Ice Claw dz-2

by David Gilman

  Sayid nodded, licked his dry lips. “Water,” he croaked.

  Max held the water carafe to Sayid’s lips and let him guzzle a few mouthfuls.

  “That’s enough, mate. You’re not a camel and there’re no toilet stops,” Max said.

  A quick glance out of the door told him the coast was clear. He pushed the wheelchair into the corridor, turned away from the main elevator and aimed straight for the left-hand side of two big swing doors. He heard the elevator stop and the floor signal ping.

  “Here we go! Hold on!”

  Sayid gripped the battering-ram crutch. They hit the door. The long corridor on the other side was a cluttered service area. There were a few wheelchairs, a couple of trolleys and a left-hand bend to negotiate. But Max could not get around the corner. Someone had jammed a cleaning wagon full of disinfectant and mops across the corridor, using it as a last place to park its awkward bulk. Max had seen the sign for the service elevator, but this way of escape was blocked.

  He looked over his shoulder. Whoever had been on their way up must, by now, be close to Sayid’s room.

  “Hang on a minute, Sayid.”

  Max ran back to the double doors, peered through the laser-thin crack and saw the approaching figure of the stubble-faced man. His bulk and size looked out of place in the clinical sterility of the hospital. Max reasoned he had convinced the nursing staff to let him in. Maybe he’d told them he was a relative. Whatever ruse he’d used it didn’t matter-he was here. The night nurse accompanied him, and Max heard her say, “The boy has already discharged himself … but his friend is still here.” The man stayed in the corridor as the nurse stepped into Sayid’s room.

  The man waited. Max held his breath. He could hear the soft creak of the man’s leather jacket as it strained to hold his muscles. The dark face turned and looked directly at the double doors. Where Max crouched was a darker area than the corridor, but he knew that if he yielded to his instinctive fear of being seen, then that is precisely what would happen. If you’re being hunted, don’t move. It’s movement that gives you away. His dad’s words echoed in his mind. Max dismissed his fear. Stand still, he told himself. Tough it out. Give in to the temptation and it would cause a change of shadow and light. Anyone with a hunter’s eye would spot it immediately. And Max knew that the man in the corridor was more than a hunter. He had the look of a seasoned killer.

  Max did not move.

  The man turned and stepped towards him. Max readied himself. The best he could hope for was that he could ram the man’s shoulder against the double doors and knock him off his feet. He knew body weight like that wouldn’t go down easily, even if he took the guy by surprise. But he had no choice. There was nothing else he could do. The man was less than half a dozen paces away. Max held his breath and readied himself, the torsion in his body bracing him for a bigger shove than any rugby scrum demanded.

  “Monsieur!” the nurse whispered urgently.

  The big man stopped and turned to face her.

  “He is not here. Perhaps the bathroom? It’s this way. I had better check,” she said quietly.

  The cones of light above the man’s head darkened his face, but his eyes penetrated the shadow. Max held his breath, heart banging away in his chest. It was a split-second moment-was the man going to take those extra few paces and push open the door? In less time than it took to think about, the heavyset man turned and followed the nurse.

  Max sighed as quietly as he could.

  There was nothing else but to jolt Sayid down the flight of steps to the floor below. It was a slow, muscle-straining process, and by the time they got there Max felt his T-shirt clinging to his back with sweat. He prayed he wouldn’t have to do this down every floor. He turned the corner, avoided another cleaning trolley, and, like a welcome sign on a lonely night, the service elevator doors were already open. Max said a silent thank-you to whatever night-cleaning staff had last got out on that floor.

  Max wheeled Sayid inside the broad-sided elevator. His finger hovered over the floor buttons. Where had the second man gone? The back of the hospital was most likely. Safest bet for Max and Sayid was the basement. That might offer another hiding place for a while and then a way out. Max pressed the button.

  The doors shuddered closed and the creaky elevator graunched its way down. When it finally groaned to a halt, a maze of service corridors faced Max and Sayid. Air-duct pipes ran along the ceiling, and licorice-twisted cables, color-coded red, green and blue, clung to the rough cement roof. A choice had to be made.

  “What do you reckon, Sayid? There should be an under-ground parking garage for the ambulances somewhere … left, right or center?”

  Sayid’s head nodded onto his chest again.

  “I’ll take that as a yes then to all of the above-and take potluck,” Max said.

  He pushed the wheelchair straight ahead, towards the darkened end of a corridor-more of a tunnel than anything else-but Max had smelled a slight whiff of car exhaust from somewhere, and he thought it came from that direction.

  No sooner had he made the decision than he heard someone push the bar on a fire door a couple of floors above. He waited a second. He listened. Nothing. But then there was an almost inaudible footfall of a rubber sole catching the lip of a step. Someone was moving slowly down the emergency staircase. There were only a dozen steps between Max and the first turn of the stairwell. If whoever was coming down decided to move more quickly, they would see Max and Sayid in no time at all.

  Max put his hand over Sayid’s mouth. His friend’s eyes opened.

  “We have to hide. Someone’s coming,” Max whispered.

  That got Sayid’s attention. A rush of fear pumped adrenaline. He steadied the crutch as Max pushed him towards the nearest door. Gently, they eased through to an older-looking corridor. A fluorescent ceiling light crackled and flickered over a linoleum floor. A different smell here. Not disinfectant. Something else. Max couldn’t put his finger on it. He stopped the door swinging closed behind them from disturbing the air-a sound that would be heard to anyone half listening. And Max’s guess was that whoever was creeping down those stairs would be listening for any sound at all.

  There was no time to go farther. A double-tiered trolley stood in the corridor. Neatly folded on top were a rubber under blanket and a cotton sheet. Opposite, a door with a slide bolt and with a transom window above was the only other exit to be seen. A small sign read: MORGUE.

  “Hang on a sec,” Max whispered.

  He eased the bolt. Inside the room was a wall of stainless-steel refrigerators, each with a door big enough to slide a body in, and there was another trolley, like the one outside. It was obviously used for bringing bodies from the wards or, as Max hoped, from down that other corridor, where he reckoned the underground parking garage was located and where ambulances might arrive to deliver their fatalities.

  Max knelt next to Sayid and whispered in his ear, “We’ll go in there. It’s pretty gloomy and there’s a trolley we can hide in like this one. You go underneath; I’ll go on top with a sheet over me. Chances are whoever it is won’t want to go poking around a mortuary. I should be able to hold my breath long enough to fool them.”

  Sayid shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  “This is no time to be squeamish, mate. Someone’s coming down those stairs and I bet it’s not nursey to tuck you up for the night.”

  “No. Can’t go in there, Max. Can’t,” Sayid whispered back.

  “They won’t hurt you. They’re dead,” Max assured him. “They’re in the fridge, like last week’s leftovers.”

  Sayid’s eyes scrunched tight and he shook his head adamantly. There was no time to argue. Someone had pushed a swing door on the floor above them. Whoever was up there, they were checking the corridors.

  “All right! Blimey, Sayid, you make life difficult at times.”

  “Me!” Sayid whispered indignantly.

  A door clanged shut above their heads. They looked up, trying to imagine the intrud
er walking back towards the stairs. Max grabbed Sayid’s arm.

  “Wheelchair stays here, you climb underneath this trolley. I’ll go in there,” Max said, with a nod towards the mortuary door.

  Sayid eased himself onto the bottom tier of the trolley as Max threw the sheet across the top so that it draped over the whole thing.

  He poked his head under the corner of the sheet. “Stay dead quiet until I come and get you.”

  “This is no time for making jokes, Max!”

  “I’m not. He’s going to come through those doors, so whatever you do-don’t move!” Max told him.

  Sayid lay rigid, clutching the clothes bundle to his chest as Max dropped the sheet corner back.

  Inside the mortuary Max eased the door closed so the lock didn’t catch, its edge resting against the frame; then he climbed under the trolley as he had shown Sayid. This sheet was shorter than the last. It wouldn’t cover the length of his body or the whole trolley. Max pulled off his boots and socks and rolled his cargo pants to his knees. Tucking a boot under each armpit, he lay down on the top of the trolley, pulled the sheet over his head and straightened himself out, as if at attention, determined not to move. The cold air on his bare feet made him want to rub them together. They would be drained of warmth and blood any minute now. Placing his heels together, he let each foot drop away naturally from the other. No sooner had he settled his breathing than he heard the swing doors whisper open.

  Max prayed Sayid didn’t lose his nerve.

  5

  The man who moved almost silently down the last couple of floors had spent more than half his lifetime in the French Foreign Legion. His young life of violent crime had been officially forgotten with no questions asked when the Legion accepted him that day in Marseilles twenty years ago. They gave him a new identity and, more importantly for him and others like him, a new family-the Legion. When he left that legendary fighting force he found better-paid work that utilized his specialist skills.

  The Legion had given him the name Corentin, a Celtic Breton name meaning “hurricane,” and he had the strength and energy of a storm. But he had stealth as well as power, and now he moved lightly along the half-lit corridors. Despite there being no obvious signs of either boy, Corentin’s instincts told him someone had been behind those swing doors. Having easily convinced the nurse he’d left the building, he had worked his way methodically downwards. Now he’d heard something move. He carried a concealed 9-mm semiautomatic pistol-a Glock 18-and a short-bladed fighting knife. Close-quarters unarmed combat was part of his armory, but he wouldn’t need any of these weapons or skills. He was hunting kids, not killers.

  Sayid smothered his face into the bundle on his chest, desperately hoping that his shallow breathing would not be heard. Under the edge of the sheet he could see soft-soled black boots. Whether it was the stress and fear of the situation or still the effects of the drugs, Sayid began to feel faint.

  Corentin walked past the hospital trolley for another ten paces until he reached the end of the corridor. Turning back, he hesitated at the mortuary door. He was a man who had seen a lot of violent death, and been responsible for some of it, something which demanded energy and aggression, but a mortuary was a silent place where the spirits of the dead lingered. Old superstitions. Perhaps an unconscious fear of knowing that one day he would lie on a cold slab while a pathologist began the ritual cutting to determine how he had died. Knife, gun, explosion. What would it be? He didn’t think about it. It didn’t matter. But a mortuary …

  Corentin eased open the door and smelled the sickly sweet aroma of embalming fluid and whatever else these doctors of death used. He looked quickly. Stainless-steel cabinets, a trolley and a body.

  OK. Clear. He backed out. His instincts screamed a warning. He’d let a stupid childish fear absorb his concentration and now someone was behind him. He whirled around, the automatic in his hand even before he’d completed his turn, already leveled to shoot the silent intruder.

  “It’s me!” his partner hissed, arms half raised.

  Corentin dropped his aim. “Thierry. For God’s sake!”

  The two men had worked together for a dozen years, each as well trained as the other. “You’re getting twitchy in your old age,” his friend said. “Anything?”

  “No. You?”

  “There’s underground parking back there. This place has lousy security. You’d think in this day and age-”

  Corentin interrupted him. “Did you see either of those kids?”

  “Not a sign. It’s a fool’s errand. What could they know?”

  “Enough to give us what we want. Let’s get out of here. We’ll call it in. The trail’s gone cold.”

  Corentin followed his partner through the swing doors, but not before sliding the bolt home on the mortuary door.

  Let the spirits of the dead stay where they belong, he thought.

  Max waited. The low, muted voices he had heard speaking in French were indistinct. He heard the bolt slam home, then the swing doors swish open and closed. He lay still for another couple of minutes, just in case it was a clever trap to lure them out, before tossing the sheet aside.

  His heart had thudded as solidly as the bolt when Corentin had rammed it across the door, but he still tugged at the handle in hope. It didn’t move.

  Max tapped, still wary of being heard. “Sayid. I’m locked in. Sayid?” he called softly. He listened. Nothing. They couldn’t have snaffled Sayid, could they? Suddenly gagged him and bundled him out?

  Max pulled the trolley to the door, toed down the wheel locks and clambered on top. He could see the other trolley through the half-open fanlight. There was no sign of the two men. “Sayid!” he hissed, louder this time. Once again he listened and, frightening as the man pursuing them had been, his friend’s snoring now scared him even more. He couldn’t escape without Sayid’s help.

  The transom, hinged at its base, pivoted outwards and offered far too narrow a gap for Max to squeeze through. He extended an arm as far as he could and tossed one of his boots at Sayid.

  Bull’s-eye! It hit the side of the sheet exactly where Sayid’s head should be. A sudden gasp of breath was the response. Good! That should do the trick. No sooner had Max felt the gratifying sense of success than the gasp settled once again into a rhythmic, nasal snore.

  Sayid was out for the count.

  Max was trapped.

  Bobby Morrell sat in the van about three hundred meters from the hospital. The road was on a slight incline, so he had a good view of the hospital, both front and back. The two other snowboarders were already tucked up in sleeping bags on the mattress in the back. This was taking longer than Bobby had anticipated. He was about to jump out of the van to try and find Max and Sayid when two men came out of the shadows from the back of the building and walked to an unlit corner of the hospital’s parking lot. They climbed into a black Audi that Bobby hadn’t even noticed was parked there. He ducked as the blue-tinged lights swept across the van when they drove off.

  Dude. Those are mean-looking guys. They don’t eat Sugar Puffs for breakfast.

  Maybe it was better to wait in the van after all. Just in case they had friends.

  There was no way Max could ram open the door with the trolley and there was no other door out of the freezer room. If he could get his weight onto the transom and force it down, smash it from its hinges, he could probably crawl through. But even if he succeeded, shards of glass might rip his legs when he wriggled through, and if he cut the femoral artery in his groin, he would be dead within minutes-even though he was in a hospital. Medical help just wouldn’t reach him in time.

  Sayid’s unabated snoring irritated Max like a persistent, troublesome wasp as he fingered the window, hoping to find a weakness, maybe a loose hinge that could be wrenched away. It was solid. Layers of gloss paint over the years had sealed the hinges into the woodwork. Only the hinges’ barrels remained oiled, allowing the window to be opened and closed. Then Max noticed the small corkscrew-like rat
chet threaded with cord, used for opening and closing the transom.

  He tugged gently, but it was obvious the window was at its maximum opening. If he could cut the cord and make a small loop he could lean out of the window and snag the bolt head.

  Max wrapped the cord through his hands and tried to snap it, but it was too tough. He saw, though, that where the cord had gone through the ratchet it had frayed with constant use. He eased the cord down until he could get a firm grip with both hands-and yanked. The cord snapped. With the single length he formed a quick slipknot so that when he snagged the bolt it would tighten. He tried to reach out through the transom, but because he’d narrowed the gap he couldn’t get his shoulders and arm out at the same time.

  He peered down. The head of the bolt was about a meter below. Dangling the cord through the gap, he worked blindly, fishing with his mind’s eye, trying to get the loop to catch hold. After half a dozen attempts he felt it snag. Keeping the cord in his fingers, he pulled his arm out of the gap, peered down again and saw the noose was tight around the bolt. Easing his arm back through the gap again and pressing his face against the edge of the transom, he yanked sideways as hard as he could. It didn’t budge. The bolt was pressing firmly against the door and its frame. It would take an earthquake to rattle that thing free. OK. Earthquake time.

  Still balanced precariously on top of the trolley, he pulled his socks onto his freezing feet and laced up the remaining boot. Knowing the bolt was just below the door handle, he steadied himself with one hand, gripped the cord tightly with the other and repeatedly kicked the door, while at the same time yanking the cord. Frustration mixed with fear-he didn’t know if those men were still in the building-and he hammered the door loudly enough to wake the dead. Thankfully, no one in the room complained.

  Come on! Come on!

  Another kick, a sudden lurch and the bolt came free. The door swung open as the force of his kicking dislodged the trolley. Max fell back; the trolley lurched forward and rocketed into Sayid.