Freefall

by Adam Hamdy

  “The system is supposed to go live at midnight,” Pavel observed. “It’s been all over the news. We should call the Feds,” he suggested. “Where’s Chris? I heard she’d been found. You guys normally work together, right?”

  Wallace lowered his gaze, devastated by the last memory he had of Ash. “She’s with the Bureau,” he said flatly.

  “If we call them, there’s a chance the complaint gets intercepted by someone loyal to the Foundation, putting everyone who knows about it in danger,” Steven told Pavel. “We can’t trust anyone. We need to stop this.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Pavel asked.

  “Stay by the phone. If you haven’t heard from us by eleven, then we’ll have to take the risk—call the Bureau,” Steven replied. “But don’t tell anyone about this before then.”

  He opened the passenger door and stepped out, leaving Wallace to contemplate the nagging feeling that he should stay with Pavel.

  “Coming?” Steven asked, hovering by the open door.

  Wallace looked at the man’s haunted face, and reminded himself that he had to do whatever he could to set things right.

  “Yeah,” he replied, exiting the vehicle. He followed Steven toward the gray GMC, gulping down deep lungfuls of the chill evening air in an effort to bring his nerves under control.

  83

  They parked on the corner of Liberty and William on the south side of the street, opposite the Federal Reserve. Wallace watched as Steven placed an FBI parking notice on the dash before climbing into the back of the van where he pulled a small, holstered pistol from one of the flight cases. He unzipped his trousers and strapped the holster to his inner thigh, concealing the gun by his groin.

  “Just in case,” he observed, before exiting through the rear doors.

  Wallace stepped on to the sidewalk and took a deep breath, then slammed the door and followed Steven west, along Liberty Street. A uniformed police officer stood on the stone steps outside the main entrance of the Federal Reserve, a heavily fortified stone building with barred windows and a parking exclusion zone that covered nearly the whole of the north side of the street. The man’s auburn hair showed beneath a peaked cap and he scanned both directions, watching passing pedestrians as they came and went. A liveried Federal Reserve police car was parked directly ahead of him, and behind it was a short line of vehicles that displayed placards similar to the one Steven had put on the dash of the GMC. When he looked up, Wallace saw security cameras pinned to the corners of the building, and wondered what other, unseen defensive measures were employed to protect this key strategic location.

  The building next to them was a modern skyscraper which loomed over its shorter, more prestigious neighbor. Wallace heard voices above him and saw people walking along a mezzanine promenade that ran the length of the street. When they reached the corner of Liberty and Nassau, they climbed a flight of steps that took them on to a flagstone courtyard that joined the promenade. Most of the traffic coming through the building’s glass doors was outbound. They’d arrived a little before seven, and the skyscraper’s occupants were heading home.

  They stepped into a gleaming white double-height lobby and approached the security guard sitting behind an expansive reception desk.

  “We’re here for Whitney Potts, Zadkiel Consulting,” Steven told him.

  “What are your names?” he asked, slowly reaching for the phone.

  “Steven Byrne. I’m her boss,” Steven replied. “And this is Craig Weathers,” he added, glancing at Wallace, who was surprised to hear him use Smokie’s real name.

  While the guard placed the call, Wallace studied the roster of companies located in the building: banks, law firms, technology companies, and divisions of the Federal Reserve that had overflowed from the building across the street.

  “Place your index finger on the scanner, please,” the guard said as he hung up. “And face the camera,” he added as he manipulated a web camera into position.

  Steven complied and Wallace did likewise, earning chipped visitor passes in return.

  “Thirty-ninth floor,” the guard told them. “Take the fourth elevator. You need to swipe the reader to make it go.”

  As they approached the security gates that guarded access to the elevators, they were ushered toward a full body metal detector by another uniformed guard.

  “Any phones in the plastic tray, please,” the man said somberly.

  Wallace had lost his phone at the warehouse, so he simply stepped through the machine, which remained dormant. He was struck by anxiety as he thought about the pistol strapped to Steven’s thigh, but was surprised when the tech entrepreneur followed him through the scanner without incident.

  Their passes got them through to the elevators and the two of them stepped into a mirrored car. Steven swiped his visitor’s card over a reader and pressed “39.”

  “How did you get through the scanner?” Wallace asked as the doors slid shut.

  “Ceramic,” Steven replied. “Even the bullets.”

  Wallace marveled at his companion’s resourcefulness, but his relief was short-lived, and as the elevator rose, his nerves started getting the better of him. He couldn’t help but feel that whatever waited for them on the thirty-ninth floor would not be good.

  The car drew to a halt and the doors slid open to reveal an opulent, wood-paneled lobby. A receptionist sat behind a high counter that bore the Federal Reserve logo. Wallace followed Steven out of the elevator, and sensed movement as he drew level with the doors. Steven bucked to his right, and something flashed to his left, an arm, a gloved hand, and something hard and plastic. Wallace felt a terrible, stabbing pain, and realized that he and Steven had both been hit by stun guns. As his body shuddered and his legs gave way, he was greeted by a ghastly sight. Three men in the horrifyingly familiar Pendulum uniforms stepped forward, their heavy boots dominating his fading vision as his head hit the floor.

  84

  The sound of her phone brought her back from darkness, and Ash opened her eyes to find herself slumped over her desk. The office lights were on and daylight had died. She looked through the open door and saw Miller and Romero still at their desks, both on their phones. They’d added their voices to a growing chorus of people who suggested she needed to be hospitalized. Harrell had started talking about a psych evaluation, but Ash had reiterated in the most forceful terms that she was not going anywhere until she knew she was safe. He’d backed out of her office like the frightened bureaucrat he was and she heard no further talk of mutiny.

  Ash answered the phone but said nothing.

  “Chris?” Pavel’s accent was unmistakable.

  “Yeah,” she replied, running her hand over the stubble that covered her head. The contact points were still tender, but she liked the sensation of the sharp little spikes digging into her soft palm.

  “Where have you been? I got your message. I’ve wrestled with this, but I’ve got to tell you, I was with your friend John Wallace,” Pavel revealed. “They told me not to let you know, but I’m worried they’re going to bite off something that’s too big for them.”

  “You were right to call,” Ash told him, suddenly alive and alert. “What is it?”

  “They’ve got a lead on a hacker who might be part of the Foundation. Her name’s Whitney Potts. She works for Zadkiel Consulting. They seemed to think it was important that Zadkiel was an Archangel.”

  Ash smiled inwardly. She knew this was bigger than an assassination plot.

  “They’re helping build the new Federal Settlement System,” Pavel continued. “Whitney is based in the Federal Reserve data hub, twenty-three Liberty Street. Byrne thinks the Foundation are going after the system. He’s going to try to stop them. I couldn’t just sit on it.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” Ash assured him, hanging up.

  Don’t be afraid, baby.

  The thought rose unbidden, and she felt a flush of anger as it forced its way into her mind. I’m not afraid, she told herself as she got to h
er feet. She’d already figured out how she would slip her guards and leave the office.

  “Hey,” she said to Miller as she approached the doorway. “You think you could grab me a sandwich? I’m starving.”

  She threw him a friendly smile.

  “Sure,” he replied, rising. “What d’you want?”

  “I don’t care. Whatever they’ve got.”

  Ash watched Miller cross the open-plan office, heading toward the elevators. She smiled at Romero, who briefly looked up from her computer.

  Ash retreated into her office and opened the bottom drawer of her desk to retrieve a Glock 26 and the two clips she kept as backup. She thrust the tiny handgun into the waistband of her trousers before picking up a billfold that was stashed at the back of the drawer. She slipped the money into her pocket, swapping it for the cell phone she’d found at the warehouse. She turned her back on the door and placed a call.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” an operator answered.

  “The Foundation has placed a bomb in your building. It will detonate in five minutes,” Ash said, before hanging up.

  “You OK?”

  Ash turned to discover Romero hovering by the door. Had she heard anything?

  “Yeah,” Ash responded, concealing the phone behind her back.

  “Miller’s on the line. He wants to know if you’d like a soda,” Romero said.

  Ash shook her head.

  “Listen, I know everyone’s been on your case tellin’ you to go home, but it’s because we’re worried about you,” Romero confessed. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  Ash couldn’t care less about Romero’s pathetic attempt to connect with her. It was just another ploy to get her to do what they wanted. Go home. Rest. Recover. Forget about what happened. Roll over. Play ball. Be a good little doggy. She was done with that.

  “I just don’t want you thinking that—”

  Romero was interrupted by a klaxon, and the sound of a distorted voice being relayed on the building’s public address system: “Evacuate the building. All personnel are to proceed to their evacuation points immediately. This is not a drill.”

  The message was repeated continuously over the insistent sound of the klaxon.

  “Come on,” Romero said. “We’d better go.”

  Ash followed her out of the office, and they joined a crowd of agents and administrators who were heading for the nearest fire exit. The stairwell was already packed, but they made quick progress through the building, moving down in a nervous, unnaturally quiet throng. When they spilled out of the Duane Street exit, Ash seized her chance. Donna and Angela, two of the administrators on their floor, cut between Ash and Romero, creating all the distance she needed. She skipped through the crowd before Romero realized what was happening, and by the time Ash heard her name being called, there was a tide of bobbing heads between them.

  She ran on to Broadway, where the traffic was slowing as drivers gawked at a skyscraper shedding its occupants. She flagged a cab heading south and jumped in the back. As it moved off, she glanced over her shoulder to see Romero push her way to the edge of the crowd and scan her surroundings in desperation.

  85

  “Wake up!”

  “Hey!”

  “Please!”

  A chorus of urgent voices bounced around Wallace’s head, and for a moment he was unsure whether they were real or imagined. As his heavy eyelids rolled open and he came to his senses, he realized that the cries were coming from nearby. The world drifted into focus and he saw the tiny squares of a metal grate. He was on some kind of gantry, which straddled a utility duct that stretched far beneath him, running the full height of the building. Judging by the background noise, he was in some kind of service area or plant room. He tried to move his hands, but they were bound. He’d been hog-tied, his hands and feet strapped together behind his back. He rolled on to his side and saw a low metal lip that marked the edge of the gantry. Beyond it was some kind of motor, which was about six feet wide and four high, and was encased in a shiny black enamel housing. Next to it was a wide platform where a dozen people stood. A mix of men and women, they were all calling to him urgently. They were animated but immobile, and when Wallace saw their hands, he realized why. They’d all been handcuffed to a steel rail that delineated the perimeter of the platform.

  “You gotta help us, mister!” a rosy-cheeked, plump woman pleaded, her voice full of panic.

  Wallace struggled against his bonds, but they only seemed to grow tighter. His body ached with the effort, and his shoulders felt as though they might pop from their sockets, but he kept at it.

  “Use the floor!” one of the men yelled.

  Wallace couldn’t see who’d made the suggestion, but he realized that the lip that edged the gantry might just be thin enough to act as a blade.

  He maneuvered himself into position and rolled on to his back, so that the lower half of his body hung out over the edge of the gantry, beneath a metal guard rail. His insides were thrown into turmoil as he suddenly realized that overbalancing would send him tumbling off the edge, plummeting into the duct below. His arms and legs screamed as though they were close to breaking, but he could feel the line of rope that connected them, and pressed his body against it. He swayed from side to side, rubbing the rope against the top of the lip.

  Hewn from rough metal, about a quarter of an inch wide, the lip soon started to fray his clothing and he could feel it biting into his skin. He ignored the pain, telling himself that if it was cutting flesh, it would also be severing the rope. The discomfort matured into real pain, and Wallace thought he could feel the lip deep in his body, heading for a kidney. You’re just scared, he told himself, willing his body on. He almost overbalanced, but recovered his position by throwing his head back against the grate, causing a mighty clang to echo around the plant room. His skull rang with ripples of pain, but once the smoky tendrils of unconsciousness had passed, he continued his task.

  His arms and legs suddenly jerked free as the rope snapped, and the movement sent him toppling over the edge of the gantry. For a moment he felt weightless, before gravity kicked in and yanked him down. Sheer instinctive reflex forced his arms apart, and the rope that had bound them slipped away, allowing him to bring his hands up and round his body to grab hold of the guard rail, just as his head slid beneath it. He hung for a moment, the rope falling away from his legs, tumbling dozens of floors into the dark depths of the duct, leaving his legs free to kick at the insubstantial air.

  Wallace heaved himself up, pulling his body back on to the gantry, before getting to his feet.

  “Yes!”

  He heard a woman cry with relief, and ran to the platform where the group had begun to chatter excitedly.

  “Keep it down,” a black man in a bloodstained white shirt said urgently. “We don’t want them to hear.”

  Everyone fell silent as Wallace approached. There were eight men and four women of various ethnicities, all in their thirties or forties, all dressed in the business casual attire common to mid-level office workers. The man in the bloodstained shirt stood about six-three, looked whippet-thin enough to run a marathon, and had the demeanor of a leader. His face was caked in drying blood and his nose had been broken.

  “My name’s Miracle Oyewole,” he said.

  “What happened? Where are we?” Wallace asked, looking round.

  They were definitely in a plant room, and he guessed it was somewhere near the top of the building. To his left was a row of air-conditioning units, power transformers, cable boxes and unfamiliar heavy machinery. To his right, beyond the gantry, was a steel access door.

  “I’m a systems team leader with the Fed,” Miracle replied. “They came at six, after most people had gone home. Whitney and her team let them in. They rounded us up and put us here. I don’t know who you are, but you pissed them off. We thought they were going to kill you.”

  Miracle’s colleagues murmured their agreement.

  “How long have I been out?
” Wallace asked.

  “No idea. But they brought you in here around an hour ago,” Miracle revealed. “They were pretty rough with you.”

  That explained the soreness, Wallace thought. “What are they doing?” he asked.

  “We don’t know, and we don’t really care. We’ve got a more urgent problem,” Miracle said, nodding his head toward the back of the black enamel housing Wallace had seen when he first came round.

  Fixed to the shiny surface were four gray blocks, each one marked “C4 High Explosive Demolition Charge.” They sat beneath a detonator that had no timer. Instead there was a radio receiver and a green LED that blinked every five seconds.

  Wallace sighed deeply, filling his lungs with smoky, oil-infused air.

  “There are more over there,” Miracle nodded toward the machinery, “and we saw them planting some in the offices before we left.”

  “Do any of you have a phone?” Wallace asked.

  “No,” Miracle replied, while his colleagues shook their heads. “They took them.”

  Wallace backed away, heading for the gantry.

  “Where are you going?” the rosy-cheeked woman asked fearfully.

  “To find a phone and get help,” he replied. “Or tools . . . something I can use to get you out of here.”

  He jogged across the gantry but slowed as he approached the steel access door. When he put his head against it, the metal felt cold and soothing, but the hum of the surrounding machinery made it impossible to hear what was on the other side. He grabbed hold of the flat handle, took a series of deep breaths, counted to three and opened the door.

  The man in the Pendulum mask seemed almost as shocked as Wallace. He stood in a concrete corridor, across from the access door, casually holding a submachine gun. Nervous adrenaline gave Wallace the edge, and he launched himself at the man as he raised the gun. Momentum moved them both, and Wallace felt the satisfying impact of the man hitting the wall, his head cracking against the unyielding concrete. Wallace grabbed the man’s face and smashed his head against the wall—once—twice—after the second time, the gun clattered to the floor, but the man’s survival instincts kicked in and he swung a gloved fist, which connected with Wallace’s cheek and sent him reeling.