Poor Kaufmann. Poor goddamn Kaufmann.
The sixth floor parking lot was closed, so Fleming parked on the fifth, the wide Hummer taking up two spaces. She crawled into the back seat with me, opened the rear door, and set her wheelchair onto the concrete. As she lowered herself into it, her right foot snagged on the door handle.
“Ow…”
“You can feel that?” I asked.
She shot me a look. “I’m maimed, not paralyzed.”
I wondered what the true extent of her injuries were. “So, can you walk?”
“Walking is for suckers,” Fleming said. “But I can swim like a son of a bitch.”
“Can you—”
“Enough about me. Get your mind on op. We take separate elevators. I cover them. You get the transceiver. If things go sour we’ll rendezvous in the lobby of the Congress Hotel at oh-eleven-hundred. Oh, and I almost forgot.” She pulled something from her pocket and dropped it in my hand.
It was a cell phone and an accompanying Bluetooth earpiece no bigger than my pinky.
“How far we’ve come,” I said. “Remember those big radio headsets?”
She nodded and pulled a matching set out of another pocket. “These are trac phones, never used before, bought them at a drugstore. I already synced the earpieces.”
Pushing my hair back, I screwed mine into my ear and watched Fleming call me. A moment later I heard the ringing.
“Tap the button to answer.”
I did. “Hello? Can you hear me?”
Fleming made a face. “Of course I can hear you. I’m standing right in front of you.”
She attached her earpiece and rolled a few meters away.
“What’s Hammett’s position?” her voice said in my ear.
I checked the PC blips. One was moving in a straight line toward us. “She’s seven blocks away, approaching fast. We have a few minutes at most.”
“Then let’s move.”
I stuck the tablet in the rucksack, and we took the parking elevator down to the lobby. The place still smelled like dusty marble, but now the scent was overlaid by the odor of human stress. Several cops dotted the lobby, talking to a handful of people, and the Best Buy was closed off.
The building had been a hot bed of activity today, and after the mess I’d caused earlier, I expected extra security. Of course, Hammett and Victor had just left. I could only guess what they’d been up to.
I circled to the tiny express elevators to the top floors, Fleming rolling behind me. We ran into more cops before we reached them. A man with short blond hair and the black suit of the Signature Room held up a hand, his gaze hovering somewhere to the side of Fleming, as if too uncomfortable to look directly at the woman in the wheelchair. “Sorry ladies. The upper floors are closed.”
“But we have a reservation,” Fleming said.
“The restaurant and lounge are closed for the evening. We are very sorry. If you’d like, I can rebook a table for you, say for tomorrow night?”
“What happened?” I asked, shifting the rucksack behind me and hoping he’d just think it was the latest style of oversized handbag. I had no doubt that whatever had closed the top floors was Hammett’s doing.
“There was a bomb threat earlier.”
“Don’t worry.” He shifted his gaze up to me, whether trying to be polite and address us both or avoiding the handicapped woman, I couldn’t tell. “It seems the threat was bogus, but…” He narrowed his eyes.
Oh, hell.
“You look familiar.”
“I have one of those faces.”
I turned to push Fleming’s chair, but she was already heading in the other direction. I hurried to keep up.
I remembered the women I’d followed this morning when I’d been looking for a place to stash the phone. I was fairly certain the elevators they’d first approached had led to residential floors, the floors immediately under the restaurant and observation deck. I motioned to Fleming. “This way.”
We ducked behind a planter just in time to avoid two officers, then made a dash in the direction of the residential elevators.
A short, squat woman wearing a black vest and pants stood in front of the elevator banks. From first glance, she seemed to be armed with a radio, a name tag and nothing more. Noticing our approach, she glanced up. “May I help you?”
“I got this,” Fleming said out of the side of her mouth. She tapped her right ear, referencing the earpiece we each wore. “Meet you at the Congress.”
Then she rolled up to the security guard, hit the brakes on her chair, and flopped onto the floor. She began to writhe around and moan, a definite Oscar-worthy performance.
As the guard rushed to her aid, I slipped past. I hit the up button and stepped into an open lift. The buttons went up to 90, so that’s the one I pressed.
I caught one last glimpse of Fleming, laying on the ground, her eyes rolled back in her head, and then the door closed. The elevator lurched, then took off on its ascent.
I forced myself to breathe, to concentrate. I took out the tablet PC and saw that Hammett had arrived. Once she entered the building, I wouldn’t be able to tell which floor she was on. The computer would be all but worthless to me. I stowed it back in my rucksack and strapped the Tec-9 across my shoulders. I stuck extra magazines for that, and the .45s, into every available pocket of my jeans, and then jacked a round into the Sig and held it alongside my body.
Watching the numbers climb, I focused on slow breaths and equalizing the pressure in my ears. This elevator was much slower than the express, and I hoped it wouldn’t stop before reaching my floor. My appearance would probably unnerve a civilian.
Luckily, the car took me all the way to the ninetieth floor. The bell chimed, the door parted, and I stepped into the hall, gun at the ready.
• • •
“When we get there, Chandler is mine. I don’t want you messing things up.”
Victor ignores Hammett and feeds the full magazine into the Brugger & Thomet MP9. Aware of the glitzy shops of the Magnificent Mile whizzing outside the van, he longs to open up on unsuspecting shoppers at nine hundred rounds per minute. He’s been living in America for too long, and he’s had enough. Americans are lazy, ignorant pigs who think they are entitled to all that is good in the world. More than anything, he has thirsted for this moment, his chance to set them straight.
Too bad he can’t start with Hammett.
“I’ve provided money and men,” he says, a temple of infinite patience. “I’ve done my part. You promised to deliver the transceiver.”
“Your part? What was your part? Fucking my sister?”
“She’s a better fuck than you are. Apparently she’s better at everything else as well.”
He says it to get her to shut up, but realizes it is true. Hammett, sexy as she is, didn’t even seem to realize he was in the same room as her when they made love. She used him like a piece of gym equipment. At least Chandler seemed to want to please him.
Of course, he doubted that would be the case now, especially after the whole torture thing. But if she came out of this alive, he’d take her along with the transceiver. He could have fun with her, at least for a little while.
Hammett, he’ll dump in the lake as soon as the prize is in hand.
In the back, his men pretend they didn’t hear, but Victor can feel them grin.
He is going to enjoy killing her.
“Let us out here,” Hammett orders. She turns to Victor. “I’ll go after Chandler. You watch for the police. Try not to fuck it up.”
Victor clenches his jaw and doesn’t answer. He is the one giving orders. He is the one who found the investors. He is the one who gets the transceiver when it’s all over. Somehow the bitch always forgets she depends on him.
The van stops. He, Hammett and his men jump out. Best case, they find Chandler, find the transceiver, and escape without a shot being fired.
Worst case, they’ll draw attention to themselves, and people will have to die.
Victor smiles privately, his hand gripping the MP9.
Worst case doesn’t seem bad at all.
• • •
Leading with the Sig, I stepped out of the elevator and into a wide hall. Various prints depicting Chicago hung on the walls, and my feet sunk into plush carpeting. The air smelled of lavender and money. No telling how much it cost to live in a landmark like the John Hancock building, but my nose told me the people who made this their home rarely stooped to do something as middle class as cook dinner.
The sound of strings filtered into the hall from the closest condo. The Jupiter Symphony, if I remembered my Mozart. No one was in the hall. Hopefully the late hour would keep it that way, at least until I could find the stairs.
Picturing the layout of the Signature Room above, I headed left. Sure enough, the third door I passed was marked Fire Exit. I ducked inside, the alarm ringing briefly. Springing on the balls of my feet, I started up the remaining five flights.
I reached the top, my heart rate slightly elevated, and pushed into the restaurant.
A man around my age stood near the maître d’ stand. “Ma’am, I’m sorry but we’re…” His voice trailed off and mouth froze open as his stare alternated between my face and my weaponry.
“I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. It’s for your own safety.”
“Again?”
It took me a second to realize he was probably reacting to an earlier run in with Hammett, and assumed I was her. Wouldn’t he be surprised when she turned up, which I was sure would happen soon.
“Get the fuck out,” I said, pointing my weapon at him.
He got the fuck out.
“I’m in on the 95th floor,” I said to Fleming.
Then I went to find my cell phone.
• • •
After flailing around and looking appropriately pitiful for the time it took Chandler to get into the elevator, Fleming allowed the security guard to help her back into her chair. A small collection of gawkers had gathered, and even though Fleming had been faking her helplessness, she still felt a small sting of humiliation.
One more indignity to add to the list.
She listened to Chandler announce her arrival, and for a brief, self-indulgent moment Fleming pretended she was up there instead. After the fall, and the countless surgeries and hellish failure that was rehabilitation, Fleming swore off feeling sorry for herself. She refused to allow tragedy to limit what she could do. As a result, she’d worked harder and accomplished more than she probably ever would have if her legs had still functioned.
But that was all behind-the-scenes stuff. Even the encryption code for the transceiver—a brilliant combination of mathematics and programming—was for someone else to use. Fleming longed to do something active. To be viable again. But instead of taking the lead, she wheeled back into the lobby and played the back-up role, watching for Hammett.
She didn’t have to watch long.
Hammett strolled in, wearing an ankle-length brown duster, a beige top, and black leather pants. Fleming had always flirted with the notion of buying leather pants, and seeing them on Hammett, decided they were a bad idea. Hammett was flanked by six men, walking in groups of two, looking very much like a military unit even though they were in civvies. Slung over each of their shoulders was a duffle bag, and judging by their weights Fleming guessed they held automatic weapons.
Keeping her head down, she backed around the corner and watched as they approached the bank of express elevators. One of the men began to speak to the maître d’ they’d run from a moment earlier.
Hammett reached inside her duster, no doubt putting her hands on a gun.
Fleming gripped the arms of her chair, but she didn’t fire. This was not ideal. Hammett and Victor stood between her and the cops. If she stayed in position and tried to take Hammett out, she might hit the innocents behind her. If she did nothing, Hammett would likely get through, and if everything went to hell, she could kill those same innocents on her way to interfere with Chandler.
Footsteps sounded to the side of Fleming. Two more officers.
She took her fingers from the triggers and gripped the wheels. Where shooting at Hammett’s men didn’t bother Fleming in the least, the thought of getting in a firefight with police officers who were just doing their jobs was another story. She’d have to find a different position, and figure out another way to keep Hammett and the men from reaching the restaurant, at least until Chandler had a chance to get the phone and get out.
“She’s here,” Fleming whispered. “Six men with her, all armed and—”
That’s when Hammett pulled out a semi-automatic pistol and shot the maître d’ in the head.
• • •
After Hammett caps the rude maître d’—and let’s face it, the son of a bitch had it coming—she sidesteps the police line and goes to the express elevators, ignoring Victor and his shouts of rage.
A firefight breaks out, Victor’s men and the police in the lobby. Hammett slips into the first lift that opens and hits the button for the restaurant. Then she does a quick check of her weapons. A 9mm Beretta, loaded with hollow points. A carbon fiber Spyderco Navaja. One of Victor’s MP9s, hanging from a shoulder sling inside her coat. And something with a bit more stopping power, in her right pocket.
“Ready or not, dear sister, here I come.”
• • •
Fleming spoke in my ear as I was racing up the stairs to the balcony overlooking the restaurant. “Six men with her, all armed and—” Gunfire exploded in the background, making her words hard to hear. But reading the alarm in her voice was easy.
“Fleming?”
More gunshots. My stomach clenched like a fist.
As I approached the top of the stairs, I forced all thoughts of what my sister was going through from my mind. I needed to focus. I needed to get the phone.
After contemplating and rejecting various hiding places, I decided to take a more direct approach and gave the phone to the bartender, feeding him a story about finding it in the ladies room. Then I hung around just long enough to see where he kept the lost and found.
Now I dashed straight for the maître d’s stand on one end of the balcony.
The top drawer was locked. Hands shaking, I started feeling along the hem of my t-shirt before I remembered I wasn’t wearing my own clothing.
Yet my fingers hit something stiff. Wires.
Of course. This was Hammett’s shirt. Hammett, who had gone through the same training I had.
I ripped the stitching and removed the picks, letting the fifty dollar bill fall to the floor. The lock was a simple one, and only took seconds. I pulled the drawer open and stared at over a dozen cell phones jamming the small space.
How did so many people manage to lose their phones?
I clawed through the collection. Seven iPhones, a Droid, at least six of the old flip models—who knew how long those had been there—and a variety of odds and ends, including a Kindle. Finally I located mine. I dropped it in my rucksack and zipped it up.
Just as the elevator door chimed.
• • •
Victor curses that shalava Hammett and then fires ten rounds into a wide-eyed cop who barely cleared leather with his weapon. He also dispatches the cop’s partner, who managed to get off two ineffective shots before doing the machine-gun-boogie. Then Victor’s men form a half-circle around him and lay down a burst of suppressive fire. The two dozen people in the lobby who hadn’t fled or hit the floor yet got the hint. All except some cripple in a wheelchair, who seems to be rolling their way with an expression of—
Chto za huy! I know that face!
Victor rolls out of the way as a barrage of bullets fires from the armrests of the wheelchair, mowing down three of his men. He slides across the tile floor on his shoulder, bringing up his MP9, but Hammett’s sister is already in motion, barreling toward his men, who duck for cover, steering toward one who had taken a dive and then—what the fuck
is that?—a long, thin blade comes out of the chair’s axle and neatly slices Sergei’s throat and then severs Nikolai’s hamstring.
Peter comes up behind, spraying bullets. They clang off the back of her wheelchair, apparently bullet-proof.
She taps her armrest again and a long jet of fire hits the poor bastard square in the face.
Holy shit.
The woman spins around, lifting up her footrest, which had concealed another blade, and as Yuri rushes at her, she guts him.
That leaves Victor and Karl, and Karl is backpedalling as fast as he can move his feet, his shots flying harmlessly over the crippled woman’s head as she accelerates toward him, now brandishing a .45. She shoots Karl in the forehead, then whirls around, seeking Victor.
But he’s already in motion, raising his weapon, stitching rounds up her legs and across her chest.
The woman slumps in the chair, her gun clattering to the floor.
Victor looks at his fallen comrades, spits in disgust, and then storms over to her, ready to put the coup de grace into her head.
• • •
The gunfire began when the elevator doors opened just a sliver. I immediately dropped behind the maître d’ stand, crawling away as bullets chewed into the wood and flung sawdust into the air, the tattoo of automatic weapon fire drowning out all thought.
I reached the stairs, flipping onto my back, freeing the Tec-9 and aiming with my left hand while the right held my Sig.
The shooting paused, and for a moment all I heard was the ringing in my ears.
“Where was it?” Hammett called out.
I kept my arms extended, fingers on the triggers. “Lost and found.”
“Clever girl. Clever, clever girl.”
I caught the movement peripherally, Hammett rushing in low to my right, the muzzle flash of her machine gun preceding the barrage of lead pocking the floor in front of me, coming my way to cut me in half.
Ah, hell…
I swung the rucksack in front of me, using it as protection. The punch of a dozen rounds peppering it, I pushed myself backward, scooting down the stairs. Still being chased by bullets, I tucked my legs up to my chest and began to roll, feet over head. I bumped into the railing and kept somersaulting, each step bruising my spine, my skull. By the time the steps spit me out onto the lower floor, my sense of balance and direction was completely gone.
Jack Kilborn & Ann Voss Peterson & J. A. Konrath Page 19
