The Complete Short Fiction (2017, Jerry eBooks)

by Matthew Reilly

  She was still rocking, singing her songs. He was still writing, about action and adventure. Their subject matter never matched, but that didn’t concern them at all. It was what was at home that mattered.

  The music and gossip magazines didn’t care for their relationship, because authors occupy a different orbit to rock The Rock Princess & the Thriller Writer stars and stories about them don’t sell magazines.

  Which was fine by him and even finer by her.

  And so they lived happily ever after.

  The rock princess and the thriller writer.

  ALTITUDE RUSH

  Empire State Building

  100th Floor

  New York City, 6:50 A.M.

  There came a shrill electronic beep as the masked intruder removed the small rectangular case from its recess beneath the desk’s clear-glass top—and suddenly the clock was ticking.

  Twenty-five minutes.

  The response team would be here in four.

  The intruder wasted no time.

  As he strode toward the office’s corner windows, he slid the rectangular glass case into a small chest-pack hidden underneath the front of his black jacket.

  He came to the north-east-facing windows, where he was met by a view of midtown New York City.

  It looked like a mountain range of skyscrapers—all cluttered and crowded. He saw the top of the Chrysler Building, its crystalline pointed peak shimmering in the dawn. The iron-lattice Queensboro Bridge and the wide expanse of the East River hovered in the background beyond the Chrysler. In the concrete jungle in between the river and the Empire State, the keen tourist would find Grand Central Station, fashionable Fifth Avenue, and on the banks of the River itself, the UN building.

  Nice view, the intruder thought. As one would expect of a member of the US Federal Reserve Board.

  The intruder, however, didn’t stop to admire it.

  He just drew a silenced Sig-Sauer pistol from his thigh holster and blasted one of the corner windows to smithereens. Then—100 storeys up, 1000 feet off the ground—he leapt out through the hole and the chase began.

  - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  OFFICIAL STAMP 046-24 -- DOCUMENT NOT DELIVERED (7

  DECEMBER, 1941) -- DESTROY ALL COPIES -- DESTROY ALL COPIES

  --DESTROY ALL COPIES -- DESTROY ALL COPIES -- DESTROY ALL

  - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  6 December, 1941

  Dear Herr Hitler,

  AERIAL RUN

  The flying fox was waiting for the intruder outside the blasted-open window.

  After the man—his call-sign for this mission was, appropriately, Robin Hood—had entered the plush office via an elevator shaft inside the Empire State Building, he had attached a radio transponder to the ceiling over by its corner windows.

  It was a homing transponder.

  Sending a signal to his companion—call-sign Little John—over on the flat-topped roof of Horwicks Tower, an ordinary-looking 45-storey building two blocks to the north.

  The rope that now connected the two buildings was very, very steep.

  As he’d taken the rectangular case from the desk, Hood had heard a loud whump!—the sound of a rocket-propelled concrete-piercing hook slamming into the thick concrete beam above the corner window. Attached to the hook was a rope; attached to the rope was a state-of-the-art flying fox.

  Robin Hood grabbed the flying fox’s handlebar-like grips and slid like a rocket down its steeply-slanted zip-line, soaring clear over 34th and 35th Streets and the low city block in between.

  As he approached the roof of Horwicks Tower, Hood applied the handbrakes on the fox and it slowed, bringing him to a sharp swinging halt a couple of feet above the tower’s roof.

  Little John was waiting for him.

  True to his namesake, he towered over Robin Hood. Whereas Hood was small and wiry and compact, Little John was big and barrel-chested and strong. At the moment his bushy black beard was covered by a black ski-mask.

  ‘Thirty-eight seconds,’ he said as soon as Hood landed. ‘I thought you’d be faster.’

  Hood said, ‘Sorry, but I didn’t want to break my legs on the landing.’

  Little John was already hustling toward the other side of the roof. Hood took off after him. Rooftop wind whistled around them as they jogged.

  ‘The Americans are on their way and they’re really really pissed,’ Little John said.

  ‘Their radio networks went berserk as soon as you lifted the pressure case from the desk. They’re sending three teams from the George Wahington. ETA: two-and-a-half minutes.’ He turned to Hood meaningfully. ‘SEAL teams.’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘That’s what I said. Aren’t we supposed to be doing exercises with them next week?’

  ‘Yep,’ Hood said, ‘which means the Yanks are not going be happy if they catch us today. And what’s this about two-and-a-half minutes? I thought we had a four-minute lead time.’

  ‘Intelligence fucked up,’ Little John scowled as he ran. ‘The Washington is in Dock for the weekend, not Dock 46. They’re closer.’

  They came to the parapet. The roof of another similarly-sized building sat across 36th Street from them.

  Little John threw a pair of handheld suction cups to Hood. ‘Just in case you turn into an unidentified falling object.’

  It was then that Hood saw that John had already connected these two rooftops with another flying fox.

  Little John turned to face him. ‘So, my friend. You ready to get vertical?’

  NOT YOUR AVERAGE DOCUMENT CASE

  Hood and Little John’s rather irregular form of movement was governed by the pressure case they had stolen from the Empire State Building.

  Constructed of superstrong Lexan glass and about the size of a slim laptop computer, the case was manufactured by the WR Grauss Company of Switzerland, and it was unique.

  Novelty, however, comes at a price. And with starting prices of $6 million for its custom-designed document containers, the Grauss Company of Switzerland has a rather elite clientele.

  Their cases are known to be used by the US and British governments, nearly every major office at the UN, and not a few billionaires who like to accumulate socially . . . unacceptable . . . collectibles.

  There are two reasons why.

  Firstly, Grauss pressure cases are all but impossible to break open. They are protected by four pressure-sealed locks which can only be opened using a highpressure air-valve release unit—a machine the size of a small refrigerator. Such machines are rare and very expensive.

  The second reason, however, is far more intriguing.

  You see, Grauss cases are capable of destroying their contents should they fall into the wrong hands.

  If a Grauss case is taken too far—or for too long—from its resting place, a small amount of highly corrosive hydrofluoric acid will be released into it, destroying the document that it contains.

  Collectors of Nazi memorabilia are known to house them in Grauss cases. US embassy employees carry highly classified messages in them. UN ambassadors are known to use them to safeguard sensitive documents from foreign theft.

  Truth be told, the Grauss case that Hood and Little John had stolen held a document—a very old document, written in 1941. And, indeed, as he’d taken the case from its home inside the Federal Reserve member’s desk, Robin Hood had beheld the document inside it—and even he had gasped at its contents.

  ‘Jesus . . .’

  The case, however, came with a singular feature, unique even by the Grauss Company’s high standards.

  Because of its home inside the Empire State Building, this case had an altitudecsensor.

  A two-way altitude sensor.

  If the case detected that it was either higher than 1000 feet—the height of the Empire State—its acid-dissolution system would be triggered. Similarly, if the sensor detec
ted that the case was lower than ten feet off the ground, the acid would also be released.

  Which meant any would-be thief had to stay both out of the air and off the ground.

  As such, the document’s owner—a smug proud man who liked the idea of owning a document that could rock the world to its very foundations—lived safe in the knowledge that if anyone stole his precious piece of memorabilia, they could never use it against his country. It would be destroyed as soon as it left the building.

  He’d only made one wrong assumption.

  The thief who went neither up nor down.

  It is with grave feelings that I write to you.

  Despite our differences, our two great nations are in many ways, very similar.

  Ours are proud nations, strong nations.

  In any event, the case had a failsafe mechanism.

  When it was removed from its resting place—after all, its owner liked to show the document to visitors every so often; as he had done recently to a diplomat from Hood’s home country—a timer mechanism was activated, giving the owner twentyfive minutes to return the case to its slot.

  That was the twenty-five-minute limit Robin Hood knew of.

  The time he had to get the case to a high-pressure lock-release valve.

  The only problem: he had to traverse 16 city blocks to get to a place with a release valve, while staying off the ground.

  RUN, RUN, RUN, AS FAST AS YOU CAN

  While the rest of New York awoke to the usual morning news—everybody, it seemed, still hated America: African warlords did; the British did, over America’s refusal to share its oil reserves with petrol-starved England; there was even a cute little protest in Washington by a dozen middle-economy countries like Singapore, India, Sweden and Australia, protesting against America’s tendency to protect its home market with high import tariffs—Robin Hood and Little John made their aerial run across New York City.

  Two blocks in thirty-eight seconds was a good start.

  The next three went equally quickly because Little John had prepared well.

  More flying foxes were already in place, allowing them to run across the building tops and just whiz down on each fox to the next roof.

  It also helped that in this part of their journey, each of the buildings was progressively shorter than the last—it was downhill sliding. That was good. Later, they would have to travel ‘uphill’, and then things would be different.

  They pushed on—following Fifth Avenue northward, crossing the chasms of 37th, 38th and 39th Streets—moving fast.

  Between 39th and 40th, they had to cut right. Ahead of them to the north was the New York Public Library and it was too low and irregularly-shaped to traverse.

  Besides, they had to head eastward anyway, which meant crossing the imposing chasm of Fifth Avenue itself.

  Little John had pre-laid another flying fox. Its rope soared across Fifth like a long swooping power cable, anchored to the roof of the HSBC Building on the other side.

  Hood grabbed the flying fox—

  —and then he heard it.

  An ominous thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

  Both he and Little John turned, and saw them.

  ‘They’re here,’ Little John said.

  They saw three helicopters thundering down the skyscraper-lined canyonway of Fifth Avenue, booming over the early morning traffic.

  They were SH-60B Seahawks. Troop carriers. Flying with their noses down and their asses up. Twelve men per chopper. Thirty-six troops.

  Mean motherfuckers all.

  ‘Now it gets interesting,’ Hood said as he and Little John kicked off the rooftop and slid in tandem across busy Fifth Avenue, the three Navy helicopters roaring down the glass-walled canyon toward them, bearing down upon them like angry birds of prey.

  CHANGE OF PLANS

  Robin Hood and Little John hit the roof of the HSBC Building running.

  They saw the uneven rooftop landscape spread out before them, the diagonal northeastern route that they had to traverse in order to get to their destination—a building over on 1st Avenue that backed onto the East River.

  Several landmarks stood out: the Chrysler Building and below it, Grand Central Station, both on 42nd Street; plus a building behind Grand Central that was under construction.

  A flying fox lay stretched across Madison Avenue on the opposite side of the HSBC Building’s roof, waiting for them.

  And then the choppers arrived.

  They came thumping by overhead, rising up behind the two thieves from the chasm that was Fifth Avenue, showing their sides, revealing armed men seated in their open doorways, guns up and firing.

  The roof all around Robin Hood and Little John erupted with bullet impacts, cutting them off from the escape fox on the other side.

  Hood and John ran.

  Two more lines of bullet holes chased them across the rooftop, catching up to them just as they arrived at a small shack that housed the building’s internal stairwell, threw open the door and dived inside, rolling down the stairs an instant before as the shack’s thin plywood walls were ripped to shreds by the chainsaw-like bombardment of the SEALS’ gunfire.

  Hood and Little John were on their feet in seconds, racing down the stairwell.

  At the same time, the first chopper landed on the roof, disgorging a team of twelve Navy SEALS from its side doors.

  The other two choppers split up—one heading north, covering 40th Street; the other heading east, covering the eastward run over Madison Avenue.

  The choppers knew where they were going.

  In times such as these, my country, like yours, has concerns about the future—about current alliances, and of course, the Soviet issue.

  CROSSING MADISON AVENUE

  Hood and Little John bolted down the stairwell, taking the stairs four-at-a-time, swinging around every turn, moving as fast as their legs could carry them.

  As they ran, they took off their combat jackets and ski-masks—revealing bulky woolen jumpers and regular trousers. If they ran into someone now, it was better not to look like a terrorist.

  They were nine floors down when they heard the SEALS’ rapid footfalls booming down the stairwell above them.

  ‘Damn it, shit! ’ Little John yelled. ‘They got here too fast! What do we do now?’

  ‘We improvise,’ Robin Hood said. ‘Where can we pick up the trail again?’

  ‘If you can get us to Grand Central, we’ll be back on the escape route.’

  ‘Grand Central it is then.’

  They came to the second floor of the building—a bare twenty feet off the ground—and headed east, toward Madison Avenue, hurrying through an empty office area.

  They came to the eastern side of the building, to the line of windows overlooking the north-south-running Madison.

  A flat steel awning lay directly outside the windows, cover for the pedestrians on the street below.

  Hood stole a glance behind him—no SEALS. Yet. They’d be here any second, though.

  And so he just drew his Sig-Sauer and loosed two crisp shots, shattering one of the windows, and leapt outside.

  The sounds of New York met him—honking horns, the clatter of shop shutters, human murmurs—all of it bouncing off the glass walls of the deep Manhattan canyons.

  It was close on 7 A.M. and the morning rush was just kicking in.

  Buses streamed northward along Madison like migrating cockroaches, taking up all four of its lanes. Yellow cabs filled in the gaps.

  And then Hood heard another sound—from somewhere above and behind them—a familiar thump-thump-thump-thump-thump—

  It burst around the corner to the south a phenomenal speed, banking hard and fast—a Navy Seahawk.

  Coming right for him and Little John.

  ‘There! Now!’ Hood yelled, indicating a bus that was about to pull to a halt alongside their awning.

  The chopper powered up, leapt forward in the air.

  Hood and Little John ran out onto the awning, t
oward the bus’s moving roof.

  There came a sudden bang as they ran—the sound of a door being kicked open.

  Then, suddenly, every window looking out onto the awning behind them started exploding, sending glass showering outward.

  The SEALS were inside the office and firing hard.

  ‘Go! Go! Go! ’ Hood yelled, running hard, ducking forward.

  He and Little John ran step-for-step along the awning, windows shattering behind them, the chopper roaring above them, before they leapt—together—onto the roof of the bus, just as the long white vehicle lurched forward and continued on its northward journey up Madison.

  But it wasn’t over yet.

  The chopper above them wanted in on the action. Since it didn’t have room to turn on its side, it swooped in low above them, trying to the get to the next intersection—Madison and 41st—where it would have room to pivot in mid-air and give the men in its side doors a shot at Hood and Little John.

  But the bus—picking up speed now—hit the intersection first and slipped through it, so the chopper had to power up again and head for the next one up at 42nd Street.

  Meanwhile, Hood and Little John were busy crossing Madison Avenue itself—by hopping from one moving bus to another!

  A bare twelve feet off the ground, they jumped from bus to bus, slowly making their way across the four lanes of traffic—two tiny figures moving above the morning rush, using full-sized buses as stepping stones.

  But they had to move fast, for as they crossed the wide avenue laterally, the forward movement of the traffic was bringing them closer and closer to 42nd Street and the big chopper now hovering in the intersection there, swinging slowly around in the open space . . .

  With one final jump, Hood and Little John landed on the steel pedestrian awning on the eastern side of Madison Avenue, fifteen yards short of the 42nd St intersection.

  No sooner had they landed, however, than the chopper swung fully around in the air above the intersection, showing them its side door: a door packed with machineguntoting Navy SEALS.

  The SEALS opened fire, just as Hood raised his own pistol and blasted another window, causing it to spiderweb with cracks, and with Little John rushing along behind him, dived through its cracked glass shards into the safety of yet another New York City building.