by Graham Brown
“We’re taking the elevator?” she asked.
“Right now they’re cutting off the exits, surrounding the perimeter to try to keep us from escaping,” he said. “We’re going to head deeper inside.”
They piled inside.
Danielle pointed to the guard’s key still in the slot. “I’m guessing if we turn that, we go up.”
“Gimme a second,” Hawker said. He dropped down and pried open the control panel.
“What are you doing?”
“Overriding their computer,” he said, pulling out an electronic interface that looked like a comb connected to a calculator.
He pulled the elevator’s own mess of wires from the unit interface and jammed the comb side of his contraption into the same spot. He typed in 102 on the keypad and hit LOCK. The doors closed and the elevator began its express ride.
As it rose up, Yuri continued to cry. Danielle attempted to comfort him, holding him with one arm while gripping the assault rifle with the other. A modern woman.
Hawker checked his readout. They’d passed the twentieth floor and were accelerating. The device he’d plugged in had come direct from the manufacturer, via the NRI lab and Arnold Moore. Not only did it override the security protocols of the elevator’s main computer but with NRI’s reworking, it sent a signal to the tracking system, fooling it into thinking that the elevator was still in the subbasement of the brig.
While Kang’s security forces were surrounding the fort, scaling down the walls outside, and frantically pressing the elevator call button in the lobby, Hawker, Danielle, and the kid were passing right by them, headed for the roof.
He only hoped that Saravich and his helicopter would be there.
He pulled out three harnesses, each connected to thin steel wires with carabiners on the end. One for him, one for Danielle, and one that would go to Yuri.
“Put these on,” he said, stepping into his own.
Danielle slipped hers on, legs first and then arms. She helped Yuri into his. The crying had ceased, but his eyes remained red and swollen.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked.
“Moore sent me.”
“How did he know?”
“McCarter called in, after you were taken.”
“McCarter?” Her voice was suddenly filled with surprise and hope. “I thought he was …,” she stammered. “I thought I’d gotten him killed.”
Hawker smiled at her. He liked being the bearer of good news for once. “Apparently he’s tougher than you thought.”
For the first time since he’d known her, she seemed to be overcome with emotion. He looked up at the rapidly increasing number on the elevator readout. “Ninety. We’ll be at the top in fifteen seconds.”
“And then?” Danielle asked.
“There should be a helicopter waiting.”
“Why the harnesses?”
“There’s nowhere for it to land.”
The doors opened to a black night and an empty, wet roof.
“Where’s the helicopter?” Danielle asked.
Hawker stepped out. It wasn’t there.
The rain was still coming down at the same steady pace. Heavy gray clouds loomed close above them, lit by the city lights just as they had been on the night Hawker arrived. Perhaps it was the quarter-mile ascent to the roof, but the clouds seemed much lower to Hawker than they had when he’d stood on the tug in the harbor.
Ordinarily no one in their right mind would risk flying around skyscrapers under such conditions, but if Hawker was right, Ivan’s pilot would do whatever Ivan ordered him to do. And if Ivan wanted this kid back as badly as Hawker thought he did, the helicopter pilot would make the attempt even if the visibility dropped to zero.
He walked to the edge.
God, it was a long way down, and with not even a fence or a wall on this roof, just a sharp, flat edge, like some infinity pool. He pulled back feeling dizzy from the false sense of movement created by the uplighting and the sheets of falling rain.
“Where is our ride?” Danielle asked impatiently.
Hawker listened through the rain. He heard nothing, until the muted sound of a distant explosion echoed through the night. A slight vibration was felt even on the roof.
She looked at him and then turned away. They both knew what that meant. Petrov had used the grenade, either on himself or the guards or both.
“At some point they’re going to realize our elevator is not stuck at the bottom floor,” she said.
“You think they’re smart enough to pop open a door and look up?” Hawker asked.
“Sooner or later.”
As if to affirm her thought they heard the sound of heavy machinery whirring, slow at first, then louder and faster. The second elevator car was moving.
“Looks like they chose sooner,” he said.
“I hope you have a backup plan.”
He looked at her blankly.
“Great.”
Hawker pulled a pistol from the satchel, took cover behind a huge air-conditioning unit, and waited. Danielle crouched down beside him, pulling Yuri close and pressing the carbine into her shoulder.
The elevator pinged.
He could see the light beneath the doors. He raised the pistol, aiming. The doors opened … to nothing. The car was empty.
“Put down your guns!” a booming voice shouted from behind them.
Hawker cringed. The stairs.
He dropped his weapon and heard Danielle’s rifle clatter to the rooftop.
“Turn around.”
Hawker turned slowly to see three guards flanking a heavyset Chinese man. He didn’t know him by sight, but Kang’s head thug was a man named Choi. Hawker guessed that’s who he was looking at.
“Get on the ground!” Choi shouted.
As Hawker put his hands on the rooftop, he caught the sound of a reverberation. As he lay flat, the sound grew rapidly until a sleek, European-built helicopter came roaring up over the side of the building.
He looked up just as shots began to rain down from the open door of the helicopter.
Two of the guards went down. Choi and the other scrambled for cover.
The helicopter swept past and turned around.
Hawker grabbed his weapon and began firing, pinning down Kang’s people in the stairwell.
The helicopter had turned and was coming back. It trailed a steel cable. As Danielle took over the firing, Hawker dove for the wire and grabbed it.
“Come on!” he shouted.
Danielle raced toward him, dragging Yuri.
The helicopter hovered, but shots rang out and sparks could be seen where shells hit the fuselage.
“Hurry!”
Hawker clicked in and then locked Danielle and the kid in as well.
The helicopter peeled off as Choi and the guard came out of the stairwell firing.
Hawker fired back, just as the slack was used up. With a jolt they were yanked off their feet, flung over the edge of the tower and falling.
The three swung through the air like jumpers on some absurd thrill ride, arcing toward the water, accelerating forward like a giant pendulum. It was an insane rush, racing at a hundred miles an hour through the dark and the rain with nothing around them, and the waters of Victoria Harbour a thousand feet below.
They swung forward and up, weightless for a second before dropping back. After two or three smaller arcs they were stable, trailing beneath and behind the helicopter as it moved across Victoria Harbour.
The rain stung their faces like pellets from a gun. Hawker gripped Danielle and Yuri tightly to reduce the friction and the swaying. The helicopter’s winch could not raise the weight of three people at once, so the plan was to get over to the Kowloon side, land, and then disperse.
Danielle held on tight. “Who’s flying this thing?”
“No one you know,” he said.
She shouted above the wind. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He tried to explain his allies. “These guys ar
e Russian.”
“I thought Moore sent you.”
“He did,” Hawker said. “But I needed help, and they sort of made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Hawker squinted at her, the wind stinging his eyes. He could see Danielle shivering in the cold and rain, but they were descending and slowing. In a few minutes they’d be down on the ground.
“They want this kid back,” he told her. “Kang was using him to blackmail one of their scientists, the kid’s mother.”
Danielle cocked her head as if she’d heard him wrong. “They lied to you,” she said. “Yuri’s an orphan. They’ve been doing experiments on him.”
Hawker cringed. He figured Ivan had told him only half the truth, but this was not what he’d expected.
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be,” she said.
He looked at the kid and then back at Danielle.
“I’m not giving him back,” she insisted.
He didn’t know what to say, how to explain just what kind of a man Saravich was. How there would be no compromise.
“I gave someone my word,” she said. “And I’m not going back on it.”
Her eyes were unyielding. Despite the wind and the spray and the rain, she glared at him.
He watched her glance toward the shore. Fifty feet high now, five hundred yards from land, they were doing only thirty knots.
“You don’t understand!” he shouted. “I made a deal with them.”
She pulled free from his grasp and stretched upward, reaching for the steel line.
“Well, I’m breaking it.”
Before he could stop her, she pulled the release bar and the three of them dropped like stones.
It’s amazing what the mind can do in the blink of an eye. It took all of a second and a half for the distance to be used up, but as he tumbled through the darkness, two complete and distinct thoughts ran through Hawker’s head.
First: that if they somehow survived the fall, he was going to kill Danielle for causing it. And second, if they did survive the fall and he relented on his first thought, where the hell could they possibly go, that Ivan wouldn’t find them and kill them both.
And then he slammed into the water like a man running full force into a solid brick wall.
CHAPTER 19
Building Five, Virginia Industrial Complex
Arnold Moore had been expecting the worst, with the president and the head of the CIA coming to see him together. The two men had chosen Monday morning for a short drive out into the countryside to NRI headquarters at the Virginia Industrial Complex, affectionately known as the VIC. Moore hadn’t been given a reason, but he assumed it had something to do with Danielle’s rescue, and he was right. Partially.
After several minutes of haranguing by the CIA’s chief, Moore glanced at the president. So far the commander in chief had remained oddly silent at a bawling-out session he’d specifically called for. It almost seemed as if he’d turned the whole thing over to Stecker, a thought that worried Moore considerably. And yet Stecker seemed just as puzzled at the president’s silence.
“The point is,” Stecker said, launching forward once again, “when we hear about someone hiring a fugitive, a mercenary who used to work for us, we don’t expect it to be the head of a fellow agency.”
Moore could see the outlines of the trap now. If he denied the meeting to the president, Stecker would produce proof. And if he admitted what he’d done, he’d be seen as a reckless fool.
With nowhere else to turn, Moore threw up his only defense, weak as it was.
“I wasn’t acting in my official capacity,” he said.
“What the hell does that mean?” Stecker asked.
Moore clarified. “No NRI funds were used in the operation.”
“Then where did the money come from?” Stecker asked.
“My own personal account,” Moore said, before adding with some glee, “My CIA retirement was a big part of it. I’d like to thank you for that.”
Now Stecker glanced at the president as if waiting for him to lower the boom. When President Henderson remained silent, Stecker scowled. He turned back to Moore.
“You must be out of your mind, Arnold,” he said. “You know you can’t act as a private citizen. Not in your office. You endanger the very fabric of—”
“If Ross Perot can go rescue his own people from a hostile nation—and be a hero for it, I might add—then I can rescue mine. When a private citizen of a foreign country acts against the law, I don’t have to be bound by it in protecting one of ours.”
Stecker exploded. “God damn you, Moore, you’re out of control! If you worked for me I’d fire your ass or have you arrested.”
Moore sat back. At least Stecker had exposed his true purpose. “Ah yes. So that’s what this is really about. The CIA’s never-ending campaign to take over the NRI and all its assets.”
“It’s called Central Intelligence for a reason,” Stecker replied.
Moore raised his eyebrows. “I’ll give you the Central part,” he said. “But Intelligence … really, that’s been kind of hit-or-miss.”
Moore watched Stecker’s face go red. He looked like a tourist who forgot to use sunblock on a Florida beach.
Before his head could explode, the president raised a hand.
“I’m going to ring the bell here, gentlemen.” He looked at Stecker. “Byron, I have you ahead on points, but Arnold has a knockout punch waiting for you, one you’ll never see coming.”
This was news to Moore.
“Arnold only took action after getting a verbal executive order from me.”
Stecker was clearly stunned. “A verbal executive order?” His brow wrinkled in confusion. “With all due respect, Mr. President, what the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” the president said, “that I didn’t want this thing blowing up in my face. But I also don’t like the idea of foreign nationals kidnapping our citizens and hiding behind a wall of legitimacy. If this had happened on the high seas we’d have called it piracy and had the navy take the SOBs out.”
The president glanced at Moore before continuing. “Truth be told, Kang is lucky he lives in a country we care about. And given that fact, the only way I was agreeing to this was if someone else’s ass was on the line in case it went down in flames.”
The president smiled. “Trust me, Byron, if the operation had blown up you wouldn’t be hearing about it from me.”
Stecker seemed flabbergasted. Moore was just as confused. The president had issued no such order. The fact that he was pretending to have done so put Moore heavily in his debt.
“And with that settled,” the president added, “let me bring everyone onto the same page and back to the real reason we’re here.”
Apparently the first payment was about to come due.
“Less than twenty-four hours ago, Byron came to me with some disturbing information,” he said. “It seems the CIA has heard rumors about your organization that go beyond the travel plans of its director. One rumor that caught my attention was that the NRI has built some type of experimental fusion reactor beneath this building, one that might be endangering the good citizens of the capital.”
Moore remained quiet. The details of the rumors were false, but there was a kernel of truth in the story. The president knew this, of course. He’d been briefed from day one, and he could have easily given the details to Stecker or whomever else he chose to inform. There was no need for the trip to Virginia to get that done.
So there had to be another reason for the drive out, one that Moore guessed at easily: It was time to come clean.
Moore had long dreaded this day’s arrival, doing all he could to postpone it. But it appeared the president wanted the CIA informed and perhaps involved with what the NRI had hidden beneath Building Five. And to really understand what that meant, the truth had to be seen.
“So we’re here for show-and-tell,” he said.
The president nodded and Moore rose fr
om his seat. “With your permission.”
CHAPTER 20
Moore led the president and the confused head of the CIA down the hall. The president’s security detail followed them until the three men stepped onto a secured elevator, where the president held out a hand.
“Smoke ’em if you got ’em, boys,” he said. “This is going to take awhile.”
Moore punched in a code and the doors closed, leaving security behind. He thought of making a last-ditch plea to the president, but one look at Henderson’s stern face told him the time for discussion was over. The president wanted the CIA informed and involved.
Moments later the three men stepped out into a darkened laboratory. The hum of an air filtration system was the only real sound. The light around them was soft and off-color, coming from special blue and white LEDs embedded in the wall.
In the quiet darkness, two NRI technicians monitored computer readouts. They stood awkwardly when they realized who their guests were.
“As you were,” the president said.
Moore walked to a pane of glass in front of them. Inclined forward at forty-five degrees to allow easy viewing of an object below, the “glass” was actually a two-inch-thick plate of clear Kevlar, strong enough to stop a high-powered rifle bullet.
Five feet below them, lit by a circle of LEDs and raised up on prongs like the setting of an engagement ring, lay a triangular stone with softly beveled edges.
The stone was the size and thickness of a large dictionary and as clear as any glass ever made. Where the blue light caught its edges, they shone like thin strands of neon, while the white light seemed to penetrate and reflect from deeper within.
“Any change?” Moore asked.
“No, sir,” the lead technician replied. “Nothing since the twenty-first.”
Stecker stared at the object. Moore could not help but do the same, despite having seen it many times. He’d even held it once, one of the few in the NRI to have done so.
The president had only seen it on two occasions, but he seemed to regard it with a new unease this time. Moore understood that, too: Events and time had changed things and the stone had gone from an object of curiosity to a subject of concern.