The Complete Short Fiction (2017, Jerry eBooks)

by Matthew Reilly

  UPHILL

  Up the stairs they ran.

  Hearts pumping. Legs pounding.

  It was tough going, but Hood and Little John were fit, very fit. After all, they were their country’s finest.

  They had to keep pushing eastward, paralleling 42nd Street. They were close to Grand Central Station now, separated from it by only two streets—Park Avenue to the east and 42nd Street itself to the north.

  ‘Damn it,’ Little John said as they ran. ‘I didn’t plan on us coming so far north so soon. Any ideas how we get across Park?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Hood said.

  They hurried up the stairwell, arrived at the roof, threw open the door, burst out into the early morning sunlight.

  Hood hurried over to the parapet overlooking Park Avenue. The building directly across from him was the same height as this one, its walls made of sheer glass; the gap between the two structures maybe sixty feet.

  ‘We got any flying foxes left?’ he asked Little John.

  ‘All out, I’m afraid.’

  Just then, Hood saw one of the Navy helicopters swoosh by beneath him into Park Avenue. The chopper began to hover in front of Hood’s building, only a few floors below the rooftop.

  It rose slightly in the air. It looked as if the chopper was trying to peer inside the windows of the building, trying to get a glimpse of Hood and Little John inside.

  As he watched it check out each floor, Hood saw that this chopper’s side doors were open but empty—this Seahawk must have already unloaded its troops.

  And then Hood got an idea.

  He spun, he’d need a—and he saw it: the building’s window washer platform.

  Within a minute, Hood and Little John had opened the guard-gates on the window washer’s platform and positioned it on the edge of the rooftop in such a way that it was jutting out perpendicularly from the roof, extending about twenty feet out from the edge, kind of like a springboard.

  The chopper beneath them kept rising, searching, searching . . .

  Hood pulled out his suction cups, held one in each hand. Little John did the same.

  ‘You see what I’m thinking?’ Hood asked.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Little John said. ‘You know you’re crazy, don’t you?’

  ‘Just take a good run up and stay with me. It’s the only way we’re going to get across Park.’

  The chopper beneath them rose quickly, checking each floor, until at last, it came to roof level.

  The Seahawk came level with the extended window washer’s platform, rotating laterally as its pilots scanned the area—in the process showing Hood and Little John its open side flank.

  Which was just what they wanted.

  ‘ Now! ’ Hood yelled.

  He and Little John ran, close together, out onto the window washer’s platform.

  They hit the platform at a run, shot out along its length, their feet clanging on its metal flooring.

  And then they jumped . . .

  . . . out into the clear open sky . . .

  . . . and landed . . .

  . . . inside the hovering Navy helicopter!

  But they didn’t stop.

  In fact, they didn’t miss a single step.

  The chopper’s two pilots spun around in astonishment—but all they saw were two rushing blurs enter their helicopter’s rear troop hold from the left, dash across its width, and then dive out through its open right-hand doorway!

  Hood and Little John blasted out the right-hand doorway of the Seahawk and threw themselves out into the air like skydivers, arms outstretched, suction cups gripped in their hands.

  They both flew through the air . . . soaring, flying, falling . . . before—whack-whack!—they hit the glass windows of the building on the other side of Park Avenue and engaged their suction cups.

  The cups held, and suddenly they were hanging against the outside of this new building!

  Two quick gunshots later and they were inside it.

  And although, in the past the United States has preferred to remain isolated from conflicts such as the present one, there comes a time when a country must make a decision that will ensure its future, and as such choose its allies based not on past allegiances, but on what is best for the nation in the cold hard light of reality.

  INSIDE RUNNING—GRAND CENTRAL STATION

  Downhill.

  To the second level—because this building possessed a glassed-in pedestrian bridge that spanned 42nd Street and opened onto Grand Central.

  They reached the second floor, and cut through a small shopping centre and for the first time that day, encountered people—the earlybirds buying breakfast, donuts, coffee.

  They hit the glass-walled pedestrian bridge, raced across it, just as, without warning, the windows on both sides of the bridge shattered violently under the weight of an incoming team of Navy SEALS.

  It was as if someone had set off a chain of fireworks on either side of Hood and Little John.

  But they just kept on running as the twin lines of windows on their flanks just blasted inwards—crash!-crash!-crash!—the star-shaped explosions of glass closely followed by the bodies of black-clad SEALS swinging into the interior of the bridge on drop-ropes.

  Robin Hood and Little John swept out of the bridge a split second before the bullets started flying, and entered Grand Central Station.

  They charged into the concourse—careful to stay high, up on the mezzanine level—and skirted the main lobby, dodging people, running hard and fast, heading east now.

  ‘This way!’ Little John called, back on the plan now.

  They hit a ‘Staff-Only’ door and burst into a utility stairwell, stormed up it—at the same time as the SEALS hustled across the concourse behind them.

  More stairs.

  More running.

  7:06 became 7:07.

  They had until 7:15 A.M.

  They came to the roof, stepped out onto it, and once again found themselves looking at the New York skyline.

  Dominating the immediate area was the colossal Chrysler Building. It loomed above them to the east, 77 storeys high, across the wide chasm of Lexington Avenue.

  Hood gazed at the top of the Chrysler Building.

  That was where they wanted to go, he thought. It was the only building in this area that was high enough to allow for the final leg of their journey . . .

  ‘All right, LJ, we don’t have much time,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘You said you had the route figured out from here.’

  ‘This way,’ Little John said.

  Behind Grand Central, a new tower was under construction. It was basically just the shell of a building—all scaffolding, gantry elevators and unfinished concrete floors. It didn’t even have windows yet, so you could see all the way through.

  It also—Hood saw—had a crane mounted all the way up on its roof, from which hung an extra-long cable and hook.

  Little John, he saw, had already been here. The crane’s cable was stretched out to the west at a steep angle, tied to one of the middle floors of the structure.

  They raced for the nearest gantry elevator, stepped inside it and whistled up toward the floor with the crane’s hook tied to it.

  The SEALS chasing them must have radioed their companions, because no sooner was the elevator moving than the three Seahawk helicopters arrived on the scene and the whole construction site was pummelled with gunfire.

  The elevator came to the 10th floor and Little John flung open its metal grill and led Hood across the exposed concrete floor to the tied-down hook at its edge. No sooner were they off the elevator, than it headed straight back down to the SEALS down below.

  They were coming.

  Through the exposed sides of the open-air level, Hood and Little John saw the Navy choppers circling the building, searching for them like bloodhounds. They’d have them in ten seconds . . .

  They came to the crane’s hook. The way Little John had secured it, it was ready for a big swing—a long pendulum-like arc that would car
ry them eastward, alongside their unfinished building’s southern side, then over Lexington, right up to the steeland-glass superstructure of the Chrysler Building’s tenth or eleventh floor.

  ‘I’ll hold the hook,’ Little John said, ‘you hold me. Just make sure you’re ready with a suction cup by the time we reach the Chrysler.’

  ‘Got it,’ Robin Hood said.

  Little John untied the hook. Hood grabbed the bigger man’s belt—while keeping a suction cup gripped in one hand.

  Then, without any further ceremony—just as the first SEALS arrived on their level in the gantry elevator—Hood and Little John jumped off the edge of the dusty concrete floor and swung.

  THE CHRYSLER

  It was a spectacular swing.

  Two tiny figures, suspended from a building-mounted crane, flanked by three Navy helicopters, swinging in a beautiful flat arc, high over Lexington Avenue.

  They swung fast—swooping downwards, across the face of the ugly unfinished tower—then they shot out into the open air above Lexington, reaching the bottom of their arc . . . and then they came back up again, up and up and up, zeroing in on the shiny vertical side of the Chrysler Building.

  They came to a window, hit it hard—and stopped, thanks to the suction cup in Hood’s hand, now affixed to the exterior of the great structure.

  Within seconds, the adjoining window was broken and they were inside, heading for the nearest elevator.

  Bing!

  A minute later, the elevator arrived at the 75th floor of the Chrysler Building.

  Hood and Little John charged out of the lift, blasted a security lock, stepped into a partitioned office area.

  ‘Jumpers off,’ Hood said.

  They wrenched off their jumpers as they hustled across the floor, heading for the eastern windows.

  The removal of their bulky woollen jumpers revealed small packs on their backs—as well as, in Hood’s case, the chest-pack containing the coveted document.

  They came to the eastern wall of the building, saw the world beyond it—the tops of buildings, the East River, and right next to the East River, their destination. . .

  ‘You ready for the rollercoaster ride?’ Hood said.

  ‘Are you kidding? This is what I’ve been waiting for,’ Little John said.

  ‘Then let’s do it.’

  Firing as he ran, Hood blasted the eastern windows to hell and then, without so much as a second thought, he and Little John sped up and launched themselves out through the exploded-open window and plummeted down through the sky.

  Although our two nations have traded indirect blows in this burgeoning conflict, the United States is not yet a formal part of this war. Our entry into it, however, need not occur at all.

  THE FINAL LEG

  The backpacks, of course, held parachutes.

  But these were no ordinary parachutes.

  Hood and Little John had known the Americans would send choppers. Likewise, they had known that getting to their final target would require at least one parachute jump.

  The only problem: parachute’s tend to hang in the air a long time.

  And so they were using stunt chutes—high-speed, high-performance chutes that dropped fast due to perforations in their canopies, but which also were capable of tight control. After all, they were still three blocks from their target building, which was why the Chrysler had been the only option: it was high enough to allow them to parachute—fast and low, without any hovering—through three blocks of street canyons and onto the roof of their target destination.

  The choppers saw them as soon as their twin parachutes blossomed.

  And took off in pursuit.

  The stunt chutes worked well.

  Hood and Little John shot downwards through the air like twin bullets, falling fast but flat, in dead-straight trajectories. They swung around onto 43rd St, banking like race cars, now heading due east.

  And for the first time that day, they saw their destination.

  It loomed before them at the end of 43rd St, two blocks away—a medium-sized square-shaped building made of glass and grey concrete, with an endless line of fluttering international flags stretched across its top.

  The UN Building.

  Fronting onto 1st Avenue.

  Hood and Little John were losing altitude every second—fifty storeys . . . forty-eight . . . forty-six . . .

  The choppers swung into the canyon behind them, rotors thumping, the lead helicopter trying to give the SEALS in its side doors a clear shot.

  It was going to be close.

  The two thieves shot through an intersection, descending quickly, flying fast.

  Forty storeys . . . thirty-eight . . .

  Shooting forward, the windows on either side of the street blurred with motion.

  They came to 1st Avenue, blasting out of the chasms of New York City, shooting high over the street, soaring over the wide paved forecourt of the UN’s headquarters.

  The choppers boomed out of the canyon system a second later, chasing desperately.

  But they were too late.

  The two parachutes sailed over the top of the UN Building, pulled up sharply, and landed deftly on its roof.

  The moment Hood and Little J landed, they jettisoned their stunt chutes and took off at a run, disappearing inside a rooftop elevator shack just as security personnel appeared from the fire stairs.

  The three choppers lurched to a halt in front of the imposing international structure, stopping in mid-air, their race lost.

  The usual bank of TV crews out the front of the building caught sight of the two parachutes, a couple of them actually raising their cameras in time to get footage of the two daredevils.

  Hood didn’t mind. In fact, it was exactly what he wanted.

  It was the nicest touch of all that they had painted some symbols onto their stunt chutes: anti-nuclear slogans berating the French for their continued nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

  It was reported on the news that night as just another publicity stunt by guerilla environmentalists.

  Once inside the UN Building, Hood and Little John attached clip-on ties to their collars, and assumed the walk of regular bureaucrats.

  Owing to the labyrinth of national offices inside the building, the Americans would never know into which mission the two thieves walked—would never know which country’s high-pressure release valve was used to open the mysterious Grauss case.

  In this vein, Herr Fuhrer, I propose an alliance between our two great nations—between Germany and the United States of America—that will supercede any previous treaties my country may be party to.

  I await your reply. In the meantime, I remain,

  Yours sincerely,

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt

  President of the United States of America

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

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

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

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

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

  THE BENEFITS OF LEVERAGE

  Two days after the theft, the President of the United States gave an impromptu press conference during which he announced that tariffs preventing Australian meat products from entering the United States—tariffs which for years had unfairly protected American farmers from open-market competition—would be abolished.

  He also issued a statement saying that aggressive US tactics toward the Euro and the European economy would cease. Some economic commentators noted that several currencies that were ‘tied’ to the Euro would benefit immensely from such an action, one of which was the beleaguered Australian dollar.

  When questioned about the sudden changes of policy, the President denied that it had been the result of a recent meeting at UN Headquarters with top-level Austra
lian diplomats.

  In fact, he said, relations between the two nations were stronger than ever. Why, just next week, US SEAL teams were to engage in exercises with crack troops from the elite Australian SAS . . .

  THE END

  A BAD DAY AT FORT BRAGG

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  27 December

  The taxi-cab lurched to a halt in front of the reinforced gates of Fort Bragg.

  It was sunset and the giant military complex lay bathed in the glow of a thousand halogen lights.

  Mitch Raleigh stepped out of the cab, eyes wide. To write about this sort of stuff was one thing.

  To see it up close was something else entirely.

  A young Army captain was waiting for him at the gatehouse.

  ‘Mr Raleigh? Mr Mitchell Raleigh. The author?’

  ‘That’s me. You must be Captain Daniels.’

  ‘That’s correct, sir. And if I may say so, sir, it is a pleasure to have you here at Bragg. Let me take your bag.’

  THE WRITER

  Raleigh was a novelist from Australia, in the US on a book tour promoting his latest thriller.

  Modestly successful, he specialised in geopolitical thrillers that competed pretty well with Tom Clancy.

  It was his third book, Detachment-5, that had brought him to Fort Bragg.

  Set in the Afghan mountains, it had featured a covert battle between three heroic members of the famed Delta Detachment fighting against their American compatriots, a rogue band of US Army Rangers who had been bribed by some Afghan drug-runners into escorting a truckload of pure heroin out of Afghanistan.

  The book had been Raleigh’s biggest hit.

  It had also, however, seen him receive many emails—most of them complimentary. Of course, some nasty ones came, too. It was always a danger when one wrote about the military: some hardcore soldiers were very sensitive to their depiction as villains in works of fiction.

  One of the nicer emails, however, had come from a Captain Dwight Daniels, a member of the Delta detachment based at Fort Bragg who had so loved Detachment-5 that he had invited Raleigh to visit the base and see some of the D-boys in action.