Free Gut Instinct by Brad Taylor Page B

secretariat building. Nothing else moving.”
    He sprinted through the light and slid into the alcove, the plan now back on its original track. He pulled the picks that had proven successful earlier on a mock-up and went to work on the lock, a grin sneaking out when it popped in seconds.
Nothing like rehearsals.
    He slipped into the darkened hallway and jogged by memory alone. The National Museum office was four doors to the right. The server room was two doors beyond that, down another small hallway.
    He reached the turn and was brought up short by Decoy.
    “Knuckles, Knuckles, we got a gaggle at your entry point. Don’t know what they’re doing.”
    It hit him immediately.
The rope. They found the rope.
It was the one risk he had been willing to take, because he couldn’t scale the wall without some mechanical help, and the odds of someone stumbling across it in the dark were astronomical.
    Damn Murphy
.
    He raced to the server room door, aiming his penlight at the keypad. “What’re they doing?”
    “More people are gathering where you breached the wall. The four out front have gone over, along with some other stragglers. They found something.”
    He punched in the keystrokes he’d gotten from headquarters and said, “They found my rope.”
    He yanked the door, but it didn’t budge.
    Shit.
    “Brett, Brett, code isn’t working. What was it again?”
    “Six-four-eight-two-pound. I say again six-four-eight-two-pound.”
    He said, “I just did that,” as he punched in the numbers again.
    The door refused to move.
    “Brett, that code isn’t right. What else could it be?”
    Decoy came on. “Knuckles, abort. They’re fanning out. They know someone’s inside.”
    “Brett, I can’t get out to Luk Luang. Stage on Phitsanulok.”
    “Ahh . . . Roger. Moving, but you realize that’s in front of the police station?”
    “No shit, now what’s the damn code?”
    Decoy said, “Screw the code. Get out of there. They’ve started to search and men are coming from the police station to help.”
    Brett said, “Try the pound sign first.”
    Knuckles did, and the door opened.
    “I’m inside. Give me a trigger when someone enters this building.”
    “Trigger now. They’re inside your building now.”
    Knuckles snicked the door closed behind him, praying that whoever entered didn’t have the combination to the keypad. He quickly analyzed the mass of blinking lights from the server rack and found the main fiber-optic hub. He pulled out the slave device and clamped it to the cable, waiting until it began blinking a steady green.
    Keeping his voice low, he said, “Slave in place. I’m coming out.”
    Brett said, “I’m staged. I’ll be coming from north to south. Heads up—this road is full of pedestrians and vendors. The street market is still hopping.”
    Which is why it hadn’t been chosen as an entry point in the first place. Well, that and the fact that climbing the wall in front of the police station didn’t seem that smart. Now it seemed a hell of a lot smarter than going out the way he’d come in.
    Knuckles placed his ear against the door and heard two voices speaking in Thai. Someone had turned on the hall light, letting a feeble glow spill underneath his door. From his earlier recce, he knew that this hallway led to a door outside. If he could just get out of the server room, he could play cat-and-mouse to the far wall of the compound, avoiding the search party.
    “Decoy, you know where the hallway to the server room exits?”
    “Yeah, I got it in sight now.”
    “Is it clear?”
    “Two men moving around to the adjacent building. Give them a second.”
    Knuckles listened again, hearing the sounds of the voices moving away, back down the main hall.
    “Your exit’s clear.”
    Holding his breath, he cracked the door and saw the men had disappeared. He left the server room and sprinted down the hall, pulling up short at the end.
    “I’m about to exit.”
    “Go. You’re clear. Move straight