by Mel Odom
Wilson dropped a hand on Valentine’s shoulder and gave the man a tight grin. “Stay alive, kid, and you’re going to make me proud of you yet.”
At the fourth floor, the elevator went on the outside of the building, surrounded on three sides by glass.
Wilson felt a moment of vertigo as it seemed like the streets were dropping away from him while he shot up the side of the glass-and-steel canyon. He was conscious of the tension filling the people beside him as they watched the level indicator speed by. Vache seemed detached, chewing his gum methodically. Scuderi was cool and professional as always, her emotions hidden away behind the dark wraparound sunglasses she wore while holding her M4 canted from her waist. January was patting his free hand against his leg to a beat that was heard only inside his head. Leaning against one of the glass walls, Valentine was breathing in through his nose and releasing his breath through his mouth. It was martial arts training, and it was the same thing Wilson was doing to keep the adrenaline up without borrowing into the fatigue factor.
At floor nineteen, Rawley broke in over the T-jack com net. “DiVarco just made the party.”
“Where?” Wilson asked. “Your side of the building.”
Wilson peered down and saw a limousine that looked like a child’s toy had stopped in front of the office building. There were other cars behind it. At least two dozen men spilled from the open doors and raced for the building.
“You’ve confirmed that?”
“Or I wouldn’t have reported it,” Rawley said. “The FBI guys we left covering our back door spotted him on his way in and let Mac and me know.”
Mac and Rawley were at the other end of the building. They had taken the elevator up to the top floor and were using the fire escape stairs to drop back down. Although they hadn’t known for sure what floor Silverton would be on, they’d guessed it would be somewhere near the top. Mac and Rawley were there to try for a squeeze play if Silverton and Min had tipped to the operation too soon and tried to bolt. They were running the outside FBI teams Wilson had borrowed from the Boston office.
“The twenty-first floor,” Vache predicted quietly, “is going to be crowded a few minutes from now.”
Wilson didn’t bother to respond. There was no time. The elevator cage slowed, seemed to hover for a moment, then locked into place. The doors opened with a soft bong.
A small room led directly off the elevator, a ten-foot-square cubicle holding an X-ray machine and metal detector that looked sleeker and leaner than the ones in most airports. The walls were stark white, and made the black one-piece uniforms of the three security personnel stationed there look even more forbidding.
Before anyone could move, Wilson swung the shotgun by its grip and caught the first man on the side of the face. After the dull, meaty crunch of impact, the guard slumped to the floor.
The second man managed to get his pistol free of the holster and was thumbing the safety off when Scuderi closed on him and knocked the weapon out of his hands with a roundhouse kick. He threw himself at the woman agent. Meeting the rush head-on, Scuderi wrapped her fists in the guy’s one-piece, lifted her knee into his crotch, and executed a sweeping inner-thigh throw. The guard landed on his back and tried to scramble out from under Scuderi. Without pause, Scuderi headbutted the man in the face, then applied a sleeper hold that rendered her opponent unconscious.
January had taken the third man out with a quick series of jabs that culminated with a short right cross.
Peering around the door and finding no one, Wilson moved out into the corridor with Valentine on his heels. The rest of the team spread out behind him.
No one moved in the corridor. The lighting was good, with large window groups at either end of the building. A news copter hovered outside, and Wilson managed a quick glance at the photographer hanging outside the craft in a safety harness.
He turned left, then right again, following the series of hallways he’d marked in his mind from the map Valentine had retrieved. The T-jack crackled in his ear. “Go.”
“DiVarco has definitely arrived,” Rawley said.
“The crazy idiot has already shot up the main lobby and is on his way up here.”
“Silverton’s security knows?”
“I don’t see how they could miss it.”
Room Q was ahead of them, less than twenty yards away. The letter designation on the door was some kind of red stone inlaid in a white pebbled design.
The door was locked when Wilson tried it.
“I got it,” Valentine said, slinging his assault rifle and kneeling in front of the lock. A heartbeat later the door swung open at his touch.
Wilson entered at the back of the room, his gaze sweeping the interior.
Alexander Silverton was at the front of the room, at the head of the long, oval conference table. The room’s decor was Spartan, arranged and designed not to detract attention from what went on at the table. Overhead, a four-sided monitor assembly showed a list of names and probable stock forecasts regarding returns Wilson recognized most of them from the information contained in the portfolio Valentine had assembled.
Silverton stopped speaking and glanced irritably at Wilson.
“Discussing the latest P & L reports?” Wilson asked. “Have you told these people yet how the money they’ve been investing through you has gone into an effort to sell this city out from under them? Or that your real partners are a Mafia don who you helped establish in a place of power, and a man representing some of the largest crime families in Korea?”
Silverton glanced at Min, who remained expressionless.
“When were you planning on telling them?” Wilson asked, walking slowly around the table. “After this city was taken over by foreign investors?”
Four of Min’s guards were scattered around the room, their hands already reaching under their jackets. A low rumble of consternation rose from the conference table, swelling to a dull roar. Demands were made of Silverton, but the man ignored them.
“This city is already being taken over,” Silverton said. “The homeless, the useless, and the godless are blights on our futures.” He swept his glance around the table. “You’ve all seen it. This city is drowning in its own pathos and sewage. The streets are filling with carrion scavengers waiting to take from us everything we’ve worked for. They’re jealous of us because we’re successful, and they wouldn’t hesitate a moment about sacrificing us for their own gains. They’ve already proven that. What I was doing, I was doing to protect us-the deserving few who’ve made something of ourselves. Our ancestors came to this country and made their fortunes from the things this land had to provide, invested their blood to build for their families. I was not about to see all that go to waste because we’ve got a passive government in power that refuses to open its eyes to what needs to be done to set things right in this country.”
The quiet that followed Silverton’s words was almost complete. Nearly all the faces at the table showed combined fear and incredulity.
“Who are you?” one of the people asked.
Wilson showed them his badge and held the combat shotgun canted loosely over one shoulder. “I’m Special Agent Slade Wilson of the FBI.” He pointed a finger at Silverton. “And I’m here to arrest that man on federal charges.”
Tonsung Min pushed himself out of his seat with the aid of his cane. Immediately two of his men closed on him to form a protective ring. Without looking in Wilson’s direction, the Korean crime lord rounded the table, apparently heading for the door at the other end of the room.
“Min,” Wilson called softly.
The Korean turned to face the FBI SAC. “I have diplomatic immunity, Agent Wilson. You are aware of that. Your laws hold nothing over me.”
“I also know you can’t let it end like this,” Wilson said. “You’re responsible for too much money that has been invested through your connections with Silverton. There’s no way the people who trusted you are going to be willing to write that money off as a loss. And you can’t r
ecover any of it without Silverton’s help.”
“You’re right, of course,” Min said with a shark’s mirthless grin. He snapped his fingers.
Immediately the four Korean bodyguards pulled out their weapons and opened fire.
Silverton ducked and reached under the conference table. A split second later, the booming roll of a series of detonations filled the conference room. The wall behind Silverton came apart as smoke billowed out.
Going to ground, Wilson flipped the Ithaca Model 37 forward and aimed at the nearest gunman. The shotgun bucked in his hands, following the direction of the SeekNFire programming.
The double-aught charge caught the gunman in the chest and shoved him backward.
Wilson racked the slide and pumped another cartridge into the firing chamber, then touched the trigger again, aiming higher. The pattern whipped across the gunman’s face and threw the nearly decapitated body to the carpet.
A combined force of Silverton’s security people and more Koreans ran into the room from the entrance at the other end. Some of them worked to hustle Min and Silverton toward the secret door hidden behind the false wall that had come down with the explosions.
Losing sight of Min and Silverton in the smoke,
Wilson racked the Ithaca’s slide again as he shoved himself to his feet and attempted to pursue. A Korean stepped in front of him and blocked his charge. Unable to bring the shotgun into play, Wilson swung a forearm at the man’s face, felt cartilage smash under the force of the blow and felt the warm wetness of blood smear his skin. But the man remained standing and tried to track his pistol on Wilson’s head.
Clasping the Korean’s gun arm in his free hand, Wilson stopped the pistol’s movement but temporarily went deaf as the gunshot split the air by his ear. He was only able to halt the man for a moment, then the power of the endo-skel implanted beneath the man’s flesh took over. Wilson felt the gun sight of the pistol rake his flesh as the Korean’s hand smashed into his face. He fell backward, his back thudding hard against the floor, concentrating on getting the shotgun up in time. When the Ithaca was in line with his opponent’s crotch, he pulled the trigger, and watched the man melt away, staring in agonizing disbelief at the ruin that had happened to his body. Wilson’s second round finished the man off.
The last cartridge in the shotgun took out a Silverton gun, then Wilson swung it like a baseball bat to clear the way to the blown-out wall. At least two rounds smacked into his Kevlar-covered back as he gazed down into the escape tunnel.
It was a cylinder that spiraled down at an angle, very similar to the inflatable fire escape slide routes used on most modern buildings. The material was slick and dull yellow.
Before Wilson could throw himself down the open throat of the escape route, flames belched out of the tunnel and singed his hair, burning his face like a light sunburn. The fire swallowed the escape route from the inside, leaving only flaming bits hanging behind.
Wheeling, he drew the Delta Elite, feeling the buzz of the SeekNFire programming as his palm read the information contained on the chipped butt piece. He squeezed the trigger as soon as he recognized an enemy, and made his way to the door. He had to step over corpses of security people on his way.
At the door, a quick glance showed him that Scuderi and the others were still operational. He slammed a fresh cartridge into the 10mm and fired it dry again. Valentine was bleeding profusely from a thigh wound, and January was raking the room with controlled bursts from the Ingram machine pistol, blood seeping from three deep cuts across his forehead. Vache had kicked over the conference table to use as a shield, and was busy pushing a new magazine into his weapon. The surviving Silverton men and Koreans had been driven up against the false wall without a defense.
He called Scuderi’s name.
“Go!” she told him. “We can handle this.” A round caught her in the upper shoulder and spun her around, but didn’t penetrate the Kevlar underneath. Gritting her teeth, she locked onto her target, squeezed the trigger, and put another man down.
Wilson ran, sheathing the Delta Elite after recharging it, then slipping fresh cartridges from his ammo pouches into the Ithaca’s loading gate. He jumped the slide to seat the first round, then pushed one more shell in to complete the reload.
Despite the escape tunnel, he knew Min and Silverton couldn’t go far. There was no way it could drop them through all twenty floors below and remain inside the building. That left the elevator as the quickest means of leaving the skyscraper.
Unraveling the map inside his head, he continued to run back the way they’d come. He blew on the T-jack’s mike to access the frequency. “Rawley.”
“Go.” Gunshots and screams sounded in the background of the transmission.
“I lost Min and Silverton. They had an escape tunnel in the conference room.”
“I’ve been in contact with the agents covering the stairwells at both ends of the building. They’re at the eighteenth floor and they haven’t seen anyone but DiVarco. He blew past them a couple minutes ago. They couldn’t hold him. The guy brought a big war party with him.”
Wilson made the final turn and came within sight of the elevator bank. All three floor-indicator panels were lit up. He punched the up and down buttons, wondering which way he should go if any of the cages ever made it to him. He had no doubt that a mass exodus from the office building had already started. Fire alarms shrilled out into the hallways.
“Slade,” Darnell January called.
“Go.”
“I dropped through the escape tunnel after the fire died down, used my grappling hook to lower myself.”
“Where are you?”
“Nineteenth floor. I missed them. They just got on the elevator.” The sound of autofire echoed along the frequency. “DiVarco’s up here too.”
“Which elevator?” Wilson asked, pressing himself up against the reinforced glass between the elevators.
“One on the right.”
The elevator was just jerking into motion, starting the climb up the side of the building. A helicopter suddenly swelled into view, slowing as it approached the top of the skyscraper.
Stepping back from the reinforced glass, Wilson fired two rounds from the combat shotgun and watched glass fragments explode outward from the frame. It was almost a sure bet that Silverton couldn’t trespass the remaining floors to the rooftop. Taking a deep breath, aware of the dizzying panorama of height falling away below him, he stepped up through the frame and leaned out. He wished he had time to set the small grappling hook he carried in a concealed pocket of the motorcycle jacket, but he didn’t. The elevator was only half a floor beneath him and climbing.
His breath locked in his throat as he stepped out and suddenly dropped. The top of the elevator came up hard beneath him, numbing his legs. For a moment he thought he was going to slide off, then he grabbed a handhold and squeezed it tight.
The rooftop was five floors up. The cage docked gently, and Wilson scrambled to his feet looking out over the helipad in the center of the building.
Out on the middle of the helipad’s blue-and-orange bull’s-eye, a jet-assisted UH-12 fat-bodied Huey sat waiting. The rotors created a windstorm that rolled over the top of the skyscraper, only partially blocked by the huge HVAC units mounted on top. The dull roar of the idling jets filled the open space. When the door slid to one side, it revealed the door gunner seated in a skeletal chair behind a Browning .50-cal machine gun. Locking into place with mechanical movements, the machine gunner targeted Wilson and opened fire.
Diving from the top of the elevator, Wilson rolled to the side of the nearest HVAC unit and pushed up into a standing position. The booming drumbeat of the .50-cal rounds slamming into the HVAC unit made even the jetcopter’s engines inaudible.
Glancing around the unit, Wilson saw two bodyguards on either side of Min as they hustled the man toward the helo. Silverton was beside them. Another pair of Koreans came around the side of the elevator bay and closed in on the FBI SAC.
The SeekNFire programming thrummed inside Wilson as he whirled around the side of the air-conditioning unit and fired at the approaching Korean bodyguards, racking the slide to chamber another shell, and firing again.
The first man went down with a shrill yell, his legs blown out from under him. Bullets from the second man’s weapon chewed holes in the sheet-metal hull of the HVAC unit. Only one of the rounds skidded across Wilson’s bulletproof biker jacket.
Ignoring the sudden flare of pain that ignited in his abdomen from the bullet’s impact, Wilson met the second man almost head-on, pulling the Ithaca’s trigger when the muzzle was only inches from his target’s face.
He felt warm blood dapple his skin, but he shoved the corpse out of his way and ran for the jetcopter as Min and Silverton scrambled aboard.
The news chopper hovered only a few yards away, keeping broadside to the escaping jetcopter so the camcorder photographer could film the footage.
Wilson didn’t break stride as he closed on the jetcopter. There was no choice. Either he stopped Silverton now, or the man could easily slip out of the country with Min’s connections and the proof against the conspiracy to take Boston would vanish with them. And the threat would remain in place, dormant until Silverton and Min got ready to move again.
The two guards who’d helped Min up turned to face Wilson and attempted to draw their weapons. A line of .50-cal rounds chewed up the helipad as the door gunner also tried to target Wilson.
He gave the first guard a forearm shiver that crushed the man’s exposed throat and drove him from his feet, then snap-fired a round from the Ithaca that caught the other guard in the face and shoved the corpse backward.
The jetcopter lifted and drifted over the side of the building.
Focusing on the escaping chopper, telling himself in an audible voice that he could make it, Wilson’s boot caught the edge of the roof and he leaped from the building. He released the shotgun and it went tumbling away, spinning end over end toward the street twenty-six floors below.
