Austin Camacho - The Payback Assignment

Felicity pulled a metal spray canister, much like he would have called an Indian tank, out of the trunk and handed it to Morgan. After he helped her get the tank strapped on he pulled another onto his own back.

Felicity led the way into the building and walked directly to the reception desk. Following his instructions, Morgan went straight to the elevators.

Felicity leaned over the reception desk, offering the guard a plastic identification card. “Exterminators. Got a call…”

“Yeah, yeah,” the guard interrupted her, not even glancing at the I.D. “Sign in here, then go on up. Check in when you leave.”

Seconds later Morgan and Felicity were riding upward. At the top floor they left the elevator and climbed stairs to the roof. Morgan had run the roofs of the projects when he was a kid, so he was at home with the air conditioner housings and the tarpaper beneath his feet. The street noises seemed a world away, like a radio broadcast from some distant planet whose language was indecipherable yet familiar. Leaving their empty insect poison canisters behind, they walked to the edge of the roof. The gap looked wider than it was, and the black chasm seemed endlessly deep. After giving each other a smile, they stepped back ten paces in unison. Morgan watched Felicity’s breathing and when her head snapped forward they both raced forward and jumped together across the five feet and down a few more to the adjoining roof. After a few seconds of seeming weightlessness, they landed side-by-side, tucked and rolled, and came up to their feet easily.

“Perfect PLF, Red,” Morgan said as they started toward the roof door.

“PLF?”

“Parachute landing fall,” he answered. “What you just did is exactly what they teach in jump school.”

His smile faded because he saw hers disappear. She was staring at the roof entrance. It was not a regular door, but twin sliding panels without a handle or knob.

“The blueprints don’t show this,” she said slowly.

“What’s wrong?”

“The blueprints didn’t show this.” Her hands became fists, vibrating at her sides. “It’s a bleeding elevator door. They must have demolished the stairs. The private elevator isn’t next to the stairwell. They put it in place of the stairwell. It’s the only roof access, and the doors are computer locked, just like inside. Bloody hell!”

Radiating frustration, Felicity stalked over to the street side edge of the roof. Morgan leaned against an air conditioning fan, staring around the roof of that old office building in midtown Manhattan. When it was built, he knew, they had called it a skyscraper. Now, newer, far more gargantuan towers dwarfed it. It still looked plenty tall to him.

Felicity was bent over the edge of the roof, looking down. Against the black tar background she was lost to sight except for her hair, moving in the evening breeze.

The silence was as thick as quicksand and Morgan knew that if he struggled against it he would merely sink deeper. Felicity was focused on the present problem to the exclusion of all else. Morgan imagined he could almost hear the wheels whirring and clicking inside her head. He had no fear that she might back away from the problem. Her determination appeared to be unshakable, and that was a trait he was coming to truly admire about her.

After a short time, Felicity said, “I’m going down. I’ll let you in.”

A moment passed before he realized exactly what she was saying. He leaped forward, but by the time he grabbed her arm, Felicity had one leg over the short parapet at the edge of the roof. Unhindered by his grip, she swung her other leg over. She seemed so fragile, suspended by her slender limbs into black space.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Morgan asked.

“It’s called a deadfall,” Felicity replied calmly. “I’ll drop down three stories, go in a window and come up the elevator.”

Morgan’s mouth hung open for a second before he spoke again. “What are you talking about? Drop down. You’ve got no rappelling equipment, no grapnel hook, nothing.”

“Look, this is something I can do.” Felicity’s reply was steel and ice. “No sweat. Now just back off and let me do my job.”

He took two slow steps back, holding eye contact as long as he could. When her head was below his level of vision, his eyes never left her hands. He was watching an unfamiliar, fascinating mystique. He thought he already knew this woman, this stranger, pretty well. But now he was seeing her from a new angle. This was the lady in her own world, a narrow subculture most people only saw portrayed in the movies. He was involved, yet totally excluded.

And he wondered if she had felt this way when he burst into her apartment not long ago to gun down two men waiting in ambush.

Hanging over the edge, Felicity had withdrawn herself from the world, leaving a vacuum around her. Slowly she allowed the darkness to surround her. The gentle breeze caressed her lithe form. As she relaxed, she hung at arms length, suspended from the edge of the roof by only her eight fingertips. Bit by bit, she surrendered to gravity’s loving tug. The warmth of her breath reflected back from the sandstone into her face. Perspiration broke from her shirt, chilling her arms. Remote traffic noises brushed her ears, carried on the cooling evening breeze.

When fear tried to intrude on her mind, she squeezed it into a tiny ball and forced it down into the pit of her stomach. In the following seconds she relaxed completely, starting with her toes and working her way upward. Last to relax were her fingers.

She slipped through the atmosphere as a dolphin through the surf. Her lungs froze during her decent, neither filling nor pushing air out. A window flew by. A second. A third and her hands snapped out, grasping the windowsill. The greedy hand of gravity gave her one bone-jarring yank, stretching her spine.

Then it was over. She hung for a moment, gasping for breath. She neither looked up nor down. Her view was stone, four inches away from her face. One tear crawled out of her left eye. She could smell her own sweat, hear her heartbeat, taste the acid fear fighting to crawl up out of her stomach.

Now for the hard part, she thought.

She gripped the wall with her fingers and toes and hung, nearly four hundred feet above the sidewalk, with her body thrust out from the wall like an arrogant spider on the face of a mountain. Her right hand released the windowsill and slid down to her belt. Without looking she selected a small jimmy.

Whoever had set up security on this place had never expected anyone to reach these windows. They were the old style with basic turn locks and no alarms. She simply popped the lock with the jimmy, raised the window and hauled herself inside.

She landed like a snowflake on an ice floe, becoming one with the darkness. As her eyes adjusted she saw she had invaded a conference room of some sort. Deserted. She moved to the door and listened. Silence.

The hallway was just as empty, but not dark. Willing herself to stand tall, she walked over to the elevator and pressed the button. Apparently the coded card was only needed to enter at the top and bottom of the shaft. On the levels in between, the private elevator operated just like any other. The door slid open within two second and she stepped in.

Morgan did not appear at all surprised when the roof doors hissed open. She was glad he didn’t embarrass her by gushing with praise, but as he stepped in he wore a smile that spoke volumes. She tossed her full red hair in a gesture of triumph, pushed a button, and returned them to the floor she had just left.

“We should search the offices first, on the floor below the apartment,” she said. “He might be keeping a safe down here, and it’s the safest place for us to start anyway. The business should be all shut down for the night.”