Sean winced and inched closer to the corner to make the transition easier. He shifted his weight and reached over again. This time, he ran his hand across the top to make sure any grit was removed before putting his faith in the ledge.
The muscles in his forearms were nearly exhausted. He’d have to move fast or risk being trapped. He grabbed the next ledge and quickly brought his left hand over. His right foot slipped on the first try, but then he got a toehold on a seam between the blocks. He resumed shuffling five inches at a time, making the same painful movement over and over again.
It took every ounce of focus and discipline Sean could muster, and after three minutes of the grueling exercise he was a good thirty feet away from the corner and nearing the warehouse wall. He had nothing left in the tank save enough for one last pull over the wall.
He dug deep and hauled his legs up to the ledge. Luckily, he discovered the top of the wall ran along behind the warehouse wall. He hurried to the shaded spot and sat on the lip, allowing his legs to dangle over the side. The hiding place gave him somewhere he could stay out of sight long enough to recover.
Sean’s fingers barely worked at first. The effort of holding up his body for so long had strained the muscles and tendons to their limit. He kept flexing them until the feeling started to come back, which took several minutes. His breathing returned to normal much faster. When he could work his fingers normally again, he rechecked to make sure his pistol was tucked firmly in its holster. Then he checked the homing beacons in his pocket.
They were still in place.
He’d put them in a little case to keep them from jostling around or falling out of his pocket. Given the ridiculous maneuvers he’d just executed, that idea had been on point.
Break’s over, he thought.
He shifted his weight and stood up, pressing his torso into the warehouse exterior wall. Next he shuffled along the ledge until he reached the corner and cautiously peeked around.
That’s not so bad.
Sean counted twenty men with assault rifles plus fifteen workers rushing around on foot and in forklifts. And there — about ninety feet away — were six crates, the same ones he’d seen in Tanzania.
They were being loaded onto more transport trucks. And unless Sean missed his guess, they were likely heading to another plane.
One of the strongest points Sean had as an agent was his uncanny ability to work through tough situations and reach a solution in a short amount of time.
Now that skill was being put to the test. He was far outnumbered. No matter how good he was with his pistol, by the time he’d taken out the first few guys, the others would rally and mow him down like it was the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
He needed to distract the men in the warehouse long enough to slip the beacons into three crates.
The thought occurred to him to shoot one of the men nearby. He wouldn’t have to kill the guy, just hit him. Everyone in the courtyard would rush to see what happened and immediately be put on full alert. They’d comb the premises to find the shooter. More than likely, they’d fan out to work more efficiently. The problem with that was that the crowd would gather close to his position, cutting off his way into the warehouse and cornering him with no way to escape.
No good. Too risky.
He sighed and examined his surroundings. Nothing helpful. Or was there?
A sturdy drain pipe ran up the exterior wall to the roof about ten feet above. Sean shuffled over to it, careful to keep his weight leaning in. He ran his hand around the rusted metal and found just enough of a gap between it and the wall where he could wedge his fingers.
If his memory served correctly — and it usually did — there were some holes in the warehouse roof, probably a result of a lack of maintenance over the years. If he could get to one of those spaces, there could be a way in. That or it would be a huge waste of time.
And time was running out.
30
A stupid tune ran through the back of Sean’s mind as he climbed the drain pipe. As he put one hand over the other, the nursery rhyme he’d learned as a child danced in his ears.
The itsy-bitsy spider went up the waterspout.
He’d never liked that song. Things didn’t end so well for that arachnid. And he liked it even less considering he was the spider climbing the waterspout.
The burning in his forearms returned much more quickly than before, but before the muscles reached a critical level he hoisted his legs over the edge and onto the roof.
Sean rested for a moment with his back on the hot roof before rolling onto the balls of his feet. When he did, a sudden and terrifying realization hit him. He was fairly high off the ground, and the roof pitch rose gradually until it reached the top.
He swallowed and stared up at the corrugated surface. The roof had seen better times — like forty years ago. To say it looked unstable was a massive understatement. Throw on top of it Sean’s irrational fear of heights, and his original idea got more appealing by the second.
“No,” he said quietly. “You have to push through this.”
His fear of heights was something Sean had fought his entire life. He wasn’t sure where it came from, though while he was in college his mother told him a story about pushing him out of a swing when he three years old.
Whether the phobia came from that traumatic childhood moment or not, he would never know. What he did know was that anytime he stood in a place more than twenty-five feet high his balance wavered and everything felt less safe. It wasn’t just for him. If he noticed someone standing close to a ledge, he worried incessantly that they would fall, and found it nearly impossible to relax.
Standing on the warehouse rooftop, all those issues came to a head. He crouched low to keep a lower center of gravity and started moving toward where the roofing came to a point high above the warehouse floor.
After only a few steps he got down on his hands and bear-crawled forward until he reached a point where one of the ceiling panels had fallen in. He stopped and lowered down until he was lying on his chest. He eased himself a few inches forward and peered down through the gap.
Seven trucks were parked side by side in the warehouse. The final two had tailgates down, being loaded by the workers.
Directly below him — about ten feet down — a rickety catwalk stretched across from one side of the warehouse to the other. It connected in the middle with another walkway running down the center. Off to the side, the catwalk was attached to a set of stairs that led to a lower walkway and another staircase to the floor.
That would be his best bet to get down to the trucks. And there were fewer men inside the warehouse than out. He counted six with guns and four workers. Definitely more manageable numbers. Still not good, but it was something he could work with. Especially if he could get the drop on them.
Unfortunately, drop was the operative word.
To make it work, he would have to hang from the ceiling and let himself drop to the catwalk below. This presented a few new problems.
If he missed the catwalk, he’d obviously die. Best-case scenario: He’d survive the fall to the floor below with a broken neck and pretty much every other bone in his body. Then there was the possibility that he could stick the landing on the elevated walkway. If he did and it wasn’t stable — which was the prevailing appearance — his weight could rip it from the housings, and the whole thing would drop to the floor, bringing him back to broken neck and other bones or dying. Probably both.
Of course, he could make it to the catwalk unnoticed, sneak down to the bottom, take out the men, plant the homing devices, and escape unharmed.