Dead Lines [911]

by Grace Hamilton

  She had been perfect.

  “I wish you could have seen that, Ava,” she whispered.

  She reached out with her fingers and grasped the switchblade. Deftly, she turned it like a surgeon holding a scalpel and began working on the ropes pinning her right wrist. Hope was a funny thing, she decided. One moment it was gone and then it could be all the fuel you needed.

  The last ropes came away from her wrist with a snik and Finn sagged against the table for a moment in relief before releasing her other wrist. Her chest heaved with the pounding of her heart and her soft flesh lay covered with bruises, blood painting her thighs. Not one to wear a lot of makeup, what there was lay smeared into a mess, and her hair was wild.

  Cutting her ankles free, she gathered her will and stood straight before looking around quickly. Time was not on her side. She stood little chance against the convicts—none at all, really. She’d gotten lucky once against a monster like Washington, but it wouldn’t happen again.

  Her legs were good, and she was young enough to run fast, but it was her brain that was going to get her out of this, she knew. For the first time, she wondered what had become of the poor Hispanic girl from earlier. In the next moment, she realized she couldn’t worry about her right now.

  Looking around, she spotted only two doors out of the chamber. The rows of shelving holding the blade processors reminded her of the Louisville public library main branch, with its maze-like shelves of books. Beyond one door, she heard Washington and the other men talking. It was an obvious no-go. It was also the only way out, as far as she knew. The other door was where Spencer had taken Colson. There were no windows.

  Growing increasingly frantic, she cast about. She saw rack upon rack of softly humming CPUs, their bodies a mixture of light taupe and off-white, tiny green and red LEDs blinking. She blinked. For the first time, she really began understanding the significance of that fact, that energy—the implications of it.

  Much like the fate of the girl, though, she couldn’t afford to get caught up thinking about it now. She looked around. What else? There was the table she’d been tied to, and the coils of rope used to tie her down. The single fluorescent bulb panel gave off muted light—light designed to blunt the harsh effects of illumination on people who spent eight hours a day looking at computer screens.

  The ceiling?

  She craned her head and looked up. It was a drop ceiling with individual tiles set into a metal framework. She instantly recognized the off-white panels, each one adorned with patterns of two-size pinholes and random series of fissures. Almost every school, every dentist office, every public building she’d ever been in, had utilized those tiles.

  And while she might not be as small as that girl from the office, she was hardly a big person. It might work….

  It wasn’t a perfect plan; it wasn’t even a good one but it was all she had. Somewhere, Parker was out there, trying to help her. She was going to do everything in her power to help him.

  Moving with purpose, she clambered up onto the table where moments before she’d been helpless and bound at the whim of sadistic thugs. Almost as an afterthought, she got back down and went to the nearby light switch and shut it off. Hopefully, every little bit she did to improve her chances helped. Hopefully.

  Climbing back up, she lifted her arm, stood on her tip-toes, and used the point of the knife to displace one of the panels. Placing the stiletto back between her teeth, she reached out her arms and jumped like a gymnast.

  Her hands caught the smooth metal of the support grid and she almost slipped. The muscles of her arms stood out in vivid relief as she struggled to hold on. In the next breath, she found her purchase and then swung up. Maneuvering into position, she crouched, careful not to step on any tiles.

  The grid didn’t feel sturdy, and she didn’t think she had a lot of time. Shifting the panel she’d entered through back into place, she looked around, letting her eyes adjust. It was dark up here. She was surrounded by an Erector set of sprinklers, framing, electrical conduits, and HVAC ducts. She couldn’t move easily at all and, from what she could tell from this position, the area was closed in by actual cement block walls.

  The plan was looking less sound every moment. She nudged the panel beneath her over half an inch to give herself a view of the floor below.

  Parker, she thought, where are you?

  17

  Before everything descended into hell for Finn, Parker had almost reached her in time. As the crew had dragged her along toward the mall, he’d settled into position at the top of the off-ramp overlooking the mall.

  He’d been slow, he realized. If only he’d been faster, risked staying closer to the crew, maybe it would have been different. But the crew had a plan, an objective… and with surety of purpose, they’d unfolded into action in a manner he couldn’t have fully predicted.

  By the time he reached his vantage point, the civilian looters had been almost completely driven away. The killing had been indiscriminate and bodies lay on one side of the massive mall parking lot like so much organic litter. Moving closer among the stalled cars of the overpass, he finally glassed the crew with his compact Zenith 10x50 binoculars.

  From some two football fields away, the powerful binoculars brought the scene up as close to him as a specimen under a microscope in a lab. There was Finn, blood trailing from her nose, body limp and unresponsive between two of the convicts. The sight of her filled him with a rage that he pushed down into icy determination.

  He scanned over. And the one he’d identified as Warden Spencer did something that surprised Parker on a night where he’d thought nothing could surprise him anymore. The man took a key card, swiped it through a reader, and opened a heavy metal door on bulky electro-hinges.

  Parker quickly swept his binocs back toward the front of the mall. It sat pitch black with the power out. He turned the binocs back. The crew entered the door weapons-up as Spencer stepped back and put his key card away. Part of the mall still held power. It was another piece of the puzzle.

  Rising, Parker walked out of the shadows between two cars, hopped the chain link fence, and walked across the loading area. He ran a practiced eye along the exterior of the building, surveying it for information, sizing it up like a burglar about to make a break-in.

  The people he was up against had known the event was coming. They’d possessed the capability to maintain power in locations they deemed appropriate. The part about them using a mall didn’t confuse him. Lots of foot traffic, lots of people coming and going to cover the movements of their own people. Hide in plain sight, piggyback on the electrical and digital infrastructure already in place. Lie about who you are and always pay your bills on time. Maybe a shell company under their control actually owned the building. Didn’t matter. Not at the moment.

  For whatever reason, the warden had led the crew to take the mall and drive off looters. He’d watched carefully as the crew shut up the building after the initial attack.

  Now, power was up, which meant the alarm system was up. That would not do.

  The alarm wire ran in a black cord from under the eaves of the roof to a small, utility transformer on the wall next to a heavy metal door. It was visible to passersby, but wasn’t overly exposed.

  Not that I have a choice.

  Crossing the space, he shrugged off his still damp backpack. Working methodically, he laid his tools out across the top of the containment box. Choosing a small screwdriver from the eyeglass repair kit, and tapping on it with the hilt of his knife, he knocked the hinges off of the box. Pulling the front panel clear, he scrutinized the circuit board, pulling off several pieces of tape and sticking them to the box while he considered his next step.

  He gently tapped the thin-bladed screwdriver into the seam of the circuit board’s face and pulled it clear, revealing the nest of multicolored wires beneath. Turning the knife, he unfolded the blade and gently scrapped away the outer plastic covering, exposing copper wires.

  Raisin in the Sun, bastar
ds, he thought as he cheerfully worked. Guess who’s coming to dinner.

  Taking the extremely fine wires used to secure subscription lenses into eyeglass frames, he wrapped one end around the exposed copper wire, covered it in electrician’s tape from his bag, and then secured the other end to the negative post of the battery case for the Bose iPod speaker. He shifted the tubular device in his hand and repeated the process with the second wire, attaching it to the positive post.

  Switching on the phone, he completed the dead switch connection, and then rested the burner on the transformer housing. Now the potential for entertainment increases exponentially, he thought. Pulling out the pair of needle-nose pliers from his kit, he quickly wrapped the handles in a sheath of the rubberized tape.

  He’d now either performed the conversion correctly, creating the dead switch through the phone… or he was about to set off an alarm. At times like this, he was always a little disappointed he’d given up smoking. With so many other vices controlling his life, that was the one he’d drawn the line at. Once he’d quit, he’d quit. He couldn’t even remember why it’d been so important to him.

  He slipped the pliers into place around the transformer wire, pushing them right up against the junction of the handle where the snipper edges were. He squeezed hard and cut the wire.

  The voltage should run up the thin wires, through the phone, and back down the other side, never registering a break in the current. When he opened the outer door and triggered the sensors, the alarm signal should be diverted and captured.

  It had worked every time he’d seen it demonstrated in training. He’d explained it in detail to juries while in court. He’d just never actually done it before.

  He stepped back, assessing his work. It wasn’t exactly a no-trace camping operation. The system was ugly and looked obviously hacked. But he had to live with it. And, he’d better get moving.

  Fully committed, he turned and regarded the exterior door. Satisfied he knew what he was dealing with, he finally slid the blade of the knife into position at the crack between door and jamb where the deadbolt rested. He slapped the end of the knife several times with the calloused palm of his hand, seating the blade into the soft wood, digging in the purchase. He looked over his shoulder once. Nothing.

  Turning back to the door, he snapped the handle around, jerking the door back on its frame and ripping the lock housing clear. Snatching his pistol free of his waistband, he then immediately went through the door, kicking it back into place behind him. Weapon out in front of him, he side-stepped to the left, avoiding silhouetting himself in the entrance.

  He came up hard against an interior wall and he turned his back against it before tracking through vectors with the muzzle of the handgun. He was inside a loading bay.

  He realized immediately that he’d fucked up. The convict stepped out from behind the stack of pallets and brought a silenced SMG up. They were within a foot of each other.

  Parker slapped the barrel to one side and fired his pistol. The crack sounded unbelievably loud. An untidy comma opened in the man’s throat and blood formed a mist halo behind his head. The man grunted once, like a prize fighter taking a shot to the body, and dropped. Parker stood there for a moment, panting. He looked past silent electric forklifts towards the back of the bay, curious to see if there was any response to his single gunshot. The moment stretched out, but nobody emerged, he saw no lights, and heard no voices.

  Still shaking slightly from adrenaline bleed, he bent down and confiscated the sentry’s weapon. It was a H&K MP5. He inspected it. It showed worn pistol- and fore-grips. He tested the fire selector and rear sight drum. Both were loose. Not falling apart, but showing age. These weren’t new weapons; these weapons had been disassembled and put back together, possibly hundreds of times. The weapons were used.

  They were corrections, or possibly police surplus, he realized. When the departments had started moving away from the 9mm in the early 2000s, the shift had left behind an inventory of the once very popular submachine guns. The suppressor was telling, as well; it was the originally integrated factory model. Not a post-2010 upgrade.

  Somehow, the crooked warden had managed to get his hands on enough surplus law enforcement weapons to arm a private death squad. Why? And there it was again, why? This night was filled with whys and hows. It was particularly sparse on answers, though.

  He wasn’t going to know the answer, Parker admitted to himself, so it didn’t matter. He holstered his pistol, checked to make sure the MP5 was good to go, and then moved out. Coming up, he started jogging toward a pair of swinging doors that seemed to lead out into the back areas of the massive mall.

  He hurdled a pallet and then juked around a stack of boxes that were shrink-wrapped together. He came through the swinging doors, blunt muzzle of the H&K leading the way, folding stock jammed into his hip as he pivoted through the entrance.

  He entered a hall and moved down it. Coming around a corner, he found several doors and the naked corpse of a young blonde girl. She’d been beaten bloody.

  “Jesus,” Parker whispered.

  It seemed a good indication he’d found the men he was after.

  Finn crouched in the darkness.

  She seethed with murderous frustration. She wanted revenge, wanted justice, but she was still trapped, and knew how precarious her position was. Her true hope was that the men, confused by her hopefully inexplicable disappearance (yeah, that’s likely, she thought), would rush out of the room to chase after her, giving her a chance to slip out behind them and head in an opposite direction.

  Across the room, the door opened, spilling a bar of yellow illumination into the room. Finn crouched lower, fighting to keep her breath from running away from her. Then Spencer appeared, silhouetted in the doorway.

  “What the hell! Colson, why is this place so goddamn dark?”

  Now she watched as Colson came running into the room, calling out to his men, barking orders.

  “Why are the lights out?” Colson demanded.

  “I don’t know,” she heard Washington say. His voice was as slurred with heroin euphoria as it had been in the office. “I was outside, remember?”

  “Jesus,” Spencer muttered, disgusted.

  Hearing how angry the men were, Finn began scooting backward on the rafter, attempting to make herself as unobtrusive as possible. This was not a good plan, she told herself. This was not a good plan.

  “The girl!” Colson shouted. He was barely discernible in the pool of darkness centered around the deep middle of the room. “She’s gone!”

  “Bullshit,” Spencer snapped. “There’s no place for her to go. Turn on the damn light.”

  “I-I-I can’t find the switch,” Colson said after a moment.

  “Idiots,” Spencer snarled. “She’s in here.” He walked over to a rack of CPUs and, with a grunt, heaved them to the floor. Plastic housing shattered into jagged pieces.

  He strode forward two steps and hurled another rack to the floor. Colson backed up to the room’s entrance. Even in the dim light, he was clearly at a loss for what to do. He looked befuddled, stupid and helpless.

  “It’s only a matter of time, bitch!” he called.

  Crash. Down went another rack. “When I find you, I’m not going to be in a good mood. Best to come out now.”

  Crash.

  “I applaud your bravery and resourcefulness, but futile is futile, Asian Barbie.”

  Crouched back in the shadows of the rafters in the drop ceiling, Finn couldn’t help but think he might have a point. It was not a comforting feeling. She realized she might only be prolonging the inevitable but, stubbornly, she refused to waver. The hilt of the knife was sweaty in her hand as she pushed herself further back into the darkness.

  Reaching a feeling of near despair, she resolutely promised herself she would go down striking back with everything she had.

  She realized that, sometime since she’d met Parker, she’d greatly changed as a person. She felt forged anew, rebuilt
in a fire. And also scared. Scared but determined.

  From overhead, she listened as Colson’s men began shouting in anger. There was a sudden staccato hemorrhaging of automatic gunfire. Her breath came out of her in a rush of relief.

  Parker, she thought.

  Relief flooded into her with such intensity that it was intoxicating. She edged herself into position and looked through the crack towards the open door to the stairs, to where Colson now stood. Her hand came down as she pivoted and the heel of her palm slid off the smooth metal of the thin girder.

  She grunted under the impact as her chest bounced off a railing. Her hand knocked loose a panel and punched through it. Abruptly overextended, her knee came down as her feet fought furiously for purchase. It was over in a second, and she fell to the floor.

  She cried out in pain at the impact and the switchblade went spinning off. Spencer reacted instantly. One second, she was trying to scramble to her feet, and in the next, he was standing above her, clothed in shadow like a deathly ghost or a villain in a superhero movie. A strong hand reached down, fingers like steel cables entwining themselves in her hair, and then she was snatched up to her feet.

  She tried to fight—knees striking, hands clawing—but he popped his arm like a lion tamer with a bullwhip and snapped her head on her neck so sharply that she saw stars. She cried out and he pulled her up tight against his body, crushing her to his chest.

  She went for his eyes, but the cold, hard metal circle of a gun barrel dug into the tender flesh under her chin. She froze.

  “Nice try,” Spencer growled. His breath was hot in her face, close as a lover as he peered down at her in the uncertain light.

  She shut her eyes tight and stood very, very still.

  Parker stalked smoothly through the back of the office areas. He found young, obviously fit men in dark suits and short hair lying dead, bodies torn by bullets and shotgun pellets.

  He’d followed more than one desperate, armed perp into mazes of urban terrain since becoming law enforcement. He understood close quarter battle in the narrow confines of a room-by-room gunfight very well.