I advanced through this span of tunnel to the plain brown door linking it to the basement of 722 Walker. As I turned my attention to the door locks, I heard the gate being closed behind us by my teammates. Only two had come along, Ixahau and Icerazor. One might ask why we didn't bring our heavy hitters, well, they weren't very subtle, and I wanted to avoid getting hostages shot. Dad would never forgive me if Nora took a bullet thanks to my misjudgment. Not that the odds were that high that she'd get hit, but any hostage shot was one too many.
"This door's not locked," I said.
"Odd," Icerazor said. "I'd think the building manager would want to keep the steamfitters out of his basement." I nudged the door ajar and slipped a fiber optic probe into the gap. It looked like a utility room. There was a cage for electrical equipment, including a backup generator. Off to the right was a set of pumps to lift municipal water to the tower atop the roof. On the far wall was a door marked 'authorized personnel only'. There weren't any visible cameras or guards. The basement was a bit disconnected from the fifteenth floor, but it didn't hurt to be careful. I stayed on point. My teammates were dressed in far lighter colors and didn't blend into the shadows as well as I did.
While he was as much an infiltrator as I was, Icerazor dressed in silver and light blues, befitting his name. I didn't want to comment on this because in our line of work, style mattered as much as substance. His mask was a simple strip of cloth with eye holes tied in back in imitation of the ponytail his short silver-white hair couldn't support. He wore red contacts as part of his costume, covering up his brown eyes. He was ungodly thin, almost skeletal in build. It came from the same health problem that left his skin pallid. "Should we call the elevator?" he asked.
"I think they'd notice something was up, that is, assuming they haven't locked down the elevators."
"I'm not climbing fifteen floors to fight these guys."
"We're not," I said, "I have a plan." I pulled a specialized key out of my pack. It didn't really look like a key, having a profile more like a tire iron. It was for opening elevator doors to access the hoistway. Putting it through the inconspicuous hole in the upper corner of the door, I swung it to trip the release catch. Once triggered, we were able to push the doors open to peer into the shaft. The basement wasn't the lowest level of 722 Walker, and below us sat a subbasement and the elevator pit. The cab buffers that prevented the elevator cars from hitting the floor of the pit looked like spikes from this far up.
"You just had to pick the filthiest route, didn't you?" Ixa asked. "And I assume we're not climbing the side of the shaft given that stupid grin on your face?" I declined to point out to Ixa that the dusty concrete hoistway was cleaner than some of the other routes I'd gotten into secure facilities, like a truck undercarriage, an abandoned vent shaft, or a sewer pipe. But then again, the primary color of her costume was white, with black faux gloves and boots, and a black starburst bearing a mesoamerican hieroglyph over her heart. It matched the white jade mask which bore the same sigil carved into its forehead. In antiquity, the ancient mask had broken just below the nose, leaving an angled lower edge. Her mask was old when her legacy started, and had only picked up a few centuries before she inherited it. The only part of her costume that wasn't black or white was a red sash about her waist that was knotted by her left hip and had its ends hanging by her thigh.
"Why do you think I dress in black?" I said.
"I always thought it was because you're called 'Shadowdemon'," Icerazor said. "You know, clothes to fit the name and all that."
"Anyway," I said as I traded the elevator key for a length of line tied to a carabiner in the middle. "Together we three weigh less than five hundred pounds." I hooked the carabiner into a loop on the back of my wrist-mounted line-launcher. "So we can ride most of the way up." Looking up the hoistway, I took aim at the bottom of a distant elevator cab. My artificial eye zoomed in on the target, its estimated point of impact wobbling as my arm fell prey to the unsteady nature of human musculature. Getting it on the strongest part of the structure I could, I fired. The grip plate hurtled up the shaft and connected with the steel panel that braced against the cab buffers in the pit. I handed the lengths of rope off to my teammates. "Tie yourselves off."
"Some plan," Icerazor said, shifting the scabbard for his sword before tying the rope about himself. Ixa made no comment, but the subtle downturn of the corner of her mouth reflected her disapproval. She did, however, put her arms around me for added security. Icerazor trusted himself entirely to the rope. I eased us out to the center of the hoistway, trying to minimize the swing as the line launcher began reeling in. For the sake of the others, I hauled us up at a slower, but steady pace. They knew that this thing could launch me almost as fast as it could launch the line when I let it. I don't know if they appreciated the more sedate pace or not, but I found it hard to complain about having Ixa hanging onto me. We were dating in our civilian lives, not that we'd had a date in the last month.
"Where'd that attachment point come from?" Ixa asked. "I never saw it before."
"There's actually a small panel covering it," I said. "I didn't know it was there until I read the manual."
"How long were you using this thing before you did that?" she asked. I just smiled.
"The banter's great and all," Icerazor said, "But I'd like to get my personal space back soon."
"Fine, I'll speed up." I kicked the motor into slightly higher gear and we rose faster. Someone had stenciled the floor numbers on the walls for the benefit of the elevator maintenance crews, and we ran out of line dangling by fourteen. All of the elevators in the cluster looked to be waiting at fifteen. "Do you see the ladder?" I asked, pointing at the span of wall with my free hand. The glove on my left hand was laced with red circuitry and secured under a wrist computer. Well, it's called a wrist computer, it's more of a forearm computer, but that doesn't have the same ring to it.
"We should be able to get past these parked cars," Icerazor said.
"I'm going to swing us closer, try to get hold of it." With that warning, I pulled on the bottom of the cab and played out a little bit of line. Icerazor caught the ladder with both hands and nodded. "Right, help Ixa over and get her off the rope. Ixa, once you're free, climb up and get on top of the elevator." Ixa took Icerazor's arm and pulled away from me, climbing onto the ladder. Together, they freed her from the tether, and she ascended into the narrow gap between the ladder and the cab. Icerazor untied himself and followed her. Once they were out of sight, I swung myself over and released the grip plate, reeling in the last of the line. Scrambling up the constricted slot, I tried to not trip myself up with the dangling lengths of rope.
Hauling myself onto the roof of the cab, I was greeted by Ixa's scowl. Both she and Icerazor had picked up a hefty bit of grime on their outfits, and the top of the cab was even worse than the ladder had been. I nudged the dead rat off the edge and let it fall down the hoistway. "From here on out, I'm sticking to team B, and letting you guys handle sneaking in," Ixa said.
"There's a camera in the cab," Icerazor said. "We can either disable it and exit through the elevator, or lower the cab one floor and open the doors directly."
"Let's put it into a loop. They might notice if an elevator moved."
"Right," Icerazor nodded, "One perpetually empty elevator coming up." I let him go to work. I could have done the same thing, but part of being a team leader was letting people know they're valued and able to contribute. That, and it was nice not to have to handle every security related detail on the mission. Though being lead of a Hero team was mostly about the paperwork. While he worked, I turned to Ixa.
"It's just dirt, it washes off."
"It doesn't stand out as much on you," she said.
"Sure it does, it just doesn't stand out on my costume as much."
Ixa rolled her eyes. "You have a crappy sense of humor."
&nbs
p; "It's not like I crawled through a sewer... this time."
"Put an end to this pun-ishment," Icerazor said.
"I wasn't punning," I said.
"Well, swordfish to you too." I stared in confusion, trying to figure out the joke. "Camera's done," he said. I released the ceiling hatch and extended the fiber optic probe again. It was built into the underside of the same rig that held the line launcher. It fed images to my wrist computer which turned around and fed them to my artificial eye. It kept me from lighting up spaces where I was trying to stay hidden with a display screen. My gadgets were all tied together -- well, the electronic ones anyway. Through the probe, I saw an empty, stylish elevator with wood paneled walls and wide open doors. The fire emergency override had a key set to 'hold', and in the elevator lobby I spotted the moving shadow of one of the hostage takers.
"Doors are open, there's a guard in the lobby. Can't get a line of sight on them."
"How do we want to handle this?" Icerazor whispered.
"Quietly," Ixa said. "We don't know how many bad guys there are."
I went over my mental floor plan of the office. The elevators were at the core of the building, backed against the restrooms. Along the shorter walls there were personal offices and conference rooms. In the space between the core and the diagonal wall, there was a cubicle farm. Beyond that, well, I hadn't spent too much time visiting Nora that day.
"Unless you've got a spell up your sleeve for it, that means fearless leader," Icerazor said.
"Oh, you can't do it quietly?" I asked.
"We're not carbon copies. You're better against humans," Icerazor said. I flipped open the hatch and lowered myself into the elevator. Flattening myself against the wall next to the door, I extended the probe outside and looked around. I called it an elevator lobby, it was really a glorified hallway with gray carpet and white walls. The one guard had his back to me. He had the build of someone who worked for a living, well built but not the overblown musculature of a body builder. He wore a blue work shirt and jeans, with brown steel toed boots. He had a full face mask with respirator and goggles, almost certainly to protect against the inevitable tear gas the police would throw at them. In his hands was some sort of submachinegun. As he turned to head back in my direction I saw it was a rather high end German model.
I pulled the probe back in and waited. As he passed the elevator, I grabbed him, flicking the selector switch to safe as I pulled him into a choke hold. Unable to call out, he went down. I dragged him the rest of the way into the elevator and restrained him with zip ties.
"Nicely done," Icerazor said as he dropped into the elevator. Ixa was not far behind.
"Notice how this guy's carrying a ten thousand dollar submachinegun that isn't even legal for civilian import?" I asked. "On the street, you tend to find American made weapons."
"Who can buy them?" Ixa asked.
"Military or police," I said. I pulled the magazine out of the weapon and drew a sharp breath.
"What?"
"Bric APX," I said. "Armor-Piercing explosive."
"Aren't those banned by the Geneva convention?" Icerazor asked.
"But so are hollowpoints. These, more so."
"Bric?" Ixa asked.
"It's a company."
"I'm guessing they make even bigger holes than regular bullets," Ixa said.
"Pretty much."
"So no letting these guys get a shot off. Got it," Icerazor said.
"I can't find any ID on this guy." But I did find his radio. Taking the information from it, I set my radio to eavesdrop on their communications. Things were quiet.
"Probably because they don't want to be identified," Icerazor said.
"According to police chatter, they think the hostages have been corralled in one of the conference rooms, and their phones have been confiscated. We need to clear out those outside that area first."
"And you brought me along for moral support?" Ixa asked. "This isn't my strong suit."
"Do you remember telling me about when you learned a spell that put everyone in the area to sleep - including the caster?"
"It was a lesson in how magic tends to be literal."
"You still remember that spell, right."
"Your point?"
I tapped the side of my head. "I can't fall asleep."
Ixa smirked. I loved that smile. "I see where you're going."
"We clear out everyone else, get near the conference room, and you put everyone to sleep. I restrain the hostage takers while they're out, no one gets a chance to shoot anyone."
"And if magic trumps the alien implant in your brain?" Icerazor asked.
"Then I'll get some sleep for the first time in a year."
"First things first."
"The perimeter guards."
We slinked out of the elevator, headed towards the cubicle farm. Looking out over the rather mundane string of semi-personalized cubes, I spied two more of the heavily armed, but simply dressed criminals. I motioned Ixa and Icerazor to take the one on the left as I crept towards the one on the right. They were half a building apart, but had a clear line of sight to each other. I couldn't see outside, as they'd drawn the shades to deny the police sharpshooters targets.
"Dekker," came a strong voice over their radio channel. "How much longer?"
"Almost there," A weaker voice, presumably Dekker, said.
"We've got too many news choppers, and I'm not sure how much longer I can stall the negotiator before SWAT makes entry. Hurry it up."
"It's not like I can poke the computer with a prod and make it go faster."
"The instant it's done, tell me, so we can get the hell out of here."
"Any sign of capes or tights?"
"Not yet." I didn't let the success of our infiltration distract me as I snuck up on the guard. The upshot of a cubicle farm is the sheer number of blind spots it created for anyone tasked with watching over it. Staying low, it was easy to stay out of sight. Of course, I wished I'd put a camera up to keep an eye on the guard. We almost tripped over each other. I moved faster, giving a jab to the throat, a twisted arm and a kick to the back of the knee to bring him down into a choke hold. As the other guard started to react, Ixa and Icerazor jumped him. Wrestling him to the ground, they zip-tied him as I restrained the now unconscious guard I'd taken down. Theirs, however, was still awake and kicking. I provided a bit more rope to bundle him up.
"Give me a robot to fight any day," Icerazor said.
"Sorry, these guys spent their money on guns and masks," I said.
"Who are they anyway?" Ixa whispered.
"Not entirely sure," I said in a similar tone. We'd been called in by Nora, but before she'd managed to tell me anything beyond 'hostage taking', they'd taken her cell phone away. The chatter on the police radio hadn't been much more informative about the who.
I raised one finger to my lips and headed to the corner by the back hall. Peering down it with a fiber optic eye, I spotted one guard standing watch at a door near the far end. There was no good way to approach unseen from this angle. My mind and my gaze went to the unconscious guard. "You've got that 'I have an idea' look to you," Icerazor whispered.
Part 2
We dragged the poor guy into the men's bathroom and borrowed his boots, pants, shirt and mask. We left him his socks and boxers, because there really was no reason to take them. I donned the impromptu disguise over my costume. I had to hand my goggles off to Icerazor, but my domino mask still fit under their gas mask. I wasn't terribly comfortable carrying a submachinegun loaded with explosive rounds, but it'd be too odd for one of their own to approach unarmed. We did a quick check of the other hallway for any other guards, but found it empty. It was shorter, so I had Ixa and Icerazor wait there as I went the long way around. It might give him more time to s
pot the flaws in my disguise, but it would have his back towards the others.
In particular, I was worried that he'd notice I was wearing a different type of gloves. Theirs were clear latex, the type you found in food service. Cheap, readily available and effective. I didn't need my disguise to be perfect, just to last long enough to engage the guard. My right eye got pissy at me for having to stare at the very close display from an electrical device that didn't talk to it. Fortunately, I managed to get it to play nice and act like a normal eye for a while. Their eye pieces probably helped blot out the effect of flash-bangs, as it was far too bright in here to need night vision. Not unless they planned to escape through someplace dark. Oh...
Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus) Page 65
