79
The argument was getting heated, but there was no way I was backing down. “Blaine, she’s climbing the wall. We need to see inside the apartment.”
“Pike, this isn’t a Spider-Man movie. It’s damn near noon. She can’t get up the backside without compromise. We take the team and hit the place with overwhelming force. It’s only a two-room apartment.”
“It was your call on the daylight hit, but no way am I setting foot in that place without intel. We could be walking into a firebox.”
Blaine said, “We’ve got the intel. Jesus, we have more than we ever did back when we used to do this shit at Bragg. We have the entire floor plan.”
The flight out of Ireland had taken as long as I thought it would, with the usual delays, but we put the time to good use, planning our next steps. The Taskforce had managed to give us a complete schematic of the entire structure the Somalis were allegedly in, and their room—318—was a corner one, with a window from the bathroom looking out into an alley and the bricks of the building next door. We’d hit the ground and rented a cargo van and a sedan, then driven straight to the target.
It was on a street called Edgware, which had the nickname of Little Beirut, but that was somewhat misleading. I’d expected it to be like other Little Arabias I’d seen in the past, in other countries. A small enclave of Middle Eastern culture, with BMO women walking about—Black Moving Objects completely covered head to toe—and men dressed in Gulf attire.
Instead, it was just a busy street in London with a few hookah-smoking establishments and a smattering of Arabic lettering on various stores. Definitely not Little Beirut, unless you were calling it that because of the international nature that city boasted in the ’60s. There were just as many westerners as people from the Middle East.
The apartment complex was set back from the street by a block of stores, a hallway leading past to the stairwell for the residences. It appeared fairly straightforward and simple to assault. Straight up the stairs and in, three rooms and ten seconds before target secure. But that intelligence was based on nothing but a sanitized piece of blueprint. It couldn’t tell us what they’d done inside. Didn’t show if they’d ringed the walls with RDX.
Brett chimed in, “Boss, he’s right. Every time someone mentions Somalis, people get killed.”
Blaine said, “Then you do it. Let’s get an Operator on the backside.”
And there it was. The prejudice. He wasn’t worried about compromise. He didn’t trust Jennifer.
Retro said, “Sir, no offense, but you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Jennifer can climb better than all of us together. If you’re saying we need to do the recce, then she’s it.”
For her part, Jennifer sat silently, letting us duke it out.
Blaine looked at her and said, “You can do this?”
“In my sleep, you chauvinistic piece of shit.”
Well, okay, she didn’t say that. But she should have. All she did was nod her head.
He said, “All right. Let’s go. We’re wasting time.”
I smiled and said, “Koko’s up. I’ll pull security to the rear, where she’s climbing. Retro, you got far-side front. Stage at the coffee shop next door. Check for atmospherics, anyone pulling security for them. Blood, you got the entrance to the apartment complex. Figure out how we get in. See if we need to fake a button-call to get inside, or whether we can just walk up like we own the place.”
Brett stashed his suppressed Glock, the barrel long enough to poke a tent in his jeans in the back. He threw on a large oilskin Burberry, draping the coattail over his butt, and said, “I fucking hate that callsign.”
Jennifer, slipping into a pair of Vibram FiveFingers shoes, said, “Preaching to the choir.”
We split up, me following Jennifer down the dank alley, past a beat-up car parked illegally, the bodywork pockmarked with dents and holes, like someone had taken a ball-peen hammer to it. Or like someone had shot at it.
I hissed and Jennifer held up. I said, “Is this the car you dinged up?”
She studied it, then said, “I honestly can’t say. It was dark, but those holes are new.”
I peered inside, seeing nothing obvious. We left it behind, turning the corner to a smaller alley, really just a walkway strewn with garbage cans. Jennifer looked up and said, “That’s it. Right above us.”
I said, “Hey, I gave you a lot of props with Blaine. You can do this, right?”
She grinned and said, “In my sleep.”
She kept walking and I said, “Where are you going?”
“To the end. See that ledge? I’ll get to the third floor from the far side, then shimmy over. I should be able to see inside, but I won’t be able to do anything but look.”
“How long can you hang? Do you need to come back, or can you lock that window down?”
She looked up at the ledge, really just a four-inch outcropping, and said, “I can hold that for at least thirty minutes, especially if I brace my feet against the brick, but I can’t lock it down. Only give you visual reports.”
I said, “Good enough. Nobody’s going to escape that way anyway.”
She reached an old iron drainage pipe at the corner of the alley and tested it, finding it anchored firmly. She said, “Catch me if I fall?”
I grinned. “Of course.”
She glanced behind me, and I turned, saying, “What?”
“Just wanted to make sure nobody’s looking.” When I turned back around, she kissed me on the lips.
Taken aback, I pulled away and said, “Damn it, Jennifer. Quit that shit.”
She grinned and, in a false baritone, said, “I’m a knuckle-dragging commando. Don’t let my friends see me kiss a girl like last time.”
I realized that Brett or Retro had kidded her about what had happened at the farmhouse hit, and she didn’t like me hiding our relationship. Didn’t like that I might be ashamed of it. Which . . . I wasn’t. I thought.
Before I could reply, she slapped my gut, switched on her Bluetooth earpiece, and leapt up, grabbing the pipe and scampering like a lizard on a summer day, getting to the third floor in seconds. She reached out, grasped the ledge, and began shimmying over to the target apartment, raising her legs into a pike position for every window, holding it while she continued moving. Amazing the hell out of me.
She reached the target and slowed. She peeked inside, then planted her feet onto the rough brick, leaning close, arms above her head grasping the outcropping.
Over the radio, I said, “Blood, Retro, status?”
“Good out here. We can walk right in. No issues.”
“Stand by. Koko’s got something.”
I saw her peer inside, twisting her body to get closer. She came on the radio.
“Pike, through the bathroom I can get a corner of the den. There are two hostages on the floor. Hooded. I can see their heads.”