My skull ached, adding to the disorientation, and after a quick self pat-down found I had somehow lost my Tec-9, and—
Oh, no.
My rucksack.
My rucksack, with the transceiver in it.
I cast a frantic look around and saw it, sitting midway on the stairs.
I got my legs under me, ready to make an attempt, but Hammett suddenly appeared over the railing above, her face shiny with excitement.
Still dizzy, I fired my Sig, and then dove to the side as more lead rained down on me. I made it to the edge of the carpeted dining area, crawled under the closest dinner table and upended it, sending silverware flying. Hunkering down behind it, I replaced the magazine in my weapon and willed the world to stop spinning.
“Please tell me the transceiver is in that backpack.” Hammett’s voice carried a teasing edge.
She’d seen my face when I realized it was gone. She knew something important to me was inside. I wasn’t about to give her any more hints. “Why don’t you go and check?” I taunted, the Sig now loaded and ready.
In my earpiece, more gunfire and screaming.
I peered around the table, eyes on my rucksack, then looked left to the expansive wine cellar, stocked to the ceiling with bottles behind glass doors. I crawled over to it, broke the glass with the butt of my .45, and snatched a bottle of Merlot by the neck. Hammett was no longer at the railing, but I knew if I were up there, about to make a run at the rucksack, I’d be close to the stairs, yet behind cover. The only thing on the balcony that qualified was the splintered remains of the maître d’ stand.
So that’s where I threw the bottle.
As it sailed through the air, I quickly grabbed a replacement from behind me, then aimed and shot the Merlot. It shattered near where I guessed my sister to be, spraying glass and wine. I tossed the second bottle, grabbed a third, shot the second, tossed the third, grabbed a fourth, shot the third, and then I stormed the stairs, taking them two at a time, emptying my magazine as Hammett brought her gun up and began to blind fire. Discarding my Sig, I snatched the rucksack strap. Bullets cut the air around me. I flew up the last three steps, leaped past the maître d’ stand, and, just as my sister stuck out her head, I cracked her in the face with a 2007 MacPhail Pratt Pinot Noir.
I landed on my side and tugged the rucksack onto my shoulders. Then I pulled up my leg and freed the asp.
Hammett was on all fours, shaking wine, glass, and blood out of her hair like a wet dog.
I got my feet under me and sprinted at her, extending my telescoping baton with a chhhht-chhhht sound like a shotgun being racked.
Hammett brought up her MP9, and I swung the asp with all I had. It hit hard, bending both it and the barrel of her gun. Then I drew back a foot, aiming to kick her in the throat.
She twisted her body and caught my leg in her armpit. She thrust to her feet, and I fell backward, over the broken stand. Grabbing her jacket, I pulled her with me, and we both tumbled down the stairs.
• • •
Victor raises his weapon to the woman’s head. He pauses for a moment, savoring. The bitch destroyed his men. Only Nikolai is still alive, writhing on the floor, whining and clutching his useless leg. But in the end, Victor took her down, and now he will blow her goddamn face off. The fact that she looks like Hammett is a bonus.
He smiles.
Before he can pull the trigger, he hears the click, feels the twin prongs jab into him, and when the electric charge rips through his body a split second later, there’s nothing he can do.
His teeth clench. Every muscle seizes. A guttural groan bounces off the marble, coming from his own throat.
The woman opens her eyes and stares at him, very much alive, as the taser pumps juice through his body.
He manages to stumble backward, ripping the darts from his flesh, but he can’t regain his balance and goes down, hitting the floor hard.
The force knocks the air out of him. He gasps for breath, but he’s not done. He still holds his weapon. Bringing it up, he sprays rounds in her direction. Bullets fly everywhere, uncontrolled, his muscles still in spasm.
Her .45 lays useless on the floor, out of reach, and she spins around, shielding herself with the armored chair. She takes off in the other direction.
She’s out of ammunition.
She had to be. It was the only reason for her to turn tail while he was down and wheezing and out of control.
Victor scrambles to his feet and starts after her. He feels stronger with each step, and he closes the gap between them despite her surprising speed. He has her now. This time he will not hesitate, he will not assume anything. This time he will shoot her in the head first and savor the kill later.
He pushes his legs to move faster, running all out, gaining.
Small pieces of something fall from her chair and skitter over the marble. He doesn’t fully grasp what is happening until his foot comes down on one.
The spike drills through the sole of his shoe and knifes into his foot. Cold slices his flesh, chased by pain. He bellows and pulls up short.
The chair keeps moving, rolling around the corner.
• • •
Hammett releases her sister as they tumble down the stairs, spreading out her limbs to stop the rolling. She snatches the railing, the world a blur, and watches Chandler reach the bottom floor and begin to crawl away.
Oh no, you don’t.
Hammett unholsters her Beretta. She fires, pinging Chandler three times in the left side.
They’re hollow points, meant to open up on impact and cause massive internal bleeding. A hit to a limb at this range should prove fatal, let alone three body shots.
Chandler cries out, but keeps crawling.
Body armor? Perhaps the liquid prototype Hammett had stolen?
No matter. She’s got something stronger than hollow points.
Slapping at her pocket, Hammett removes the grenade. According to The Instructor, the transceiver has a diamond-hardened case, and is practically indestructible.
Chandler, however, is not.
She pulls the pin and throws it, fastball style, at her sister’s head.
• • •
Fleming took a turn into the main lobby, leaving the Russian behind.
She couldn’t help wondering how Chandler was dealing with their dear sister. Right now, she’d give nearly anything to be able to get upstairs to help. When Hammett’s men had started shooting, she hadn’t been able to hear much over the earpiece. Now her pulse was beating so hard in her own ears, all she could make out was a loud explosion.
She hoped to hell it was only gunfire.
“Chandler? What’s going on?” Her voice sounded shaky, even in her own ears.
There was no answer.
Fleming’s arms felt weak, as if all the adrenaline was suddenly draining from her system. Her chest and legs hurt like hell. While the liquid armor she’d borrowed from Forsyth’s body had stopped the Russian’s rounds, they’d still left countless deep bruises in their wake and what felt like at least one cracked rib.
Approaching one of the building’s exits, she slowed the chair and took several shallow and painful breaths. If everything went to hell, as it indeed had, she and Chandler planned to meet at the Congress Hotel, but the thought of wheeling out the door and leaving her sister to face Hammett alone left her cold.
But could she really help? She was injured, and while she normally wouldn’t let that stop her, she had the extra problem of being out of ammunition.
When they’d arrived, she’d had to stay on the ground floor because cops had closed off the restaurant and the express elevators leading to the top floors. Now those cops were dead. The elevators were accessible. And the bodies of Hammett’s men were scattered around them.
Hammett’s armed men.
A few of their weapons and a short elevator ride, and Fleming would be back in business.
She turned away from the exit and headed back into the building.
&
nbsp; • • •
Getting shot while slathered in the liquid body armor felt a lot like getting hit with a bat.
Then, a moment later, the ball hit me as well.
But it wasn’t a ball. It was heavier and green and unmistakably a grenade.
It cracked into my hip, then rolled a meter to my left on the black marble floor. My heart froze in my chest. I had no time to think, no time to get a safe distance away, so instead I crawled toward it. No time to even pick it up, I swatted it and covered my head as it rolled into the corner of the restaurant.
The explosion was epic, impossibly loud and bright, the light blinding me even though I had my hands over my eyes.
Then came the wind.
I blinked away motes, and saw that the grenade had blown out two of the floor-to-ceiling picture windows. The wind was gale-force.
I crawled away from it, not anxious to get sucked outside.
Hammett, still on the stairs, had to grab the railing so the gust didn’t knock her over. I dug into my bag, pulling out the spare Sig, and unloaded on her. It took a few shots before I was able to adjust to the crosswind, but then I began pegging her like a tin bunny in a shooting gallery.
She dropped her gun, but the rounds didn’t drop her, and I guessed she must have slathered herself with the body armor as well. So I went for the head shot.
That’s when she charged me.
I tried to adjust, but I was dizzy and hurting, add the wind, and my shot went wide, and then Hammett was throwing a tackle, lifting me up off of the ground, driving me toward the broken window.
• • •
Victor pries two spikes from his foot. The hot ooze of blood soaks through his sock, and he curses the bitch and her tricked-out chair.
She’s long gone now, he’s sure.
He’s not happy.
He turns and hobbles back to the express elevators. Bodies litter the floor, blood pooling on light marble. Nikolai is still wailing, his leg dragging behind him as he tries to crawl.
Victor doesn’t feel like carrying him, but although he wants to put a bullet in the worthless man’s brain, he resists, instead kicking him in the ribs. “Shut up and pick up your weapon,” he says to the man in Russian. “Be ready.”
Dialing his wails down to whimpers, the man does as he’s told.
“When Hammett steps off those elevators, shoot her.” Victor has had enough. He’s going to collect his transceiver.
He picks up an AR15 off Sergei and hits the up button. The chime sounds and the elevator door slides open. He steps on just as shots squeeze out from Nikolai’s position.
What the hell?
He peers out in time to see the cripple roll in from the opposite direction. Nikolai is shooting, but she is not dying. She rolls past the open elevator, leans down and scoops the weapon from Peter’s dead hands. She empties it into Nikolai.
She has her back to him, either not yet aware he’s there or confident her chair will protect her.
He steps up behind her. Keeping his body out of range of whatever blade she might produce, he flings the assault rifle’s shoulder strap over her head and yanks.
Her head slams against the back of the chair.
He keeps the pressure on. Once she stops struggling, he tips the chair forward and dumps her onto the floor.
She lays limp on the marble.
He levels his weapon on her, waiting for the slightest twitch.
A cough shakes her body. She’s still alive.
His first inclination is to end her before she tries something else, but then he notices her earpiece.
This one might be more useful alive.
Victor hears a police radio crackle. Any second, the cops will be swarming the place.
He drags the cripple over to the express elevators and hits the call button, summoning the lift.
It’s time for this debacle to end.
• • •
Hammett aches all over from being shot, and this little game has gone on long enough. The wind is howling and whistling, whipping through her hair. She body slams Chandler to the floor, pinning her down, and Chandler’s gun bounces across the floor and out the window. Then Hammett reaches for her Spyderco knife, wanting nothing more in the world than to slit this bitch’s throat, get the phone, and get the hell out of Dodge.
Chandler grabs her wrist, trying to leverage Hammett away, and Hammett drops a knee onto her stomach, provoking a lovely grunt of pain.
“Didn’t you hear, Chandler?” she shouts above the wind, raising the blade up. “You’re second best. I’m number one.”
“This… this is what you are,” Chandler says, punching Hammett’s knife-hand.
Hammett almost laughs at the attempt, and then feels the spike of pain, accompanied by a roiling nausea. She looks at her hand, and sees Chandler has stabbed her with a piece of silverware.
Chandler grins, her face manic. “You’re forked.”
Then Hammett’s nose explodes when it meets Chandler’s fist.
• • •
Fleming wakes up to pain. Excruciating, unrelenting pain.
It takes her back years, to waking up on the operating table, her shattered bones poking through her skin in so many places her legs looked like cacti. She screamed so hard her throat bled, screamed while the nurses scrambled to put her under, screamed even as she slipped into unconsciousness.
This pain was similar. Except she wasn’t in a hospital. She was in an elevator. And her legs weren’t the cause of her agony. It was her finger.
Her broken finger, that the Russian was twisting back and forth, pulling it and snapping it again, and again.
Fleming tries to claw his face, his goddamn smiling eyes, but he easily slaps her hand away, twisting even harder, prompting the biggest scream of her life.
• • •
Hammett pushed herself away from me, and I rolled to all fours, taking a quick look over my shoulder at the howling Chicago skyline, less than two meters away.
My stomach twisted into a vertigo knot, and then I scrambled after Hammett. She was staring at the fork in her hand as if it had magically appeared. Her nose was a mashed tomato, leaking down her chin.
I bent down, reaching for my VORAX blade, when my head was pierced with the most horrible sound I’d ever heard. A scream, in my earpiece. So sharp and shrill that it drowned out the whooshing wind.
Fleming.
• • •
Victor twisted the cripple’s finger once more, grinning at the screams he provoked. Then he snatched the earpiece from her and shoved it into his own ear.
“You hear that, Chandler? That’s your sister. You couldn’t save your dear Kaufmann, but I’ll give you a chance to stop her pain.”
He twisted so hard he heard the knuckle pop out of place. The high-pitched keening probably woke up every dog in the building.
“I want the transceiver, Chandler.”
• • •
For a moment, I was unsure what to do. Fleming’s cries cut me to the core, and suddenly I was back in that helpless place, watching Kaufmann break down, lose his humanity, knowing it was me who’d betrayed him. In that instant of inaction, Hammett pounced on me, throwing a reverse kick. I managed to catch it on my shoulder, bunching up my muscles. She followed with a knife thrust, and I managed to block that, too.
Another scream threw off my concentration, and this time Hammett used a Muay Thai kick known as a Kradot thip—a jumping foot-thrust. It connected with my thigh, forcing me backward, backward toward the edge of the world.
“Don’t give him shit!” Fleming cried out, followed by more shrieks of agony.
I took a quick glance behind me, the night wind slapping my face, the ninety-five story drop so steep I couldn’t see the ground.
Hammett took two steps toward me. She’d yanked out the fork, and was slashing her knife in front of her, cutting the air. Not any martial arts move I was aware of, but terrifying nonetheless.
I dug the cell phone out of my
pocket and held it up. “Come closer and I throw it off the building.”
Hammett stopped, but her face morphed into a bloody sneer. “It will survive the fall.”
“Maybe. But how long do you think it will take to find? If ever?”
I was liking the idea more and more. I never asked for this responsibility in the first place. I didn’t want to be the President’s back-up plan. I didn’t want to have the fate of the world resting on me. Better to chuck the transceiver hard as I could, and hope it would be lost forever.
The elevator chimed, first on the floor, then in my ear. Victor stepped out, dragging a still-crying Fleming across the floor by her hand.
“Hold it,” Hammett warned. “She’s got the transceiver.”
Victor scowled at her. “I know, you ass. And look what I’ve got.” He raised up Fleming, holding her like a prize fish.
“Give me the phone, Chandler.”
“Don’t do it,” Fleming gasped.
Victor kicked her, then dropped her to the floor and stepped on her neck. He unslung the AR15 around his chest and pointed it at Fleming’s head. “The phone! Or she dies.”
Fleming’s eyes found mine. I saw fear there. But also resolve. She was willing to die so the transceiver is safe.
I should be the same way.
I need to think of the greater good.
These maniacs can’t have access to nuclear weapons.
I have to throw the phone away.
I have no other choice.
They’re going to kill Fleming anyway. Fleming, and me.
The world is more important than we are.
But I couldn’t drop the phone.
I’d only known Fleming as Fleming for a short time, but I’d known her as Jacob for years.
I couldn’t watch her die. I couldn’t watch anyone else I cared about die. Never, ever again.
“Let her go,” I said, with more bravery than I felt. “Or I’ll drop it.”
Hammett began to creep closer to me. I took a step back, my heels on the window pane. For a millisecond I wondered if I should just keep going, plummet to my death with the phone. Then I wouldn’t have to watch Fleming die, and this worst day of my life would be over.
Jack Kilborn & Ann Voss Peterson & J. A. Konrath Page 20