by Dane Hartman
The elevator’s groaning became louder and then ceased altogether as it came to a rest. Nobody got out. The elevator was unoccupied, and the two of them entered.
The buttons on the elevator’s interior wall indicated that twelve was as high as they were going to go; presumably, from that floor one could gain access to the roof.
Before they commenced their treacherous climb, Harry surveyed their confined circumstances, determining with his eye that the roof of the elevator could be made to open. It would be a mistake—and very likely a fatal one—to remain imprisoned by the elevator, especially as it attained the twelfth floor. It was obvious that the snipers would be awaiting their arrival.
To avoid this unhappy prospect, Harry decided it best if they rode on top of the elevator. Owens, being the lighter of the two, supported himself on Harry’s shoulders and by exerting all the strength in his arms forced the door open. Then he grasped hold of the sharp rusted surface of the roof and pulled himself up.
Harry now depressed the button designated 12, and while the elevator responded, beginning to move slowly, Owens helped him up and out onto the roof. It was a tricky maneuver, one that a mastery of Alpine mountaineering would have helped. But the possibility of a quick violent end is powerful incentive; mothers have been known to lift cars weighing tons when their children have been trapped beneath them. Harry could conquer the canvas-lined wall of a freight elevator.
Both men now safely on the roof of the elevator, they stretched out, hugging the surface. No telling how much space would be available between the cable supports and the top of the elevator. It wouldn’t be of much use to survive a terrorist’s attack, only to be mashed by indifferent machinery.
Certainly when viewed from their angle, the thicket of cables looked intimidating. It was possible to believe that the elevator wouldn’t stop, that it would keep right on going, allowing Harry and his partner to be sucked into the fearsome motor that kept the whole thing in motion.
The all-too-familiar staccato of gunfire reached their ears as they came closer to their destination. Gradually, the churning wheels about which the cables continued to revolve slowed and creaked to a halt. The twelfth floor.
Somebody was opening the door but only enough to permit him to spray the elevator’s interior with a succession of rounds that tore apart the canvas, echoed off the metal walls underneath, and sent up a poisonous smell of cordite into the air.
The gunman who wielded a Belgian FN MAG machine gun, the kind mercenaries fighting in Rhodesia used, stepped into the elevator, clearly astonished that he hadn’t hit anyone and that there was no one to hit in the first place.
Before he could glance upward and see that the door to the roof of the cabin was open, Harry fired his .44, striking the man in the chest. The gunman was flung way back, slamming against the wall he had just ripped up with his FN. His eyes were wide with shock and surprise that his strategy had so obviously and catastrophically come to an end. He slumped down on the floor and loosened a short burst from his FN, a futile gesture but one that he probably found as consoling as a priest’s last rites.
Harry quickly leaped down through the opening, expecting to have to contend with the deceased’s equally murderous comrades, but they were either too busy wreaking havoc on the steps of the Cavanaugh-Sterling headquarters or else operating on the premise that the problem coming up on the elevator had been eliminated.
Owens followed Harry down. Before they abandoned the elevator they confiscated the FN, seeing as how the dead man was not going to be using it where he was headed. It was difficult to determine the nationality of the terrorist; he was swarthy, though that could have been merely because he liked the great outdoors, and he sported a bushy beard that pretty much dominated his face. They had no time to search him or note any other distinguishing attributes.
Opening the door that entered onto a hallway that looked no different in the darkness than the one on the ground floor, they instinctively turned in the direction of the firing. A small speck of light to their left aided their search.
As they proceeded toward this light, they realized that it was leaking in from a door that presumably yielded onto the roof.
“From here on in we continue firing,” Harry said. “Take out as many as you can with this thing.” He handed Owens the FN.
Owens was not expecting this. “Don’t you want it?”
“You don’t know how to use it? Is that what you mean?”
Owens shook his head; he’d had experience with machine guns before, when he served in Vietnam for a year’s tour, but he had just naturally assumed Harry would prefer the benefit of its rapid firing.
Not so. Harry held out his .44, “You believe something gives you luck, you go with it.”
“You’re the boss.”
Owens had never been on a parachute jump, all his training and battling had kept him to the ground, but he imagined that this was what it felt like when for the first time you were standing at the door about to leap from a plane twenty thousand feet in the air, stomach lurching, heart beating crazily, wondering whether your chute would open.
It was a different sort of door now and a different sort of jump. Only the danger was far greater.
Harry stood, his hand gripping the handle, waiting as if for some signal. It would have to come from his own mind, from his instincts, because with no window to see what was happening outside, they would never have any means of knowing which moment to launch their assault was the most propitious.
As soon as the door flew open, Harry flung himself on the asphalt surface of the roof. Owens followed his example, and when they had flattened themselves out, they opened fire.
Across from them, crouched behind a low-lying protective wall that extended about the entire perimeter of the roof, were two snipers, both of whom were maintaining their barrage on the street. All that could be seen of them were their backs, their shoulders hunched high enough to blot out almost all view of their heads. Their bodies shuddered repeatedly with the recoil from their guns, but clearly they were accustomed to it.
Because of the time element involved and the necessity of protecting themselves, neither of the guns discharged by Owens and Callahan did as much damage as they should have were they properly sighted. But they did enough.
One of the snipers sustained a blast of the FN in his upper shoulder, which forced his weapon from his hand. Another gouged out a huge chunk of the brick wall, propelling it upward so that it hit this same gunman in his gut, further debilitating him.
The second narrowly escaped Harry’s fire, but that was only because he had unexpectedly shifted position. Turning to see where this attack was coming from, he fared much worse, for the round that Harry now fired made a mess of his stomach and sent him toppling over to the street. His scream persisted for as long as it took him to plummet to the ground: not long.
The surviving sniper had no opportunity in which to consolidate himself, for Owens had him correctly targeted by this point and, without a moment’s hesitation, loosened another burst from the Belgian machine gun. Though this gunman did not make his exit from the world so dramatically as his companion had, his death was every bit as thorough. He crashed to the asphalt and immediately began to pour blood onto its dull, sunbaked topography.
It was only then that Owens allowed himself the luxury of standing erect in order to better survey the scene. Twelve floors below there was shouting as people gradually understood that the danger had passed, that they could move out into the street again without sustaining a gunshot wound.
But it was not the shouting that Harry heard but something else, a softer, almost inaudible sound from their left. He reached out, grabbing hold of Owens’ ankle and virtually threw him down.
Owens reacted with annoyance. “What did you do that for?”
Harry signalled him to be silent. “Over there,” he whispered, “there’s another one still alive.”
Owens looked to where Harry was pointing but all he could see
was the protrusion of an immense gray cooling unit that rested on pontoons and beyond that what looked like it might be a water tank of some kind. He noticed nothing unusual nor did he hear what it was that had Harry so alarmed.
But Owens was certainly not about to lose faith in Harry now. If Harry said there was someone there, why then he believed him.
Once Harry’d advised Owens to stay put, he began to crawl slowly in the direction of the cooling unit. He surmised that the fourth assailant, aware that his companions had been killed, had decided to break off the engagement and was now hiding, hoping to avoid discovery, at least long enough for him to make good his escape. And the route of that escape was evident enough to Harry. Denied the use of the elevator, the gunman would have to resort to the adjacent rooftops that were about as high off the ground as this one, meaning he wouldn’t have to chance limb-breaking jumps as he ran. No doubt considerable reconnaissance had gone into this operation before it was undertaken.
Whether Harry’s antagonist panicked or whether he actually thought he had a decent chance of hitting him, Harry didn’t know, but all at once the asphalt in front of Harry spewed into the air as a succession of rounds tore into it.
Instantly, Harry rolled away. And before he could return the fire, Owens was doing so for him, spraying the cooling system, puncturing a trail of holes into the weather-beaten metal. Water bubbled out of the ruptured ducts, splashing down onto the roof with a roar that made it sound like a small Niagara.
Though he hadn’t hit Harry’s assailant, Owens had succeeded in driving him from his shelter. He could now be seen bolting in the direction of the next rooftop. Owens could barely make out his form and was in no position to hit him, not with the water tank and cooling unit in his way.
Harry, spitting out the asphalt dust that had gotten in his mouth and rubbing his eyes free of the same, started after him, oblivious of the water that cascaded down on him.
The escaping gunman was agile, that much was obvious, leapfrogging over the retaining wall, momentarily disappearing from sight until he picked himself up and began his scramble across the contiguous roof.
But in mid-motion he wheeled about, firing his Yugoslav FAZ automatic, a cousin of the famous—some would say notorious—Soviet AK machine gun. Lacking optimal balance, he failed to cause Harry injury, but he did force Harry down, which in turn allowed him the opportunity to put more distance between them.
The threatening afternoon skies, which had held off since morning, now unleashed a fierce downpour that did not even bother announcing itself with the formality of a drizzle. The rooftops were converted into instant pools, and the deluge of water made their surfaces more and more slippery until both Harry and the man he was chasing found the going increasingly difficult. And there was no question that either of them could proceed as fast, as nimbly, as they had before the skies broke.
They got onto their third rooftop, but only by a risky jump down one entire story. The impact was painful. Harry, coming down on his knees, had momentarily stumbled and fallen into a gathering, mud-clotted lake. After lifting himself to his feet with difficulty, he could no longer see the man.
He continued to the rooftop’s edge and peered down. This was as far as one could go. Either the terrorist had leaped eleven floors, which was unlikely given his determination to extend his lifetime beyond this afternoon, or he had somehow found another way off the roof.
By further exploring the geography of this third roof, Harry discovered a door that gave access to the building itself. Cautiously, he proceeded down the steps that led into a brightly lit hall. But the terrorist hadn’t decided to linger in hope of ambushing him. He had chosen more wisely and had simply vanished.
C H A P T E R
T h r e e
Fresh cologne could not entirely eradicate the faint scent of blood, but otherwise there was nothing about William Davis’ appearance or demeanor to suggest the ordeal that he had just undergone.
A small dressing room adjoined his office on the twenty-fifth, and highest, floor of Cavanaugh-Sterling Headquarters, and it was there that Davis had showered and changed while Harry and Owens waited for him.
Davis’ office was elaborately paneled; the walls were of teak and rosewood, the furniture mahogany and fine ebony. The atmosphere was subtle, and, without the lights set discreetly into the walls, dark as a rainforest at night. Harry had expected a window vast and panoramic so that Davis’ sense of power could be confirmed by the view. But there was no window, only paintings: a Rothko canvas, all browns and blacks, a dreary landscape of Edvard Munch, a depiction of grotesques that looked like a Bosch.
On his desk, which was so empty as to suggest that all of Davis’ work had either been completed or consigned to others, there was one black push-button phone with three extensions and a framed photograph of a frail-looking woman whose hair was pulled back; she was pretty enough but wan, and her expression intimated at some great sadness. Harry, taking advantage of Davis’ absence, regarded it closely. He guessed that the woman must be Davis’ wife.
Unlike Davis, neither Harry nor Owens had enjoyed the opportunity to change, and they looked less like police officers than derelicts of the sort that were favored by the Mission Street Knifer: mud-spattered and bloody, their hair unkempt and dirt-ridden, their trousers ripped, bruises everywhere on their flesh. Until they’d displayed their badges to the security officials in the lobby, they had stood in danger of being arrested by their uniformed colleagues on charges of trespassing. Even then they were made to wipe their feet clean of mud lest they stain the expensive carpets that lined every corridor and smothered every office floor.
Davis, emerging from his dressing room, regarded them with some amusement. He took a seat behind his desk and spread out his hands on the blotter, taking hold of a pen and absently tapping it on the pointed ebony surface.
“I understand you were the two who neutralized the terrorists,” he said, taking the initiative in the conversation although he was the one who was supposed to answer questions, not issue statements.
Harry, in no mood to be particularly deferential, no matter that the man before him was a self-made millionaire who wielded immense economic and, of course, political influence, cut him off. “Why do you think this attack was made? Do you believe you were the exclusive target?”
“Of course. You realize that this terrorist strike, because it was that, mark my words, was meant also to decimate much of Cavanaugh-Sterling’s top leadership. And unhappily, two of my vice presidents were murdered.”
There was nothing in his tone of voice, Harry noted, to indicate that Davis was suffering from their premature demise.
“I am grateful that my Japanese friend—”
“That would be Mr. Asabuka?” Owens said, consulting his hastily drawn-up notes.
“Correct. He sustained nothing more than a braised scalp. But there are men to replace the men we lost.”
“Your vice presidents?” Harry asked, wanting him to be precise.
“Yes.”
“And what about your security men?”
Davis seemed to have forgotten about them. “Oh yes, naturally.”
“Why would terrorists wish to carry out such a strike against you and others here at Cavanaugh-Sterling?”
“Because we are capitalists, we believe in free enterprise, and there are those elements, foreign and domestic, which oppose our investment policies, our expansion, accusing us of exploitation, the usual errant nonsense . . .”
“Who do you believe these terrorists are exactly? Have you any idea where they might have come from?”
“I would assume they’d have to be imported. From Nicaragua, from San Salvador maybe. Possibly Cuba. Anywhere where revolutionaries can flourish. But what is an outrage is that such an attack could take place here in San Francisco. I am surprised and alarmed that the police would allow these people to operate freely.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
Davis held up his hand
in an attempt to forestall any rebuttal.
“I want to make it clear that I am not implicating either of you two gentlemen. As far as I’m concerned you are the only ones to show any courage, any balls. Everyone else I noticed was paralyzed, rooted to the spot, waiting for God knows what, the National Guard, maybe hoping the Strategic Air Command would nuke the sons of bitches. Only you two seized the chance, risked your lives, and I want you to know that if I can do anything for you in the future, either of you, I would be happy to lend whatever assistance I can.”
His phone rang. He excused himself, picking it up. “No, no, I don’t want to be disturbed now. I am not about to speak to the reporters. Tell them I have no statement.”
He slammed the phone back down, stared hard at Harry and Owens as if to determine who they might be and why they were sitting here in his office. Then he allowed a smile, as cryptic as the one Leonardo gave to the Mona Lisa, to come to his lips. “Will that be all or is there anything else I can do for you?”
Harry rose, sensing that he was unlikely to acquire any useful responses from Davis so long as he remained on his own turf. He was too fully in command and confident of himself, showing no visible sign that he was ever in fear for his life. Being pinned down on the steps of his building, protected from death only because one of his loyal security men had permitted his body to be used as a receptacle for bullets intended for him, had failed to make any apparent impression. Accidentally burning his fingers with a match would probably have aggravated and disturbed him more. And his detached attitude in the face of the deaths of his corporate officers, not to mention his guards, struck Harry as very odd.
“No, I think that’s all for now,” he said politely. “We will probably have some more questions for you later. In the meantime, I suggest that you and your staff exercise extreme caution. There is every possibility that the terrorists, if that’s what they are, might strike again.”