Vertical Run (16 page)

Standard operating procedure. If you can’t hit your target with a straight shot, get him on the bounce
.

Dave vaulted another banister. A shot, a ricochet, whined under his chin. He flinched. Far away, down—
how many?—flights of stairs, another door flew open. Men were running up now. They were trying to catch him in between.

Twenty-sixth floor. One more floor to go
.

He slipped, caught himself, pulled himself straight. He was where he wanted to be—on the twenty-fifth floor.

He glanced up the stairs. There it was, snaking up the steps, long and flat, just as he’d left it. It had been surprisingly heavy work to unwind it all the way up to the twenty-ninth floor. He hadn’t really expected to have to use it.

Ransome’s men were running past its end now. They didn’t see it, or if they did, they didn’t think about it. An emergency fire hose.

Dave took the red-enameled wheel in both hands, and turned. It was stuck. Dave gave it a panicked jerk. The wheel was frozen.

Aw, God, don’t do this to us
.

He braced his legs, and strained. The wheel moved. The pipe gurgled and hissed. Water was flowing through it. Dave pulled harder. The wheel turned freely. The hiss mounted to a roar. The fire hose was no longer flat and motionless. It filled, rounded, moved. Water boiled through it, up one flight of stairs, up a second flight, the pressure mounting with each passing inch.

How much water pressure? If memory serves, three hundred pounds. And that, my friend, is one hell of a lot of pressure
.

The hose jolted, swayed left to right, and began to rise. It looked alive, like an enormous tan snake shaking itself awake. And if it was shaking here, five flights from its end, then the nozzle would be …

A scream echoed down the stairwell.

 … whipping back and forth uncontrollably. Three hundred pounds of pressure in rapid motion. Six or seven pounds of heavy brass nozzle. One blow would break a strong man’s legs.

The scream rose. It was coming closer, and with awful
speed. Dave looked up just in time to see the body pass. The man was plummeting down the stairwell, wind-milling his arms, trying to seize the banister. His face was white with hopeless terror.

Damn
.

Damn, indeed. He hadn’t wanted to kill them. He just wanted to slow them down.

From up above there were more screams, more shouts, and no small amount of swearing. Dave ignored it. He had more serious concerns. The men coming up from the lower floors were uncomfortably close. If he shimmed the lock and fled onto the twenty-fifth floor, they’d be right behind him, and he’d be an easy target.

He could hear them—how near?—two or three flights of stairs below. One of them, almost out of breath, gasped, “What’s going on up there?”

Another voice, less winded, replied, “Only one way to find out.” Shoe soles clattered on concrete. They were running.

A barrage of bullets, automatic fire, stitched across the fire hose. Water geysered as the hose, losing pressure at every bullet hole, slowed its furious undulations. Now, the men racing down the stairs could pass it safely.

Earlier, while laying his traps, Dave had wound double lengths of thick coaxial cable around several standpipes. One of them was on this floor. The cable was anchored firmly and would not come loose. He snatched it up, looping it between his legs.

Tell me you’re not going to do this
.

Twice around the left leg, twice around the right.

You are utterly fucking insane
.

Up over the left shoulder, beneath the crotch, crisscross the back, and over the right and left shoulders.

Pal, let me make this as clear as I can. I do not want to die
.

A quick hitch knot. He was done.

He gave the cable a tug. It was secure. And the harness in which he had wrapped himself was a hasty but nonetheless credible imitation of a parachutist’s jump rig.

Oh no, pal! No!

A bullet whipped by his chest. He didn’t think about it. He took a short step forward, brisk but not hurried, bounced once on his toes, and sprang over the handrail. He dove with a perfection long-practiced, and never forgotten. He dove into the muddy-brown pond of his youth, into a green, green mountain lake. A jackknife, folded at the waist, now turning in the air, the torque of his body rotating him upright. A swimmer into cleanness leaping.

And it felt
good
.

Dave plunged through the empty space between the stairs. As he fell, he caught a glimpse of a face, a man wide-eyed and gaping. “Jesus God!” the man whispered.

A bullet whined somewhere, too far away to be worrisome.

He clutched the cable, bracing himself for the coming jolt. It would be no worse, he guessed, than his first jump. Twenty-five hundred feet over Fort Bragg. One or two men, the company clowns, were cracking weak jokes. Everyone else was solemnly avoiding their comrades’ eyes. That sonofabitch Cuban staff sergeant was jumpmaster. He was standing by the open door, screaming above the wind, screaming the countoff, and screaming obscenities. What was that Cuban’s name …?

The cable snapped taut. Thinner than the flat canvas straps of a jump rig, the wire sliced into his legs. Unexpected pain drove the breath from his lungs.

Christ! That hurts
.

He swung left, arcing up over the twenty-first floor handrail, and slamming into the wall with bruising force. Reflexively, he yanked the hitch knot, tumbled to the concrete, and rolled.

“Sheee-it!”
someone yelled. “Did you see that sucker?”

Someone else was bellowing, “Down! Get down there! Don’t let the bastard get away!”

Dave plucked a pistol from beneath his shirt. His legs
were numb and shaking. He forced himself erect. He grinned, showing his teeth, and emptied a twenty round magazine up the stairs.

Are we having fun yet?

Time to move on. Soft bullets pinged and bounced on the stairs above him. Dispassionately, Dave criticized his pursuers’ aim. He’d been in clear sight. If they had been better marksmen, they would have gotten him. He guessed his little do-it-yourself bungee stunt had rattled them.

Can we get out of here now?

David Elliot ran. He ran vertically as he had all day, and thus advanced not one step nearer freedom. Nor, in all fairness, did he fall one step closer to capture.

On the nineteenth floor, he lightly vaulted a tripwire. On the seventeenth, he heard a man—perhaps two men—come a cropper of it. Smiling faintly at their screams, he emptied two buckets of slippery soap on the stairs.

His pursuers swore when they reached those stairs. Or rather some swore. Others cried and moaned—they were the ones with broken bones. Dave heard their pain and stifled a laugh.

Now on the fifteenth floor he heard the sputtered but nonetheless gratifying profanities of someone who up above, had lost his shoes to the sticky embrace of quick-drying rubber cement. His cursing was heartfelt, Dave could tell, and all the more appreciated for its sincerity.

In contrast, the man who had been near the microwave oven at the wrong time didn’t swear. He merely whimpered. Dave thought he sounded in shock. Probably needed a medic, and soon. Too bad. Besides, he’d live. It was no big deal, only a small microwave, a countertop model stolen from an employee lounge. Dave had secreted a brace of two liter bottles of diet cola into it, and plugged the machine into an emergency outlet. As he ran past it, he had hit its on switch. Forty-seven seconds later an explosion of scalding cola and the shrapnel
of a shattered oven door eliminated yet another of his pursuers.

Dave heard it all—all the outraged wounded, all their obscene invective, all their cries for help—as he ran, and as he ran he giggled.

The thirteenth floor (fourteen by the building manager’s logic) was where Dave remembered placing a bottle of cleaning solvent. With no little foresight, he had taped a book of pilfered matches to its side.

Because the men chasing him had cautiously slowed their steps—no reason for that, those seemingly innocent wads of balled up copier paper were no more than they seemed to be—Dave had ample time to empty the bottle, light a match, and, while descending to the twelfth floor, flick it into the puddled cleanser. When it exploded in flame, he could no longer contain himself.

The last thing his pursuers heard was his laughter, deep rolling belly laughs, boundless joy, guffaws of sheerest pleasure, echoing through the stairwell. They stopped, looked questioningly at one another, and shook their heads.

Two pieces of enameled brass ring musically as they bounce across Colonel John James Kreuter’s field desk. The colonel picks them up, holds them to the light, and squints. He rolls his tongue around in his mouth, scratches the side of his head, and frowns. “Aw right, Lew-tenant, yew gonna stand there all day lookin’ like yew jest et a canary bird or are yew gonna tell me whut these here doohickeys is supposed to be?”

“Ensigns, sir. Those are the insignia of a Russian officer.” Dave can’t keep the smugness out of his voice. He doesn’t even try.

Kreuter rubs his hand across his cheek. He looks up at Dave, and then back down again at the two brass emblems. “Like as not, a field grade officer. A major, meybe.”

“Yes, sir. That’s precisely what they are.” Dave places a folded piece of paper on the colonel’s desk. Kreuter looks
at it like it was a dead rat. “An’ whut’s this, yer Christmas list for Santy Claus?”

“No, sir. It’s the name of an ARVN captain, one of our loyal allies. The major gave it to me shortly before his untimely demise.” He bites his tongue. He has to. If he doesn’t, he’s going to laugh.

Kreuter unfolds the paper and nods. He taps an unfiltered Camel out of a pack, flicks his thumbnail across a wooden match, frowning as he inhales. “An’ jest how is it, young Lew-tenant Elliot, that yew managed to work this here par-tic-u-larly miraculous feat?”

Dave shows his teeth. “Well, sir …” He feels the laughter boiling up from his belly. “… it’s that I figured …” His face flushes with the effort to control himself. “… living is …” He can’t bottle it up. “… a hell of a lot more fun …” No hope for it. “… than dying!” The laughter explodes.

Mamba Jack throws his head back and laughs with him. “Well, well, well, Lew-tenant, and ain’t yew some piece of work. That’s whut I got to say to yew. Jest well, well, well, and meybe yew and me got us here the start of a bee-utiful friendship.”

7:03
P.M
.

David Elliot stepped out of the elevator and onto the forty-fifth floor.

About time you returned to the scene of the crime. If there are any answers, this is where you’re going to find them
.

The Senterex executive suite was locked. The receptionist had long since departed, and all the secretaries would have left for home before 6:00. There still might be one or two workaholic executives hanging around at this hour. There usually were. Dave hoped to avoid them, but if he didn’t, he was quite prepared to deal with them.

He slid his office key in the lock, turned, and pushed.

Now aren’t you glad Bernie didn’t have one of those electronic card gizmos installed on this floor? Those suckers automatically log the ID numbers of everyone who comes in and everyone who goes out
.

He strode quickly across the reception room, turning left into the corridor leading to Bernie Levy’s office. Then, on impulse, he stopped, spun around, and jogged east down the hallway where, twelve hours earlier, he’d cowered beneath Ransome’s and Carlucci’s bullets.

The repair job was flawless. The bullet holes had been filled in, the gouges papered over; there wasn’t a scratch, a dent, or a scar.

No evidence. If you try to show anyone the proof of what happened this morning, they’ll just look at you and sadly shake their heads. Poor old Dave, they’ll say, it’s all in his mind
.

He glanced at the carpet, at the spot where Carlucci’s blood had spilled. No stain remained, no evidence, no hint that here, at this place, a man had bled to death. The carpet had been replaced with fabric the same shade, the same nap, and even the same wear as every other inch of carpet in the corridor.

A nice professional job. But then would you expect anything less from Mr. John Ransome and company?

He turned back toward Bernie’s office and, as he entered the reception room, almost collided with the sartorially resplendent frame of Dr. Frederick L. M. Sandberg, Jr.

Sandberg took a short step back, glanced over his shoulder, and collected himself. With patrician politeness he intoned, “Good evening, David.”

“Hi, Doc.” Fred Sandberg was the eldest member of Senterex’s Board of Directors. He had retired some years earlier as the dean of the Yale medical faculty, but remained active in private practice. His clientele was limited to senior corporate executives, and he was as good as he was expensive. So good, in fact, that he acted as personal physician to Bernie, Dave, and most of the Senterex executive cadre.

“And how are you this evening, David?” Sandberg’s tones were soft, smooth, inimitably well-bred.

“I’ve been better.”

Sandberg smiled gently. “So I have heard.”

Dave grimaced. “You and everyone else, I presume.”

“Quite so. Bernie called a Board meeting late this afternoon. You were, need I say, the sole subject on the agenda.” The doctor stroked a perfectly shaved cheek, as if framing a further remark. Dave spoke first.

“Doc, you know me, right? You’ve been seeing me for at least five years. You know me inside out and five inches up the large intestine.”

Sandberg peered over the frames of his gold-rimmed glasses. “Indeed.”

“So you know I’m not nuts.”

Sandberg gave him an exceptionally professional smile. “Of course I do. And, David, I must assure you that neither I nor anyone else thinks that you are actually …” He wrinkled his aristocratic nose in anticipation of using an improperly unmedical word. “… nuts.”

“The story is drug flashback. Right?”

“It is more than a story, David. I have seen proof. Agent Ransome …”