Flee (30 page)

I
dug the cell phone out of my pocket and held it up. "Come closer and I
throw it off the building."

Hammett
stopped, but her face morphed into a bloody sneer. "It will survive the
fall."

"Maybe.
But how long do you think it will take to find? If ever?"

I
was liking the idea more and more. I never asked for this responsibility in the
first place. I didn't want to be the President's back-up plan. I didn't want to
have the fate of the world resting on me. Better to chuck the transceiver hard
as I could, and hope it would be lost forever.

The
elevator chimed, first on the floor, then in my ear. Victor stepped out,
dragging a still-crying Fleming across the floor by her hand.

"Hold
it," Hammett warned. "She's got the transceiver."

Victor
scowled at her. "I know, you ass. And look what I've got." He raised
up Fleming, holding her like a prize fish.

"Give
me the phone, Chandler."

"Don't
do it," Fleming gasped.

Victor
kicked her, then dropped her to the floor and stepped on her neck. He unslung
the AR15 around his chest and pointed it at Fleming's head. "The phone! Or
she dies."

Fleming's
eyes found mine. I saw fear there. But also resolve. She was willing to die so
the transceiver is safe.

I should be the same way.

I need to think of the greater good.

These maniacs can't have access to nuclear weapons.

I have to throw the phone away.

I have no other choice.

They're going to kill Fleming anyway. Fleming, and me.

The world is more important than we are.

But
I couldn't drop the phone.

I'd
only known Fleming as Fleming for a short time, but I'd known her as Jacob for years.

I
couldn't watch her die. I couldn't watch anyone else I cared about die. Never,
ever again.

"Let
her go," I said, with more bravery than I felt. "Or I'll drop it."

Hammett
began to creep closer to me. I took a step back, my heels on the window pane.
For a millisecond I wondered if I should just keep going, plummet to my death
with the phone. Then I wouldn't have to watch Fleming die, and this worst day
of my life would be over.

But
my tank still had a bit of hope in it. And where there's hope, there's always a
way.

"Here's
how it will work," I said, staring at Hammett. "You let Fleming go
and throw me your gun, and I'll throw you the phone. Or I chuck it out the
window. Am I bluffing, Hammett? Do you see anything on my face that indicates I'm
lying?"

Hammett
narrowed her eyes. "She's telling the truth."

"I
will drop it, Victor. And you can spend a few months combing the entire block
looking for it. That is, if someone doesn't pick it up and take it home."

"Do
it," Hammett said.

Scowling,
Victor released Fleming, then tossed his gun my way. It didn't reach me, coming
to rest on the carpet two meters from my feet.

True
to my word, I tossed him the phone.

Hard.

Real
fucking hard.

Victor
did what anyone would have done. He ducked.

Hammett
and I both went for the gun at the same time. She reached it first, but I was
ready with a punt to the head. She bunched up, and I connected with her
shoulder, then drove an elbow down on the back of her neck.

"Broken!"
Victor yelled. "The phone is broken!"

It
was broken because that was the trac phone Fleming had given me. The
transceiver was still in my backpack. As Hammett ate the ground, I got a hand
around the sling of the MP9, tugging as hard as I could even as she grasped the
butt of the weapon. I saw Fleming crawling toward us on her elbows, her face a
stone mask of determination, and then Victor was on me, hands around my throat,
his eyes bulging with rage.

He
tugged me off of Hammett, and pushed me back, back, toward the broken window.

Gunfire,
behind Victor. Five or six shots.

Oh... no...

Although
I was getting strangled and about to be thrown off the building, I strained to
see what happened, blinking away the encroaching darkness.

No... no...

Hammett
was standing over Fleming, the barrel of the MP9 smoking, Fleming still trying
to slink away, leaving a thick streak of blood across the floor.

"Don't
drop her, you idiot!" Hammett called. "The transceiver is in her
backpack!"

Victor
reached one hand down for the bag, and I raked my fingernails across his eyes,
then tried to kick him in the crotch. He pushed me back further. My feet were
hanging in open air. I was going over the side of the building.

He
released my throat and I fell off the 95th floor and into open space.

I
had a moment of pure, animal terror, rivaling drowning, then I jerked to a stop
and slammed into the side of the building. Pain yanked through my bad shoulder.
My elbow was hooked around one of my rucksack's straps, and Victor held the
other.

Legs
kicking, feet scrambling to find purchase, I reached for Victor with my free
hand, stretching to grab his arm or shirt. He swatted my attempt away and
tugged down the zipper.

The
stun gun began to slip out of the opening, then tumbled toward me.

I
reached for it...

...missed.

Victor
dug around. He pulled his hand out, the transceiver clutched in his fist. He
gazed down at me, his eyes glinting.

"See
you at the bottom."

Then
he let go of the strap.

#
 #  #

It
was over.

Fleming
was unarmed and outnumbered, and even if she’d had healthy legs before they certainly
weren't healthy now. She hadn’t smeared liquid body armor on the backs of her
legs, since they were already protected by her chair, and Hammett had shot them
full of holes. Then Fleming had watched Chandler—poor, dear, heroic Chandler—fall
out the window and felt something inside of her die.

"Hello,
Fleming," Hammett said, gazing down at her. "Apparently you survived
that fall in Milan. My my my, how pathetic your life must be."

Hammett
nudged Fleming's legs, and she set her jaw to avoid crying out.

"Don't
worry," Hammett said. "We're not going to kill you yet. We have one
more use for you first." She turned to look at Victor, who had walked
over.

"It
wasn't working out between me and Chandler," he said. "So I had to
drop her."

Victor
eyed the MP9 dubiously, but Hammett was wiping it down with her shirttails,
then tossed it off to the side. "We carry her down in the elevator. If the
police stop us, we're taking a wounded woman to an ambulance."

"What
if she talks?" Victor asked.

"She
won't talk," Hammett said.

Fleming
saw Hammett's boot come down, and then everything went blessedly black.

"You shouldn't fear the inevitable," The Instructor said. "And
it is inevitable that one day you'll die."

For
the second time that day I was falling off a building into open air. But the
Hancock Center was a lot taller than my apartment, and I was in much better
shape earlier.

Panic
making it impossible to breathe, I hugged the rucksack to my chest like a teddy
bear. Cold wind beat my face, my body. My fall felt slow, painfully slow, each
fraction of a second stretching out into hellish, terrifying infinity. Tears
streamed from my eyes and I saw nothing but a swirling mosaic of darkness and
light.

Then
something skimmed past my leg.

I
didn't think, just grabbed it.

Fire
seared my palm.

A
cable! A goddamn life line!

The window washers.

An
image flashed through my mind, earlier in the day, searching for a place to
hide the phone, noticing the cables outside the restaurant windows, the ones
that lowered the window washers' suspended scaffold.

I
couldn't hold on—I was falling too fast—but I felt the cable or rope or
whatever it was still whizzing by, still near. Thoughts blasted through my
brain like machine gun fire:

Can't grab the scaffold—can't hold on—hit it square and I'm dead—thrust
an arm through the rucksack strap—push it tight over my shoulder—one shot, just
one shot at this—might rip my arm out of the socket—gotta try—scaffold rushing
up at me—the whole city beneath my feet—dizzying height—stretching—reaching out
with the other strap—timing it just right—even with the scaffold—streaking past—looping
the strap around the corner winch bracket—

A
force ripped through my arm, my shoulder, my back, my neck. For a moment, all I
felt was excruciating pain.

When
my brain kicked back in, I realized I had stopped. Motes swam in front of me in
the darkness, and I struggled to assess what had happened.

I
hung on the side, one handle of the rucksack caught on a bracket at the base of
the platform. The force of my fall had unseated the scaffold, and it listed
sharply to one side, hanging from the safety cable. The wind and reverberation
thrashed it against the side of the building.

I
gripped the rucksack strap with every bit of strength I had left. It took a few
seconds for my heart to catch up and feel as if it was part of my body again.
It took longer for the scaffold's bucking motion to slow to a dangerous sway.

Then
the rest caught up to me as well.

Disbelief. Amazement. Exhilaration.

Terror. Panic.

Anger.

Loss. Sadness.

Pain.

Too many kinds of pain.

Wind
whipped around me, over me, through me, twisting me left and right. The back of
my eyes hurt like they'd been wrung out, and tears froze to ice on my cheeks. I
no longer had the strength to sob, but my breath hitched painfully anyway, in
my throat, in my chest, in my gut, as if it would never stop.

Fleming
was gone, almost as soon as I'd found her. I could picture her body, crumpled
on the floor of the restaurant, life draining from the holes Hammett had
punched into her. She'd be dead soon, if she wasn't already. Just an anguished,
lifeless face, staring into nothingness.

Like
Kaufmann.

Kaufmann...
Fleming...

Oh, God.

Maybe
it didn't matter. Hammett had the phone. It was only a matter of time before
she used it.

Maybe
soon, the world would cease to exist.

Maybe
Kaufmann and Fleming had just escaped first.

Maybe
I should let go of the strap and let everything fall away. Simple. Final.

Against
all common sense, I chanced a look down.

Tiny
pinpricks of light unfolded below me, as cold and far away as the stars. I
should feel panic, dizziness, the moment of weightlessness before the roller
coaster plunges.

Instead,
I felt nothing. I felt dead.

Over
the wind's shriek, I heard the sound of canvas tearing, and I dropped several inches
lower.

The rucksack.

I
craned my neck, aching from the abrupt stop. My backpack had a tear in it. As I
watched, the rip extended, making my heart leap up out of my throat. I thought
I'd run out of adrenaline hours ago, but fear grabbed me, full body, and shook
the living hell out of me.

If
I feared death that much, I obviously wasn't ready to call it quits. At least
not yet.

Keeping
perfectly still, not moving my neck, I peered over at the building, hoping to
see a window with a bunch of people staring and pointing.

Instead,
the window was black, reflecting a mirror image of a terrified woman whose life
was hanging by a thread.

Far
away, I heard a car honk. I glanced down again, seeing the traffic beneath my
feet. Too small to even look like toys. The wind kicked up, making me sway.

Another
tearing sound.

Another
small drop.

Another
notch of sheer fucking terror.

Moving
slowly, deliberately, I eased my free arm up over my head. I could barely touch
the platform, but not enough to get a grip on it.

Instead,
I cinched my fingers around the strap, and carefully removed it from around my
armpit.

Which
is when the tablet PC fell out of the tear in the bag.

Not
stopping to think, my other hand lashed out, pinching the corner of the PC
before it dropped out of range. If I were to live through this, I needed the
tablet to find Hammett.