Sleight of Hand (45 page)

Except that his overconfidence might make him vulnerable.

“You know Tucker’s got men downstairs now,” I said. “You’re not going to make it out of the building alive.”

He ignored me. I edged around and away, overplaying the Kung Fu moves. His lip curled more, but he didn’t otherwise respond except to follow me until it was too narrow to get past him and there was no way out behind me. He knew that.

With him barely a step away, gunfire sounded from below just as I feinted a punch at his face. He lost concentration; the gunfire distracted him for the smallest moment. He blinked and raised his hand to swat my fist away. All his weight was coming down on his left leg. That was all I was going to get and that was all I needed.

I went low and hard with my boot, nothing fancy, nothing in any pretty style of martial arts and too low for him to block. A simple way for him to discover suddenly that my toecap was much stronger than his kneecap, and just like that, he was down to one working leg.

To give him his due, he realized immediately he was in trouble and lunged forward off his good leg with his arms spread wide to sweep me up into his grip, where I would die.

But he lunged to where I had been, and unfortunately for him, I was a step and a half to the side already. With his arms out to try and grapple with me, he left his whole side unprotected, and this time I did Master Leung proud. A perfect, full side-on snap kick, with all my force concentrated into the small, hard hammer of my boot sole. I yelled out as it went home and felt his ribs splinter like rotten wood. He screamed and went down hard, hands flailing, too late to protect his ribs or to catch my foot. His face hit the floor with a sickening crunch.

He was tough. Even with a busted knee and broken ribs, he tried to get up. Just the ribs must have been excruciatingly painful, let alone any other internal damage. For a moment I regretted that I’d never had him in my squad, but he wasn’t that kind of guy and I didn’t have a squad any more. I broke the hat stand over the back of his head and he collapsed like a poleaxed bull.

“Amber, what’s goin’ on?” said Victor in my earpiece.

“Dealt with guards, back to you in one.”

I got the gun from beneath the desk. Yup, another Glock. Tucker must have gotten a real bulk discount on them. I checked the guard, but with his windpipe and neck arteries crushed, he was already dead.

There were keys for the storeroom on the table.

Morales blinked as I pulled the bag off his head.

“Farrell?” he groaned, trying to sit up. The movement opened a stomach wound and started it bleeding again.

“Lie still for now,” I told him, and cut the rope tying his hands and feet before checking on the wound. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been. It was in and out on the side and it would hurt like hell, but he could walk.

Verdoon had no bullet wounds, but they’d worked him over. His face was broken and bleeding and starting to swell. He could barely speak. His leg was broken.

The man chained to the bed was Troy, still in his cycling clothes, and thankfully he seemed unharmed.

“Oh Lordy, have we been looking for you, Troy,” I said as I ran through the keys until I found the right one and unlocked his chains. “Are you okay?”

“Yuh,” he said weakly, swinging his legs around and wobbling upright. “Dizzy. I thought they were going to kill me. Thank you. Thank you.” He was trembling and tears ran down his cheeks, but, other than that, he seemed steady. I was impressed. “I’m not hurt,” he finished.

“Good man,” I said. “Now, I need your shirt, please.”

He frowned in confusion, but took off the smelly yellow and black cycling top. I used it and Morales’ shirt to create a basic compression bandage for Morales while I spoke to them. “Guys, we need to go. There’s a SWAT team outside, but there are armed men in the building and I think their orders are to kill you. Bernard can’t walk, so I’m going to need you two to help him. We’ve got to get down the corridor and up the stairs. Let’s move.”

Morales seemed most in control of himself, but he was limited in what he could do. Troy had been a captive for two weeks and would be disoriented and weak. Verdoon was going to be unable to help with anything. But I had to be free to keep Tucker’s men away.

“Victor,” I said into the mike, “I have Morales, Verdoon and Huber. Two wounded. No sign of anyone on this floor yet, but I can hear gunfire below. We’re moving now.”

“Roger that,” he replied. “We’re ready for you. SWAT team engaged in delivery area, holding for reinforcements before coming further in.”

I stuck my head out the door. There was still nothing on this floor, though I could hear shouting below and the firing continued. I risked a quick look into the atrium. People were running around on the other floors, trying to get into the elevators or down the main client stairs.

We headed for the service stairwell, limping along at the pace the three of them could make while I kept a lookout.

The door at the end was locked. Rather than try my pass, I broke the nearest fire alarm. Bless those building regulations; the doors opened and we were through into the stairwell.

“Up!” I caught them, turning to go down automatically. “Up to the roof.”

Morales understood and Troy followed his lead. I waited on the landing, looking down and listening. Our luck had run out; there were people coming up the stairs. Not as many as there would have been without the SWAT team in the delivery area, but there was only one of me.

I dived back into the corridor and retrieved the fire extinguishers stacked beside the door. In the stairwell, I checked out the types and got the foam one ready.

Troy came back down from the roof. “The door up there’s locked,” he said.

I tested the door behind me to the corridor, and that had now locked as well. Someone had overridden the fire precautions and we were trapped in the stairwell with the bad guys only a floor or two away.

I thrust the spare fire extinguisher into his hands. “Use that to break the lock.” It was a CO2 extinguisher for electric fires, smaller and lighter than the foam one, but I needed that. He stumbled back up while I waited for the first person to come into sight.

Tucker’s lead man was trotting up the steps, panting and waving his gun around. They hadn’t realized the hostages had escaped yet, but the point man recovered quickly and fired wildly. I shot him, a single bullet through the chest, and then I walked down the stairs, firing into the group behind him. Men in suits. Tucker’s elite troops rather than his ZK muscle.

There were screams and someone more alert than the others started firing back. I heard the vicious sound of the ricochets off the walls behind me. In my left hand I triggered the foam extinguisher, pointing it down into the mass and following it with another shot.

“Amber, sitrep,” called Victor.

“The hostages are trying to break out the roof door,” I shouted. “I’m in the stairwell, engaged. Where are you?”

“Comin’ in on the roof,” he said over the thudding of the chopper blades.

“Freaking A, Vic,” I whispered as I retrieved guns from the first two bodies on the stairs and retreated back upwards. Someone was firing up blind, which was a smarter move than it sounded like. In the cramped concrete stairwell, ricochets were as deadly as straight shots. Something smacked into the wall right next to me and I felt a sting of concrete chips across my cheek.

I ran up, followed by shouts and more bullets. The foam was slippery and had caused confusion and panic when they were bunched up, but it wouldn’t keep them back now.

Troy was doing a good job breaking the door—he was almost through. Morales was holding up Verdoon. I pushed Troy aside and shattered the lock with a kick.

The doors opened and slammed closed again as the downwash from the chopper caught them. I forced them back and pointed at the chopper. “Go, go, go,” I screamed over the noise, grabbing Morales’ shoulder and jerking him towards it.

Someone came around the corner below and I fired at him. Another followed him and I fired again, emptying one gun and swapping it for another. I was stuck; I couldn’t break off to get to the chopper, otherwise they’d have a clear shot at it while it was at its most vulnerable.

“Victor,” I yelled. “Take off as soon as they’re aboard.”

“Shit, woman, no one’s leaving you here.”

“Just do it, damn you. Go!”

The firing from below redoubled and again I felt the sting of chips gouged out of the walls. Then a ricochet hammered into my chest and knocked me down. Only the Kevlar vest saved me.
Thank you again, Vic.

As I struggled back to my feet, they took the opportunity to sprint up the last few steps. I shot the first one and grabbed the second in the doorway, blocking it for the others behind. I heard the chopper wind up behind me and the downwash buffeted us as we struggled. A bullet raked along my leg. My gun went off again, into the stairwell, and someone yelled. Getting purchase on the doorframe, I managed to shove them back inside. Behind me, the chopper was gone.

The stairwell was a confused melee, and someone swore in panic. I heard a sound that made my blood freeze. Some idiot had dropped an armed grenade onto the concrete floor and it was the distinctive
ching
of the metal safety lever springing out. I tried to struggle free, but I was pinned where I was.

The stairwell exploded. The blast hurled me against the doorframe, tearing the gun out of my hand and the comms plug out of my ear. Everything went black and distant.

The place was a charnel house filled with smoke and dust. I had a dozen splinter punctures and my face and hands were leaking blood, but that was better than the guy I’d been wrestling. He’d taken the main force of the blast on his unprotected back. I shoved his tattered corpse off me and tried to get up, coughing. The others on this level were dead or badly injured as well.

A figure loomed through the swirling smoke, pointing a shotgun at my head. His foot stamped down on my chest and pushed me back.

“You should have agreed to work for me at the ball. It felt right, you know. You’d have done well.” His voice was hoarse, strained. “Now it’s your fault it’s all fucked up.”

“Tucker,” I croaked, and spat dust out of my mouth. “It’s over. The SWAT team are all around this place and your hostages are gone.”

“Except you,” he said. The edgy businessman from the charity ball was gone, replaced by an angry maniac in torn clothes. His eyes were like staring holes.

“They won’t do you a deal for me.”

“They won’t, but she will. I saw her car. That’s her helicopter that just left my roof.” He laughed, sweat glistening on his face. “I know all about you two. Half of Denver knows about you, after the ball.”

He pulled a cell from his pocket and dialed.

“Kingslund,” he yelled. “I’ve got your whore up here on the roof. You can pick her up off the ground or you can give us a ride in your helicopter.”

I shouted to stop him from hearing an answer. “You’re not getting away, Tucker. You’ll die in here.”

“I don’t care anymore. See?” He tore his shirt away from his neck, and I could see the mark of fangs. He’d gotten the full dose and he wasn’t in any fit state to be able to stand the crusis. But he didn’t know that. “I don’t care if I die today. Inez has bitten me, and if I die it just means I’ll return stronger.” He was exultant, laughing, his eyes staring and completely mad. “I just don’t fucking care anymore. You caused all of this, you interfering bitch. If you hadn’t cracked our operation at Crate & Freight, I’d have bought Kingslund out and Matlal wouldn’t have any claws in me. Now it’s all gone. And you and your Altau friends will pay for it. Matlal will make sure of that.”

The pieces kept falling into place. Matlal was cutting his losses. Tucker was a liability now. The bite was a deliberate move to force him into crusis. He was slipping into rogue behavior already. Flecks of foam had appeared at the corners of his mouth.

“Sir, we gotta get out of here,” one of his men shouted in panic up the stairwell.

He bent over me, not quite close enough for me to grab him. And the shotgun was shoved in my belly. “Tell me,” he whispered. “What’s it like? To die and come back like a god?”

Outside, I heard the sweetest sound, the thudding of blades as Victor brought the chopper back in. But I also could hear the sounds of fighting in the stairwell coming closer.

“It’s not like that, Tucker,” I said.

He wasn’t listening. “Kingslund,” he screamed into the cell. “Decision time, bitch.”

“Shit, Tucker, Matlal’s screwed you,” I shouted. “That bite will kill you. Dead is dead. I don’t know what she told you, but that’s not how it works.”

Tucker didn’t believe me. He laughed. He closed his eyes, put his head back and roared with laughter. The shotgun waved away. And I pulled the extinguisher out from beneath me, ripped the pin and set it off.

CO2 comes out of the extinguisher like jet exhaust but
cold
. The nozzles have double insulated layers to stop your hand from freezing solid on them. Tucker’s hand didn’t have that protection. It froze to his shotgun. The firing mechanism of the shotgun froze. I lunged up as his head snapped back upright. He gasped in pain, dragging the vapors in. His lungs and his face filled with a freezing cloud and his mouth opened in a silent scream as his men arrived.

I kicked his body towards them, turned and sprinted for the sound of blades.

Victor was holding the chopper about ten feet away from the roof. He didn’t dare land back on the roof, but he was giving me a chance. Even with Tucker dead or dying, his men were still trying to kill us. My back tensed as I ran, waiting for the blow. The Kevlar wouldn’t stop a rifle bullet. With horrible clarity, I saw holes appearing in the skin of the chopper.

I launched myself off the roof. For a heart-stopping second I fell through the air, a hundred feet above the ground, sure I had misjudged. Then my hands closed around the chopper’s skid bar. I hung on, swinging wildly while the chopper twisted on its side.

But something had gone wrong. The engine was screaming and we were falling out of the sky.