Green Ice

by Gerald A. Browne

  Carlos made a trial pass, went almost to the mountains and banked back.

  The plane would blip on Argenti’s radar screen, Wiley thought, but nothing to alarm the Conduct Section men on duty at the control console on the thirty-third floor. Just another private plane going by, not a helicopter and not really near.

  On the next run Wiley was up and at the exit. He would be first. Lillian and Miguel were ready, would follow in that order.

  Carlos adjusted the altitude to two thousand feet. At that height, with no wind factor, they would descend on a diagonal line and land seven hundred feet from the spot over which they jumped. That was the normal jumping formula. It would take about two minutes from opening to landing.

  The Hospital de San Juan de Dios was about seven hundred feet from target and a large enough structure to serve as their opening point.

  It was coming up below.

  Carlos cut the engine.

  Wiley blanked his mind and leaped.

  He said his full name aloud four times and pulled the ripcord handle. After half a second of uncertainty he felt the harness snug up around him as the chute blossomed open above.

  He looked up to see if he had a line over. He couldn’t tell with the black chute against the night sky. He wasn’t spiraling, so he assumed all suspension lines were in order.

  But where were the fires?

  He was supposed to use the four fires as quadrants, draw an imaginary line from fire to fire and aim for the center of that square.

  He was falling about fifteen feet per second.

  There they were, the fires, off to the right.

  He had to adjust. He pulled down on the wooden handle that was on the back side of the right riser, just above him. Pulling that toggle, as it is called, distorted the shape of the canopy and allowed air to spill out of its rear right slot.

  The harness with Wiley in it rotated slowly to the right.

  He immediately released the toggle and, according to the four fires, was now descending on the correct line. His rate of forward glide was a normal ten feet a second, still going down at fifteen a second.

  What if he undershot and landed in the middle of some busy intersection? He wouldn’t have to be far off to end up in the Plaza Bolívar in the midst of people on their way to Christmas Eve mass. He could see his picture in the newspapers and the expression on Argenti’s face.

  In keeping with his training average he had only slightly better than a fifty-fifty chance of being on target.

  At a thousand feet now, he estimated.

  It appeared he was going to be long.

  Way long.

  He braked, pulled down on both left and right toggles. Of course, it wasn’t like braking a car; there was no stopping or slowing him. What it did was reduce his forward glide by opening both slots in the canopy. At the same time it altered the angle of his fall to almost vertical.

  After a moment he released the toggles, glided a ways. He braked and glided alternately several times; it was like going down a flight of steps.

  At six hundred feet he realized he was off to the left. At that point he was only two hundred feet above the roof, had only a few seconds to make the corrections. He yanked down on the left toggle, the canopy responded at once.

  He came down on the roof about ten feet off dead center. A soft, stand-up landing, like an old pro. He found it incredible that he’d actually done it. The roof, though unfriendly territory, felt solidly comfortable and welcome beneath his feet. With the layer of foam rubber Lillian had glued to the soles of his boots, he’d landed with barely a sound. He recalled that when the bruja Julietta had told his tomorrows, she’d said he would fall from a great height but not be hurt. What a coincidence.

  His chute lay relaxed on the surface of the roof. He slipped out of the harness as he gazed skyward.

  Lillian was about a hundred feet up.

  She was going to overshoot.

  Wiley kept himself from shouting to her to brake, so as not to set off the listening alarm. But what the hell did it, or anything, matter if she wasn’t going to make it?

  She missed the roof by six feet.

  A section of her canopy brushed the edge, overlapped the roof.

  Wiley dove, made a stretching reach and got a crease of it with his fingers. The canopy was nylon and slick. It slipped away, but not before he grabbed out with his other hand and got a better hold. In that prone position it took all his strength to stop the momentum of her fall.

  She dangled along the side of the building. Her legs extended below the thirty-third floor, outside the window of Conduct Section’s control room. The men on duty needed only to glance in that direction. She could do nothing to avoid hitting against the window. The toes of her boots barely missed bumping it, as she swung back and forth.

  Wiley fought the expanse of the canopy and finally grasped the suspension lines. Slowly, hand over hand, he hoisted her up onto the roof.

  She thanked him with her eyes.

  “I love you” wanted to come out of him again, but there could be no talking because of the listening alarm.

  Miguel came down directly in front of the rotating radar beacon.

  That caused a momentary blank-out on the screen in the control room below. The radar man on duty noticed and was alert for any further sign, but the sweep on the screen was immediately clear all the way around and remained so. He attributed the lapse to a minor discrepancy somewhere in the circuitry.

  Wiley had been right about the radar. It was designed for longer range, couldn’t pick up and define anything as close as the roof. To prevent its waves from constantly bouncing off other high buildings and the mountains to the east, the radar’s rotating beacon had been set at an upward angle, missing the roof and anyone on it.

  Also as Wiley had thought, the listening alarm was an honest and formidable device. A series of miniature transmitters, super-sensitive no doubt, were built into a low raised ledge that bordered the roof all around. Thousands of transmitters, so not an inch of the roof was unprotected. Apparently it was a custom installation. Anyway, Wiley had never seen or heard of anything like it. He had the urge but not the suicidal compulsion to yell right into it, rupture a couple of eardrums down on thirty-three.

  He put his finger to his lips, reminding Lillian and Miguel to maintain silence.

  They packed the chutes.

  Wiley went to the window-washing apparatus.

  It was actually a cumbersome vehicle, with thick rubber wheels that fit into a pair of six-inch-deep tracks. The tracks ran parallel around the perimeter of the roof. The electric motor that powered the apparatus was housed in a large metal box fixed to the vehicle’s weighty steel frame. As part of the frame, two structural beams, left and right, ran up and out, armlike. From them a permanent scaffold was suspended by steel cables. An arrangement similar to the way lifeboats are suspended from overhanging davits so they can be swung out and lowered down the side of a ship. The platform itself was made of steel. It was about fifteen feet long, four feet wide, enclosed by waist-high mesh, like a cage, on the outer side and at both ends. The ignition and directional control switches aboard the platform were wired to the motor.

  Wiley wondered how much noise the motor would make. Could be whenever the building was having its windows washed Conduct Section was notified and cut the listening alarm.

  He flipped the ignition switch.

  The motor didn’t go on.

  Did the building turn off the power up there at night?

  He flipped the switch on and off several times. Nothing.

  Maybe there was a disconnect at the housing. He kneeled beside the box that contained the motor, saw the wires were intact. The housing was solid, sealed.

  Well, that was it. Stopped, right off.

  Wiley slouched futilely against the housing. He realized then that he was feeling a vibration. Very slight. He put his ear to the side of the housing and heard it, an ever-so-faint hum. The motor. It was running. Why the hell hadn�
��t he tried the scaffold controls instead of assuming the worst. Evidently the inside of the housing was extra-insulated to prevent the motor’s noise from interfering with the listening alarm. Probably Kellerman had ordered that so surveillance would not be interrupted. Thank you, Kellerman.

  Lillian and Miguel placed the packs and other equipment on the scaffold and climbed aboard.

  Wiley would operate the directional controls, which were as simple as could be: one switch for up or down or neutral, another for left or right or neutral.

  He flipped the switch to down.

  The scaffold moved out over the edge of the building to the end of the davits. In motion, the scaffold seemed much less secure. It swung a bit more than Wiley and the others had expected. They braced themselves. Wiley flipped the switch to neutral for a moment.

  Now there was nothing between them and a thirty-five-story drop except the floor of the scaffold. The floor also was constructed of steel mesh, which made them feel as though they were sort of standing on air.

  They glanced down to the street.

  The fires were still blazing, and there was still the confusion of the trucks and hoses, halfhearted fire fighters and the crowds from the barrio. The pops and the booms of fireworks exploding. Some seemingly childish grown-ups were using slingshots to send fireworks high into the air, timing them so they exploded at their peak. Some reached nearly halfway up the building. It was like an assault.

  Directly below, at the base of the building, a cordon of armed troops had taken position. Evidently, someone, most probably Kellerman or Argenti, had been informed of the crowds and fires, and as a precaution, this contingent of troops had been ordered to the scene.

  Wiley estimated there were about fifty men. It was something neither he, Lillian nor Miguel had anticipated. If even one of these soldiers happened to look up and believe he saw something silhouetted against the sky.… The fire trucks were equipped with searchlights. The soldiers with their rifles would be able to pick them off easily.

  Best not to think of it now.

  Wiley flipped the down switch again.

  The scaffold descended by its cables slowly, steadily. Wiley stopped it when it was level with the top floor.

  They were on the west side of the building, the side they wanted; however, the vault area was at the southwest corner.

  Wiley flipped the appropriate switch. The scaffold moved to the right. It took about twenty seconds for it to reach a window of the vault room.

  Conduct Section’s control center was on the second floor down. They could see its lights spilling out.

  The window to the vault room measured about twelve feet wide, ten feet high. Heavy plate glass, at least a half-inch thick, from the sound when Wiley rapped it with his knuckles.

  Lillian positioned herself opposite the midway point of the window. She estimated exact center. Taking a solid stance, she aimed the Colt forty-five automatic and squeezed off a single round.

  The bullet with water in its nose hit the window glass.

  They might be wounded by pieces of glass flying outward. A greater danger would be the reaction of the soldiers when glass fell to the sidewalk.

  The hydraulic bullet shattered the window all the way to its four frames. The tremendous spreading force of the bullet caused the glass to implode. Huge shards and smaller pieces flew into the room. Hardly a splinter fell outward, and the frame was bare, as though the window had been removed by a glazier.

  The shot set off the listening alarm on the roof just above.

  In the control room on thirty-three, the Conduct Section man on duty saw the decibel needle jump to the limit. He waited to see if it stayed at limit or jumped again, but it settled back to normal level on the gauge. He cut the alarm, reset it and made a notation in the log. He had phoned Kellerman three times since ten o’clock, whenever the alarm had gone off. It was the fireworks. Otherwise, the decibel needle would have stayed up there more than a second, Kellerman had told him. Kellerman had sounded miffed, short with him during the last call. So, he wouldn’t call Kellerman this time. Good thing he hadn’t had the earphones on just then. He liked his job but not enough to go deaf for it. Goddamn fireworks, and Kellerman for that matter.

  He told the other man on duty to watch after things for a moment. Got up and went into the adjacent room. The armory, they called it. A dozen automatic rifles were in place on a rack. He reached down behind the rack and brought up a fifth of Smirnoff hundred proof. He drank from the bottle. It was against regulations, of course, drinking while on duty, but with vodka his breath wouldn’t give him away, and this was Christmas Eve, and turning out to be a hell of a night.

  Two floors above, Wiley, Lillian and Miguel were in the vault room. Glass crunched under their steps. First thing, Wiley examined the wall closely, played his flashlight on it. He didn’t find what he was looking for right off, because they were so tiny, unnoticeable.

  Holes not large enough to stick a pin into.

  Hundreds of such holes within a six-inch-square area on the surface of the wall. About five feet up from the floor.

  That the holes were there was encouraging, Wiley thought. He had never been a hundred percent sure they would be. Eighty-twenty, he’d told Lillian, sixty-forty had been more the truth.

  He tried to recall exactly where Argenti had stood that day. He decided on a spot about seven feet out from the wall. Lillian also remembered and agreed that was about it. She got the tape recorder from her pack. It was cued up, all she had to do was stand on the spot and turn it on.

  Argenti’s voice.

  Ominous at that moment in that place.

  Wiley resented that it caused him a shiver.

  “Meno Sebastiano Argenti,” the tape said with Italian flavor.

  Wiley had surmised that the vault would open in response to Argenti’s voice, specifically those words. That the perforations on the wall concealed an electronic receiver which would transmit the voice to a computer. The computer would be programmed for the exact inflections, pitch and resonance of Argenti’s speech. Those sounds would be translated by the computer into vibrations on a scale, much like the notes in a score of music. The vibrations of Argenti’s exclusive vocal configuration processed by the computer would give the vault doors’ internal mechanism permission to unlock.

  However, it didn’t happen. Nothing happened.

  “I think I had it too loud,” Lillian said. She rewound the tape, turned the volume down a bit and played it again.

  That made no difference.

  Possibly they had selected the wrong key words. They had settled on his name because it was the only thing they both remembered him saying those separate times when the vault doors had opened. It seemed to stand out, but they could have been wrong.

  “Play the whole tape,” Wiley told Lillian.

  She did. Nothing on the tape had any effect.

  That left only one possibility.

  Lillian got the photographs from her pack. They were eleven-by-fourteen-inch black-and-white enlargements of Argenti. Front view head shots, life-size, ten and a half inches from chin to top of head. Argenti’s beard and full crop of hair had made it difficult to determine exactly where his chin and top were. Using the motorized Nikon camera, with its ability to take five exposures per second, Wiley had been able to get a series of Argenti saying his full name.

  Lillian stood on that same spot facing the wall and held up one of the photographs.

  Wiley and Miguel shined their flashlights on it.

  Wiley had also speculated that the perforations on the wall might serve as an electronic unit, much like an ordinary television camera. Argenti’s image would be received and relayed into a computer. The computer would be programmed exclusively for Argenti’s features. His various shadings and shapes would be scanned. The total resolution of Argenti’s face would be the only thing acceptable to the computer, which, when satisfied, would activate the vault to unlock.

  It didn’t.

  Lillian
tried another photograph. Then each of the photographs in the series.

  The wall remained intact.

  Maybe the photographs should have been in color. Or could be what was missing was a mere wink from Argenti.

  Wiley had been wrong.

  Argenti still had him outsmarted.

  “What now?” Lillian asked.

  Wiley hated to say it. “Unless you or Miguel have any bright ideas, we try to go home.” He was disgusted with himself. Realized now how sure he’d been. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone this far, jumped out of a plane at night over Bogotá. Shit. All Argenti had suffered was a broken window.

  He lighted a cigarette. The first in over two hours. His nicotine craving had been nullified by anxiety. Now the cigarette didn’t taste good, or maybe it was the bad taste of failure.

  Anyway, how did that goddamn vault unlock?

  He berated himself with a closed-mouth scoff.

  Okay, electronic smartass, if not acoustically or visually, how?

  It was probably something simple, but he couldn’t come up with it. He could hardly think beyond his acoustical and visual theories. His mind had become too set on acoustical or visual …

  … or.

  “Let’s try one more thing,” he said.

  Lillian resumed her position seven feet from the wall. She held up one of the photographs.

  At the same time Wiley played the tape.

  Acoustical and visual combined.

  That didn’t work either.

  But Wiley had the feeling he was onto something.

  There were five photographs, taken in a series when Argenti was saying his name. Wiley and Lillian hadn’t thought to number or in any way note their sequence. They tried to determine that now. The only thing they had to go on was Argenti’s mouth, which was hidden completely by his beard in one photograph and only barely visible in two.

  When they believed they had the photographs in correct order, Lillian stood on that spot facing the wall.

  She held up four of the photographs, her fingers separating them. She couldn’t handle five, so Wiley held up one photograph, the first in the sequence.