether the cameras were moving as designed, or had been hijacked. It would only be after a camera failed to provide three circuits of complete coverage that the computer would detect the error and sound the alarm. He would need twenty seconds, no more, to get into position.

“Got ’em,” Grimsdottir said.

Fisher stood with his back against the wall, then reached over his head, grabbed the edge of the car’s roof, and chinned himself up. From one of his tac-suit pouches he withdrew the Shroud, unfolded it, then slipped his left hand and both feet into the hemmed pockets, drawing it taut across his back. He laid himself flat on the car’s roof. With his free hand, he scrolled the OPSAT screen:

 

 

 

Sam punched in “Yes,” then “59.” The Shroud wouldn’t conceal his body heat long enough to reach the penthouse level; he’d have to do last floor the hard way.

“Ready, Grim,” Fisher said.

“Releasing cameras to hotel control.”

With a slight shudder, the car started upward.

AS
the car rose, Fisher slowed his breathing and concentrated on remaining still. In his mind’s eye, he imagined the guards in the hotel’s security center watching a split monitor showing both NV and thermal views. The Shroud would give nothing back, a perfect square of darkness on the car’s roof.

Unless,
Fisher thought. Unless his foot was sticking out, or the Shroud had failed, or—

Stop,
he commanded himself.

The world was full of “unlesses” and “what ifs.” The trick was to control what you could, try to influence what you might, and let the rest go.

On the OPSAT’s screen, he watched the floor numbers scroll upward: 25 . . . 26 . . . 27. Next to these numbers were the words “Seconds to Shroud Failure” followed by a clock scrolling down: 50 . . . 49 . . . 48 . . .

With one eye fixed on the readout, he rehearsed the next phase in his head. To get past the last floor would require timing, patience, and stamina. Fisher felt a smile play over his lips. Just the kind of challenge he liked.
Careful, Sam
.

Just as getting killed or captured was one of the hazards of his line of work, so too was adrenaline addiction. Living life balanced on the razor’s edge was a powerful drug, and without constant self-discipline, the pursuit of that drug could ruin an operator. At his age and given his level of experience, Fisher had for the most part insulated his mind to the lure of adrenaline, but it was always there.

Especially now, especially given the stakes.

He had little doubt the United States was marching toward war. Only one question remained; against whom?> The
Trego
’s aborted collision with the Atlantic Seaboard, combined with the rapidly rising death toll in Slipstone, would not go unavenged. So far, all signs of guilt pointed toward a Middle East player. Whether an extremist faction, a terrorist group, or a nation was responsible mattered little; in the coming weeks and months, many lives would be lost. It was Third Echelon’s job to make sure the right blood was shed. Fisher felt the mental weight of it.

Questions over what he’d found on the now-destroyed
Duroc
plagued him. It seemed clear the yacht had picked up the
Trego
’s crew, transported them to Freeport City, and then executed them in an abandoned coffee warehouse. If so, why had the
Duroc
been manned by a Chinese crew? What was the disconnect? He wasn’t sure, but perhaps the man he’d come to see, this wayward hacker named Marcus Greenhorn, would have the answer.

Fisher felt the car’s acceleration slow, then glide to a halt.

“I’m stopped,” he radioed.

“Hold position,” said Grimsdottir. “When I give you the word, stand up and step to the ledge directly behind you. To your right will be a stanchion. Press yourself against that and hold position.”

“Roger.”

“Ready . . . move!”

Fisher stood up, flipped the Shroud off his back, and took a step back until he felt his foot touch the ledge. He flattened himself against the wall and slid right until his shoulder bumped the stanchion.

“Releasing the elevator,” Grimsdottirsaid.

The car groaned, then dropped away into the darkness.

Fisher tapped buttons on his OPSAT until the overhead schematic of the shaft appeared. Surrounded by green lines that represented the walls, his own position was a pulsing blue square. To his right, on the other side the stanchion, was a red dot. A camera. Opposite him, on the other side of the matching stanchion, another red dot, another camera.

“You next move is a leap, Sam,” Grimsdottir said. “Straight across the shaft to the other ledge.”

It was an eight-foot jump onto a ten-inch ledge. He was good, but not that good. He glanced down the shaft; it was a bottomless pit.

“I’ll be hanging by my fingernails, Grim,” he said. “How long?”

“Twenty-two seconds. After that, climb back onto the ledge, slip around the stanchion, and hang again. The cameras will pan right over your head. At my next mark, you’ll stand up and reach above your head. There’ll be a maintenance ladder. Climb five rungs, then freeze.”

“Got it,” he said.

His destination was a maintenance crawl space that ran over the length of the penthouse’s ceiling. Once there, away from the ever-watchful cameras and sensors, he could access a hatch the led to the roof.

He switched his trident goggles to NV and scanned the route Grimsdottir had indicated. He’d be dancing between the blind spots of two cameras. No room for error; no room for hesitation.

“Ready,” Grimsdottir radioed. “Hold . . . hold . . . Go!”

He jumped. He hung in midair for what seemed seconds with a thousand feet of nothingness yawning beneath him. His hands slapped the ledge. He clamped down and lifted his knees to minimize his swing, which lasted only a few seconds. He let his legs dangle.

“Almost there,” Grimsdottir said. “Camera’s coming around. . . . Okay, go.”

Fisher chinned himself up, then hooked his heel on the ledge and levered his body up. Then, using his right hand, he grabbed the stanchion and pulled until he could twist himself into a sitting position. He slid up the wall to a standing position.

“In place,” he called.

“Next move in four seconds. Three . . . two . . . Go.”

Fisher turned to face the stanchion, grabbed it with both hands, and leaned out, letting his own body weight and momentum swing him to the other side. He backed up until he felt his heels slip over the edge, then took a breath and stepped backward into space. He dropped straight down. As the ledge swept past his face, he snagged it with both hands.

“Seventeen seconds,” Grimsdottir reported. “Hang in there.”

Fisher thought,
Very funny
.

“Sorry, poor choice of words,” she said. “Okay, up the ladder and you’re home free. Go in five . . . four . . . three . . .”

Fisher was tensing his arms and shoulders for the movement when alarms began blaring.

“Go, Sam, move!”

He chinned himself up onto the ledge, snagged the rung above his head, and started climbing.

HE
pushed through the maintenance hatch and squeezed himself into the crawl space. He was surrounded by water pipes and electrical conduits. He contorted himself until he was turned around, facing the hatch again. “What the hell just happened?” he asked.

“Not sure. I’m checking.” Ten seconds later she was back: “Okay, it looks like they had a power surge. It threw the camera algorithms off. They must have caught a glimpse of something moving—probably not enough to know what it is, but enough to raise the alarm. Hunker down and wait. Company’s coming.”

The words had barely entered his earpiece when he heard the squelch of a radio somewhere below him, followed by a ratcheting sound. It took him a moment to place the noise: The guards were forcing open the elevator doors.

Voices in Arabic echoed in the shaft. Light from below seeped around the edges of the hatch as the guards panned their flashlights around. Fisher’s Arabic was good, but the guards were talking in rapid-fire, so he caught only snippets:

“Anything? Do you see anything?”

“No, there’s nothing. What did they see?”

“Let me check.”

A radio squelched again. There was another exchange, too muffled for Fisher to make out, then a voice: “They’re not sure. Just movement.”

“Well, there’s nothing here. We’re a thousand feet up. What could be moving around?”

Radio squelch. “Control, all clear. Nothing here.”

A few seconds passed. Fisher heard the thud of the elevator doors closing, then silence.

“Moving again,” he said, and started crawling.

 

 

 

FIVE
minutes later, having found the hatch with no trouble, Fisher crouched at the edge of the roof, looking down at the penthouse balcony. Somewhere down there Marcus Greenhorn waited.

The speed with which the hotel guards had responded to the alarm told Fisher they were very close by—as were, he assumed, the Emir’s Al-Mughaaweer special forces soldiers. Fisher neither needed nor wanted a fire-fight on his hands, so he’d have to step carefully and get Greenhorn under quick control before he could call for help.

He flipped his NV goggles into place, then lay down on his belly and scooted forward. Slowly, inch by inch, he lowered his torso over the edge of the roof until he was hanging upside down, arms braced on the eaves.

The balcony stretched the length of the penthouse, some hundred feet, and had its own hot tub, fountain, and outdoor dining room. Through the windows he could see the interior was mostly dark, the only light coming from a two-hundred-gallon aquarium glowing a soft blue. He switched to IR, scanned again, and saw nothing. He did a final check for sensors and cameras using EM, and likewise saw nothing. However many Al-Mughaaweer guards there were, they were probably stationed in the hall outside.