Free Gut Instinct by Brad Taylor

side.”
    “Roger.”
    “Decoy, what do you have?”
    “I’m looking. Outside of the four unknowns, I’ve got bodies right where we expected them. Hang on.”
    Knuckles shook his head, still a little aggravated that his team had been called to do the mission. On the surface, it would appear a strange choice to risk so much breaking into the Thai Ministry of Education, but his goal wasn’t inside this compound. It was the Metropolitan Police Bureau across the street, on Phitsanulok Road.
    Another team on the ground had found getting inside that place was just too risky but had learned something interesting in the process: The fiber-optic data cable for the police department also serviced the Ministry of Education. All they needed to do was slave into it, which is where Knuckles came in.
    The Ministry of Education’s National Museum division was responsible for all archeological work in the country, a convenient arrangement that had given Knuckles’s team a plausible reason to conduct the four reconnaissance missions earlier. As far as the Thai government knew, he worked for a company called Grolier Recovery Services that specialized in facilitating archeological work.
    The team he was helping was in Thailand under a different cover and couldn’t simply switch hats to accomplish the mission, so he’d been called forward. He had never linked up with them in-country and didn’t even know who they were tracking. Just that they needed access to the Metropolitan Police database. His mission and theirs were completely firewalled.
    He waited in the brush, eyeballing the route he had planned earlier and feeling the time slip away. The compound was about two hundred meters across, but his target building was only one hundred meters away. Tucked between two larger buildings, it was smack-dab in the middle, at the apex of the lawn.
    He’d planned this route specifically because it was threaded through the myriad of CCTV cameras, but that was predicated on slipping in between the guard force patrols. He considered simply waiting where he was and letting the guard pass again but didn’t like the odds of discovery. He was hidden well enough in the darkness, but nothing was a sure thing when other human beings were involved. Murphy would raise his head at the worst possible moment. While he felt sure he could get out clean, the mission would be a failure. No way would they attempt another break-in after a compromise.
    “Okay, Knuckles, I got a route, but you’re not going to like it.”
    “What?”
    “Well, you got bodies in front of the building, cameras on the corners, and the guard shack in back. You got nothing on top.”
    “Are you kidding me? You need a UAV to tell me to climb to the roof? I could come up with that using a paper map.”
    “I know, I know, but the secretariat building runs lengthwise and butts right up to your building. The roof is sloped, so you could go the whole distance without being seen from the front. And I can track your progress.”
    “Do I look like a monkey? The secretariat is three stories tall.”
    “So you can’t do what the chicks do?”
    Knuckles knew exactly whom he was talking about, and the jibe didn’t help his attitude any. He was about to call an abort when Decoy came back.
    “Just kidding. I’m looking at a fire escape ladder on the northeast corner. It’s inside the shadows. Can you climb a ladder?”
    He clenched his teeth, biting back what was about to vomit out of his mouth. “Roger. I can climb a damn ladder. Is it locked?”
    “Can’t tell from the video feed, but you need to make a decision quick. Guard is coming down the path. You got about forty-five seconds.”
    “Moving.”
    Knuckles sprinted in a crouch across the open area to the shrubbery on the near side of the secretariat building, then scampered down the wall to the northeast corner, underneath the cameras. He heard the guard’s footsteps at the same time Decoy called.
    “Freeze, freeze. Guard has