Court and Zoya stood together in the dark bedroom right before beginning their operation. Court took her in his arms, and she looked up to him, but he could feel her misgivings. He said, “When you told me your name earlier… I should have told you mine. I’m sorry.”
“I was upset about that. But I didn’t know at the time you were a world-famous secret agent.”
Court shrugged. “The most famous secret agent on the planet. What does that get me?”
“Killed, one would assume. Somehow you managed to beat the odds.” She added, “Chad.”
“It’s Court. Court Gentry.”
Zoya nodded. “Good luck, Gray Man.” She went up on her toes and kissed Court. It was quick and more friendly than romantic, but it was enough to make him feel better.
Court let her go. “Good luck.” They separated; Court went to the living room and Zoya stayed in the bedroom.
Court and Zoya decided to attempt their escape exactly sixty minutes before the Chinese attacked the Chamroon estate. They reasoned that all the Chinese forces would be moving to their predeployment positions, except, of course, for the ones left behind to guard the prisoners here at the safe house. After dealing with the men on the balcony, Court and Zoya hoped to make it down to the boats at the water by the time the gunfire started nearby, providing them with a slight distraction.
Major Xi had nearly a dozen men at the house with him, but he’d stationed only two on the balcony overhanging the water behind the suite where the captives were being held. Apparently Xi had decided no one would be foolish enough to try to make an escape down the sheer rocky cliff, especially late at night.
Zoya opened the curtains to the balcony, right where Court had done so earlier in the evening. Court was still in the living room, standing at the balcony door there, but he had not moved his curtains yet.
Zoya could see one guard sitting at a small table, facing her direction. A second man was closer to Court’s side of the balcony, standing there, hands on his hips.
The seated man saw Zoya, and he stood. He motioned for her to step away from the glass, but she smiled, nodded, and waved, then unlocked the balcony door. Pretending to completely misunderstand the man’s gestures, she opened the door, but did not step out.
In her American accent she said, “Sorry, I know to stay inside, but do you speak English?”
“Yes, I speak English. Close the door now!” The man reached for his pistol inside his jacket, but just to put his hand on the grip. He held it there, another indicator for the clueless American woman that he meant business.
As he stepped closer to the woman, his partner had reached into his own jacket for his pistol, and he faced the action twenty feet away.
He never heard the living room door to the balcony slide open.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-THREE
Zoya spoke again to the Chinese guard. “It’s okay, sir. Can you get Colonel Dai on the phone? We need to talk to him.”
“No! Go back inside or I will—”
The guard closest to Zoya turned to look to his partner, and he saw the bigger American man standing behind him, just now wrapping the cord of a floor lamp around the guard’s throat. The American cinched the cord tight enough to lift the man off the ground with one hand, and with the other he reached around and controlled the pistol, holding it tightly in place in its holster, despite the guard’s attempts to draw it.
The guard by Zoya spun into action, facing this new threat, pulling his pistol out in a fluid motion and bringing it to bear on the man’s head. But before he sighted the weapon he felt a loop of cord around his own neck from behind; it was yanked hard, and then, to his utter astonishment, he saw the legs of the woman out in front of him.
While she held on to the cords around his throat she used the leverage there to kick her legs up, wrap them around the extended weapon, and adroitly disarm the guard by simultaneously kicking forward with the right foot into the slide of the gun and heeling back with her left foot into his hand.
The pistol bounced on the deck of the balcony, and the woman’s legs retracted, then cinched around the guard’s lower back.
And through all this his windpipe was being crushed by the lamp cord.
He flung himself back to the deck, slamming the woman hard and using his own body to amplify the effects, but she held on, even improving her choke hold by looping a second ring of the cable around the man’s neck and pulling it even harder.
After less than thirty seconds the loss of blood to the guard’s brain caused him to pass out completely. Zoya quickly pushed him off her, grabbed the pistol, and looked across the balcony to see how Court was doing.
Court already had his guard unconscious on his shoulder, and he walked him to the edge of the balcony. Court let the body fall, dropping the man 150 feet to his death. Zoya saw that the SIG Sauer pistol was already jutting from Court’s waistband.
Zoya panted with exertion as she jammed her guard’s pistol into the small of her back and retied her warm-ups tightly around it. Then she reached down to lift the body.
Court appeared next to her. Softly he said, “I’ll get him.”
But Zoya ignored him, took the unconscious man’s arm in one hand, then executed a forward roll over the prostrate body. This gave her the momentum she needed to heave the man up onto her shoulder and then stand with him in a fireman’s carry.
Court’s eyes widened as she walked slowly to the balcony’s edge and then let the guard roll off her shoulder and fall away.
Zoya rushed back into the bedroom, grabbed the length of bedsheets she’d turned into a rope with loops at both ends, then made her way back to the edge of the balcony.
Court was there with her and they wasted no time getting off the overhanging balcony, because they had no idea if someone was about to put bullets in their backs from one of the other windows in the big house. They kicked out over the side, lowered slowly till their hands were holding on to the balcony deck itself, and below in the near darkness they found a metal beam support structure holding the balcony away from the home. This they moved along easily, over and under like monkey bars, with Zoya leading the way because of her speed and comfort with the action.
Court thought it was probably a good thing he couldn’t even see the ocean below in the low light, but from the sound of the crashing of the waves, the shore was both very far beneath them and very rocky.
When they got to the end of the balcony supports they found themselves at a sheer cement wall, which marked the edge of the foundation of the house. There was almost no moonlight here, but when their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they could see it was eight feet straight down to a narrow ledge of earth that rimmed the top of the rocky cliff. Court hung down and dropped a couple of inches, then moved over to Zoya to help her when she dropped.
She came down on solid footing, not needing him there at all. She said, “I’ll be fine. You just worry about yourself and we’ll go faster.”
“Okay,” Court said, completely unaccustomed to working with someone so skilled. He even thought back to his old paramilitary unit in the CIA, Task Force Golf Sierra, known around CIA as the Goon Squad. These were six of the best operators in all of the U.S. military and the intelligence services, mostly former SEALs or Delta Force guys, and Court had been by far the best free climber of the unit.
Now he was completely outclassed by this Russian woman, and he wished he could just sit down and enjoy watching her at work.
They began climbing down the cliff just two minutes after they left the balcony, but within another minute of starting their descent they could hear shouting above them. They soon saw flashlight beams scanning the rocks to the left and right of their position, but unless Xi or one of his men wanted to climb under the balcony itself, there was no way they could be seen from above.