The intelligence headquarters' storage facility was three standard floors
shorter than the mess, this meant they had to rappel off the roof of the
mess, down to a storey or so below the facility's roof, and then use the
hook gun to fire a grappling hook at the ceiling of the other building, and
glide across it.
Jack waited for Nina to rappel a storey down the roof to make sure her rope was secure and they rally off the roof onto his own rope, a pair of officers walked past and they froze, but remained undetected. Once on the roof of the building they rushed over to the roof entrance, secured by a numerical keypad lock.
Nina reached into one of her trouser pockets, reaching for a small makeup compact that had been designed for them by the CIA, she pulled off the adhesive label on the back, detailing the contents of the powder and pressed it to the control panel, obscuring the numbers. Nina opened the compact and removed the powder, taking the small control pad from Jack and slapping it into place. With a few commands, the compact was searching for the numerical sequence to open the door, and after five or six seconds, six digits flashed on the console. The key to the outer door.
Nina stripped the compact off and Jack read the number, keying it into the pad as he did so. The code was correct, the door buzzed, they were in.
On the other side of the door there was a darkened stairway. Jack checked for a release mechanism on their side of the door and then let it shut, blocking out the only light into the room. There were no blinking lights on the wall, no red flashing bulbs that would indicate infrared cameras, the tiny amount of red light that the scanners gave off. They slipped their infrared goggles on again and took a look around to be sure, but they were in the clear.
The only place the Dramhurst key could be stored was in the vault at the bottom of the building, but whilst the building was shorter than the officer's mess next door, it extended for several stories below ground. It was a long way down.
-24-
For some reason, this stairway, although central to the building, was deserted. Nina and Jack made it all the way down to the bottom with out passing a single security guard, but when they reached the bottom of the building, they had to venture out into the corridor to gain entrance to what they were sure was a securely guarded vault.
The fiber optic periscope crept its way under the door and into the corridor. The tiny piece of transparent cabling had been on its fair share of missions, and today was one of the rare occasions when the cable was able to give a clear view of the corridor. For the moment no one was walking along it.
Nina peeled the compact off the keypad panel and held the code so Jack could see. He keyed in the number and listened to the release sound, cringing. He pushed the door open, and Nina tiptoed out, listening carefully to hear if someone had noticed his or her entrance.
Jack felt so much more comfortable, reaching into his back pocket and retrieving the guard's revolver from the waistband of his trousers. He held the gun low and by his side, following Nina as she ventured in what ever direction she chose, neither of them being entirely sure what they were looking for.
She suddenly pulled back, staying behind the cover afforded by the wall, and pressing against it so Jack could move past to see what she had avoided. A quick glance showed a young officer, sitting at a desk inside a Plexiglas room, guarding the entrance to the vault.
"What do we do now?" Nina whispered to Jack. She was confident that the guard couldn't hear their discussion through the walls that had completely screwed up their entry plan.
Jack scratched the thin layer of stubble that peppered his chin. He turned dropped his backpack to the floor and opened up his bag, just as he noticed the air vent in the wall. He smiled and pulled the bag to the side, the vent opening was small, it certainly wouldn't fit a person inside, but maybe there was another entrance that would.
He zipped up his bag, glancing up at the ventilation piping in the ceiling; it was large enough to fit a person in, easy. He pointed Nina to the vents and they followed them along the halls, checking for personnel around every corner. They seemed to end at the lift shaft.
Now Jack needed something from his backpack, he pulled out a pair of emergency door openers, magnetic paddles. He pressed one to the door, keying the magnetic lock to activate, and pulled. It was only sheer brute strength that was going to get the door open and it did. The thick metal door slid to the right. Nina unclipped her torch and shone it down the elevator shaft, and then back up again. Leaning into the shaft they could see that the elevator was a few storeys above them and climbing steadily.
Nina directed her torchlight to the wall of the elevator shaft and Jack grabbed his pack again, he could climb the shaft to find the air vent, so he stood on the end of the platform and jumped off, grabbing the handles, and after a few seconds of flailing legs, he found purchase on the rails and told Nina to avert the torch light.
It was much easier to see in the shaft with the night vision goggles than it was in the torchlight, the torchlight cast shadows, obscuring important details, such as, Jack discovered, a large entrance to the ventilation ducts. Jack whispered Nina's name, and she turned back to him. "Come on." He gave as a simple order, and Nina took his hand to help her onto the railing so she could climb down the shaft with him. The elevator door shut behind her - she pulled the magnetic grip off as she rounded the door, and the door automatically shut on its own inertia.
The vent wasn't securely closed, the grill covering slid off easily when Jack tugged it, and he moved aside to let Nina crawl in first, lest she needed any help from him to get inside. He climbed in behind her, and then slipped the vent doors closed behind him.
This was the ventilation duct system that ran just above the floor they'd just been on, the same floor as the vault, which hopefully contained the Dramhurst code key.
Nina crawled along the piping, dragging her legs, being as quiet as possible, and hoping that no one below them would hear. They passed several large gratings in the duct - possible exits onto the floor below, but at the moment, all of them led to the corridors outside of the vault area. Nina crawled along, hoping that the flooring wouldn't wear a hole in the knees of her trousers.
-24-
When Nina stopped suddenly, Jack had to extract his head from her arse without feeling like a fool. She crawled on after a few seconds, coming to rest a little way from where she stopped the first time. Thankfully Jack hadn't recovered fast enough to have to extract himself a second time, so when she turned around it wasn't embarrassing.
She'd stopped with a grating between them - a hatch, just the right size for a person, of a similar design to the one they'd climbed through to get into the system in the first place. Jack peered down through the metal, realising why Nina had stopped, she'd chosen a good place. The view from the railing was one of the corners of the secured area that the guard had been protecting. Unfortunately the vent was secured from the other side, so Jack was forced to kick the vent open, eventually only getting it open because of a broken screw.
Jack hung down into the secure vault. The room was dark, completely - it was probably quite a cavernous room beneath them, Jack could only see so far with the help of the night vision goggles, but it was completely black. He pulled himself into the ventilation duct only reposition himself well enough to jump out so he'd land on his feet, and then supported Nina by the waist as she lowered herself to the ground.
It was easier to see the intricate details on objects with torchlight so they both slipped off their night vision goggles and grabbed their maglites. They were standing in a section of the room that was a palace of filing cabinets, but knowing the code key was an antiquity, they were able to scan the area for an exit rather than having to read the inscriptions on the front of the cabinets, some of which were several decades old.
Jack led the way through the columns of cabinets towards the far corner of the room. He'd already mentally worked out how far they were from the guards post, and he wanted to search the areas furthest from the post - that would call the least attention first. They walked through cabinets for a few minutes, both silent, until they started to come across beds of filed paintings, each separated by a strip of metal, keeping one separate from another but allowing the movement of the paintings. The ability to flick through each one, like cds at a music store.
The Dramhurst key was something they'd seen photographs of, from the vague images, it was a book jacket, and so Jack led on. The arrangement of the pictures was less muddled than the cabinets, the paintings were in rows, so it was easily to cover the fifteen metre expanse, making it across to the other side relatively quickly.
A makeshift partition separated the book depository from the rest of the room. It was thin, metal railings on wheels, with pieces of material with the metal sewn into the hem, the kind of partitions at the doctor's office to bar the bed from the entrance to the room. It was obviously only a temporary measure.
On the other side of the partition it was obvious that somebody had recently done some cleaning, at one end of the cornered off area were rows of books, all neatly stacked, all dusted - most likely in meticulous alphabetical order, but in the corner of the partition that they'd just stepped through, there were piles of books on the floor, with the letters in loose order at best.
Jack shone his light across the thousands of objects around them, over the antique dressers, the cars, one that looked suspiciously like Hitler's beetle and back to themselves, looking around the room. Secure in the knowledge that they were alone, he spoke: "What was that name again?"
Nina was already starting on the first row of books over in the 'F' section; the 'A' section was closer to him. She paused from her perusal of the bookcase to answer him. "A transparent dancer." She told him, keeping her voice low. She shone the maglite over the next three or four titles in her vision and read the first few letters on each of the spines in turn, hoping to see 'A transparent dancer' in the book titles.
"In what language?" was Jack's next question, as he scanned the bookcase nearest to him, Nina made a mental note of the bookcase he looked at, there was no point in them checking the same one twice.
"English - Dramhurst was English." Nina reminded him.
Jack scanned the 'P' section of the bookcase. 'P' surnames included mainly Italians and English people, which made sense, he could only think up a few famous composers beginning with 'P'; Purcell, Puccini and Purandell all of whom where either Brits or Italians.
Nina suddenly moved behind him, muttering something to herself, before Jack turned his flash light on her, he moved closer. "Dramhurst, Dramhurst." She was muttering, and as she got closer he noticed her flashlight scanning the section of 'D' authors. He followed her motion, realising at the same time as she had that the idea had come up trumps. "Well, it was worth a shot." She muttered, and left him hovering over her previous spot.
-24-
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Can't be, it's got to be here." Jack squatted down next to Nina, as though the book were right in front of her and she just couldn't see it. After a quick scan of the books, which annoyed Nina so much she stood up, he too couldn't see it, and stood to join in a more productive conversation.
"Isn't there anything else we can do?" she asked him.
"No, we knew what we were looking for, it's not here, and maybe Batilla stopped here and..." Jack reasoned, before he was cut off.
"Can't we go up to Batilla's office?"
"We don't know where it is, and those guards will wake up sooner or later, if they haven't already been found." Jack watched as Nina sighed, they were as pissed off as each other, but getting caught wouldn't help them. "We'd better get out of here."
She nodded, exhausted, and she turned, leading the way to the pipe they'd crawled out of. Jack guided her, placing a hand on her shoulder blade until they were about to enter the cavalcade of filing cabinets, when she suddenly bolted.
"Nina, what are you doing?" He asked her, as she pushed through paintings in one particular drawer. She didn't respond, so he joined her, holding the paintings as she rifled thorough them.
She slid out a painting and placed it on the top of the cabinet, she ran a hand along the frame, obviously recently cleaned. It was a beautiful painting, a piece of classical work, an imagined painting of soldiers and harlots around a dining table. The work was obviously centuries older than the frame, which was a silvery metal that would never have been used to frame a painting in the 18th century, simply because it wasn't in fashion.
Nina slipped her maglite into her mouth, holding it in place with her teeth whilst she rotated the framed canvas, there was an adhesive label stuck to the side of the frame, and amongst the alphanumerical coding, it read 'A transparent dancer'.
Jack smiled, and Nina slipped the torch out of her mouth. He squatted to the floor and unzipped the longest compartment of his backpack. The painting didn't fit entirely inside, but it fit in the compartment enough to hold in place. He hoisted the pack up and fixed it back over his shoulders. "Okay, let's get out of here." He whispered to her, and rose to his feet.
Nina nodded, and they sprinted to the vent opening.
-24-
A huge klaxon alarm sounded as Jack reached the duct entrance in the elevator shaft. The sound was moderately muffled by the wall insulation, but they could clearly hear the cartoon siren on the floors around them. "They've found the guards." Nina muttered.
In the darkness, Jack nodded, pushing open the duct entrance, for a moment he held off climbing into the shaft as he heard a slow metallic grinding sound, and then the elevator moved past the entrance to the ventilation system, blasting Jack and Nina with a wall of air.
Jack glanced back at Nina, and looked out onto the elevator, which had stopped a few inches below the duct on the lowest floor. "Let's go now." He whispered to her, crawling out onto the roof of the elevator and hoping that the doors hadn't opened on the floor below all that long ago. He crawled onto the elevator roof safety and reached out for Nina as he felt the elevator below him lower. It was just a fraction, but it meant someone had climbed inside.
They couldn't risk being separated, so he grabbed Nina's hands, where she was holding the outer rim of the duct, and pulled, lifting her out of the pipe in one swift movement. He set her down with plenty of time before the elevator began to move.
As it jerked into action the elevator knocked Nina and Jack from their secure position in the centre off to the edge, pressing Jack against the wall and Nina on top of him. He pulled himself up using the elevator cable, and the momentary counter weight brought the elevator to a halt. Nina tugged him to safety and they stood in silence, praying for the elevator to start to move again.
This time they were better prepared for the jerk, and quickly regained their balance, using the most stable drunkards pose, feet quite wide apart, placing their hands on each others arms to stabilise themselves. Jack slipped off his night vision goggles, once he realised Nina had already done so, and reveled in the feeling of being propelled through the air, the night was warm, humid, but the building was air-conditioned, and the air in the shaft was cool - it blasted against the sweat on his forehead and froze it from evaporating.
Nina looked just as hot, her hair was messed up, complete with a few sprigs of grass and leaves, and she had a sheen of sweat that was probably more a reaction to the temperature than the exercise they'd done tonight. Jack was glad it was too dark for her to be able to see the expression on his face, how attracted he was to her at this precise moment, in the motel in Marbella, every night she'd dressed up for the showrooms, for Batilla.
It wasn't the whore look that attracted him, it was the amount of perfect skin she'd revealed.
The elevator ground to a halt a few metres from the top of the shaft, maybe two floors beneath it. Jack dragged himself away, creeping over to the ladder and started climbing to the top of the building. Nina followed suit, and he slipped on his night vision goggles again, there didn't seem to be an exit at the top of the elevator shaft so he slipped open the nearest ventilation duct, which conveniently enough had an exit pipe leading to the roof.
Jack waited for Nina to rappel a storey down the roof to make sure her rope was secure and they rally off the roof onto his own rope, a pair of officers walked past and they froze, but remained undetected. Once on the roof of the building they rushed over to the roof entrance, secured by a numerical keypad lock.
Nina reached into one of her trouser pockets, reaching for a small makeup compact that had been designed for them by the CIA, she pulled off the adhesive label on the back, detailing the contents of the powder and pressed it to the control panel, obscuring the numbers. Nina opened the compact and removed the powder, taking the small control pad from Jack and slapping it into place. With a few commands, the compact was searching for the numerical sequence to open the door, and after five or six seconds, six digits flashed on the console. The key to the outer door.
Nina stripped the compact off and Jack read the number, keying it into the pad as he did so. The code was correct, the door buzzed, they were in.
On the other side of the door there was a darkened stairway. Jack checked for a release mechanism on their side of the door and then let it shut, blocking out the only light into the room. There were no blinking lights on the wall, no red flashing bulbs that would indicate infrared cameras, the tiny amount of red light that the scanners gave off. They slipped their infrared goggles on again and took a look around to be sure, but they were in the clear.
The only place the Dramhurst key could be stored was in the vault at the bottom of the building, but whilst the building was shorter than the officer's mess next door, it extended for several stories below ground. It was a long way down.
-24-
For some reason, this stairway, although central to the building, was deserted. Nina and Jack made it all the way down to the bottom with out passing a single security guard, but when they reached the bottom of the building, they had to venture out into the corridor to gain entrance to what they were sure was a securely guarded vault.
The fiber optic periscope crept its way under the door and into the corridor. The tiny piece of transparent cabling had been on its fair share of missions, and today was one of the rare occasions when the cable was able to give a clear view of the corridor. For the moment no one was walking along it.
Nina peeled the compact off the keypad panel and held the code so Jack could see. He keyed in the number and listened to the release sound, cringing. He pushed the door open, and Nina tiptoed out, listening carefully to hear if someone had noticed his or her entrance.
Jack felt so much more comfortable, reaching into his back pocket and retrieving the guard's revolver from the waistband of his trousers. He held the gun low and by his side, following Nina as she ventured in what ever direction she chose, neither of them being entirely sure what they were looking for.
She suddenly pulled back, staying behind the cover afforded by the wall, and pressing against it so Jack could move past to see what she had avoided. A quick glance showed a young officer, sitting at a desk inside a Plexiglas room, guarding the entrance to the vault.
"What do we do now?" Nina whispered to Jack. She was confident that the guard couldn't hear their discussion through the walls that had completely screwed up their entry plan.
Jack scratched the thin layer of stubble that peppered his chin. He turned dropped his backpack to the floor and opened up his bag, just as he noticed the air vent in the wall. He smiled and pulled the bag to the side, the vent opening was small, it certainly wouldn't fit a person inside, but maybe there was another entrance that would.
He zipped up his bag, glancing up at the ventilation piping in the ceiling; it was large enough to fit a person in, easy. He pointed Nina to the vents and they followed them along the halls, checking for personnel around every corner. They seemed to end at the lift shaft.
Now Jack needed something from his backpack, he pulled out a pair of emergency door openers, magnetic paddles. He pressed one to the door, keying the magnetic lock to activate, and pulled. It was only sheer brute strength that was going to get the door open and it did. The thick metal door slid to the right. Nina unclipped her torch and shone it down the elevator shaft, and then back up again. Leaning into the shaft they could see that the elevator was a few storeys above them and climbing steadily.
Nina directed her torchlight to the wall of the elevator shaft and Jack grabbed his pack again, he could climb the shaft to find the air vent, so he stood on the end of the platform and jumped off, grabbing the handles, and after a few seconds of flailing legs, he found purchase on the rails and told Nina to avert the torch light.
It was much easier to see in the shaft with the night vision goggles than it was in the torchlight, the torchlight cast shadows, obscuring important details, such as, Jack discovered, a large entrance to the ventilation ducts. Jack whispered Nina's name, and she turned back to him. "Come on." He gave as a simple order, and Nina took his hand to help her onto the railing so she could climb down the shaft with him. The elevator door shut behind her - she pulled the magnetic grip off as she rounded the door, and the door automatically shut on its own inertia.
The vent wasn't securely closed, the grill covering slid off easily when Jack tugged it, and he moved aside to let Nina crawl in first, lest she needed any help from him to get inside. He climbed in behind her, and then slipped the vent doors closed behind him.
This was the ventilation duct system that ran just above the floor they'd just been on, the same floor as the vault, which hopefully contained the Dramhurst code key.
Nina crawled along the piping, dragging her legs, being as quiet as possible, and hoping that no one below them would hear. They passed several large gratings in the duct - possible exits onto the floor below, but at the moment, all of them led to the corridors outside of the vault area. Nina crawled along, hoping that the flooring wouldn't wear a hole in the knees of her trousers.
-24-
When Nina stopped suddenly, Jack had to extract his head from her arse without feeling like a fool. She crawled on after a few seconds, coming to rest a little way from where she stopped the first time. Thankfully Jack hadn't recovered fast enough to have to extract himself a second time, so when she turned around it wasn't embarrassing.
She'd stopped with a grating between them - a hatch, just the right size for a person, of a similar design to the one they'd climbed through to get into the system in the first place. Jack peered down through the metal, realising why Nina had stopped, she'd chosen a good place. The view from the railing was one of the corners of the secured area that the guard had been protecting. Unfortunately the vent was secured from the other side, so Jack was forced to kick the vent open, eventually only getting it open because of a broken screw.
Jack hung down into the secure vault. The room was dark, completely - it was probably quite a cavernous room beneath them, Jack could only see so far with the help of the night vision goggles, but it was completely black. He pulled himself into the ventilation duct only reposition himself well enough to jump out so he'd land on his feet, and then supported Nina by the waist as she lowered herself to the ground.
It was easier to see the intricate details on objects with torchlight so they both slipped off their night vision goggles and grabbed their maglites. They were standing in a section of the room that was a palace of filing cabinets, but knowing the code key was an antiquity, they were able to scan the area for an exit rather than having to read the inscriptions on the front of the cabinets, some of which were several decades old.
Jack led the way through the columns of cabinets towards the far corner of the room. He'd already mentally worked out how far they were from the guards post, and he wanted to search the areas furthest from the post - that would call the least attention first. They walked through cabinets for a few minutes, both silent, until they started to come across beds of filed paintings, each separated by a strip of metal, keeping one separate from another but allowing the movement of the paintings. The ability to flick through each one, like cds at a music store.
The Dramhurst key was something they'd seen photographs of, from the vague images, it was a book jacket, and so Jack led on. The arrangement of the pictures was less muddled than the cabinets, the paintings were in rows, so it was easily to cover the fifteen metre expanse, making it across to the other side relatively quickly.
A makeshift partition separated the book depository from the rest of the room. It was thin, metal railings on wheels, with pieces of material with the metal sewn into the hem, the kind of partitions at the doctor's office to bar the bed from the entrance to the room. It was obviously only a temporary measure.
On the other side of the partition it was obvious that somebody had recently done some cleaning, at one end of the cornered off area were rows of books, all neatly stacked, all dusted - most likely in meticulous alphabetical order, but in the corner of the partition that they'd just stepped through, there were piles of books on the floor, with the letters in loose order at best.
Jack shone his light across the thousands of objects around them, over the antique dressers, the cars, one that looked suspiciously like Hitler's beetle and back to themselves, looking around the room. Secure in the knowledge that they were alone, he spoke: "What was that name again?"
Nina was already starting on the first row of books over in the 'F' section; the 'A' section was closer to him. She paused from her perusal of the bookcase to answer him. "A transparent dancer." She told him, keeping her voice low. She shone the maglite over the next three or four titles in her vision and read the first few letters on each of the spines in turn, hoping to see 'A transparent dancer' in the book titles.
"In what language?" was Jack's next question, as he scanned the bookcase nearest to him, Nina made a mental note of the bookcase he looked at, there was no point in them checking the same one twice.
"English - Dramhurst was English." Nina reminded him.
Jack scanned the 'P' section of the bookcase. 'P' surnames included mainly Italians and English people, which made sense, he could only think up a few famous composers beginning with 'P'; Purcell, Puccini and Purandell all of whom where either Brits or Italians.
Nina suddenly moved behind him, muttering something to herself, before Jack turned his flash light on her, he moved closer. "Dramhurst, Dramhurst." She was muttering, and as she got closer he noticed her flashlight scanning the section of 'D' authors. He followed her motion, realising at the same time as she had that the idea had come up trumps. "Well, it was worth a shot." She muttered, and left him hovering over her previous spot.
-24-
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Can't be, it's got to be here." Jack squatted down next to Nina, as though the book were right in front of her and she just couldn't see it. After a quick scan of the books, which annoyed Nina so much she stood up, he too couldn't see it, and stood to join in a more productive conversation.
"Isn't there anything else we can do?" she asked him.
"No, we knew what we were looking for, it's not here, and maybe Batilla stopped here and..." Jack reasoned, before he was cut off.
"Can't we go up to Batilla's office?"
"We don't know where it is, and those guards will wake up sooner or later, if they haven't already been found." Jack watched as Nina sighed, they were as pissed off as each other, but getting caught wouldn't help them. "We'd better get out of here."
She nodded, exhausted, and she turned, leading the way to the pipe they'd crawled out of. Jack guided her, placing a hand on her shoulder blade until they were about to enter the cavalcade of filing cabinets, when she suddenly bolted.
"Nina, what are you doing?" He asked her, as she pushed through paintings in one particular drawer. She didn't respond, so he joined her, holding the paintings as she rifled thorough them.
She slid out a painting and placed it on the top of the cabinet, she ran a hand along the frame, obviously recently cleaned. It was a beautiful painting, a piece of classical work, an imagined painting of soldiers and harlots around a dining table. The work was obviously centuries older than the frame, which was a silvery metal that would never have been used to frame a painting in the 18th century, simply because it wasn't in fashion.
Nina slipped her maglite into her mouth, holding it in place with her teeth whilst she rotated the framed canvas, there was an adhesive label stuck to the side of the frame, and amongst the alphanumerical coding, it read 'A transparent dancer'.
Jack smiled, and Nina slipped the torch out of her mouth. He squatted to the floor and unzipped the longest compartment of his backpack. The painting didn't fit entirely inside, but it fit in the compartment enough to hold in place. He hoisted the pack up and fixed it back over his shoulders. "Okay, let's get out of here." He whispered to her, and rose to his feet.
Nina nodded, and they sprinted to the vent opening.
-24-
A huge klaxon alarm sounded as Jack reached the duct entrance in the elevator shaft. The sound was moderately muffled by the wall insulation, but they could clearly hear the cartoon siren on the floors around them. "They've found the guards." Nina muttered.
In the darkness, Jack nodded, pushing open the duct entrance, for a moment he held off climbing into the shaft as he heard a slow metallic grinding sound, and then the elevator moved past the entrance to the ventilation system, blasting Jack and Nina with a wall of air.
Jack glanced back at Nina, and looked out onto the elevator, which had stopped a few inches below the duct on the lowest floor. "Let's go now." He whispered to her, crawling out onto the roof of the elevator and hoping that the doors hadn't opened on the floor below all that long ago. He crawled onto the elevator roof safety and reached out for Nina as he felt the elevator below him lower. It was just a fraction, but it meant someone had climbed inside.
They couldn't risk being separated, so he grabbed Nina's hands, where she was holding the outer rim of the duct, and pulled, lifting her out of the pipe in one swift movement. He set her down with plenty of time before the elevator began to move.
As it jerked into action the elevator knocked Nina and Jack from their secure position in the centre off to the edge, pressing Jack against the wall and Nina on top of him. He pulled himself up using the elevator cable, and the momentary counter weight brought the elevator to a halt. Nina tugged him to safety and they stood in silence, praying for the elevator to start to move again.
This time they were better prepared for the jerk, and quickly regained their balance, using the most stable drunkards pose, feet quite wide apart, placing their hands on each others arms to stabilise themselves. Jack slipped off his night vision goggles, once he realised Nina had already done so, and reveled in the feeling of being propelled through the air, the night was warm, humid, but the building was air-conditioned, and the air in the shaft was cool - it blasted against the sweat on his forehead and froze it from evaporating.
Nina looked just as hot, her hair was messed up, complete with a few sprigs of grass and leaves, and she had a sheen of sweat that was probably more a reaction to the temperature than the exercise they'd done tonight. Jack was glad it was too dark for her to be able to see the expression on his face, how attracted he was to her at this precise moment, in the motel in Marbella, every night she'd dressed up for the showrooms, for Batilla.
It wasn't the whore look that attracted him, it was the amount of perfect skin she'd revealed.
The elevator ground to a halt a few metres from the top of the shaft, maybe two floors beneath it. Jack dragged himself away, creeping over to the ladder and started climbing to the top of the building. Nina followed suit, and he slipped on his night vision goggles again, there didn't seem to be an exit at the top of the elevator shaft so he slipped open the nearest ventilation duct, which conveniently enough had an exit pipe leading to the roof.