by Jon Land
Silence filled the limo. Belamo started to speak a few times, only to stop.
“Look,” he began finally, “you wanna lay low for a while, maybe I can set you up someplace. I got the right friends owe me favors. You ask me, that’s your best bet.”
McCracken shook his head. “Thanks anyway, Sal. Just get me to LaGuardia before the Blue Code reaches all levels.”
“Where you headed?”
“Atlanta.”
“What’s in Atlanta, pal?”
“The headquarters of the PVR and Mohammed Sahhan.”
The President leaned forward incredulously. “I think I need to hear that again, Bart,” he said to CIA Director McCall.
“We have identified the caller to our box office positively as Blaine McCracken.”
“How?”
“The coding and designation he gave. Each one’s as individual as fingerprints, and even if they weren’t, the voiceprint confirmed it was him.”
“But McCracken’s dead!”
“Only in Stimson’s mind. It was a means to keep him active on this mission without us knowing.”
“And the body at Roosevelt Hospital?”
“A John Doe. I just received a report from the team I dispatched up there this morning. Stimson filled all the holes in neatly. McCracken’s still out there and the box office refused to validate his call because we deactivated his file upon termination.”
“But we know he wasn’t terminated. And right now he’s the only man who can tell us what Andy was on to that led to his death.”
“Finding him won’t be easy,” McCall said somberly. “He’s too good, too professional. He’s got no reason to trust us and he’ll kill any man who gets too close. We’ll just have to hope that he calls in again.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“Slim. He knows he’s alone and that’s the way he’ll plan to keep it now.”
“Goddammit, Bart!” the President fumed. “I can’t believe you’re telling me all we can do with an entire intelligence network out there is to wait.”
“And if he surfaces, hope we can move fast enough.”
“To catch McCracken?” the President posed sarcastically. “Just make sure your boys have their running shoes on.”
The address the caller told Sandy to meet him at was located in a rundown slum section of the steel and glass city known as the Fifth Ward, just past the University of Houston. The population of the Fifth Ward was almost exclusively black, living in shanties and patchwork buildings, some dating back forty or more years. Scattered among them were numerous, more modern apartment buildings constructed at optimistic intervals by men who envisioned that Houston’s great revitalization would stretch to here. It never did, of course, and the buildings had become tax write-offs left to their own fate.
It made no sense, Sandy thought as she gazed up at an abandoned six-story apartment building with boards nailed where most of the windows used to be. Why would the caller have chosen this place to meet?
Sandy had used a rear exit of the Four Seasons to avoid the man in the cream-colored suit or anyone else Dolorman may have had watching her. And now she started across the desolate street with her handbag clutched close, as if she expected someone at any moment to dash by and strip it from her grasp. The steps leading up to the building were still sturdy, and her high heels were grateful for that much. The door had splintered holes where locks had been ripped out. She guessed this building served now as a local youth hangout and perhaps as a temporary haven for squatters passing through the golden South.
The door creaked as she swung it open and the stench assaulted her immediately. It seemed a combination of dust, mold, sweat, and spoiled food. Inside the lobby Sandy noticed a series of steel mailboxes in the wall. They were missing their fronts, and the names of former residents were so dust-covered as to be unreadable. The stairway up lay right before her and her high heels clicked against the wood floor as she approached it.
The caller had instructed her to meet him in apartment 4C. Sandy started up the stairs and grasped for the bannister. The rotted wood wavered, the bannister’s structure standing virtually free and unattached. The steps squeaked as she took them, and she hugged the wall close for support. Finally the first flight was behind her. She started up the second, a bit more confident now.
She was halfway up that one when a step gave out. Her foot plunged right through the wood and most of her leg followed. She groped for something to grab, but there was nothing. Her fingernails scraped futilely at the wall, and she had a vision of plunging all the way down into the cellar and dying among the rats.
In the end she plunged down only up to her thigh. She struggled to still her trembling and began to lift her leg from the hole, careful not to tear any flesh on the ragged splinters rimming the opening. She managed to save her shoe, but her stocking was shredded. Sandy paused briefly to steady herself, got her breath back, and started on again.
This time she was more careful with each step, testing the wood before giving it all her weight. Clearly these steps could take only the weight of the children who used the abandoned building as a retreat. Evidence of their presence in the form of ant-infested candy wrappers littered each level. Nervously she reached the fourth floor, already dreading the trip down.
There were six apartment units on each floor, and most of the labels over the doors were long since missing. She was looking for 4C and had to rely on impressions outlined on the wood to tell which was which. Four C turned out to be the last one down on the left, and the floor leading down the corridor toward it seemed no more sturdy than the stairs. She moved so tentatively that even the clicking of her heels was stilled. She reached the door and knocked lightly.
“Hello?”
No response from inside.
“Hello? It’s Sandy Lister. …”
Still no response. Sandy knocked again.
The door swung open, and Sandy stepped into the murkiness. Surprise clogged her throat. The apartment was actually furnished with several chairs and a couch. She saw a desk, several lamps, and half-eaten boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts and Kentucky Fried Chicken strewn over the windowsills. The lamps weren’t on, so the only light came courtesy of the afternoon sun. Its rays shone softly through windows caked with dirt even a razor blade couldn’t scrape off.
Sandy moved farther inside and switched on a lamp. Its light did little to change the room’s dimness. But there was another room off to the right. She had started for it, when the door behind her closed softly. Sandy spun and saw three men coming toward her. A bald-headed man was one, a brawny hulk holding a huge pistol the second …
And Stephen Shay was the third. Stephen Shay, executive producer of the network news division and her boss at Overview, standing between two men with the promise of death in their eyes.
“I’m sorry, Sandy,” was all he said.
Chapter 23
“REALLY I AM,” Shay added calmly before she had found her breath again.
Sandy tried to ask a question, but there was only air. Her throat felt as if it had been stuffed with tissue paper.
“T.J.,” she managed finally, and it took all the effort she could muster.
“He became a problem, I’m afraid,” Shay told her matter-of-factly. “Too much of a risk that he’d contact the authorities before much longer. We couldn’t have that.”
“Who’s we?”
“Does it matter?”
“You killed T.J., didn’t you?”
Shay’s silence answered her question.
“You’ve been a part of this all along,” she charged. “A part of Krayman!”
Shay stepped farther into the apartment, the bald-headed man and the hulk staying in his shadow. He shook his head regretfully at Sandy.
“I never imagined you’d get this far,” he said. “I underestimated your abilities and your persistence. Now both are going to cost you.”
“You’re going to kill me, too, is that it?” Sandy shot out at
Shay, glad for the fury that distracted her from her terror.
Shay glanced away. His brown three-piece suit looked totally out of place in the decaying building. Somehow he had made it up the stairs without gathering a single speck of dirt.
“I tried to convince them to let me reason with you,” he said. “I told them I could explain the situation to you, make you join us.”
Sandy knew she needed time if she was going to get out of this. “I’m listening.”
Shay shook his head. “They didn’t. Their orders were precise. You know too much, more than anyone else alive outside a small circle.”
“About what, Stephen? That’s the one thing I don’t know, you see.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“I think it does.”
He regarded her impatiently. “You really don’t know what you’re dealing with here, do you? You really don’t understand the scope of their influence.”
“Influence that’s just beginning to make itself felt. Right, Steve? It’s got something to do with a few billion dollars worth of ultra-density microchips and a mechanical monster in outer space with the power to blow up space shuttles. Just tell me if I’m getting warm.”
“This has gone far enough.” Shay started forward.
“This isn’t easy for me, Sandy. Please believe that.”
“Stow your bullshit somewhere else, boss.” Sandy started backing up, searching for a means of escape, a weapon, anything. She had to keep Shay talking, had to buy herself as much time as he would sell.
“That’s enough,” Shay told her, and his two henchmen drew up even with him. The fat hulk holstered his pistol. “This has to look like an accident, Sandy. If you struggle, it will only prolong the pain.”
“Does Krayman own the whole network? Or is it just you? How powerful is he, Steve? The only damn thing he doesn’t own is the country, and that’s what he’s going after, isn’t it?” Sandy had gone as far back as she could. Her shoulders rested against cracked and splintered windowpanes. Her hand grazed one and she felt a stinging prick from the daggerlike shard. “What’s Krayman got in store for the good old U. S. of A., boss? What’s he going to use his killer machine in the sky for?”
Shay gazed at her vacantly. He made no reply as the bald-headed man and the fat hulk advanced even closer to her.
It has to look like an accident.
They were going to throw her out the window! Famous reporter falls to her death while investigating story in rickety apartment building. …
Her fingers closed on the daggerlike shard of glass and snapped it free. She let the fear show on her features and begged the approaching pair off with her eyes.
“No, please, no.” Then to Shay, “Make them stop, Steve, please,” she pleaded, her voice strained with just enough desperation.
The bald-headed man came in first toward her left side, leaving the right for his lumbering fellow. For that instant Sandy’s right hand was free, and an instant was all she needed.
She brought her glass dagger up in an ascending arc. There was no designed aim in the move. Impact anywhere would have satisfied her. She felt a thud and then the sensation of flesh giving way as the shard plunged inward. Sandy saw the thicker half protruding from the bald-headed man’s throat as his eyes bulged and he began to retch. He stumbled into the hulk and Sandy darted past both. Stephen Shay moved to cut her off, but she crashed through him and bolted into the corridor.
She knew the advantage was hers. It was slim, though, and wouldn’t last long if anything slowed her up. She reached the stairway and started down to the third level.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs from below. How could she have been so careless? Of course Shay would have left another man in the lobby to guard against possible intrusion. If she continued down, she would run straight into him. If she ventured back upstairs, Shay and the hulk would have her easily.
That left the third floor as her only option, and she swung down a corridor that was identical to the one on the fourth. She was sprinting now, oblivious to the precarious flooring and not caring that the loud clicking of her heels might give her away.
Voices mingled behind her, men meeting one another and conferring desperately. Sandy started trying doors.
The first two were locked, but the third lacked a knob altogether. She hurried through it and crossed the living room floor to the window overlooking the street. This one was in far worse shape than the one she had grasped the shard from upstairs, and it resisted not at all when she hoisted it open to permit her access onto the fire escape.
She had them now. Three flights descent and she would be gone.
Sandy’s heart sank as her eyes surveyed what would have been her route to the ground. A large section of steel stairs was missing between the first and second floors. Going down by this means was impossible. That left her only with up. Not bothering to consider the ramifications of her strategy further, Sandy squeezed out the window and started climbing the fire escape as quickly as her high heels would permit, cursing the shoes for restricting her.
The voices found her ears again when she passed outside the fifth story and headed toward the sixth and final one. She didn’t look back, for a downward glance would only serve to slow her flight.
“No!” a voice she thought was Shay’s screamed from a window beneath her. “No bullets, dammit!”
Her death still had to look like an accident. That meant she had a chance. She climbed from the fire escape onto the roof. She stumbled on the edge, fell to her face, and rose quickly to survey her next available move.
There weren’t many choices. A jump to another building was her only chance, but of four possibilities, two were stories higher than this structure and one was far out of range. That left her with a building the same height as this one an alley’s width away. Afraid that hesitation would make her task impossible, Sandy kicked off her heels and backed up to get a running start. The jump was eight feet, possibly ten. She had to do it now.
Sandy threw herself into motion, dashing across the roof with her eyes fixed on her target. During the instant she was airborne, she resigned herself to not making it across and tensed in anticipation of certain death.
Then she landed hard on the other side and tucked into a roll at impact. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the fat hulk hesitate before following and heard Stephen Shay’s desperate orders as she located the rooftop door. Her hands twisted the knob and found the door was open. A bullet clanged against its outer frame as she slammed it behind her. Obviously, Shay had abandoned his original strategy of “creating” an accident. She had beaten him.
But there remained six flights of stairs to descend, and Sandy took them quickly, without even bothering to consider use of another untested bannister. The first two flights came easily.
Halfway down the third she felt her leg give out, then realized fast it wasn’t her leg at all, but an entire section of the staircase. She grabbed on to the bannister as she tumbled, but it gave way and she felt herself falling. She tensed against the expected impact. It came quickly, but Sandy found herself still in motion, toppling down the flight of stairs she had landed on. She held tightly on to consciousness as she rolled to a stop and pushed herself tentatively to her feet. None of her wounds seemed serious, but it was difficult to tell. She touched her fingers up to her cheeks and they came away warm and wet, sticky with blood from several small gashes. The areas where it came from felt numb and swollen. She knew shock might overcome her and fought against it.
Her first step caused her right ankle to give out beneath her. The injury might not be serious, but it was enough to slow her down and that made it serious enough. She started down the fourth staircase, relying on the bannister now, though careful not to lean against it.
If Shay and the hulk had followed by way of the roof, they would now have to negotiate past the hole left by her plunge through the staircase, and that would slow them down considerably. That thought fueled her resolve even as she he
ard the first sounds of footsteps from above. Sandy turned onto the third flight.
A burly monster reached out for her. One hand grasped her throat, and as the other joined it, Sandy realized she had forgotten about the man Shay had left in the lobby of the other building, a costly oversight, because now he had her.
Sandy used her nails as weapons, digging as deeply as she could into his eyes and flesh. The man screeched in pain but held tight and slammed her hard into a wall. She felt plaster crack behind her and tried to knock the man’s hands aside, but he was too strong for her. Her legs would have made able weapons, except with one rendered useless it took all her strength just to keep the other from collapsing. She moved sideways across the wall, trying to keep the man’s grip from shutting off her air totally. She went for his face again, but he extended her at arm’s distance and she couldn’t reach him.
His fingers closed tightly on her throat, his raw cheeks dripping blood. Sandy felt her breath choked off, felt the tremendous pressure in her head an instant before she began to grow numb. Her hands flailed frantically, finding nothing.
Sandy realized she was dying. Her eyes remained open, but her sight was dimming. Her ears heard only the raspy breathing of the man who was killing her.
Suddenly there was a crash and a scream from behind her. Distracted, her killer’s grasp slackened. Sandy found the strength to struggle, swinging her entire body around to break free. She didn’t understand what had happened, but she knew she had an opening, a chance to live, and she grabbed for it.
Sandy threw herself toward the staircase as the killer grasped for her again. When he shoved her toward the bannister, though, instead of resisting, Sandy just twisted into his motion so his force carried him by her. She pushed against him with all her strength while he was still off balance and heard his scream mix with the shattering of wood as he crashed through the railing and plunged three floors down.
She swung around and came face-to-face with the fat hulk’s body impaled on some of the boards her fall had splintered. He had fallen through the same hole to his death. His limbs were twitching. Blood poured from his mouth.
