Nikita slowly edged forward. The house was one of many in the area. It had the standard alarm sign in the front yard but nothing else whatsoever to indicate that it was the hiding spot of information that could sink a government. She walked carefully over to a house three houses down with a Realtor sign in the yard. Pulling the house information from the tube mounted under the for sale sign she walked toward the obviously empty house.
When she got behind the large brick house, she looked around. Not seeing any eyes, she moved toward the small garage and leapt for the edge of the roof. Settling herself on the shingles she examined her passage. She could stick to the upper back edges of the properties between her and the target house. Leap from this garage to the next tacky one, using it as a platform to get to the roof of the ranch next door.
She decided ringing the front doorbell would be a bullet eating experience. Better to enter from the roof and make her way down to the safe room Percy indicated was in the basement. Why the man planted the first black box in suburbia she would never know. Nikita checked her equipment. There was probably a few layers of security between her and the box, but she was well armed and had more than a few of the latest toys.
Nikita dropped lightly onto the edge of the roof. The rain gutter quietly squealed its displeasure at being under her heel but quieted as she threw herself forward. She edged over the cheap and tacky shingles that defined this cheap and tacky subdivision and made her way toward the peak. She pried loose the exhaust on the roof and ducked her head in. Almost no room, but there soon would be. Anchoring herself, she lowered head first and began cutting one side of the duct. The space between the roof and the first livable floor would probably be stifling and filled with pink insulation. Few of the low end security companies that alarmed the area would bother alarming the drop door from a tiny attic space like this down into the main house. She was soon sliding through the opening and planting her limbs on the support beams that defined the floor area of this space.
"Now the fun part," she whispered. Nikita cracked open the trap door and lowered a tiny mic. She listened intently. There was definitely someone moving around down below. She would have to exercise caution.
She lowered herself onto the top shelf of the linen closet and pressed her hands firmly between the walls to lower herself to the floor. Nikita placed her face against the shag carpet and tried to see under the door. A pair of shining shoes passed the closet and from the sounds, made their way downstairs. She reached up to the knob and turned it slowly.
Nikita moved down the stairs slowly and entered a living area that had been left behind in the eighties. Teal carpet, salmon highlights on the wall, clunky brass mirrors. Nikita frowned and began sliding toward the kitchen where the basement stairs were to be found. Listening as she moved, she heard the back door close and an alarm set. Would she be this lucky? She edged down the stairs. She soon found the bottle of cleaner that Percy had indicated sat on the switch.
A set of shelves swung out revealing walls full of photographs. Her brow knit and she moved forward as she saw one that was familiar. She pulled it down.
"Daniel."
"Percy asked me to take care of him as a favor."
She spun and saw Owen in the corner. "Aren't you supposed to be cleaning something?"
"Aren't you supposed to be dead?" He stood. "Yet another mess for me to clean." He quickly brought up his weapon.
Alexandra took a deep breath. She and Nikita had eventually hammered out an approach that would work... hopefully. The key to a successful assassination was to keep things as simple and direct as possible... or not. She sighed as she entered her suite. The man on the floor above was an arms dealer who made the biggest mistake of his life by turning on Division an offering information to a sub-committee about black ops. A fatal mistake for anyone brave or stupid enough to try it. Alex frowned. So far, Amanda was operating a lot like Percy. She brightened. It was a damn good thing she was going to let them kill each other.
The security team on the target was good. They were very good. Watchful, well armed. What they didn't have was an expectation for the unexpected. She hummed as she cut the wall near her tub. She laid out a diagram and a penlight. "Hello," she whispered to one of the pipes coming from above. Alex followed it down to where her own tub drain joined it. "And you taking that pretty room at the top? Makes this so much easier. Only one tub on the other end of this," she muttered as she followed the pipe up. Hopping out of the tub she grabbed a pipe wrench.
"Lefty loosy, righty tighty," she muttered. Taking the joint out, she slid in a replacement joint with a small device with a tiny wireless camera on top. Basically it wouldn't show much even under ideal circumstances, but it would show enough. If a shadow fell over the drain of the shower for more than a few seconds, she would trigger the device that would fire off a very toxic dose under heavy pressure. Even if he had a stopper in his hands and the presence of mind to stop the drain, even if the water was already falling from the shower head and toward the drain, and even if he was standing at full height from the blow, he would still have inhaled enough to constrict his throat and lungs and make testifying out of the question forever. The histimine reaction would drop him like a rock.
She wasn't looking forward to clearing the drain of the equipment afterward. She would give them a little time to drag him clear of the tub and then replace the original joint. It would not be pretty. The severity of the reaction would cause the expected like red skin, hives, and of course the angiodema that would close up his respiratory, but it would also cause other even nastier reactions. She took a deep breath and stepped back. Now it was all about the wait.
If this didn't work, she would just have to go in guns blazing and hope for the best. That being exactly what Micheal was hoping for with her suicide mission.