Runner (Sam Dryden Novel)

by Patrick Lee

  Through the open bathroom door he saw the cordless phone, its display glowing green, and understood.

  * * *

  Audrey’s fingers halted on the final clasp of the tandem parachute harness. She locked eyes with Sandra, who had also gone still, picking up the same thought from Dryden.

  “She couldn’t,” Sandra said.

  “She did,” Audrey said. “Watch the door.” She grabbed the rifle, threw it to Sandra, and left at a dead run.

  Past Rachel’s bedroom she took the hallway corner and crossed the sitting room to the southern windows, slamming to a stop with her palms against the glass.

  The helicopter was already north of the river, following a line up Michigan Avenue. Behind it, a second chopper lifted off from the rooftop of the RMC Plaza.

  A soft ding announced the arrival of the elevator car, no doubt full of security and police. Beyond blocking the easy way out, they were meaningless; they could no more open the heavy door than they could morph through it.

  The helicopters, however, would have to be dealt with. Audrey ran to the nearest closet, opened it, and pushed hard on the shelving unit inside, swinging it inward to reveal the cavity beyond the closet’s back wall.

  * * *

  Dryden had never felt this immobilized. For ten seconds, a stack of eternities under these conditions, he simply held on to Rachel and had no idea what to do. He kept the gun leveled on the door, and his eyes on the incoming helicopters—executioners to the scaffold.

  “I’m sorry,” Rachel whispered again.

  Dryden regained his composure and turned the girl’s face up toward his.

  “You can’t do this,” he said. “You can’t give up. You’d be giving up for both of us, do you understand that?”

  “If we get away,” Rachel said, “and if I turn into the other me … you might wish you had this moment back. That you hadn’t saved me.”

  “Not a chance.”

  He held her gaze a moment longer, hoping to see a glimmer of resolve there. She took a deep breath and nodded, looking stronger, if only by degrees.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Dryden said.

  The lead chopper was twenty seconds out.

  In the hall, one of the two women was still standing guard—Dryden had heard the other run past to verify the helicopters for herself. Whoever was in the hall would make a move on this room in the final seconds before the Little Birds reached sniper range. She would have no choice, by then, if she intended to keep Rachel alive.

  That move would come any moment now.

  Dryden’s eyes took in a long vertical split in the bedroom door, from the impact of the dresser. It followed the wood grain from the bottom of the door all the way to the top.

  Don’t think. Do it. Now.

  He turned his eyes on the south windows. He visualized himself shooting out the glass and plunging into open space.

  Rachel jerked as if stung, reacting to the thought. By reflex she reached to stop him from doing it.

  Dryden pushed her away and, keeping his mind focused on the plan to exit through the window, turned and sprinted for the cracked door instead. There was just enough room to get up to speed. He vaulted the dresser, brought his leg up, and pistoned it forward to exploit his body’s momentum. His foot connected with the door and broke it like a sheet of ice as he went through. The movement was awkward as hell. He ignored his balance—ignored everything but the SIG and the direction it had to be pointed.

  The corridor was pitch black. He fired, even as he fell, and in the instant of the muzzle flash he saw Sandra ten feet away holding the rifle—a G-36. She wasn’t aiming it. She looked deeply confused. The distraction, rough as it had been, must’ve worked—she’d gotten the image of him diving out the window, the same as Rachel had.

  Dryden landed in a crouch, retargeted on the darkness where Sandra’s face had been, and squeezed off three shots as fast as he could.

  It was death by strobe light. Three snapshots within the deep black, Sandra taking the bullets to the neck, cheekbone, forehead. Crumpling like a dropped marionette.

  Dryden heard screaming, somewhere. Not Rachel. Audrey. Along the south side of the apartment. Dryden scrambled for the heavy machine gun, groped for it in the darkness, and took it from Sandra’s hands. He raised it to a firing position facing the south end of the hall, where enough city light bled past the corner to show that there was no one there.

  Rachel appeared at her doorway. Dryden took a step toward her and stopped—something metal had rattled at his feet. He realized he’d heard the same sound when Sandra had fallen, but had missed it for more pressing details. He felt a barrel-mounted flashlight on the G-36 and switched it on.

  Sandra was wearing a parachute.

  He killed the light beam and checked the south corner again. Still clear. Audrey apparently knew better than to approach from that way; she didn’t have to read his mind to know he had the machine gun now. With vague amusement, Dryden realized Audrey’s mind reading gave him a small tactical advantage: For the moment he felt only Rachel prodding his thoughts, and he would sense the change as soon as Audrey got close enough to round the corner.

  He turned the other way, toward the north end of the hall. Skyline glow shone there as well, from the library’s windows. It was likely Audrey would circle the apartment to attack from that direction, but that would take her a minute or more. Her scream had placed her at the south side only seconds ago.

  Rachel’s bedroom windows began to hum as the nearer of the two choppers closed in. Dryden glanced through the doorway and saw the lead aircraft pass over the roof of the white marble building one block to the south.

  “Take this,” Dryden said, handing Rachel the SIG. It had two shots left in it. He nodded over his shoulder at the north end of the hall. “You see anything move up there, shoot at it.”

  She nodded and raised the weapon. Dryden crouched over Sandra, keeping both the G-36 and his eyes on the south corner. By touch, he set to work removing the parachute harness from Sandra’s body.

  * * *

  Two monitors in the computer room showed helmet camera feeds from the snipers on Sparrow-Four-One, the first inbound chopper, which had just gone stationary near the south face of the tower. Gaul watched the viewpoints pan across the glass and steel edifice.

  The pilot’s voice came over a speaker. “No movement on the target level.”

  Above and below eighty-three, the occupants of nearly every residence were at their windows, woken by the hovering chopper. The pilot directed a spotlight into the seemingly deserted floor, sweeping most of the southern stretch in a few seconds. Nobody there.

  “Sparrow-Four-One, make a slow orbit of the building,” Lowry said. “They’re in there somewhere. Neighbors called in gunshots. Sparrow-Four-Two, deploy your men.”

  “Acknowledged, out.”

  On a tightened Miranda frame, the second chopper arrived on-site. Gaul watched it settle into position above the southwest corner of the roof. The Little Bird didn’t need a proper landing pad; it was designed to off-load men onto rooftops in parts of the world where building codes weren’t exactly strict.

  In the satellite image, it was impossible to tell exactly when the chopper touched down, but suddenly the four-man specialist team bailed from the troop bay and sprinted across the building’s roof. They reached a stairwell access and halted for a moment. Bright light flared as they torched out a lock, and then they were in.

  * * *

  Dryden released the final clasp and pulled the harness free from Sandra. Rising, he kept the machine gun trained on the near corner. Still no sign of Audrey, in his view or in his head.

  He could hear both choppers now. The first was circling the building clockwise, moving up the west face. The second, having settled onto the rooftop moments earlier—its turbines sending vibrations down through the building’s core—now powered up and lifted off again. The team it must’ve put on the roof would be inside this apartment in no more tha
n four minutes. They would cut through the ceiling from upstairs if need be.

  They’d be three and a half minutes late.

  Dryden slipped the chute harness on with automatic ease, adjusting for the tightness. He nodded to Rachel; reluctantly, she lowered the pistol and stepped into the bedroom. Dryden followed.

  “All you have to do is hold on,” he said. “You’re going to put your arms around my neck and grab your wrists with your hands as tight as you can. Don’t focus on anything but holding on, okay?”

  She nodded, already scared to death.

  At that moment intense cold pressed at Dryden’s temples, like the touch of icicles. Audrey. Close now, coming fast. Determined and reckless.

  Rachel understood. She threw her arms around him, lifting her feet off the floor. Dryden raised the G-36, thumbed the selector switch to autofire, and raked the south windows. The panes disintegrated into a curtain of shards, raining out of the frames even as Dryden sprinted toward them. Wind surged in like water, plastering Rachel’s hair across his face and spraying glass against them both. Two steps from the window he let go of the gun, locked his arms around Rachel, and dove.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The city. Out in it, above it. Lights and windows and streets spinning in a wind-tunnel scream of night air. The tower filling up the world beside him. The choppers pounding the darkness with their rotors.

  Dryden’s senses stabilized. He turned his head to correct for the spin of his body and locked his eyes on the tower for reference. He and Rachel had fallen maybe ten stories, with seventy yet beneath them. He freed one arm from Rachel, pulled the release for the pilot chute, and had the arm tightly around her again before he felt the line go taut and rip the main chute from the pack.

  A second later the straps of the harness wrenched his shoulders back, and the rush of air ceased. The night became silent except for the helicopters circling the tower high above.

  Drifting now. The moment was deceptively peaceful. Dryden looked up at the canopy of the chute and saw the wind’s influence at a glance. It was pushing them toward the tower.

  “Can you hold on if I let go of you?” he asked.

  Rachel nodded, her forehead against the side of his jaw, and tightened her arms over the back of his neck.

  Dryden let go of her and grabbed the chute’s steering lines, Velcroed to the straps above his shoulders. He pulled the left line and felt the canopy respond, turning hard counterclockwise, swinging him and Rachel outward like a pendulum. Within seconds they were facing away from the building and gliding just fast enough to beat the wind.

  In the relative calm, Dryden considered their situation. It would take ninety seconds or more to reach the street. By then the choppers would spot the chute and report it to whatever ground units Gaul had dispatched along with them. Dryden had no sooner formed the thought than a trio of vehicles appeared to the south, veering fast through the sparse traffic on Michigan Avenue. It wasn’t even necessary to hazard a guess: Those units would be parked below the Hancock long before he and Rachel touched down.

  Dryden sought other options. The white marble tower across the street, directly to the south, rose from a base structure wider than itself—a building that occupied its entire block and stood perhaps ten stories tall. The roof of the base building offered a broad and easy landing zone and, more importantly, the tactical advantage of the building itself. Within the labyrinth of its interior, he and Rachel would have at least a fighting chance to evade Gaul’s people. The layout almost certainly extended two or three levels beneath the street, with egress points into service tunnels through which neither satellites nor helicopters could track them.

  The parachute’s glide angle was already taking them toward that rooftop. They were a minute above it—they would land on it around the time Gaul’s ground units arrived, or maybe sooner. This could work.

  At that moment the parachute’s canopy flared bright, and in the street far below, the circle of a spotlight shone, with the chute’s rectangular shadow eclipsing its center. One of the choppers had spotted them.

  The remaining sixty seconds it would take to reach the broad rooftop suddenly felt like an hour. It was enough time for the chopper to do a lot more than report them—it could attack them.

  Already Dryden heard its turbines changing pitch and saw the spotlight angle swing: The chopper was coming down to their level.

  A minute wouldn’t do. Dryden reached above his head, coiled his hand around three of the chute’s lines, and pulled hard. The effect was immediate. The canopy partially collapsed, dumping air, and he and Rachel began to plummet at twice the chute’s normal descent rate, spinning wildly as they did.

  Spinning—and no longer gliding. No longer heading south, toward the rooftop of the white building far below. While in this spin, they were once again at the mercy of the wind; it was shoving them north, back toward the cliff face of the Hancock.

  There was a judgment call to make: How long to drop like this before filling the chute again and trying to glide for the white building’s roof? Before Dryden could make the decision, the wind gusted. With each rotation he got another glimpse of the Hancock, and with each glimpse it was closer. A lot closer. They were going to hit it. He let go of the lines and held on to Rachel as tightly as he could. The chute reinflated and stopped spinning just a few yards from the tower’s face, but they were still closing distance with the building at something like twenty miles an hour. Dryden had just enough time to consider that this was about as fast as he could sprint on the ground. Which meant that this impact would be like running full speed into a wall. He spun to take the collision with his own body instead of Rachel’s, and tensed for it.

  It felt like being hit by a bus. Every joint screamed. Rachel lost her hold around his neck, and for an instant—the instant that counted—momentum turned her eighty pounds into five hundred, and her body was wrenched from his arms. All pain vanished from Dryden’s mind under a flash of adrenaline. His hands shot out for her, felt one of her sleeves—for a horrible second he imagined getting only her shirt as she fell free of it—and then locked around her wrist.

  They were sliding down the glass wall now, her eyes looking up at his, wide and intense. Below her was the abyss, easily forty stories of open space.

  There was something else below her as well, rushing up to meet them: a horizontal stretch of the tower’s famous exterior bracing. There were diagonal beams that crossed to form X shapes, and there were lateral beams running sideways through them. One of these flat beams, forming a ledge maybe eighteen inches deep, lay thirty feet below their position. Thirty feet and coming on fast. Dryden looked up and saw the reason for their speed: The chute had partly caved against the building, losing over half of its drag.

  Twenty feet to the ledge now.

  Ten.

  Dryden pulled Rachel up to his level and got his arms around her, once again meaning to take the collision himself first, though in this case there was no reason to think it would help.

  They hit.

  It was worse than he’d imagined. Once, in a training accident, Dryden had fallen three stories onto concrete. This impact on the ledge was at least that hard. He and Rachel were slammed downward into a tangled mass, his body cushioning her impact only slightly. He heard her breath rush out along with his own. He locked his arms around her before she could roll off him into open space.

  She opened her eyes but took several seconds to focus on him, even though his face was nearly touching hers. She held on to consciousness for a moment, then lost it.

  The dead chute fell past them, flapping uselessly against the tower in the straight-on wind. Seconds later it began shuddering violently in a different sort of wind, coming from above. Rotor wash.

  Dryden looked past Rachel and saw the AH-6 directly overhead. It descended into a hover thirty feet to the side, filling all his senses. Even the taste of its exhaust reached him. It pivoted to give the sniper on its left skid a clear line. The man was clos
e enough for Dryden to look into his eyes just before he raised his weapon.

  Assuming Rachel would be the first target, and not willing to spend the last few seconds of his life soaked with her blood, Dryden cradled her against himself and turned inward. He put his back to the chopper, visually shielding her. It wouldn’t save her, but they would at least have to shoot him first. He studied her face, absorbing the details one last time. Even with her eyes closed, she was as beautiful a thing as he’d seen in his life. He kissed the top of her head. Reflected in the windowpane behind her was the chopper, and the man with the rifle. The scope lens gleamed.

  Then, from high above, something screamed down out of the night on a vapor trail. It turned the chopper into an inferno, pounding it downward like a sledgehammer striking a child’s toy. Debris rained against the building, lit by the ghostly fire of the now-falling helicopter.

  * * *

  “What the fuck just happened?” Gaul shouted.

  The pilot of Sparrow-Four-Two was yelling about a missile, and on the Miranda image, his chopper pulled hard to the west and sped away from the building.

  The pilot of Sparrow-Four-One was not responding, probably because Sparrow-Four-One had become a flaming ball of metal. Gaul watched it hit the street with a bright puff of heat on all sides.

  * * *

  Audrey leaned as far out of the empty window frame as she could afford to, with the second FGM-148 Javelin resting in its launcher on her shoulder. The first launcher lay steaming on the carpet behind her.

  No good. The other chopper was long gone; pilots were survivor types. She dropped the second launcher as well, held on to the window frame, and leaned farther out into the wind. Dryden’s parachute hung against the building far below.

  Audrey retreated ten steps into the bedroom, came forward at a sprint, and leapt.

  * * *

  Dryden took his eyes off the wreckage and set his mind to the only thing that mattered now: getting into the building. The window beside him looked into a darkened office, visible only when he cupped his hand to his eye against the glass.