by Abbott, Jeff
Snow was crazy-strong and she sank her teeth into Luke’s wrist, still trying to turn the gun into his flesh. She crouched between Luke and Mouser.
Mouser, running full-tilt down the hall, gun raised, screamed at Snow: ‘Move out of the way!’
Luke kicked the buttons as he fought with Snow, hitting the door-close button. The doors whooshed shut and the car began to descend.
Luke tangled with Snow, her mouth smeared with his blood. He saw her gun swing free of his grip. She pivoted the gun toward him. No place to retreat. He pushed her away, yanking the gun back from her, stumbling, falling into a corner of the elevator.
Then a sudden stop, a screech of metal against metal. Snow collapsed onto him, her hands clawing for the gun, and he barely felt the soft phut of the gun’s discharge.
She doubled over, spat blood onto his foot. He couldn’t tell if it was his or hers. Her eyes widened as she sank to her knees.
Drummond dropped through the opening and went to one knee.
Luke could see the fear in her eyes and her hand went to her shot chest, fist clenched, as though she could hold her life in with her fingers.
She spat in his face as he leaned close and she died.
‘I … I …’ Luke could hardly speak.
‘She would have killed you and laughed about it later,’ Drummond said. ‘Let it go. Let’s see what floor we’re on.’
Above, he heard Mouser screaming Snow’s name.
41
It took Mouser only seconds to reason it out. The two bastards - the old man and the nine-lives punk - had entered the elevator shaft from the roof.
He forced the doors open with a mighty shove. It took all his strength but he peered down into the darkness of the elevator shaft.
He heard the crack of a shot, saw Drummond, sliding from the roof of the cabin sliding into its interior. The hatch clanged shut.
‘Snow!’ He screamed down the shaft. It made an echo: No. No.
He could see the support rails inside the shaft. He leapt inside, landed on metal, and grabbed hold. He began a mad, spidery scramble downwards.
Seventh floor. They ran for the stairwell. The floor was a huge, empty open space. Soft light made squares on the concrete floor. There was no place to take cover.
They moved quietly but quickly down the stairs. Several floors below them, they heard the clang of a door.
‘Hell,’ Drummond whispered, leaning against Luke. The injuries to his head and his shoulder made his voice thick, his walk shaky. ‘Don’t let your heart guide you. Stay cool. Remote. Always.’
‘Shut up with the advice,’ Luke said.
‘By the way, my gun is empty.’
‘I have the one you gave me.’
They reached the third floor. Storage space, empty of tenants. Crates and boxes everywhere. Plastic-wrapped office furniture - chairs, desks.
Drummond listened. ‘I hear them coming. I think they’re in the stairwell.’
‘Then we go out the window.’ Luke hurried along the windows, peering down. One side of the building was scarce of foot traffic.
He stripped plastic from a heavy desk, he braided the fire hose through the drawer’s opening and he rammed the desk through the window. Glass exploded and the desk plummeted, unfurling the heavy hose. The desk stopped ten feet above the pavement, dangling like a broken pendulum against the building.
‘Come on!’ Luke yelled. ‘On my back.’ No time for them both to climb down the rope. Luke felt Drummond’s solid weight go on his back and he threw himself out onto the makeshift rope.
42
The cameras in Drummond’s kitchen had been destroyed in the hail of Snow and Mouser’s gunfire, so the watchers - the boss, the scarred Frenchman and Aubrey - had to settle for a satellite view of the Quicksilver building. They’d seen Luke and Drummond retreat to the roof, vanish into the hatch, then saw Mouser and Snow come onto the roof and disappear back into the building moments later.
Aubrey made a horrified noise in her throat.
The computer screens were set up in a corner of the hold, and Aubrey could hardly hear what was said over the drone of the engines. They’d given her drugs, first to make her sleep, then to make her talk, or so she suspected. She’d been laying on a cot, staring at the gray ceiling, when the boss had come and pulled her up and made her speak to Luke on the phone.
Luke was alive. But the boss told her what to say and she said it. Then she saw and heard the tat-tat-tat of the bullets in the kitchen, then nothing.
The boss pushed Aubrey away from the black screen.
‘You have to help Luke,’ she said. ‘Please.’ She felt hazy from the drugs.
The boss ignored her. ‘Response from the security team?’
‘None,’ the scarred Frenchman said. ‘We have to assume the ground floor gunmen killed them.’
‘Drummond?’
‘Not answering. I imagine he’s busy.’
‘Access the building’s computer systems. Wipe everything clean. What can you install in its place to soften the police inquiry?’
‘We have a backup story: the building is a prototype, being built to test security technologies for sale. We will wipe and then reinstall data to that effect.’
‘Fine. Keep it simple.’ The Frenchman began his work.
‘That’s not helping them!’ Aubrey yelled.
The boss looked at her. ‘I know. Go back and lay down. We’ll be landing soon.’ The old cargo plane creaked and Aubrey looked past the man’s shoulder. On the satellite feed that monitored the building, glass shimmered as a large desk burst through a third-story window.
‘Luke?’ Aubrey said.
43
The hose held, the desk dangling a good ten feet above the pavement.
Luke held hard to the fabric of the hose, slid down to the desk’s surface. Drummond was wiry, all muscle, and he weighed a ton.
Luke looked up and saw a sparrow-thin man staring down at them from the broken window.
The thin man raised a sleek rifle, aimed it with confidence in his eyes. He let five seconds pass, saying, ‘You made it easy now.’
Against his back, Drummond twisted. The weight of Luke’s gun, jammed in the back of his pants, came free and a thundering boom went off near Luke’s head.
The thin man ducked back or fell dead, Luke didn’t know. He lost his grip on the hose and he and Drummond hit the canted desk, slid, hit air again. He felt Drummond’s arms wrapping around him to cocoon him, to drink the impact of the concrete.
And it hurt. Luke felt all the air drive out of him. Drummond lay beneath him, breathing in short sharp pants. Luke’s vision swam - he saw the desk, swinging above him.
Move.
Luke scrambled to his feet - muscles feeling like they’d been pulled from his body and hastily stuffed back inside his skin - and tried to lift Drummond from the sidewalk.
‘Can’t - leg broken - go.’ His voice was a hiss.
No way he was leaving Drummond behind. Luke hiked the older man up. Supported him on his shoulders. The hard shrill knife of a police siren sliced the afternoon, cutting through the Manhattan hum.
He pulled Drummond into his arms and carried him, heading for the cross street. He wanted to put buildings between him and the killers.
‘My keys,’ Drummond patted at his pocket.
‘You have a car?’
‘My keys,’ he repeated and then the shot rang out, piercing him in the back, near where Luke’s hand held him. The bullet tumbled through spine and organs and the impact nearly knocked him loose from Luke’s grip.
The crowd that had been starting to close around them scattered, a woman shrieking, students bolting.
But Luke did not stop. A tea shop was a few yards away and he stumbled through its door as the proprietor opened it to see what fresh hell had erupted in the Village. At tables people with laptops looked up from their web-induced isolation and gasped; the counter person erupted with a series of short screams.
‘Cal
l 9-1-1,’ Luke said. ‘Please.’
Drummond opened his eyes with visible effort. ‘My keys. Run. No police.’ His eyes focused on Luke’s face. He clutched at Luke’s Saint Michael medal, which dangled above his face as Luke knelt by him. Then his hand went to his pocket and he died.
Oh, God, Luke thought. In the pocket he found a ring of car keys with a bottle opener. He grabbed the keys and Snow’s gun, still nestled in Drummond’s hand.
When he grabbed the gun everyone in the tea shop scrambled backwards. He paused. Then he tore the Saint Michael medal from Drummond’s throat, cupped it in his hand. He hurried past a counter and ran into a small side alley of brick. It was closed to the main streets by an iron gate.
Keys. A car. Drummond must have a car. A rental garage’s address was printed on the back of the bottle opener. Four blocks away.
Luke climbed over the iron gate, dropped to the next street, and ran.
44
The final bullet of Drummond’s long career had caught Sweet Bird under the jaw and he’d fallen back with an astonished look on his thin face.
Mouser had picked up the rifle next to Sweet Bird’s body. He’d gotten a single shot off, nailed Drummond, missed Luke. He squeezed the trigger again; no ammo left.
Chaos was about to descend on this building. He had to get out. There was no time to say goodbye to Snow. He’d left her behind in the elevator cab, one kiss goodbye. He blinked away the hot feeling behind his eyes as he bolted out the back of the building, avoiding the arrival of the police, blending in with the crowd. Sweet Bird’s crew was either dead or had fled.
Luke and Drummond had killed her. The vengeance against Drummond had come quickly but Luke still walked and breathed. He felt the cold bloodthirstiness from Snow begin to fill him, as though her spirit was settling in his bones, seeping into this skin. A stirring in his chest took its final breath and shriveled. He had not even known her real name.
He turned into the tea shop’s back door; he’d seen where Luke ran. Drummond’s body still lay sprawled on the tiles. He frisked the body. Nothing. No cops yet; outside, a woman in a barista’s apron spoke with the police in the street, pointing toward her store.
He retreated out the back door. The alleyway remained empty. Which way had Luke gone? And where would he go?
He remembered the manifest for Eric’s charter - he’d seen it at the air park in Chicago - had said New York, then Paris.
He ran down the alley, toward the iron gate, fury for Luke filling him, and fury for Henry, who had sent him on this fool’s errand.
The garage was four stories tall and Luke hurried along the row, testing the remote, until the lights on a plain Ford sedan beeped. He opened the trunk and found a briefcase and a packed bag. He took the briefcase and set it on the front passenger seat. The car still smelled new; the miles on the car were fewer than a hundred. Luke rifled through the glove compartment. The car had been sold to James Morgan.
The charter pilot, Frankie Wu, had mentioned flying on to Paris. There had to be a reason that Eric would have stopped in New York - perhaps to meet Drummond and seal a deal on information - and then fly on to Paris.
For what? A final meeting? Drummond said the people watching their interview were headed to Paris.
He steered into traffic, heading away from the chaos at Drummond’s building, watching his rearview mirror for Mouser. His mind kept replaying the bullet he’d put into Snow. Intent didn’t matter. He had killed her. He had ended another human life, but she had brought on her own fate with her choices.
At a stoplight he snapped open the briefcase. Two Canadian passports, one for Drummond, one for him. In the names of James Morgan and for Luke, in the name of Tom Morgan. The passport photo was a modified version of his license driver’s photo, cleverly expanded to fit the passport parameters. They were stamped with entry for the US and the Bahamas. They looked real to him. He counted the cash, around two thousand dollars. He found credit cards in the name of Tom Morgan. The promise to hide him was real and would have been immediate. And two tickets, the seats together, on the red-eye to Paris for tonight, in the same false names.
The car had a GPS system, and at the next light, he plugged in a request for directions to JFK airport.
Aubrey lay on the cot and she heard the scarred Frenchman say to the boss: ‘We have a live signal from Drummond’s car.’
‘He got out?’ the boss asked. The satellite picture of the street had indicated Drummond might have been hit.
A pause. ‘I wonder where they’ll go,’ the Frenchman said.
‘Track the car. And find where Henry Shawcross is. I want to know if he’s on a plane, a train, where he is.’
‘Do we still send a cleanup team?’
Aubrey closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. They might speak a little louder, over the rumble of the plane, if they thought she was asleep again.
‘No. If anyone’s still alive they’re on their own,’ the boss said, and she could hear the awful bitterness under his words. ‘Sometimes you have to leave people behind.’
‘We could just call the car,’ the Frenchman said. ‘If it’s Luke alone, he’s probably scared to death.’
‘We clearly have to build trust with young Mr Dantry,’ the boss said. ‘You play it out, you talk to him.’
Aubrey felt a shadow over her. She opened her eyes. The boss, staring down, wore a frown on his hard face. ‘How is Luke doing it?’
‘What?’
‘Escaping these people. Finding us. Being so clever. Was he trained by Shawcross?’
‘Trained? He’s a grad student in psychology and you people have scared the crap out of him. A smart person who’s scared can be dangerous.’
‘You better tell me the truth, Aubrey.’
‘I am. I am.’ She licked at her dry lips. ‘He and I, we just want out, we just want our old lives back. Please.’
The man leaned close to her. ‘You get to go home when you help us. This fifty million Luke mentioned to Drummond. Where is it?’
‘I don’t know. I want nothing to do with that money. I want to go home.’
‘Home,’ the boss said. ‘I hope you can.’
45
Henry wanted to be present for Luke’s capture - or at least in the van that would be taking him away from the Quicksilver building. But an absolutely critical component of Hellfire required his attention. He especially wanted to be there to kill Drummond personally, if Drummond was at the address. But priorities were priorities. He could not delegate this task.
The storefront in a quiet street in Queens read Ready-Able Services. A recent change in ownership was not reflected in the storefront. The company, which was headquartered in New York and had branches in fourteen major metropolitan markets, contracted out cleaning and maintenance services to government and corporations. The workers were bonded and underwent background checks. The company was twenty years old, successful, and privately held. The inside man had been hired, inserted at Henry’s suggestion four months ago. He cleared the background check because he had no record; he had never been caught. He took a salary cut for the job at Ready-Able, and his boss thought the company lucky to have landed such a smart, hard worker.
Henry went inside and gave a false name. The inside man, with the rank of supervisor, was expecting him. The two of them walked past the other supervisors and employees and headed for a storeroom at the back of the facility.
In the storeroom, the supervisor opened the box. ‘You can see,’ he began in Arabic.
‘English,’ Henry said. ‘I don’t wish to be overheard.’
‘Yes, well,’ the supervisor said in lightly accented English. ‘As you asked. Twenty surgical masks.’
‘It’s not uncommon for the employees to wear these?’
‘No. Cleaning can be a nasty job. They go with the uniforms. I have provided twenty, in the sizes you asked for.’
Henry looked at the uniforms. ‘The pocket here is big enough to hold a gun.’
&n
bsp; ‘Yes, a variety of models, I tested it myself.’
‘And the access passes?’
‘Activated. That took a bit of fiddling with the master database. You cannot have substitutions of personnel, though. I cannot issue new picture IDs at this late date.’
‘I understand.’ Henry carefully inspected all twenty passes. They looked entirely genuine because they were. Ready-Able had just added twenty employees that had not been hired or interviewed, hidden inside an access pass database that held information about two thousand employees around the country.
‘The database audit was completed yesterday. I added the new records immediately afterwards. We should be good for two or three days. I hope your operation takes place by then …’
‘Not your concern.’
‘The company will be seen as a common element of the attack’s targets when Hellfire is completed.’
‘You will be extracted and sent wherever you like. Go to the airport, go to the Travport cargo office. They will smuggle you out of the country.’
‘Understood.’
The supervisor and Henry resealed the boxes, and loaded them into Henry’s van. Henry drove to a Travport satellite office and shipped the boxes to an address in Chicago.
This was the next to last stage before Hellfire could be launched. If only he had Luke under his thumb, then all would be well.
Henry’s phone rang, and he opened it, sure that it would be good news.
The car’s phone rang as Luke pulled into airport parking. He hit the talk button. ‘Hello?’
‘Is this Luke?’ A man’s French-accented voice, the same one from Drummond’s phone.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, but Drummond is dead. I’m sorry I couldn’t save him. He saved me.’
‘We mourn him more than you know. I can tell you he had a rewarding life.’
‘I have the fifty million the Night Road wants. I will trade it to you for information on my father’s past, and for you to set up Aubrey someplace where she is safe.’
