He clears his mind and focuses on the fast-approaching terrain below, now sharp and clear; the street lighting casting a yellow glow, a flame Zeb is rushing toward.
Zeb toggles the chute gently until he’s dropping slowly over the roof of Holt’s house, bends his knees, pulls both brakes, and steps out of the sky onto the house, balancing himself on the incline of the roof. He quickly unstraps the chute, pulls it down, and crumples it to its smallest. The wing suit joins the chute as he steps out of it, dressed now in his hunting gear, all black with his guns and knife strapped across his body. From his backpack he takes a long cord that he wraps around the wing suit and chute, and ties both to the chimney so that they don’t flap in the night or fall down to the ground and draw attention from within.
He double-clicks his collar mic, waits for Broker to respond and, when he does, double-clicks again to signal over and out.
He wraps another rope around the chimney of the house, wraps the other end of it around his waist, and lowers himself down the front of the house between the windows. He lowers himself down a foot and stops immediately. In all their planning, Broker and he had overlooked a simple and now glaring fact — the house clapboards are painted white, and Zeb is in black.
He wills away his anger at his mistake, knowing that Broker is watching and has caught on to the challenge. He waits a few minutes, working out various options, and then decides to take the risk and continue. The traffic is almost nonexistent, and neighboring houses are dark.
The front has six large windows, but Zeb is interested in only one — the one on the second floor that had the three blobs in it. Back in New York, Broker and he had worked out the angle at which he would have to lower himself so that the only way anyone from any window would spot him would be if they leaned far out of the window. So far none of the sentries seem to be so inclined.
He hopes his luck holds out.
He lowers himself to a few feet from the top of the window and then pulls out a telescopic wire camera. He has his Glock strapped to his left arm in case somebody decides to get a breath of night air. Broker modified the wire camera — it’s fitted with night-vision capabilities that can be turned on and off, and also a wireless capability with a limited range.
Zeb activates the wireless unit and hears an acknowledging double-click from Broker as the images come up on Broker’s monitor. He lowers the camera to the top corner of the window and positions it and finds the curtain obstructing the view. He moves the camera towards the central divide in the curtain, finds no luck there either, and moves the camera down the divide. At a narrow opening at the bottom, he gets lucky and is able to see inside, but all he sees are legs — three pairs of them sitting, two pairs facing the third — and a dim light burning in the room. The camera is on a downward angle, and he is unable to correct the angle to make it horizontal, so he moves it to the top right corner of the window. He gets lucky there and gets a clear view of Holt, with Lauren and Rory, both gagged, facing him, their profiles to the window.
Broker double-clicks, acknowledging the images on his screen.
Holt is looking straight at the camera as if he knows it’s there. Zeb keeps it still, hoping it’s too small to be detected by Holt — especially in the dark.
After his contemplation, Holt looks away and says something to Lauren, who nods. Zeb commits everything in the room to memory, where Lauren and Rory are seated, Holt’s chair — whatever the camera sees, Zeb absorbs.
He considers peering through the other windows but drops the idea immediately when he studies them. They are all dark from within and without curtains; he or his camera would be easily spotted.
He climbs back up the wall and steadies himself on the roof as he gets rid of the climbing rope, planning his entry all the while. There should be a skylight on the side of the roof facing the back.
This is his point of entry.
He moves cautiously up the peak of the roof and surveys the other side.
No skylight.
Chapter 17
He can’t tear his eyes away from the smooth downward slope of the roof. He looks away for a moment and then turns back to the roof.
Nope. His eyes aren’t playing tricks. There isn’t a skylight.
The wing suit approach was because of the existence of a skylight, which was marked on the house plan Broker found.
Clearly Holt had rebuilt the roof to eliminate that entry point. He must have considered filling in the windows, but that would have drawn attention to the house. Zeb leans against the chimney and considers his options. It’s obvious he’ll have to go in through a window — the middle window on the top floor, facing the rear, winning hands down against the other windows.
Zeb signals Broker with a small flashlight to get his attention.
Broker replies with a text message, and when Zeb answers it, back comes a string of curses. ‘I knew there would be a fuckup. It was too easy till now.’ Another string of curses follow and then a few minutes of silence.
‘Top floor has two men patrolling the front and back windows on either side of the house. These same two guys alternately patrol the middle windows too. Each man spends about ten minutes in the rear room where the middle window at the back is located. The room is without a patrol every ten minutes, so that’s your opportunity. You’ll have to use that.
‘Keep your phone powered on. I’ll message when the window is clear at the next ten-minute interval.’
‘No need. Will figure out. No more now,’ Zeb replies and powers off his mobile, removes the battery, and pockets both.
He peers down the back of the house and works out an approach to the middle window, wraps the rope around his waist, and sets down noiselessly to just above the sill of the window. He extends the wire camera and plugs it into the top left corner of the window, a corner that is usually overlooked by right-handed men, the most common handedness on the planet.
The room is dark, but the images stand out clearly, courtesy of the improvements Broker has made to the camera. He can make out furniture — a wardrobe, a bed against the wall — and in the distance the faint glow of the open door.
He waits, something he is very good at.
The guard drifts in eight minutes later and positions himself by the side of the door and stands still.
A good move, thinks Zeb, a sign of experience. An inexperienced guard would move to the window immediately. The guard drifts to the sides of the room and then approaches the window but stands a few feet and to the side, observing the world outside. All good tradecraft except for not checking outside the windows.
Zeb waits till the guard leaves and then slithers down rapidly to the side of the window. Bracing his legs against the wall, he withdraws a suction cup from his backpack, attaches it just above the sash, and cuts a circle around it with a diamond cutter. He removes the circle of glass and drops it behind his head into the open mouth of his backpack.
Most houses of that age have windows with locking mechanisms at the bottom, and luckily these windows have a simple sliding bolt screwed into the frame. It takes Zeb not more than a couple of minutes to unscrew the bolt, open the window, and slip inside.
He glances at his watch — six minutes from first tapping on the window. He can imagine Broker snorting in disgust, for Zeb has made similar entries in less than five minutes with hurricane winds eddying around him.