Blaise whispered into his mic, “Bravo Team has passed the front desk.”
The camera designated as Alpha Team swiveled. Farther over the tarpaper expanse, five more people crawled to the edge.
Tristan found that group’s feed, where a man muttered, “Charlie Team is in position,” and Blaise relayed it.
That Irish guy’s voice whispered, “Delta Team is in position,” but their browser window was nothing but darkness.
Dammit, Tristan had wanted to see Colleen, just to make sure she was all right and they were keeping her in a safe place.
Blaise, who’d been watching other browser windows, said, “Bravo team is in the elevator. Final countdown has started.” He typed a few strokes on the keyboard, obviously running a pre-positioned program. “Control of the closed-circuit security system is confirmed. Repeat, security system is confirmed, and Echo Team is a go.” Tristan and Blaise were Echo Team, the technology division of the operation.
Tristan asked him, “So it looks like you hijacked the security cameras’ video feed. The security personnel watching the closed-circuit monitors, are they watching a video loop?”
Blaise nodded but added, “Yes, it is a loop, but I’ve written a video manipulation algorithm to shake things up. Just like how you can digitally alter videos for social media like with FaceTune, I built a randomizer into my algo to subtly change people’s appearances and the colors of their clothes. That way, the security guards won’t get suspicious because they’ve seen the same woman in a bright red dress walk out of the elevator exactly every seven minutes for the past half hour.”
“Nice,” Tristan said. “We should talk sometime. I have some interesting ideas—”
“Sure, you have,” Blaise mumbled. “Everybody who’s not in the cybersecurity business thinks they’re a hacker.”
Tristan backed off. Blaise was busy, and Tristan didn’t need to get in a pissing contest with a guy who was obviously very good at his job.
Blaise Lyon watched the monitors and muttered into the microphone, “Bravo Team has exited the elevator and is in the stairwell to the penthouse. T minus three minutes.”
Tristan found a browser window showing the four guys barreling up concrete stairs. The operation was beginning. It should only be a matter of minutes before Jian and Anjali were safe.
But before that, Colleen might be in danger.
“That Eian Summerhays guy, he’s good at his job, right?”
“Can’t talk right now,” Blaise said.
“Colleen Frost is on Delta Team because she’s supposed to make sure Anjali doesn’t panic and try to fight off the guys who are trying to rescue her. I don’t like that Colleen is going in there at all. I just want to make sure this Eian Summerhays guy can do his job and protect her.”
Blaise repeated, “Can’t talk right now.” He clicked on the mic. “Bravo Team is at the stairwell door. Electronics are a go.”
On the screen, one of the guys held a box-like contraption over the electronic lock on the stairwell door that was supposed to be opened with a key card or QR code on a phone screen. After a second, a green light flashed on the top of their device.
A voice came over the speakers. “Bravo Team is in position and ready.”
Blaise whispered into the mic, “Bravo Team at T minus five seconds. Everyone else at T minus ten seconds. Countdown for Bravo Team. Go Bravo Team in five, four,—”
Tristan held his breath.
When Blaise said, “One,” the mercenaries in the stairwell opened the door and swarmed to the next door over, which Tristan recognized as the door to the presidential suite at the Boulders Resort. They applied their device to the door’s electronic lock.
Blaise was already counting down. “Delta Team stand at the ready. Alpha and Charlie Teams go at T minus five seconds. Five, four—”
Tristan held onto his knees, his fists clenching as he watched the rescue proceed, and he tried to catch a glimpse of Colleen on Delta Team’s surveillance feed.
Blaise said, “One. Go.”
38
Delta Team
Colleen
Colleen lay on warm desert dirt, glad that she’d worn denim jeans the previous day when they’d been breaking and entering at GameShack. But she was regretting her choice of the cotton tee-shirt that had been delivered. The grit of the soil ground right through the thin knit, dusting her stomach with fine, dry clay.
Her clothes certainly weren’t the black mercenary fatigues that the other guys on Delta Team were wearing, but they’d given her a webbing harness that buckled around her body.
Eian Summerhays, her personal mercenary, had fussed over making sure the straps over her shoulders and around her waist were latched securely and cinched down snugly. He’d watched closely, bracing himself on his knees to inspect how tightly she’d yanked the harness, and he’d instructed while she tightened the ones around her thighs.
Weird.
Delta Team was hiding among the enormous burnt ochre boulders at the base of the resort, directly below the balcony of the presidential suite. The floodlights illuminating the sleek, modern hotel built into the side of the mountain reflected a dark twilight where they were hiding in the shadows.
Colleen was lying among the rocks, cacti, and presumably rattlesnakes, spiders, and scorpions.
A trace of chlorinated water wafted on the dry breeze. Fifty yards away, hotel guests drank fruity drinks while relaxing around the pool in the ninety-five-degree heat. Mariachi music played from the speakers while kids splashed, despite that it was after midnight, while their parents slowly got drunk.
Around her, five men lay prone, stuck flat to the desert floor. Because Colleen didn’t have a walkie-talkie or whatever they were using, Eian Summerhays whispered what was happening to her. “They got the go signal. Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie teams are going in. The operation has begun.”
“When are we going to know if she’s okay?”
“Soon.”
The air cracked like a gun thundering beside her ear.
A crash and clatter of smashed glass blasted above them.
Colleen’s arms flew around her head and face, but nothing rained down on them.
Over by the pool, hotel guests screamed and ran.
Eian said, “They’re in.”
“Jesus, are they shooting?” she asked him.
“Flashbang grenades. Nonlethal weapon. Like a thousand flashbulbs going off in your face all at once and a sonic boom right by your head.”
Ten long seconds later—ten seconds that lasted an hour in Colleen’s mind as she pictured Anjali terrified or Sergey holding a gun to her head while the Rogue Security mercenaries broke in— ropes dropped from the balcony of the presidential suite at The Boulders Resort and dangled, twisting in the dim light.
Eian leaped to standing. “Let’s go.”
The rope stretched five stories up to the hotel balcony. “I don’t think I can climb that.”
“No worries.” Eian grabbed Colleen around her waist and pulled her against his chest.
“Dude! I have a boyfriend!”
While that was her usual retort when a guy got too handsy in a bar, never mind the societal implications that she had to be some other man’s property for a guy not to molest her, it rang differently in her mind when she said it that time.