Okay, here it is. The action-chapter. Thank you all so much for all of your feedback, they were inspiring, encouraging, wonderful to read and makes me feel thankful to all of you. It's nice to know that the decision to let other people see your writing was not one made stupidly; though one can write without reviews, it's always nice to get feedback in order to continuously improve and allow yourself to realize that there are people who read and enjoy your stuff.
So thanks to everyone.
Special Thanks to:
Chele: Lately I've been seeing your reviews everywhere and I want to thank you for constant encouragement and for letting me know that I'm on your favorite author's list; it's an honor.
Secret Agent Girl: i think I might change my sn to quirkyrollingbeanlady hahahaha, okay back to the point. You are so awesome and supporting (you better be wearing your reading glasses while you read this chapter!!!) and I'm so glad that I now have you as a friend. It's actually easier talking to you because you live so far away... Because i don't know you extremely well or maybe because you don't know the same people i do, it's always easy to talk to you about anything. We've basically covered all the essentials anyway: guys, alias, musicals, alias, and guys. What more is there to life?
36.
"Mountaineer where are you?"
The voice was fuzzy and Sydney cautiously fiddled with the ear-piece hidden underneath her hair. Ducking her head slightly, she answered. "Two blocks away."
She had been on countless missions and had thought that she had seen everything and done everything that could possible be done. But this... This was something new. And hardly disguised.
Standing up in the middle of the near-barren streets surrounding her rose the tall, shimmering steel of the building housing the one thing she wanted more than anything in the world. Behind and in these walls lay the death for SD-6. And she was going to get it.
"All right Mountaineer, the four guards are in position at the South and East walls and two are making there way towards the west gate. ETA 20 minutes. Go."
She nodded slightly, and walked towards the building in an almost admiring way. Readjusting her large sun-hat, she hooked her arm through Vaughn's pointing at the mighty building in front of them. "My my dahling, have you eveh, eveh, seen anythin' like that before?"
She felt his eyes on her face and it took her immense strength to keep from laughing. So instead she jabbed his stomach slightly. "Sydney, it's right there." So he wasn't going to play. Well it made sense, after all this was a monumental moment in his life too. She supposed that she just wanted to completely play the part of this overly American tourist wife for a couple minutes before the mission of her life began.
Who was she kidding? It had already begun. Stepping out of public view, Sydney eyed the darkening sky before removing her tourist outfit and tossing them to the side of a nearby tree. Outfitted in a form-fitting cat-suit, she switched on her ear-piece. "Mountaineer is set to go."
"Hold it. The three guards are walking towards the eastern side but there is one more on the roof. Use the froggs."
~:~ Flashback~:~
"Marshall, what would you make in order to enable one to scale a wall made of steel with no hangings or anything to hold on to?"
Yes, normally it was be a rather strange question to ask anyone, particularly someone who worked for SD-6. But Marshall's social skills were inversely proportional to his technical mind and she knew she had to take the chance and hope that he would get too caught up in the question to wonder the origin of it.
"Why, do you need this for some clandestine mission? Not that you would have to tell me or could tell me or... would want to tell me especially is it was clandestine because it means "secret" you know... of course you know what clandestine means, what sort of agent doesn't know what clandestine means? Anyway, that's strange that they would tell me about something like this, I mean that they would route the question through you instead of directing it to me, like they don't trust me, not that there's anything wrong with sending you, it's just-"
"Marshall." Though she was usually amused as his klutziness with words, she had no time for it now. She smiled at him and his racing thought process. "This isn't for any mission. I just saw a picture of such a building and I was just wondering how one would scale anything like that. You know me, always thinking about mission stuff."
'"Oh. That would make sense given what you do, I mean I think about my job all the time though that is probably because my job is to think but anyway, it's good for people to stay involved- Oh, let me get to the point. I have this problem where I always digress from the subject, have you noticed that?"
She suppressed a grin and nodded.
"Okay, anyway, and mind you that this is only what I'm thinking at the spur of the moment so I'm not sure how valuable this would be if you ever had to scale this kind of building. Okay, so I'm assuming that the hook wouldn't work because the walls are solid steel with no turrets or extraneous projection and so the first think that comes to mind is gecko."
"Gecko?"
Marshall smiled at her, nodding his head slightly as thoughts formulated rapidly in his head. "For a long time, everyone thought that the little pads on geckos' feet were like suction cups but now they know that they are using covalent bonds. You see, covalent bonds are the strongest chemical bond because of the fact that they are the result of two nonmetal atoms sharing electrons as opposed to gaining or losing them. Because of this type of reaction, gecko's can climb any surface-" He holds up his hand and mimics it climbing up the wall.
"And you can make… gecko-substitutes for the hands and feet?"
"Well, probably not at the spur of the moment and of course no where near as efficient as a real gecko but... I suppose that if I took an element that reacted a special way to steel and then altered it so that it formed the same type of reaction that a gecko's feet would then something could be done. And then they would have to be magnified and adjusted to your body weight and size because you are much bigger than a gecko, of course, but you're not big or anything and you're not too skinny either. I mean, I think you're perfect... Just awesome."
Sydney smiled again at his innocent charm and quickly gave him a peck on the cheek. "Thanks Marshall, that's really interesting."
As she turned to walk away, she heard him call her name. "Hey Syd! If we ever do need them and Sloane makes it a clandestine mission and you can't talk to me about it directly for some reason and you have to pitch the idea to Sloane, can you call them "froggs" or "froggies"?"
"Why?"
He smiled sheepishly. "Well, I just think that the sounds better than "geckos.""
Sydney laughed. "Okay Marshall. They will definitely be called froggs if we ever use them."
~:~
She slipped on the gloves and pulled the stocking-style oversized socks over her shoes.
"I'm all set. Vaughn, how's video surveillance?"
There was a pause.
"Hold on a second... I just need about ten more seconds to loop."
She waited.
"Go."
Walking cautiously to the outer wall, she pressed a finger onto the cool metallic surface. Unsurprisingly it stuck and though this had been practiced back at headquarters, there was something about scaling a hundred foot wall with no supporting line that changed the stakes this time around. So she pressed her entire hand onto the wall, followed by the other, and then her feet.
And she was up. It wasn't even hard, it was more as if something was pulling her to the wall. Yet when she removed her hand to climb, it was surprisingly easy. So this is what it's like to be a gecko.
"Boy Scout, how's the guard on the roof?"
"Making his normal rounds at the corner of north and east. At your pace, he should be at the other end of the building by the time you're on."
She nodded and looked up, if only so she wouldn't look down and moved steadily upwards.
"Syd, how far do you have left until you reach the top?"
Sydney bit her lip and looked upwards at the distant end to her climb. "About 30 feet."
Vaughn hesitated. "The East guard doubled back and he's coming back to the South gate."
"I can't just go back down."
"Yeah I know, but you'll be 70 feet up, do you think that if you flatten out, he won't see you?"
"We can hope."
"Okay, go for about 2 more minutes and then flatten."
She crept on.
~:~
"Okay, Syd, do it now."
She inched her arms and legs apart so that she stood stuck on the wall, looking for anything like a large ink splatter. Hopefully the cover of darkness would do its job and cover her after all.
And waited.
At the same time she heard a muffled shout coming from the ground below, came Vaughn's low voice in her ear. "Oh shit."
Her voice was a tight whisper. "What?"
There was no response and Sydney finally looked down to see a man still clad in tourist-y shorts cleanly disarming the guard below with a sharp blow to the gut and a twist of the wrist. The movement looked smooth and effortless from her vantage point but she heard the sound of his harsh breathing. "Go."
Without stopping she clambered on, gaining building confidence in the round bumps attached to her gloves. Hopefully they would sustain her just a little longer.
And they did. Quickly building up her momentum to transfer her weight onto her hands, she flipped over the top of the building and landed on the floor with a slight thud.
~:~
She could see the back of the other guard about 20 feet away but opted to be stealthy and try to get down into the building without arousing any suspicion. The more they could make this a "smash and grab" job (if one were to overly simplify the situation), the better off they would be.
Slipping off the gloves and socks and instead slipping on Marshall's latest invention- the cooling body suit- she gingerly removed the metal tiling, smiling softly to herself as she felt victory so close. Looking down into the space, she saw everything that her mother had warned her about.
~:~
"Sydney, I need you to know something. I told your father that I knew of Charlemot but not its location. Now when I said this, I was being entirely truthful but now that you have discovered the location of this disk, I have to tell you that I am familiar with it. If I had known that the disk was there all that time.." Irina paused before regaining her train of thought.
"What I mean is that three years ago, I had extensive contacts in Istanbul and a section of it operated in that building. Thinking about, I think I may have an idea as to where exactly the disk may be located.
Several years ago, I had in my possession about 15 pages of the Rambaldi manuscript and had negotiated an exchange in Istanbul. When I got there, I demanded the most extravagant vault but found that it had already been taken and leased years ago. I think that that is where the disk is. "
Her gaze was strong, unwavering and Sydney could not help but feel that same amazement that overcame her senses whenever she found a new limit or lack thereof of her mother's intellectual capabilities. First her ability to remember mine locations from decades ago and now this… If she had an ulterior motive, then it definitely wasn't clear to her.
"Now keep in mind that the first 17 floors are all offices and legitimate government-financed dealings. You might expect that all the dealing happen underground or on lower levels but that's not true. It all takes place in the top; farther away from the people, farther away from the ground, farther away from the entrance yet closest to the roof where they have 24 hour access to their own private helicopter.
If I am remembering this correctly- and I like to think that I am-, There are three corridors branching off from the roof tile that the CIA has informed you about. I am assuming that there is an undercover agent working one of the lower levels so I think you know most of this already but the doors down the leftmost corridor go in order of importance though the pattern is not linear. They go by thirds."
Sydney looked at her mother, speaking though she was clearly inside of that building and retracing every step she took, rearranging and taking out all the information that she had stored in her head for all these years.
"Thirds? What does that mean?"
"The pattern is in thirds and in alternating corridors. So the first door on the left is followed by the first on the right but then goes to the second door on the right and going back to the left side of the corridor. However, every third power of the third door, that is ever ninth door, the order reverses."
Sydney closed her eyes in order to see at least a glimpse of what her mother was seeing so clearly. "Okay."
"I am thinking that if the disk is not in the first door which should by the last door on the right side unless it has been demoted, that it should be in one of the last two doors on either side."
That she had been told. "Yes I know."
"Okay. Watch out, there are cameras everywhere though they are heat sensitive and they cannot be changed to body-temperature like we did on our last mission together. Each camera can be turned off with the use of a 4 digit code that changes every 3 hours but it would be easier to circumvent that any way you can."
She stopped and looked up at her daughter once more, eyes shining in apparent pride. "That's all I know but I hope you know what to do."
She smiled, understanding the true message of her mother's words. "I will. I do."
~:~
Three corridors. There they were with their shining tile floors and carpeted gray walls. She headed off towards the leftmost one as her mother had said and quickly made sure that her outfit was on the right way before entering and quickly scanning the doors with her eyes.
One two three three two one on two three three two one three two one one two three three two one one to three three to one one to three one two three…
She stopped in front of the blue door. Behind it could lie everything that she had ever wanted to find. All the information that she could want. Kneeling, she looked at the handle carefully, looking at the intricate design engraved on it, making sure that the picture was one of the dragon, matching all major points and creating the formation of a two.
~:~
The intel we received also tells us that part of the identification process is both pictography and numerology. These two are combined and, as a luxury, the investors are allowed to choose their own person identifications. The numbers shown for the Charlemot account are 258822942. All of the other numbers are garbage in the number factor, the repeated number is two and the swtching back and forth of the numbers in respective addition and subtraction also come out to two. When the numbers are all placed on their coordinate graph it spells out the Chinese symbol for dragon. So that is what you are looking for. Is this clear?"
~:~
She crammed in the tiny metal pole, shifting it until it came into full contact with the lock and she heard the soft click from the other side.
The door opened softly and we walked into it, apprehensive of what she would find, what was waiting for her in there.
TBC…
Wow, this chapter was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Okay, so it's not that action-packed but I promise that the next one will be if I can actually do it… it's an exciting prospect it really is.
Anyway, I hope it wasn't too confusing and If it was, then I hope that you guys just take it as something really smart that they understand and we can only guess at because I'm not sure I understood everything I wrote either. I all just came out and, as you know, I don't do any pre-writing because I'm too lazy.
So, I hope you enjoyed it and I promise that the next one will come reasonably soon… the ending looms closer, I'm guessing maybe 4-5 chaps.
-Jenn
