“How the hell are we supposed to get from here to over there?” Gomez asked, pointing a finger to the far end of the complex.
“Lots of jumping onto hard concrete. Some leaping over chasms,” Ransom replied.
“Sounds like fun,” Luke said.
The first connection between wings wasn’t that bad, maybe an eight foot drop from one roof to the next. Luke uncoiled a thin roll of black wire and fished it through the end of a small, slick grappling hook. He wrapped the rig around his chest, twisting the ends of the hook under the cable to the side of his right hip.
“Might as well get started,” he growled.
Then, without another word, he turned, flexed his legs, one knee cracking audibly, and took off running. At the edge of the roof he tucked into a squat, sprang up into the air, and leapt onto the next roof, where he landed with a muffled thud, stumbling and falling to his knees, then quickly jumping back to his feet.
Gomez turned to Ransom, flashing him a look of comical panic.
“Oh man, at least my girl likes tending to my wounds. This is gonna hurt.”
Ransom nodded, trying to hide his fear. Then the two of them ran for the edge of the roof, hurled themselves up into the air, and glanced down over the edge of the building at the crowd down below. For a moment they seemed to hover in the air. Then they crashed down, a Tasmanian Devil cloud of tumbling equipment and flailing limbs. The two of them climbed back to their feet, picked off the pieces of roofing and bird crap, and took off running to catch up with Luke.
Negotiations
They moved the group into the glassed-in room in the back of the lab. For some reason the change of location made Raj especially mouselike. His left hand was constantly creeping to the back of his neck, where it scratched up to his scalp before suddenly dropping down and clasping his right hand. Jeff watched this display a half-dozen times until he finally spoke up.
“What the hell are you doing, Gupta? Why are you so nervous?”
Raj didn’t say anything, but swallowed visibly.
“For Christ’s sake, just say something!” Jeff yelled.
“This is the staging area.” Raj said.
“Staging area?” Nina asked.
“For the project,” Gupta answered. “This is the room where we tested the formula on the animals.”
Jeff took a deep breath. “And I’m sure we’re not talking flea and tick formula, right?”
“No,” Raj said calmly. “And before you ask, we’re not talking about a cure for that virus, either. That never worked out. The research pinwheeled off in a different direction, something very much outside my field.”
Jeff stared at him. His mouth tightened.
Raj continued, “It was more of a... weapon. If put into the right hands. It could just as easily be used to wipe out carriers of the infection. Instead of hoping the virus would burn itself out, thereby bringing about its own demise, this would act to speed things along.”
“The whole God thing,” Jeff said.
“Maybe,” Gupta nodded. “Certainly in the wrong hands I’d say that might be a possibility.”
“An inevitability,” Renoir muttered.
Nina looked up. “So that canister?”
“That’s it,” Raj whispered. “Most likely, your friend is dead.”
Nina and Jeff fell silent.
The people scattered around the edges of the room were whispering to one another or crying softly. Others sat and stared, mentally removing themselves from their current situation.
“If we get out of here. When we get out of here,” Jeff said in a slow, deliberate voice. “Your career is over. I’ll do everything in my power to be sure you go to jail for this.”
“That’s the least of my concerns now,” Raj replied.
“So how does it work?” Renoir asked. His voice was growing weaker as time went on.
Jeff looked at the older man. In the hour or so that he’d seen him, Renoir’s face and hands had turned about ten shades lighter. His face was glazed with a mist of cold sweat. His lips were pale. The blood loss was taking its toll.
“The formula is delivered in a gaseous state. It acts on contact, whether inhaled through the lungs or transferred to the nervous system through physical contact with the skin. Within a few moments of exposure, cells, every cell, almost instantaneously deteriorates and breaks down.”
“And I’m sure that’s not pretty,” Jeff muttered.
Raj shook his head. “But it acts too quickly for the subject to feel any pain.”
“I’m sure you’d like to believe that,” Jeff continued. “Makes it easier on you.”
“Not that that’s a consideration,” Renoir added. “He’s never exactly been the most humane researcher in our department.”
“In what range does this concoction of yours take effect?” Nina interrupted.
Raj looked away from the men, turned to Nina and responded in a slightly condescending tone. “If it’s in the air in a self-contained environment, like this room, the range is virtually unlimited. Larger areas may bring partial exposure, but the effects are still lethal. The question of a safe distance is virtually irrelevant.”
“So, I’ll just say what you’re worrying about. What we’re all worrying about then,” Jeff said. “You think they’re gonna kill us.”
Raj said nothing.
“Any idea what we can do about it?” Jeff asked.
Raj glanced through the glass at the gunmen in the next room, then turned and looked towards the hostages lined up against the back wall. Satisfied that no one else was watching, he reached down to a drawer near the bottom of the lab bench and slowly pulled it open. Two metal canisters rolled from the back of the drawer forward, clinking against one another as they rolled to a stop.
* * *
Ransom was hurting by the time they reached the west wing of the hospital.
This was something new.
Time was, he could run across three football field-length rooftops, jump down from any number of gravel-covered rooftops, climb up just as many brick walls and AC systems, and still not break a sweat. Now he was definitely in some pain.
Was it was getting time to start thinking of settling down, maybe take a desk job, squire a serious lady friend, like Victoria, or that chick Morgan? Maybe it was, maybe it was.
Still, the last 10 or 15 minutes had been a lot of fun, and now his adrenaline was pumping to beat the band, so he might hold off on the desk job for now, stick with the exciting work a little bit longer. Victoria and Morgan were another matter. Whichever one got to him first, that was good enough for him. Which reminded him of his onion tartlet; it was after all “seal the deal night,” and he still had a lot of prep work to wrap up when this whole situation was resolved. His mouth was watering in anticipation, hot, delicious anticipation. His only hope was that Victoria’s performance would live up to that of his tartlet; it would be some tight competition.
“You ready for this?”
“You bet your ass I am,” Ransom answered without hesitation, the tip of his tongue tickling the corner of his mouth.
“Uh, don’t look at me that way man,” Gomez responded. “You’re freaking me out.”
Ransom snapped to attention. Stop thinking about the tartlet, Ransom!
“I meant I was ready to move in and get this thing done.”
“We all clear on the battle plan?” Luke asked.
“Not a bit,” Gomez said.
Luke pulled out a printout of Murray’s plans and flipped to the second page. “Assuming these guys have rigged all the exterior and adjoining doors, our best bet is to come in through the ventilation housing on the roof-”
“Goddammit!” Ransom muttered.
“What?” Luke asked.
“It’s just so clichéd. I was trying to avoid the air ducts; they always do that in the movies. You know that never works.”
“We don’t go in through the ducts. We just get into the building through the exhaust fans for the ventilation sy
stem, then we pop out a panel on the inside and go through the maintenance accesses above the top floor.”
“And how do we get down to where these guys are standing, rubbing their hands together and cackling?” Gomez asked.
Luke ran his hand over to a cross-section diagram of the building. He stopped on a glass-enclosed stairwell at the southeast corner. “To get downstairs we’re gonna take the express route, open the hatch above the back stairs, hitch a rig to the cross beam, and repel down down the middle of the stairwell as quickly as possible without cracking our heads on the handrails.”
“Then what?”
“Then we find this kid and see if he can show us around.” Ransom answered.
The three of them looked at the plans one more time, then exchanged glances.
Ransom nodded his head. “Let’s do it.”
Luke pulled out a Zippo-sized gadget, flipped open the top, and exposed a small, two pronged metal fork, which he lifted to one corner of the ventilation housing and fit into a matching set of eyes on the top of one of the fastening bolts. He pressed his thumb against the back of the tool, and a tiny motor quickly spun the fork around, twirling the bolt free in seconds. He did this for each of the remaining bolts and tipped the cover free. Gomez and Ransom helped him lower it silently to the rooftop. With the cover free, the hot air from the exhaust system began swirling around them. Ransom looked in through the metal screens and saw two massive fan blades whirling about inside.
“What do we do about those?” he began, but was cut short as Luke pulled open the breaker panel on the side of the exposed ducting, studied the inside fleetingly, and jammed another fork-shaped tool between two circuits, which immediately shorted out the system, sending up a plume of smoke.
“How many of those fork things have you got?” Ransom asked.
“Plenty,” Luke replied as he pulled the cover from the fan, moved the blade to the side with his foot, and leaned his back against the metal ducting. “See you inside.” He pulled his arms against his chest and slid into the darkness.
Ransom and Gomez listened carefully for a thump or a muffled scream.
Gomez looked at Ransom a little warily. This was the part of the operation where Brick was often known to get a case of the... butterfingers, or at least, that was the rumor. Gomez knew the guy’s reputation in the department, and especially in this type of operation, was top notch, but there was a part of him that couldn’t help but worry about getting tripped up if the guy had one of his Inspector Clouseau incidents in the middle of the job. Oh hell, what was he worrying about? Luke was the one who would probably end up running into trouble. He was humorless, and he was mechanical, and at this moment, God only knew where he was slipping and sliding to inside the building ventilation system. After a few moments, when no sounds of panic or stifled agony echoed up to them from the access hatch, Gomez and Ransom each climbed up to the entrance of the system and followed Luke’s example.
* * *
Phelps was on the phone now, trying to get an answer from inside the building. Tim hadn’t answered the phone on the last three attempts. This did not bode well for the chances of negotiation. He hung up, dialed again, and waited. The phone rang five times, started to click into the lab’s voicemail account, then, just as Phelps was about to hang up, a voice came on the line.
“Are you trying to sweat us out?”
“Excuse me?” Phelps asked.
“Agent Phelps,” Tim responded. “The ventilation inside the building has been turned off. Are you aware of this? I have a hard time believing that you aren’t.”
“There could be a million reasons for that.” Phelps responded. He was trying to sound in control. “As you know, there was a pretty good sized fire at the construction site next door. And in case you’ve forgotten, the front of the building just got chewed up pretty good with gunfire. More likely than not, something’s shorted out or gotten nicked.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Are you still with me?” Phelps continued. “I think we have more important things to discuss than the status of your air conditioning, don’t we? I’d like to know a bit of the objective behind this whole operation of yours. What’ll it take to get you to let some hostages out of there?”
“There won’t be any hostages coming out of here.”
Phelps stopped cold.
He’d dealt with guys like this before. In most cases it was just talk, swagger. A few comments about what they were doing there, what they wanted, and then they’d let something slip, something telling, the name of their home country, or a mention of their family, something, anything that would let Phelps get a little knife blade in there, so he could work and jiggle the blade, pull back the cover and get inside the workings of the big machine. These guys all had a purpose in their heads, cracked or otherwise, something that made them think they had a right, an obligation, to do whatever the hell they wanted, just so long as it was all in the pursuit of their “mission.”
Only this guy was different. He didn’t seem to have the need to talk, which led Phelps to believe that he wasn’t planning to use the people inside the building as pawns. More likely than not, the folks he had squirreled away in that building were more of a hassle to him than a negotiating chip, and if Murray was right about Griffin’s past operations, those people were in some serious danger.
“What do you mean ‘there won’t be any hostages coming out of there?’”
“I’m not interested in these people, or in trading their lives for mine. You’re going to let me out of this building, Agent Phelps. You’re going to provide me with transportation out of here. And then you’ll find these people inside the building, safe and sound.”
“I’d like to see that happen, but I’ll need some sort of good-faith gesture on your part,” Phelps said slowly.
“Good faith,” Tim laughed. “Ohh, Agent Phelps-”
Then there was silence again. Jesus, what the hell did that mean? What a goddamn annoying laugh! What in the bloody hell was this guy here for?
Phelps flashed on the image of that guy Drake going up in a cloud of pink mist. Whatever the hell was in the canister, that was what Ted, or Griffin rather, was here for. He was just out on the town, picking up new and exotic weapons. Nabbing a few essentials with a five-finger discount, and all he wanted to do was get out with minimal hassle. But what happened with shoplifters when they got caught? They either gave up, ran, or put up a fight. This guy was definitely gonna put up a fight, unless Phelps found a way to make him happy.
“Look, let’s talk. What kind of transportation do you need? How many people are we talking about here? How many men do you have with you?”
That’s when Griffin said something that really made Phelps worry.
“One. I only need transportation for one.”
* * *
Everyone tried to read the expression on his face as he hung up the phone, but it was no go. By now they were sure law enforcement was in communication with the group, but it didn’t seem like any headway was being made.
“You know they were rigging up the doors with something as we were leaving, right?” one of the women in the back the room whispered.
“We’re not getting out of here,” another replied.
Jeff seemed to be mulling something in his head. If anyone could do something to convince this guy, or buy him off, it would probably be him. It would have to be. Thats what he was asking himself anyways.
Could money buy your way out of trouble?
Sometimes.
Course, it didn’t work for Martha.
It sort of worked for those White House buddies though. Bastards.
But this wasn’t anything like that. These guys were terrorists, or at the minimum, militant whack jobs. Their idea of reasoning was blowing something up, or shooting someone in the back of the head when they got too vocal. So far the group had been lucky.
The bleeding in Renoir’s leg might have stopped. The pant leg, which
had stopped seeping blood, was drying into a caked, blackish mass of fabric. The older man smelled of blood now, a mix of iron and humid breath that was enough to curdle your stomach. He had stopped sweating. The cold chills still quivered through his body every few moments, but maybe he had stabilized. Then again, maybe he was slipping into shock.
“I’ve got to use the facilities,” Renoir said suddenly.
“Good luck with that,” Someone muttered from the crowd.
Jeff turned and scowled. “Knock it off,” he said.
Renoir lurched to his feet and hobbled to the window, where he rapped his fingers on the glass.
“I’ve got to use the facilities!” he said louder.
One of the men walked over. He motioned with his gun towards the back of the room.
Renoir shook his head angrily.
“The fuck I will!” he boomed.
Renoir started pounding on the glass.
Hard.
His right hand was balled up in a fist, moving back and forth in a disjointed, mechanical motion. His left hand seemed to fall limp at his side.
Jeff looked closer.
No, the left hand was clenching something against Renoir’s leg, pressing it against the place that had been bleeding.
“Renoir,” he whispered. “What are you trying to do?”
Michel’s eyes rolled in Jeff’s direction, then he spun back to the window, and pounded on the glass still harder, until Tim himself turned and marched into the room, stopping on the other side of the glass.
Renoir stopped knocking and stared at the man.
Tim hesitated, then motioned to the man beside him, who nodded his head and walked over to the entrance of the testing room and opened the door.
“Come on, lets go,” the man shouted at Renoir.
Billionaires, Bullets, Exploding Monkeys (A Brick Ransom Adventure) Page 12