Hidden Charges

by Ridley Pearson

John Steuhl grabbed an ashtray from the counter and used it to prop open the door to Dispatch. If the door shut he would be forced to reenter the room via the utility tunnel, a difficult and time-consuming effort. In his frenzied state it did not occur to him that the ID tag he had taken from Perkins might open the door. In fact, the card would not have helped. Both Brock and Perkins gained entrance to Dispatch in a pre-established time programmed into the Chubb. That envelope of time had long since passed.

  He tested the door, making certain the ashtray would hold. Satisfied, he hurried down the drab hallway.

  ***

  The moment Steuhl left the room, all three hostages moved simultaneously. Brock stretched toward the Chubb but came up short. Perkins tried for the radio but couldn’t even reach the chair. Susan strained to knock the ashtray out of the doorway. Her shoe came within a foot of the door. “Help me,” she begged.

  The two men saw her efforts and repositioned themselves to allow her to stretch. She clearly had the best shot at the door. Her lean calf muscles flexed with her efforts, toe pointed. “Push,” she said.

  Perkins adjusted himself and placed his foot on Susan’s shoulders as she lay on the floor, and applied pressure. Her shoe came within inches of knocking the ashtray clear….

  ***

  Steuhl had awaited this moment for years. His father, though poor, had been a man of principle. He had believed in his right to shelter. Despite the eviction notice, Matthew Steuhl had been unable to relocate his family. Affordable housing simply could not be found. So when the law came to take him away, he resisted.

  This was different from the judge. Much different. With the judge he had simply rigged a pressure detonator under the seat of the man’s Mercedes-Benz and then had taken up a position a block away. The judge walked out of the building, opened the door, and sat down on the seat. The car had seemed to jump off the ground before disintegrating. That had been easy.

  This was different, much more difficult. Steuhl aimed down the barrel of the small handgun and realized that killing a man face-to-face was a whole different story.

  Haverill dodged to his left.

  Steuhl fired. He saw the man’s reaction: a slight stumble, an unavoidable movement backward as the concussion of the bullet threw him off balance. The wounded man fell, surprise on his face.

  The money. So close!

  Steuhl fired again.

  The money!

  The big man went down heavily, sliding toward the railing that overlooked the main concourse.

  Steuhl saw him lifting the aluminum briefcase. “No!” he yelled.

  But Haverill’s last effort in life was to throw the briefcase over the railing, sending it sailing toward the concourse below.

  Steuhl stepped forward reluctantly and finished him with a final bullet. The briefcase had fallen directly in front of a set of doors. The perfect location for a sniper’s bullet to finish him.

  He turned and ran back toward Dispatch.

  ***

  Susan groaned with her efforts. If only she could knock the ashtray out of the door. Toby had explained that the glass to the Dispatch Room was bullet-resistant. If only they could shut Steuhl out and buy some time.

  “I need something more. I need an extension.” Having heard the gunfire, her voice was ragged and tense.

  Steuhl came running down the hall toward them.

  Susan began to kick and scream in frustration, but to no avail.

  The door remained open. John Steuhl reentered the room as easily as he had left.

  Steuhl brushed his oily hair out of his face, removed and polished his glasses. He turned and said to his hostages, “It’s all part of their plan, isn’t it? It’s a trap. They expect me to try and get the money. They expect me to walk into their trap. Well, I won’t fall for that.” He waved the gun high in the air. “I’m in charge here.”

  The three stared at him numbly. Ralph Perkins made no attempt to stop the tears that swelled in his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. “Don’t kill us,” he choked out.

  Steuhl spun in his chair and slid the headset over his oily hair. Glancing over his shoulder, he told the hostages hysterically, “I can kill you, I can kill them all whenever I want.” He stared down at the autodialer.

  One button was all it would take.

  19

  As the camera swung back toward the north end of the service hallway, Jacobs reached down and cut the stiff black power wire that connected to the camera’s pivot motor. Sparks flew and he tugged the cable out of the way and rested it against a PVC plastic pipe. The camera would not pivot now.

  He jumped down and signaled Popolov and Coleman, joining them at the back door of the hardware store. “You’re all set,” he told the Greek. “If you work at this end of the hallway, you won’t be seen by the camera. I’m on my way. If those doors aren’t open by three forty, that means I haven’t made it over to Pavilion C. Shleit will make the decision.”

  “Did you see the parking lots?”

  “No.”

  “I’m told the police and the national guard are surrounding the mall and that they have fire trucks and ambulances lined up.”

  Jacobs nodded. “Remember. Give me until twenty of.”

  “If I’m ready by then it will be a miracle.”

  “We could use a miracle about now.” Jacobs went back down the hall and jumped up, pulling himself into the web of suspended pipes. He crawled along the pipes awkwardly on his belly, threading his way between the metal supports that held the pipes from the ceiling. He followed the majority of the pipes as they turned right and entered the dark square hole in the wall. Inching his way, he reached the entrance to the tunnel and swung his large body into the dark hole. The tunnel’s lights had failed as a result of the earlier explosion. It was dark.

  Only moments later, he came upon the intersection with the vertical utility shaft. The shaft rose sixty feet toward the rooftop utility sheds that housed air-conditioning and ventilation systems.

  As he ascended, rung over rung in complete darkness, he caught himself praying.

  Popolov was right: they could use a miracle.

  ***

  Shleit turned up the squelch button to disguise his voice and answered the walkie-talkie. “No,” he said. “Can’t do it,” he replied, keeping his response short. He clipped the handset back to his jacket. Steuhl had disconnected.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Popolov, just returning to the café. The Greek approached his wife, and they both walked over to Shleit.

  “He says Haverill’s dead,” reported Shleit. Mrs. Popolov gasped. “He claims Haverill tried to set him up. He sounded bad. We’re losing him.”

  “Losing him?” Mrs. Popolov asked.

  “There’s no predicting what he’ll do next.”

  “What do we do?”

  “There’s nothing we can do. He expects Jacobs to deliver the money. Said it has to be Jacobs. The briefcase is on the bottom floor of C.”

  “But Toby is already on his way. I just spoke to him. Steuhl may know what he looks like. There’s no way he can deliver that money.”

  “Exactly right,” huffed Shleit. “No way at all.”

  ***

  Civichek bent down and said to the worker who could climb no further, “I got it from here, pal. You think you can get down?”

  The worker hesitated a second and said, “I’m a little rattled. I passed my limit.”

  “Can you get back down?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Hand me the tools.” The two men exchanged the wrenches. “Go on. I got it.”

  The worker pulled himself up to his knees and began a slow and arduous descent.

  Civichek advised, “One step at a time.” He then shinnied up another vertical strut and pulled himself onto the next I beam.

  Within minutes, the nimble Civichek was only a few yards below the underside of the heavy chain drive to the roller coaster’s main lift. The wrenches threatened to slip out of his back pocket. He rea
ched behind and stuffed them farther in.

  He understood why the worker had frozen. Even for an experienced second-story man like himself, this was rough going. The beams were only inches wide, slick because of the paint, which also tended to diminish the depth of field between levels. Civichek had climbed thirty and forty feet before. Eighty feet straight up I beams was for the American Indian gorillas who worked on New York bridges. Union work. He felt like he was thousands of feet above the ground. With all eyes trained on him, he wasn’t about to quit, despite the sudden weakness in his legs. This was his big moment. And he knew it.

  He paused briefly to rest, rubbing his right calf which had cramped painfully. Instinctively, he knew he should stop here. It was a Herculean job. Even if he made it up the next two beams, even if he managed to unfasten the key link, even if he could thread the heavy chain across the crisscrossed superstructure, how the hell was he going to find the strength to get back down?

  His mind was wandering to his problems. It should have been on the job before him.

  He pulled himself up to the final beam and made the mistake of briefly glancing down. At the same time, a good deal of the crowd broke into applause. His legs grew unsteady, danced beneath him, and he slipped, falling painfully to a beam. The crowd gasped. Civichek felt sweat on his palms. He steadied himself and dried his hands on his jeans. He slowly rose to his knees and then stood back to his feet. The crowd applauded again. He could feel their eyes on him. He reached up and touched the key link in the oversized chain drive.

  ***

  Laura couldn’t look. The last time she had glanced over to Sam he had seemed dead, his face pale and lifeless, the color drained out of him. It was torture to have the process going so slowly. She knew that that troublemaker was up there showing off, trying to be the big hero. She’d read about him, seen his picture in the paper. Sam’s the hero, she thought, knowing Shelly would have died without his efforts.

  Rappaport and DeAngelo moved the seated crowd away from the area. DeAngelo had pointed out that something might go wrong, and if people were too close, they might be injured. The chain could snap, the escalator could roll; any number of unpredictable things could happen. Rappaport moved slowly, still in pain from the injuries suffered the day before.

  Everyone in the pavilion centered their attention on Civichek’s efforts. A silence fell over the hall, broken only by a random cough or an infant’s cry. Shafts of sunlight boldly filled the pavilion, catching the dust created by the earlier explosion and causing striking shafts of light to fill the upper air. The heat continued to rise—the result of the failed air-conditioning system. People in the crowd mopped their foreheads with their shirt sleeves. The distinctive smell of charcoaled beef filled the air—a fast food restaurant with broken ventilation.

  Laura studied the faces of the children. Even they were watching Civichek. “Children, children,” she said, gaining their attention. “Let’s play a game of pat-a-cake.”

  ***

  Shleit asked, “Are you sure that you and the kid can handle this alone?”

  Popolov, a headband tied around his broad brow, replied, “Right up until the last few minutes, yes. Positive. Once we have the charges in place, assuming we can find all the materials we need, we’ll need to sandbag the area. We’ll use whatever we can find.”

  “This other scheme can’t possibly work.”

  “I’m telling you, you and Toby look something alike. Wearing this hat, with your coat buttoned up, you’ll pass for him. Just don’t let the cameras see your face. He may know what Toby looks like.

  “Toby wears his hat,” Popolov continued, adjusting it, “more like this.” He turned Shleit around. “See, Mother?”

  “Yes. Much better. I think you’re right, Mhykloteus.”

  “I’m much heavier,” complained Shleit.

  “You must keep your jacket buttoned,” reminded Popolov. “He’ll never notice.”

  “Yes, that’s good,” added Mrs. Popolov.

  “It’ll never work,” insisted Shleit.

  “Let me tell you something,” Popolov said sternly. “You can make anything work. I ought to know.” He lifted his stump of an arm.

  It was the first time his wife had ever seen him make a point of his own handicap. She stepped toward him but stopped herself. Perhaps this day was what Mhykloteus had needed all along. How strange that one man’s peril can be another’s reward.

  Shleit nodded. “I still don’t like it.”

  “It’s our only choice,” said Popolov. “What other choice is there? We’re not going to give up, are we?”

  “No,” agreed Shleit with a twinge of a smile. “Okay, you old buzzard, I’ll do it.”

  “Just remember to keep your head down.”

  “And you too.”

  “Yes,” said Popolov looking into the eyes of his wife. “I learned that years ago.” She reached out and touched him lightly.

  Popolov stuck out his left hand, and Shleit shook it. “Here goes nothing,” said the detective.

  “Let’s hope not,” said Mykos Popolov. Shleit headed out the back door of the store. Popolov turned to his wife and said. “I must get busy. I am needed.”

  His wife couldn’t hold back her tears. She could sense something final in his words. She threw herself around him and hugged him dearly. “God be with you,” she whispered.

  “And you,” he whispered back.

  ***

  Steuhl, like his three hostages, was sweating heavily. With the air-conditioning out, the mass of electronic equipment in the confines of the small cement room created intense heat. His attention was split between the monitor that showed the man he believed to be Jacobs walking down the service hallway, and an adjacent monitor that showed Civichek on the roller coaster.

  The timing was all wrong. Only forty minutes remained until the charges would detonate automatically, but he still had to get the money.

  His escape route would take him through the city storm sewers. Once he reached the sewers, it would be impossible to find him. He organized a route to direct Jacobs to the upper level. He had a trick in mind that would speed up his departure.

  He sat with one finger poised above the autodialer, ready to detonate the charges if there were any sudden surprises….

  ***

  As Susan got a good look on the monitor at the man entering Pavilion C, she suddenly realized it was not Toby.

  The man in the hat moved wrong. He displayed none of Toby’s natural athletic grace. This discovery gave her the first feeling of hope. They were up to something. There was still a chance.

  20

  Civichek unbolted the master key link that connected one end of the large drive chain to the other. The long section of chain disconnected, clanging against the steel I beam and chipping bits of red paint. The chips fell away, twirling like autumn leaves. The crowd applauded.

  He signaled the clutch operator, who engaged the motor and advanced the chain a few feet. Civichek spent the next five minutes freeing a band of steel that held the chain against the drive gear and then backing the heavy chain over the gear to give him as much slack as possible. Since the gear drive only moved in one direction, he worked as much of the long chain free as he could, carefully placing the slack between I beams so he could work with it later. He then returned the steel collar that held the teeth of the gear in the slots of the drive chain.

  With nearly two hundred feet of heavy chain draped over the I beam that he stood on, he located the end and began the tedious chore of lacing it across the beams, toward the outer edge of the roller coaster’s support structure.

  Civichek moved cautiously along the thin beams. The chain clattered across the steel as he pulled on it. Strut by strut, Civichek advanced the chain.

  His legs betrayed him with the continual twitching of tired muscles. The chain was heavy and hard to move.

  After nearly ten minutes Rappaport yelled, “That’s it!”

  The tired Civichek established a routine.
Drag the chain over an I beam, hook the end over the next, inch his way over to this next beam, pull the chain up and over, start again. Loop by loop, he advanced the chain to the far side of the roller coaster’s superstructure. Finally, he lowered the chain toward the fallen escalator below. He was seventy feet up and on the farthest extremity of the intricate interlacing of steel beams that supported the ride. This outermost beam would act as a fulcrum for the chain to slide across. As the motor of the ride was engaged, the chain would tighten. Held above the escalator by the I beam, it would serve to support the fallen piece of equipment as workers attempted to jack the lilting escalator off Sam Shole.

  Civichek felt winded and even a little bit dizzy.

  “That’s perfect,” shouted Rappaport, helping the others as they dragged the end of the chain toward the escalator.

  Civichek stepped forward to rest a hand on a vertical beam and again looked down. The multicolored beams created an odd illusion of distance. He suffered a brief moment of vertigo. He blinked and reached for the security of the beam just ahead of him.

  His hand missed the beam. He fell forward in a dive.

  Several in the crowed screamed.

  He free-fell ten feet before striking a cross strut. Bouncing off this beam, the wind knocked out of him, his ribs broken, he continued the fall. He smashed into the next I beam and the next, unable to grab onto anything to stop his fall.

  He yelled, defending himself as best he could, protecting his head.

  Off in the distance, he heard people screaming. Like a boneless doll he fell toward the ground floor, striking beams and bouncing clear.

  He could vaguely make out the faint sound of voices. Blurred images swirled inside his eyelids. Red flashes of light. Blackness stole in from the edges and swallowed him, removing his pain.

  Finally, he thudded onto the hard cement slab and was still.

  21

  Coleman caught up to Popolov in the hardware store. “What can I do?”

  “We’ll need a larger container. A pipe bomb will not work. It has to be something much bigger.” Popolov stood staring at the shelves in the hardware store. “There must be something.”