by SL Huang
Checker had said he’d be looking into the people whose names were on the real estate I was checking out, but he’d warned me it might not be helpful if the bad guys were using well-laid shell corporations or simply squatting. It looked like he didn’t have to investigate this one.
I drove to the next location.
The second neighborhood was a lot emptier. I slowed down as the road narrowed and the traffic dropped off. The buildings looming past the dirty curbsides were all either shuttered or boarded up.
This looked like a place I would choose to hide out in myself. I was betting the people who had Halliday felt the same way.
At this location, we’d identified a large abandoned factory as the likeliest base point for our bad guys, as it had the space and the lack of foot traffic. I cruised closer, and my back itched uncomfortably as I came level with the factory. It’s unlikely they know what you look like, I reminded myself—after all, I’d killed everyone who’d seen me. And they weren’t going to be sniping random drivers who took a jaunt through the surrounding streets—that was far too good a way to get noticed.
The factory was a cluster of huge near-windowless buildings. A solid, high cement wall lined the curb in the gaps between structures, keeping hooligans on the street from wandering in, but the buildings themselves were the bulk of the barrier. Erratic graffiti dotted the wall here and there, but it was old and half-assed, as if even the graffiti artists lost whatever will they had as soon as they came out here.
Yeah. This place was perfect.
The main entrance had a solid metal gate that was locked up with a rusted chain and padlock. I drove on by. Two other entrances were similarly barricaded, and three corrugated metal gates looked like they’d lead straight into buildings or down into underground loading docks.
If they had any surveillance, it was likely to be at those points—and maybe along the wall, to see if anyone was climbing over. Squatting in a huge abandoned complex like this meant they probably wouldn’t have wired the whole thing up for security.
Probably.
Well, there was only one way to find out.
I drove back around the complex to the end farthest from the freeway. The buildings abutting the street here were dilapidated: all crumbling brick and filthy, cracked concrete, with even the plywood nailed over the sparse, high windows dirty and warped. Considering how huge this place was, our bad guys had almost certainly based themselves in a more solid part of it. I’d break in here.
All the windows facing the outside were third-story or above, and stupid Arthur had told me to leave the C-4—I stubbornly ignored the fact that I hadn’t wanted to take the time to pick any up anyway—but those weren’t the only ways in. I did a noise calculation. Thick walls, the decibel levels of exploding brick and screeching metal. They’d probably hear me, wherever they were, but by the time they came to check out the noise and realized what had happened, I’d hopefully have Halliday already. Once I located the professor, skedaddling out of the complex and stealing another car—or one of the bad guys’ own SUVs, if convenient—would be the easy part.
I pulled out a knife, pried open the steering wheel of the Honda, and cut out the airbag—airbags were too unpredictable, with too many variables attached. Then I fastened my seatbelt and adjusted my gun so it wasn’t in the small of my back, slipped into reverse and zoomed the little car backward, and spun it around in a neat, tight doughnut so I was facing the brick wall.
Newton’s Second Law. I needed enough deceleration against the wall, times the mass of the car, to generate sufficient force. Subtract the amount that would be absorbed by the hood crumpling—fucking safety measures—and backtrack through the equation to find the necessary speed at impact.
Oh, and check my own acceleration against the seatbelt. Wouldn’t do to break through the wall only to kill myself. I wasn’t fond of the idea of cracking a rib or two, either.
The numbers fell out pleasantly, provided I hit at the minimum necessary speed. Just bruising. Bruising I could handle.
The car was a stick shift. I pressed the clutch and revved the engine, watching the RPMs climb. Two thousand, three thousand—heading for the power band—
If I fucked this up I’d either smash into a brick wall and wreck the car with nothing to show for it, or go in too hot and put myself in the hospital. Maybe Checker had a point about asking for backup.
Well, too late now. I slipped the clutch and goosed the gas, and the car leapt forward like it had been shot out of a cannon.
The wall flashed huge in my vision for an instant. The crash was deafening.
The metal screamed like a living thing and the brick gave way with a boom like the earth had split open, rending itself apart in the path of the car and burying me with huge chunks of debris in the hailstorm from hell. The seatbelt yanked me back with over 30 Gs of acceleration; it split me in two from hip to shoulder and crushed the breath from my lungs. The windshield shattered in my face. I ducked my head and closed my eyes and the sky fell on the Honda’s roof.
The car lurched to a halt, and the avalanche above my head completed itself with a fine shower of gravel and dust.
I unbuckled the seatbelt, my sternum aching like someone had slammed an iron bar against it. Maybe the bruising hadn’t been such a good idea. The door was jammed up against the tumble of brick and cement chunks, so I climbed out the broken windshield instead, getting my feet under me and hopping through onto the crumpled hood. The metal was jagged and buckled, contorted into a steel sculpture of sharp points and deep dents and covered in broken brick.
I jumped down, my boots echoing on the cement floor in the wide open space. The inside of the building was dark, high-ceilinged, and empty—and huge, the cavernous nothingness fading away in the dimness. Rows of gigantic support pillars marched through the space like massive sentinel guards frozen in time.
I ran. My footsteps were loud against the empty floor. My chest throbbed with every pace, and it felt like an elephant was sitting on my lungs whenever I tried to draw a deep breath. Dammit. Fucking seatbelt.
With an effort of will, I pushed aside the injuries. I’d pulled my Colt without thinking about it before I’d even cleared the car, and I kept it at the ready as I slid out a side entrance of the building. Time to find where our kidnappers were holed up.
If they were indeed here, I reminded myself. I was going to be pissed if Destination Number Three ended up being the winner instead.
The shadows were getting longer as the day wound down, turning the abandoned factory into a weird play of looming walls and deep darkness. I loped toward the other side of the complex, where the buildings had looked sturdier. I’d start my grid search there.
Of course, searching buildings took a lot of time, and I was an impatient motherfucker. Besides, it might work to my advantage to kick the beehive a little more.
I found a crumbling tangle of scrap metal and other debris piled in a stairwell and pulled out a few hand-sized chunks of metal and concrete. Cradling my makeshift projectiles in one arm—I winced at taking the weight with my burned hand and wrist, but there was no help for it—I stuck my Colt back in my belt and ducked around the corner from the first row of buildings, keeping myself against the wall. Here inside the complex, most of the windows were still glass, and I’d been staying aware of all those possible lines of sight and where the sniper vantage points might cross.
I tossed a chunk of brick in my right hand, figured out the arc—x-distance, y-distance, two possible solutions—and threw. The bit of debris crashed through the third-story window, the tinkle of the glass echoing in the emptiness.
I pressed myself against the wall, out of sight. Nothing. No goons scrambling with AKs, no napalm.
I threw through a second story window, then one on the ground floor. Still nothing.
I continued down the first row of buildings, and then moved to the second. Maybe I was wrong—maybe this wasn’t the place, and I should go to the third location. I’d seen not a hin
t of any sort of security, of any response to my rabble-rousing.
Then I threw a rock through the third floor of the next building, and it blew up.
I ducked around the side of the building I was next to, dropping my debris projectiles and covering my head. The blast ended with a heavy rain of brick and concrete hitting the street at y-equals-zero from the height of the third floor.
I peeked an eye back out.
The building was still mostly intact, but the third floor looked like a monster had bitten it off, with only one corner of the walls still standing. The rest of it had been blasted away into rubble, and the wreckage blanketed the surrounding pavement in a tumble of cinder blocks and rebar.
And nothing moved.
What the hell?
Why would a security measure be blowing up their own building? And why hadn’t it triggered any further security, any of their troops with AKs or their expanded-upon Molotov cocktails…
Oh. Because they weren’t here.
A breeze blew through, and the settling dust pattered against my skin. Whoever they were, I’d missed them. They’d taken Halliday and run somewhere else, and left explosives behind for anyone who tried to investigate what they’d deserted. They’d probably left hastily, probably planned to return, but figured if they couldn’t come back to retrieve the rest of their base then nobody else would either.
Of course, they hadn’t expected me to come by.
Whatever explosive security they’d had on the third floor had already been tripped, clearly, but I didn’t think it likely their entire operations had been up there. After all, where had they stored their fleet of vehicles? That had to be on the ground floor. And there was plenty of gear and equipment they would’ve wanted closer to their escape route.
If I had a base I was wiring to blow…
I was betting that if I’d tried to walk in at ground level, the whole building would have gone up in a domino effect, but starting on the third floor had only tripped those security measures. After all, why would they think anyone would walk in on the third floor?
Which meant that was exactly what I was going to do.
I strode over to the building next door. It was taller, and sixteen and a half feet separated the two. I threw rocks through the windows just in case, but nothing blew.
I kicked a metal door out of its frame to get into the next-door building and searched around until I found a peeling wooden staircase going up. The top floor didn’t actually have roof access, but I didn’t let that stop me. I gathered a tottering pile of junk, climbed up on top, and busted out the ventilation system from the rotting ceiling. This building was in terrible shape, and it didn’t take much for the air ducts to come crashing down along with a whole big chunk of roof, giving me my very own makeshift skylight. I leapt up, caught the edges of my hole, and clawed my way through until I tumbled out on the asphalt roofing.
It was slightly soft where I stepped when I stood up. But it held my weight.
I jogged over to the side of the roof.
The blasted-open third floor was a lot closer and clearer from up here. The crooked edges of the concrete backtracked for me like I was watching the blast in reverse, showing me exactly how they’d set the charges. Breaking a window had detonated them, but I’d been right that an explosion from the second floor would’ve set everything off too. The rubble felt like the third act in a Rube Goldberg chain.
Which meant the first and second floors would definitely also be rigged.
The building they’d been operating out of had massive square footage, a long, square, ugly box of three tall stories—well, formerly three—with peeling siding and painted-over windows. Utterly unassuming, and more than large enough to house fleets of vehicles and whatever else this gang might need. Now I just had to get over there.
Sixteen and a half feet between the buildings, and if possible I wanted to clear the jagged edges of destroyed wall and the lion’s share of the rubble. Fortunately, I was one story higher. I’d have more than enough time to fly the x-distance while I was falling, and the vertical distance was barely over thirteen feet. I’d fallen farther plenty of times.
Of course, the height difference meant I’d have to find a different way out once I made the leap, but I could figure that out once I sussed the demolition rig up close.
I walked along the edge of the roof, looking for the smoothest landing spot amid the rubble on the opposite building, and zeroed in on a likely patch of floor. I tossed some bits of roof over just in case anything was still live, but my landing area showed no evidence of being likely to disintegrate me. Good.
I backtracked to the middle of my roof to give myself a running start, did the final calculations, and then ran straight at the edge. I couldn’t see my landing spot as I pounded toward the brink—only purple-blue sky, clear and empty, as if I were about to take off and fly past the end of the world.
I hit the lip of the roof and jumped.
My muscles rocketed me into the air, and I soared in a perfect parabola. An instant of weightlessness at the top—my own personal optimum, hanging above the earth—and then I accelerated downward, faster and faster, the rubble-strewn third floor of the other building multiplying in my vision until it became the entire universe.
I hit exactly where I’d aimed, and rolled out.
Ow.
I sat for a minute. Why had that hurt? Oh. Yeah. Napalm and street-sized bonfires and being shot and getting into an intentional car crash.
I coughed. Dammit.
I staggered up and surveyed my surroundings. Now that I was on the building, it appeared even more vast, a broad forest of rubble and nubs of walls. I began picking my way across. Every so often I caught sight of something that might have been part of the gang’s base—a few loose papers crushed under concrete blocks, a broken computer monitor, a dismembered office chair—but mostly it was unidentifiable debris.
I stayed wary of any explosives that hadn’t gone in the original blast, but the third floor had died a valiant death and thoroughly destroyed itself. I finally found a staircase—well, more like a ladder into a skylight now.
Very carefully, I stepped down.
My skin tingled as I transferred my weight from stair to stair. What if they’d rigged everything about the second floor, instead of only the perimeter like I expected? What if I jostled the wrong bit of wall or stepped on the wrong patch of floor?
I reached the bottom without blowing anything up. I took a steadying breath, immediately regretted it as my ribs twinged, and peered around, keeping my steps slow and my senses alert.
The second floor had been set up like a barracks. Bunks took up quite a few of the rooms, stacked on top of each other with no privacy. A rusted-out kitchen was replete with boxed MREs; I didn’t think it likely the plumbing was working. A larger percentage of the rooms turned out to be empty—this building was, apparently, too big even for their purposes. I wandered between them, the light filtering through the painted-over windows creating an eerie interplay of shadows.
Whether or not the rooms had been in use, they were all set up to explode, though fortunately the setup was a lot clearer than I’d feared. The wiring crawled over the whole outside perimeter, cupping the second floor in a deadly closed circuit. What looked like military-grade plastic explosives were packed against all the support pillars. Foil wire spiderwebbed over the windows—that must have been what I’d tripped on the third story—and floor mats lined the walking space next to the walls. Any pressure on the mats would flip a relay and make the whole circuit detonate, I was sure.
I also saw now why the third floor had gone without triggering the others: they’d armed this as a demolition trap, with the bottom two stories going off first to start the implosion and then setting off the explosives above them almost instantly, leading in a mathematically neat way to the complete implosion of the building.
Which wasn’t even necessary. Destroying the ground floor this way would have led to the collapse of the le
vels above it anyway, so they could have kept only the bottom floor set and connected any breach of their security system to that—but they hadn’t.
Someone liked overkill.
I walked gingerly, cautious of where I put each foot, but they’d set up their charges so it was possible to live and work and walk here. The deadly security must have been prepared in advance, as this was too big a job to do in a trice after they’d sent the SUVs after me and then learned police were finding the bodies of their men, or whatever had spurred them to move base. Plastic explosives were stable enough to leave long-term—they had to have set this up from the beginning, as a contingency plan, and then wired everything live as they hightailed it. I avoided the edges of rooms and double-checked that each footfall was landing on bare wood instead of anything that could hide a pressure plate.
I crept down to the ground floor.
Here it was even more obvious they’d cleared out in a rush. The scattered detritus of a hurried flight was strewn across the floor—the odd knapsack or ammunition belt dropped in haste, tables knocked askew when the evacuation order had been given. Half the ground floor was a broad cement expanse they’d obviously been using as a garage; the smell of motor oil and burned rubber still pervaded the air, but all the vehicles were gone. I also found a bunch of storerooms and a room that had clearly been their armory. Much of its contents had been scooped up and taken as they ran, but there were still cases of ammunition, haphazard piles of blast shields and body armor, and large stacks of unlabeled boxes that probably contained plenty of things that would go kablooey. It might be nice to raid some of this, when I was done here.
The charges on the first floor were more extensive than on the other two, every support pillar and structure densely layered with plastique and wiring that crept up and across the ceiling. The intended sequence of the explosion kept playing out in my mind, the mathematics extrapolating forward for me and dropping the structure neatly into rubble in the shape of its foundation.
