Jack Be Nimble: Gargoyle (35 page)

–the click of metal-on-metal above and behind him drove a deep wedge of panicked energy from Jack’s heart to his legs, and he dove from the balcony, snagging the edge of one of the banners as he tumbled over the edge. The sagging cloth broke his impact with the floor somewhat, and he rolled under the walkway, jostling through a coat rack and knocking over a display of running shoes. Bullets thudded thickly into the carpet near his hands. Again from behind, he thought, and ignored the irrational impulse to cast around for the oversized thug who’d accosted him in the Parisian alley. He had the presence of mind to look down, and quickly found the unconscious form of the gunman that had been knocked off the walkway earlier, groaning in the darkness.

“Very fast,” someone said from above, and Jack heard the impact on the walkway of someone jumping onto it from a higher level. From further above, someone barked out a series of commands, most likely in Russian but too indistinct for Jack to make out. He found the supine man’s gun–happily, a Glock fairly close to the one he’d lost–and checked the magazine. At least three bullets left.

It would have to do.

“Do you know what my superior just said, whoever you are?” The voice from above was high-pitched for a man, but full, not feminine. Slightly haughty. Jack placed the man about halfway along the walkway, near a potted plant he’d almost collided with earlier. He slipped under the span, staying close to it, pistol fully extended before him. He caught a glimpse of the back of the speaker’s full head of hair before the man turned to hunt for him. “He says you have real
yaytsa
for an Englishman. I think you are a member of your Secret Air Service, no?” Without warning, he loosed a spray of bullets into the shadows below, raking the carpet, shredding the hung suits. Hangers clinked and clanged like chimes in a gust of wind.

Jack backed under the walkway. It appeared that he and the huge Russian were alone in the shop turned shooting gallery. He could see a corner of his opponent’s overcoat. “
Nyet, ya Amerikanyets
,” he said, and fired a shot of his own. Got you now, he thought, racing under and along the length of the walkway, keeping his pistol extended, the sights tracking along the line where he knew, he
felt
the other man to be.

No, I’m American
. The voice was naggingly familiar to the big Slav. He’d heard it before, and recently, though not speaking Russian. The accent was even Moskovian, though the vicissitudes of that fact were lost on him as he ducked under the clap and whine of a bullet. A glimmer of movement from below, and he emptied his magazine into the shadows, then stepped quickly away from the edge of the walkway as he ejected the clip from the MAC-10 and withdrew another. He backed all the way across the width of the narrow bridge, wondering fleetingly if the man below had any chance of tracking him, of guessing his movement. None, he decided in less than a second. His footfalls were silent; he wasn’t even breathing loudly. Following Miklos’ example without fail. Sasha had never felt so calm, so completely in control in his entire life. Just to be sure, he glanced behind and down as he ran the clip into his weapon.

And looked straight over Trijicon night sights into the American’s eyes as the other man slid smoothly out of the shadows.

Brad’s injuries weren’t as grave as Solomon had feared. He’d taken at least two bullets clean through his thigh, and another had grazed his lower abdomen. It was when he tried to remove his friend’s jacket that Solomon received his biggest shock of the night.

The two shooters had been excellent marksmen, lapping almost all their hits over what would normally have been vital areas. The leatherlike material had taken several bullets before finally shredding, but the inner lining itself had stopped nearly a dozen rounds. They had lodged between disks of metal Brad had roughly glued into the jacket’s lining. Most of the disks had bent or broken under impact, but they looked to Solomon like—no, they couldn’t be. But that’s what they were. Antique silver doubloons.

Brad cracked open an eye and moaned. “Saved by a life of crime.”

Solomon smiled for his friend’s benefit, and yanked open his medical kit.

*

Miklos and his companion strode down the shadowed hallway. He was furious. Raines had betrayed him!
Him!
Inwardly, Miklos cursed himself. How could he have not seen the duplicity for what it would become? He had assumed the decoy maneuver was for the crowd’s benefit, so that someone would recognize him in the morning when his manifesto was broadcast.
Of course
Raines had known there would be men above the theater with rifles. He sneered indignantly into the dark. Instinct and training demanded that he run, that he mingle and vanish into the mindless herd that even now was stampeding down the stairs and escalators. Once out on the street it was only a few meters to an entrance to the Tube, and the two men would be untraceable. They could even make Belgium before dawn. But how to balance this, this--

Betrayal!
His mind still reeled from the possibility. Then, like an eagle wheeling in the sky, Miklos’ thoughts came fully about. The man at his side, at least, he could trust. “Tovik! We’re not going to leave just yet. Raines owes us a soul. Blood for blood, eh?”

Tovik’s impassive frown remained unchanging. “You know he will use the Sikorsky.”

“And we’ll be there to greet him,” said Miklos. The two checked their weapons. Each carried an American-made MAC-10, a fine piece of deadly art that fired over forty five rounds every second and a half. Its design was not necessarily to kill, but to wreak shattering havoc on the human body--as different from a regular revolver as a sledgehammer is to a surgeon’s scalpel.

“We’ll use the service lift in the back of the building, the one used by the workmen to reach the construction site.” Miklos explained to the other man.

“Blood for blood.”

*

The little girl asleep on the vendor’s cart bore a striking resemblance to Christine Windsor; she was a closer match than the girl at the theater had been. Same height, same hair, different nose–another one of the four abducted girls he’d read about in the major’s file, no doubt. Jack ran a fresh clip home and then stowed the Glock before picking her up.

There were still a few people left at the top of the escalators leading to the next lower level, and Jack whistled to get their attention when he drew close enough. “Hey,” he said, slipping automatically into a West End accent. “Would ya mind getting the little miss down below with ya?”

The couple he approached looked at him, dazed, and Jack realized he was still half-covered in blood. “Not to worry, I slipped into one o’ those demmed American hotdog wagons up top.” They took the snoring little girl, still eying the stains on his black clothing. “Right then, be down m’self in two shakes. Just see her to a bobby, will ya?”

He spent half a minute in a men’s room cleaning himself off and checking his equipment. His headset was still in his jacket’s inner pocket, and he put it on immediately. “Steve?” The lift had to be around here somewhere.

“Jack, where’ve you been?”

“I’m on the floor above Harrods, in the big atrium, facing north. The window’s behind me. Which way to the elevators?”

Papers fluttered over the digital line. “‘Kay, go straight until you come to the wall, then it should be 50 meters to your right, near an information kiosk. Hey, Al and the Major are going to meet you on the 35th floor. Raines is moving.”

Jack found the kiosk, a touch-activated show-and-tell of the whole building, hard-wired into a black plastic pillar with a slanted face, in the general three-tiered three-winged shape of the Illuminatus Tower itself. The bank of elevators–three in all–sat behind it, obscured slightly by a BBC display on easels. Jack stabbed at the call button, then glanced again at the plastic-faced BBC announcement.

Intense Broadband Capability–Tower Transmits Crystal-Clear Images Using New Technology.

Above the fine print was an artist’s rendering of the transmitter Jack had parachuted past only an hour before. Light refracted off the ad, however, and he had to tilt his head slightly to block the glare and see the huge, electronics-laden disk at the tower’s summit. As he moved, the weak light behind him played out over the plastic laminate covering the poster, casting an illusion of energy coruscating over the disk.

The elevator chimed and Jack entered, pressing the button for the thirty-fifth floor. Staring at his vague, streaked reflection, Jack cast his thoughts upward. He hoped Christine wasn’t too frightened. There were myriad tortures that could be inflicted upon a child–though Jack quickly locked his imagination away from such possibilities. No, she would be fine. If Raines wanted her for ransom, he’d keep her safe; as intact mentally as physically.

Yet ransom made no sense. There’d been no demands made, no price allotted for her return. Besides if there was any truth to the plot William had mentioned to Alonzo–to weaken the collective British resolve?–the perpetrators of the kidnapping must have taken into account that they’d be running for the remainder of their lives, once the ire of the people stirred against them. Nothing was more cherished in any given nation than that country’s children--and Princess Christine was the embodiment of the entire extended British Family. The kidnapers would have nowhere to–

The elevator shuddered to a halt. Jack looked up; he was barely above the twentieth floor. Before he could move, the lift began moving again, but now descending. Rapidly. Jack touched his headset. “Steve?”

Rain was beginning to fall in irregular, fat drops on the street and the gathering crowd. Ian exhaled in relief as he handed the little girl off to a paramedic, turning his attention from the looming building above to the approaching police vans. Behind them, he could see flashing lights of the fire truck variety, with accompanying sirens. A mounted officer reined in between the gathered crowd and the vacant lobby. “Here now, what’s all this?

“And where would you be goin’?” He pressed his heels into the horse’s flanks, moving to interpose himself between Ian and the entrance.

Before the other policemen in the crowd could react, Ian patted the horse on the neck, then took a firm grip on the halter. It wouldn’t do to pull FBI credentials here; besides, nobody was supposed to know he was even in the country. “The King’s business, mate,” he said, jerking the horse’s head. The animal shied and reared slightly, and its rider had to struggle to keep his seat.

Ian jogged into the lobby and pressed the call button for the elevators. There were five banks of them at this level, not counting the service lift he’d used to bring the little girl down. If he remembered right, the middle three went all the way to the top.

“You there, you!” Two of the bobbies he’d seen in the street entered the lobby, their batons loose and ready at their sides. Except for the truncheons, they reminded Ian unfailingly–like every other first-time American in London, he supposed--of Mack Sennett’s classic Keystone Kops.

He looked back at the elevators. At least one would surely–

Ian swore in dismay as the backlit numbers above the door diminished. First one, then another, then a third elevator passed him on its way to the basement. He heard the fourth descend past the lobby, then turned in dismay.

Only to be rushed by four big policemen who hammerlocked his arms before he could get a word out. Someone punched him hard in a kidney, and he collapsed, gasping, into their collective grip. “Jack,” he blurted into his headpiece, and then it was ripped from his ear.

“Jack Scratch is what you’ll be getting, my friend,” said the burliest of the officers. “‘Ere Charlie, look at this! Bloke’s got a gun!”

“Steve, what’s up with the elevators?” Jack swallowed hard. Shouting would not do just now. “I thought you had control.” He flipped open the emergency call box.

The voice on the other end was pinched, irritated. “I was trying to find Raines or Christine on the security cameras. The elevators sort of got away from me.”

“Sort of got away?” There it was, a list of notices and operating procedures printed in light red on the backside of the call box door. IN CASE OF FIRE, LIFT WILL PROCEED TO BASEMENT. USE STAIRS, it supplied helpfully. Jack worked a kink out of his neck, then calmly kicked the little door from its hinges.

“You alright, Jack?” Steve asked. “The system’s acting like there’s a real fire somewhere in the building.”

He was already pushing at the ceiling escape hatch. “Here’s one you won’t see in the movies, Steve,” he said, and dropped back to the floor as he pulled his gun. Three shots rang out like one-note thunder in the confined space, and the hatch tumbled back with a clatter and a crash that sounded tinny and far-off to Jack’s ringing ears. He planted a foot on the waist-high rail that ran the inner circumference of the cabin, and levered himself onto the roof.

“Any chance you can get control of this again?” he shouted. The noise in the shaft was tremendous. He couldn’t see any sort of ladder built into the wall, like those in movies used by the hero to escape and rescue the damsel in distress. Well, hell.

And it was lighted, which surprised him. Besides the cables and the bolstering lines for the other two elevators, a bright, almost glossy column ran up one wall, half hidden by iodized piping and sectioned, segmented steel wire casing. It embraced a sharp white light, much, much brighter than the conventional phosphorescent flame. No, he decided. Fire was the wrong analogy. He could feel a chill radiating across the gap. What lay before him was something even more elemental. This was heatless, liquid energy, almost plasma. Though it was crisscrossed with cables, its unchanging brightness lent it the illusion that the glossy pillar was keeping pace with Jack as the rest of the shaft flew upward around them both.