Gunmetal Gray

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.

Court and Zoya had discussed moving laterally along the cliff face until they could find a place wide of the Chinese safe house to make their way back up onto smoother ground on the hillside, but Court was glad they’d chosen to descend all the way down to the boats below. If they’d been caught out on the cliff by a flashlight now, they would have only been a few feet away from the balcony, and there would be nothing they could do but hold on to the wall while they were shot to death from above.

They moved along close together with Zoya below Court, and she found ledges, handholds, and small wedges in the rocks where she could jam her tennis shoes in to brace herself. Often she called up to Court softly to give him directions, which he followed carefully. At one point she had to use the makeshift climbing rope over her shoulder to hook it onto a rock and climb out to either side looking for a path. When she found her way she had Court lift the loop of the bedsheets off its outcropping, and then she had Court slide the loop over his own shoulder, while she hooked the other end on a closer rock.

They moved this way for twenty grueling minutes, and by now Court guessed from the sound of the waves they’d made it halfway down. They still had another seventy-five feet or so to go, and he’d just climbed down level with Zoya when she announced that the face of the wall just below her slanted in, and she couldn’t find a place for her feet.

“Okay,” said Court, straining under a tough handhold. “Do you want me to try?”

“No. Just find a good hold, loop the rope around your head and shoulder, and hang on tight. You’re going to have to lower me.”

“Right.” Court had to move to his left several feet to find a decent spot to hang on, and then he readied himself to take Zoya’s weight if she fell. When he was ready they both hooked into the bedsheets, he around his upper body and she around her waist.

It took every bit of Court’s strength to lower Zoya slowly, playing out the bedsheets with his right hand and taking the full weight of her 145-pound, muscular physique. She was aware of Court’s strain, and quickly she found a place to get a handhold inside the forty-five-degree inward slope of the wall. This took some of the weight away, and after another minute of work she managed to make contact with the wall with both feet and hands.

She called back up now. “You’re going to have to come down the same way, and I’m going to have to hold you.”

“Can you do it?” Court asked.

“We’ll know in a moment, won’t we?”

“Great.”

Court took his time, put a hand in one of his footholds, lowered himself, and grabbed on to the other tiny outcropping where his other foot had been. He hung down now, with his legs swaying in open air. Zoya could see them, right in front of her but three feet away. She could grab him by the waist, but from there he’d have to drop, and she didn’t know if she could carry both his weight and his momentum.

She called up to him. “Okay, here’s what we do. I hang out with one hand and one leg braced. You step down on my shoulder. I lean forward and you step on my lower back. I’ll pull myself and you back to the wall while you let go and grab on to me with your hands.”

“Jesus,” Court said, but he couldn’t think of a better plan.

“It’s all in the timing,” Zoya said. She tightened her left handhold, forced her left foothold tighter to the wall, and then swung out to the right. She fully extended her body away from the wall, and Court began climbing down her slowly. When he had both feet on her butt and one hand on her shoulder, she said, “Okay, one… two… three.”

Court let go with his remaining hand, lowered his head quickly so it didn’t smack against the lower edge of the outer wall, and “rode” to the deeper wall on Zoya’s back as she swung back in with her right arm and leg. Once there, he got off her as quickly as possible, finding his own foot- and handholds.

“You all right?” He knew that couldn’t have been easy for the five-foot, seven-inch woman.

She was clearly reaching exhaustion; he could hear it in her voice. “Fine. Take the rope off and give it to me. I may need both ends to traverse.”

Court did as instructed; Zoya put all the bedsheets back over her shoulder, and she started back down.

Court was still thinking about what she’d just had to do. As she lowered her left leg down to a spot far below her, he said, “Why don’t I lead? You need a minute to—”

A loud cracking sound in the rock interrupted him and then, to Court’s horror, Zoya dropped away suddenly.

Court’s mouth bled freely now, dripping onto the wet stone right in front of his face, though he could not see it. His right shin hurt because he’d smacked it on an outcropping as he threw himself forward, and now it was holding up more of his weight than it should have been, considering he had no power to control his shin like he did a hand or foot.

His right wrist and hand hurt, not because he’d hit them as he’d lunged for Zoya, but instead because he was now horizontal to the wall, facing straight down, and three fingers of his right hand were up high and behind his back. Other than his bloody shin the three fingers were the only part of him taking his body weight because his left foot hung down in open air, and his left arm was hyperextended, his hand gripping the thin fingers of Zoya Zakharova’s right hand.

He’d lunged for her, snatching her hand out of free fall in desperation and only then trying to find something of his own to grab on to. He’d banged his face in the process, and his leg, and although he had stopped her from dropping seventy feet to her death, he had no idea what either of them could do now to get out of this situation.

He’d lost hold of her hand almost immediately, but now their fingers were locked tightly together. The position was agonizing for Court, but he knew the woman below him must have been in excruciating pain with the way he held on to her.

Court spit blood into the wall so he could talk. “You okay?”

The voice came from below; he couldn’t see any part of her now, only the rockface in front of him. “No. There is another recess here, deeper than the one before. I can’t see anything, and my feet can’t reach the wall.”

“Can you stretch out with your left hand and find the wall?”

“I’ll have to spin around, and I’ll lose my grip with you. What are you holding on with?”

Court didn’t want to tell her, but she was the more experienced climber. If there was a solution to this problem, maybe she could solve it. He said, “Three fingers of my right hand. I can’t move my legs without losing my grip.”

“Shit,” she said, and she said it in English.

“Der’mo,” he answered back. He wasn’t going to be able to hold her for long.

She asked, “How far down do you think it is to the water?”

“The same distance it is to the rocks.”

Zoya said, “You are saying, it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah.”

Court knew there was only one thing they could possibly try. “Look, I’m going to have to—”

Zoya knew before he finished the sentence. “Do it. Swing me out, then back in towards the cliff, and let me go.”

It was a Hail Mary, nothing more. He was going to have to generate some momentum by swinging her back and forth, in and out towards the wall below the underhang. And then, when he’d gotten her moving as fast as possible, he would let go, and she would fly in through the darkness and hope against all reason for three things to go right at the same time: One, that she made it to the wall before she lost momentum and fell to her death. Two, that she would somehow instantly find hand- or footholds that would keep her from sliding off the wall. And three, that he didn’t throw her so hard into the wall that she crashed face-first into the rock, knocking her hard enough to where she couldn’t grab on to a hold even if it was there for her.

Court knew he couldn’t hold on much longer. “I have to start swinging.”

“Go.”

Slowly at first, he rocked the deadweight in, then out, straining his left shoulder. After three full cycles, Zoya was moving enough for Court to feel significant pull against the three fingers holding him against the wall.

“Court.”

“Yes?”

“Do you pray?”

“I’m praying now.”

“Then pray for me,” she said.

“Okay. Two more swings and then we go. You’ve got this.”

From below he heard her say, “You are a good man. You will rescue Fan and save your Agency friends tonight.”

Court said, “Not without your help, spider monkey,” and then he swung in with all his might, let go of her fingers, and felt Zoya’s hand slip away.