There are sixteen prime numbers lower than 50. Dave laid traps in the fire stairs on sixteen floors. Sixteen in the east stairwell, sixteen in the west, and sixteen in the south.
His instructors at Camp P had emphasized the importance of simplicity. A good snare is a plain snare, designed to produce maximum effects with minimal materials. As in almost every field of endeavor, so too in the art of dirty tricks — K.I.S.S. is the greater wisdom.
Dave respected K.I.S.S. His traps—“jokes” the instructors would have called them — included strands of dark green telephone cable strung as tripwires near the top of flights of stairs; buckets of slippery liquid soap (the kind used in bathroom dispensers) set in corners where they might be retrieved easily by a running man; jars of sticky rubber cement ready to be tilted over; containers full of flammable industrial cleaning solvent placed conveniently ready to hand; much heavier gauges of wire, this time carefully coiled around a water pipe and easily unraveled; a handful of cheap letter openers taped in spiky groups of three; power staplers left in various strategic positions; seemingly innocent wads of paper blanketing two platforms in the stairwells; a fire hose unwound from its spool and stretched up five flights of stairs; three canisters of photocopier toner ready to belch out blinding black powder; and other things as well.
His teachers would have been proud of him. K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Dave doubted that all of his traps would be effective. Many wouldn’t even be tripped. And as for those that were, at worst they’d cause broken limbs and punctured flesh. Most were merely inconveniences and none were guaranteed mankillers. They didn’t need to be. All they needed to do was slow Ransome and his people down.
On the other hand, pal, if you want to cause some real damage …
In a janitor’s closet he’d found five large cartons — two dozen bottles to the box — of ammonia cleanser.
Ammonia is common stuff. Everyone uses it to wash windows, sanitize toilets, and scrub porcelain. It is an ordinary household ingredient.
At Camp P they had taught him about ordinary household ingredients. They had taught him that, to the knowing, the average kitchen pantry is an arsenal of poisons, incendiaries, and explosives. When combined in the correct ratios, no small numbers of quote ordinary household ingredients unquote are lethal weapons.
Among them ammonia.
When mixed with iodine — the kind found in almost any office emergency medical kit — ammonia produces a precipitate of tiny nitrogen triiodide crystals. Once properly treated and dried, nitrogen triiodide becomes a substance of some commercial value. Indeed, DuPont sells it under a brand name well known in the mining industry — well known as being the perfect tool for blasting open new ore seams. The only problem with the stuff is its instability. A mere sixty pounds of pressure placed on a batch of triiodide crystals and …
Dave’s guardian angel smirked. Baby go boom!
2
Shortly after 6:00, David Elliot walked into an ambush.
While laying his traps, he’d concluded that Ransome’s goons were keeping out of the stairwells. Guarding the ground-floor exits was enough to ensure that their prey did not escape. Besides, occasional smokers — exiled from their offices, lepers of the late twentieth century — snuck out to the stairwells to enjoy secret, shameful cigarettes. While the presence of a telephone repairman carrying spools of wire up and down the stairs was unremarkable to the nicotine addicts, the presence of patrolling thugs would have raised their suspicions.
Had Dave been in Ransome’s shoes, he would have ordered his men to steer clear of the stairs until long after the business day had ended. Unfortunately, now the day had ended, and some of Ransome’s people were getting playful. Dave wondered whether their boss knew what they were up to. Probably not. A man like Ransome would never approve of such an ineptly prepared trap. It was inconsistent with Ransome’s professional standards. Dave himself found it sufficiently amateurish as to be offensive.
You just can’t get good help anymore.
Two of Ransome’s men had positioned themselves in the west stairwell. They were crouched in a corner on the thirty-third floor near the fire door. One of them, doubtless thinking himself cunning, had disconnected the fluorescent lights above the door. The concrete platform, the cold grey walls, and the door itself were masked in shadow.
The shadows were the giveaway. If they’d left the lights on, Dave might not have noticed until it was too late.
The old turn-off-the-lights trick. These guys read too many Robert Ludlum novels.
They couldn’t have been in place long. As he’d put the finishing touches on his booby traps, Dave had climbed past the thirty-third floor twice during the last fifteen minutes.
If they have any training at all, there’ll be another pair of them on the thirty-second floor, waiting on the other side of the fire door. Standard ambush tactics, straight out of the manual.
The idea would be to trap him between the thirty-second and thirty-third floors. Two men shooting from above, two from below. “Flanking crossfire” was the technical term. It turned your target into shredded beef.
Which means the excitement won’t start until you’re halfway up the next flight of stairs.
Dave climbed the last few stairs to the thirty-second floor. His shoe heels echoed on the concrete steps. The two men in the shadows knew he was coming. They would have heard him, would have been following his progress, and would have been whispering eagerly into their radios.
How long have they been there? How long have they been listening? Have they had time to summon more men?
The space between the stairs, the empty well that plummeted from the roof of the building to the ground, was wide enough that he could see his waiting enemies. Both were flattened against the wall. Both held stubby, ugly assault rifles to their shoulders.
AR-15s? No, something else. Something with bigger magazines and more rounds.
Dave stopped and puffed hard, as if catching his breath. He untucked his shirttail and swiped it across his face. He blew heavily. “I hate these goddamned stairs,” he muttered in a voice just loud enough to be heard. One of the men above him jiggled a radio closer to his mouth.
Idiot. You can’t yammer into a radio and point a rifle at the same time. Don’t they teach you people anything?
Dave rolled his shoulders and resumed climbing. The two men on the next floor would not shoot. Not now. They wanted to be sure they got him, and the only way to do that was to take him in a crossfire. They wouldn’t fire until he had reached the platform halfway between the thirty-second and thirty-third floors. He was certain of it.
The certainty did not help. His heart hammered, and now, all at once, he did feel short of breath. Sweat beaded on his forehead. A small muscle beneath his left eye twitched uncontrollably. His knees felt wobbly. He wanted a cigarette.
There are times when you knowingly walk into a trap. Sometimes you do it because it’s the only way to flush out the enemy. Sometimes you do it because the only way to achieve your objective is to spring the trap. But mostly you do it to bait a trap of your own.
Which doesn’t make it any easier.
The muscle beneath his left eye was out of control. His wrists, just where the veins are closest to the surface, tingled. It took conscious effort to keep his hands away from his guns.
Dave climbed. One step. Two steps. Three steps. Four …
He was, just for this moment, invisible. The men on the thirty-third floor could no longer see him. They would be shifting their aim to the platform eight steps ahead of him, waiting for him to blunder into their sights. The men stationed behind the door would be coiling their muscles, readying themselves to spring out. Both teams thought they knew where their target would be. They were ready for it, looking forward to it, and perhaps even thinking about how, once it was over, they would pat one another on the back, crack rough jokes, light cigarettes, and assure one another that, when all was said and done, the David Elliot affair h
adn’t been an especially difficult assignment.
Dave put his hand on the stair rail — cold, hollow, tubular.
One deep breath.
He pulled, kicked, pushed, and vaulted.
Thirty-two stories to the ground floor. If he missed, he missed, and that was that.
He cleared the stairwell, cleared the rail opposite, and landed on the balls of his feet. It had been a short, easy jump — only a moment of danger to take him from one flight above the thirty-second floor stairwell to one flight below it.
“Shit!” A voice from above. Silenced bullets pocked the concrete where he had landed. Dave was already gone.
He snatched at the banister, seized it, and hurled himself downward. He took two and three stairs at a time. He had to get past the next platform. If he was still on the stairs leading down from the thirty-second floor …
The fire door slammed open. Shoes slapped on concrete.
… then the men behind him would have a lovely view of his back.
He swung over the rail and leapt. A hail of bullets cut the air above, behind, and beside him.
A scream of frustration: “Sonofabitch, sonofabitch, sonofabitch!”
David Elliot ran.
“This is Egret! He’s on thirty-one, on thirty, headed down! Where are you? What? In the west stairwell, you jackass! Get here, fast!”
Someone, maybe more than one person, emptied a magazine, maybe more than one magazine, down the stairwell. The bullets punched into walls, blasting out rock hard splinters of concrete shrapnel. Dave felt a bee-sting of pain in his shoulder.
They were thundering down the stairs, firing as they ran. Flattened bullets ricocheted all around.
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 floo
r, 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.
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