by James Somers
Michael groaned and blew water away from his face, allowing Jonathan to remove him from the wreckage. “I think so. Where’s the boy?”
“He wasn’t in the truck,” Jonathan reported.
“The first truck must’ve gotten here way ahead of us. Ming will have him tucked away somewhere inside.”
They both looked at the tower before them. At the lobby level, Ming’s men had already sealed the steel shutters into place. “We need more police officers,” Jonathan said.
“There’s no one available,” Michael said. “This whole business with Trenton has taken a toll on us. We’ve still got a bunch of officers assigned to guarding your Genetic Corp building. He’s teamed up with Ming, of all people. He could hold us off for a week in there.”
“Jay doesn’t have a week,” Jonathan said.
“I know.” Michael checked his Kevlar vest, then picked up a machine gun and inspected the clip for ammunition. He tossed it to Jonathan, then retrieved another for himself. “That’s why we’re just going to have to go inside after him ourselves.”
23 UNEXPECTED GUESTS
Jay woke up foggy-headed. His tongue felt like a piece of cardboard stapled to the roof of his mouth. “Rise and shine, sleepy head.” Trenton sat before him on a side bench inside the armored car. “Time to give me those encryption codes,” Trenton said.
Jay noticed the places on Trenton’s face where the Taser barbs had embedded, then been ripped out. The wounds had almost completely healed already. “I don’t have a computer and I’ll have to do the work myself,” Jay said.
Trenton grabbed his neck and squeezed. “Sure you will. Don’t play games with me boy, I’m not a patient man today.”
Jay fought for breath. Trenton released his grip, and Jay filled his lungs with air. “I’m not kidding, man! I don’t just make up codes,” Jay said. “I have a certain formula for doing encryption and I have to work through it to get the code again.”
Trenton’s face turned to stone. “Are you saying my data is at the mercy of some encryption formula you have to work out? You could end up with anything that way!”
He grabbed Jay’s foot and twisted his ankle, until the bone popped. Jay screamed in agony. “You little rat, I want my data!” Trenton said. “I may not hurt those magic fingers of yours, but I’ll start at your feet and work my way up, until I get what I want!”
Jay tried to breath through the pain. He thought he might pass out. “I’ll give it to you, I promise. I have to have a computer in your network. I’ll get it back for you.”
The others people, inside the armored car, laughed at his pain. Trenton slapped the broken ankle again. Jay screamed.
“That one was just for fun, little man. Let’s get you inside to a computer. You had better have my work unlocked within an hour, or you’ll never walk again.”
•••
Jonathan and Michael circled the building under cover of darkness.
“How are we going to get into this place other than the front door?” Michael asked. “Ming’s men will have every entrance guarded. He’s a thug, but he’s no fool.”
“I just had an idea and maybe—there it is!” Jonathan ran toward a window washing rig that was attached by cables to a pulley system on the roof, thirty floors up.”
Michael stopped short when he spotted it. “Whoa, wait a minute. I don’t know about this.”
“What’s the matter?” Jonathan asked. “We can take this and get off on any floor.”
Michael shot him a cold stare. “No, you don’t get off on any floor. You’ll have to go through a window—you’ll have to leap from that thing into a busted window.”
“So what?”
Michael just stood there.
“Are you afraid of heights?” Jonathan asked.
“No, I’m afraid of plunging to my death from heights,” Michael said. They stared at one another for a moment, until Jonathan cracked a smile.
Michael broke down, marching past him. “All right, all right. If we’re gonna do this, then let’s go.”
Jonathan stifled a laugh. “Big tough cop, eh?”
Michael climbed onto the washing rig. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Call Dr. Phil later—we’ve got work to do.”
Jonathan followed, climbing onto the platform. The key had been left in the control box. He turned the key, and the indicator flashed from red to green. “We’re good. Here we go.”
Jonathan used the joystick control to raise the platform. The control worked on an X and Y axis control, giving them the ability to move vertically and horizontally across the face of the building.
Michael looked down, closing his eyes as they ascended.
•••
Ming watched the window washing rig rise on the western face of his building through a video monitor. He laughed to himself. “Do they take me for a fool?” Around Ming, his men said nothing. “You see how they fall into my trap?” he said. “They think they will sneak up on me in my own home. I have a nasty surprise for them. Go up to the roof and cut the cables—shoot them away if you have to, but make sure they do get high enough to make a good mess on the pavement when they fall.”
Two of Ming’s men nodded, leaving the group to do their master’s bidding. The others, twelve in all, remained. They wore black apparel with hoods draped down over their backs. “The rest of you, be prepared. If they should get inside somehow, you will show them what true ninja can do.
•••
The wench motor hummed as the gantry platform rose into the air alongside Ming’s building. Michael tried to find a good place to focus his attention, but every angle made his stomach queasy. “How are you doing?” Jonathan asked.
Michael shot him with an uncertain glare. “If I throw up, you’ll be the first to know.”
“I think we’ve gone about twenty floors, so far.”
“Wonderful,” Michael said. “Just let me know when I can get off.”
Shots rang out above them, and the metal platform dropped down at one corner. Michael lost his balance and slammed into the safety rail. He peered down, becoming dizzy. “What happened?” he shouted.
Jonathan looked up and saw movement near the pulley system, then a muzzle flash. The sound traveled to them almost at the same time the second cable broke. The platform tilted vertically. Michael pitched forward, and fell away from the window washing rig. He screamed, as he clawed the air for a handrail to save himself.
Jonathan snatched Michael from the air by his Kevlar vest and held the detective suspended over the pavement below. “I’ve got you!”
“Yeah, but who’s got you?”
Jonathan held on to the rail directly above them where two cables remained—the only two cables still holding them away from death down on the street below.
“Michael, you’re going to have to do something,” Jonathan said. “Someone up there is shooting the cables!”
Michael rotated his submachine gun strap over his shoulder, and looked up through the scope. He toggled to night-vision. A man appeared in the viewfinder. The man placed his own gun next to one of the remaining two cables. “I’ve got him,” Michael shouted. Then he fired a burst from his machine gun.
Sparks erupted around the steel, pulley brackets nearly ten floors up, on the roof. One of Ming’s men took several hits, and fell away from his task.
“Got him!”
Jonathan lifted Michael up trying to get him to some kind of safe footing. “Try to get a hold of the side-rails.”
“Uh-oh.”
“What?”
Michael peered through his scope. “There’s another one!”
Another shot rang out above them, and a third cable snapped. Jonathan strained to keep his grip on Michael as the platform began to spin around the lone support cable’s mount. Michael fired his machine gun at the other man on the roof. “I didn’t get him.”
The ninja fired at the last cable again. Michael fired as the ninja became visible. Both men missed their targets.
“F
orget him! Shoot out the window across from us!” Jonathan screamed.
“What?”
“Do it now!” Jonathan demanded.
Michael obeyed. He opened fire on the huge window pane across from them, on the building. The pane exploded sending a cascade of glass fragments down toward the street below. “Now what are we going to do?” Michael asked.
Jonathan swung Michael’s body away from the platform, and then snapped him back toward the building, and released. Michael screamed, as he realized what Jonathan was doing. He sailed through the air toward the building, then through the busted window. He tumbled across the floor inside.
Jonathan grabbed the remaining cable with both hands, tapped the wench control with his foot, then kicked the bracket housing which held the cable in place until it broke free. As soon as the mount shattered, the cable shot away from the gantry with Jonathan in tow. Without the weight of the wash platform, the wench pulled him toward the roof very fast.
Jonathan watched the platform fall away and crash into the pavement below. Just as the cable would have brought his hands into the pulley, Jonathan let go, and grabbed the steel bracket hanging over the building edge. Ming’s ninja looked shocked when Jonathan appeared right in front of him. Jonathan kicked the man in the head hard enough to knock him out before he could fire another shot.
He swung his body over the edge of the building, and landed on the roof. When he examined the man’s weaponry, Jonathan found firearms, and to his delight, a ninja sword—black handle, black blade. “Oh yeah,” he whispered.
He walked across the roof, toward the access door that would take him down into the building. A blade, like the one he had just taken, cut the air with the slightest whistle. Jonathan ducked, allowing the strike to pass. Another ninja attacked him with a high kick. Jonathan blocked with a forearm, then swept the man’s other leg out from under him. He fell, then sprang up again as yet another ninja closed in with his sword.
Jonathan smiled. Years of training suddenly came to a boil within him. The ninja lunged at him. Jonathan allowed the sword to pass, stepped inside, and elbowed the man hard enough in the ribs to knock him backwards onto the gravel covering the roof.
Jonathan turned, ready with his weapon, and met the first ninja’s weapon in mid-strike. Their swords struck together over, and over again like angry vipers. He matched the ninja blow for blow. Another two joined in the fight.
Jonathan found himself surrounded. All of them came at once. Jonathan dodged two strikes, rushed the third man, countered, then parried the fourth, and finished him with a devastating roundhouse kick. He heard something snap in the man. The ninja fell, and didn’t rise again.
Jonathan rushed two others, snapped the leg of one, and punched out the second. The remaining ninja threw two shurikens. Jonathan snapped his blade up, and the weapons clanged off the metal harmlessly. He lunged, and disarmed the man with a quick flourish his instructor had taught him.
The ninja flipped backwards, then pulled a handgun, and fired as Jonathan followed. The ninja unloaded a clip of twelve rounds into his chest, but Jonathan kept coming. He struck the handgun so that it flew out of the ninja’s hand. He spared the unarmed man, but knocked him out.
Jonathan checked his weapons, then ran for the door. Whoever this crime lord, Ming, was, he now worked with Trenton, and he could show him where to find Jay.
•••
Michael lurked in the dark corridor on one of the floors below Ming’s penthouse apartment. Fortunately, his men hadn’t anticipated Jonathan’s insane maneuver. Michael had thought he might have a heart attack, when Jonathan pitched him toward the interior of the building. The young man’s new strength had saved his life, instead.
Still, Michael crept cautiously. This was Ming’s domain. He almost certainly had surveillance throughout the building. A door opened, and two men entered the hallway shooting at him in the dark. I knew it!
Michael returned fire, ducking for cover inside an office cubby. He’d never known exactly what sort of business Ming conducted in this building during the daylight hours. No matter what the front was, the middle aged Chinese gangster had never been an upstanding citizen.
The desk, and partition filled up with holes, as the men laid down a steady stream of machine gun fire on Michael’s position. A computer monitor exploded on the desk above him, while he hunkered on the floor, waiting for his opportunity to return fire.
“Richard, what I wouldn’t give to have you here with me one more time,” he whispered. Then Michael rolled out from behind the partition, and fired.
24 GOOSE CHASE
Jonathan had decided on another entry into Ming’s top floor apartment. He had been repelling before, but nothing like this. He tied the steel cable to the satellite dish housing with knots cinched up using his great strength. It wouldn’t give, even if an elephant did what he was about to do.
Jonathan tried to measure out the appropriate length of cable. Soon he would see if he was right. He took hold of the last three feet on the other end and ran for the roof edge. Jonathan leaped away from the top of the building with only the cable tethering him.
The cable allowed him so much length before it caught, became taut, and pulled him back, gravity pulling him down. Jonathan swung in an arc which sent him barreling directly into, and through, the panes of mirrored glass that brought a skyline view into Ming’s penthouse apartment. The panes exploded inward upon impact.
Jonathan let go of the cable, tumbling across the floor before leaping back to his feet. He ran screaming at the men guarding Ming inside his living room. Jonathan leaped over the plush leather couches and kicked the mahogany coffee table up like a soccer ball. It hit one of the men and knocked him out of the way.
The guards fired their guns, but Jonathan flew into them like a rabid animal. He absorbed most of the gunfire with his Kevlar vest and kept coming. The men fell before him like grass to a charging rhinoceros.
Ming ran for the exit on the other side of his spacious, luxury condo. But when he opened the door, a gun barrel came through the opening, touching his temple and pinning him to the wall. Michael held his submachine gun to Ming’s head. “Don’t go anywhere just yet, sweetheart,” he said, smiling. “We’ve got some unfinished business to attend to.”
•••
“Tell me again, how you had nothing to do with all of this, how that psych-job just happened to have your men and your equipment.” Michael leaned in close to Ming with his hand cupped to his ear…waiting.
Ming breathed deeply. “I want my lawyer.”
Michael stood, looking at Jonathan. He sat in the shadows Michael’s exchange with Ming. Jonathan’s clothing was torn—bullet ridden and bloody. He felt exhausted, had been through hell and back tonight, and still had not rescued Jay.
Michael sniffed at Ming. “Jonathan, I can’t do a thing with him,” Michael said.
Jonathan got up from the leather chair and walked toward Ming, who was sitting under the only light on in the room. They had tied the gangster up and made him sit on his leather upholstered couch receiving the third degree.
Ming watched Jonathan stalk toward him. “You’re the other one, aren’t you? Trenton said the mutagen he created actually brought you back from the dead. Here you are, shot up, but still alive.”
Michael interrupted the monologue. “So you do know about Trenton Hallowed and his work!”
Ming looked at the detective, replacing his amazement at Jonathan’s seeming invincibility with the same smug expression he had been wearing for the last hour under interrogation. “Name, rank, and serial number is all you’ll get from me until I see my lawyer,” he said.
Jonathan stopped next to the gangster. Michael looked at Jonathan and nodded. “I think I’m going to see if I can find a cup of coffee around this place.” He bent down to Ming’s face, patted the cords wound around his chest, and said, “Sorry, Ming.”
Michael turned and walked toward the door to Ming’s apartment. The smug gangster l
ooked up and found Jonathan seething with anger. Ming gulped down a lump in his throat. Jonathan grabbed him by the ropes, yanking him up off the couch into the air. His feet dangled over the floor.
“The old good cop—bad cop routine? You can’t do this,” Ming cried. “I have rights. I want my lawyer!”
Jonathan leered at him. “I’m not a cop.”
Michael’s voice echoed across the room from the doorway. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, guys.” The door closed behind him.
Jonathan and Ming gazed into one another’s eyes.
“What are you going to do?” Ming whispered.
Jonathan smiled, then ripped the cords away from Ming’s body. “Until I know where Jay is, anything I feel like.”
•••
Douglas Tanner sipped his mocha through a split plastic lid. He had managed to balance a glazed jelly donut in the fingers of the same hand, carrying his brown leather briefcase in the other. He stopped at the entry gate wondering why the guard was not on duty. “Carl, I knew I should’ve fired you last month,” he grumbled. Douglas stood on the security pad, leaning in a little for the retina scan as he said his name. “Douglas Tanner.”
The security computer automatically measured his weight, matched his retinal blood vessel pattern, and confirmed his voice signature. A warm, synthesized female voice greeted him with a European accent. “Access granted. Welcome, Mr. Tanner.”