Fire with Fire(52)

Which she did, keeping her bare feet in gliding contact with the wet floor: anything else and she would sound like a kid playing in a puddle. She reached the corner of the T intersection, went low, did a quick out-and-back check: three distant figures disappearing into the artificial downpour, then pausing, preparing to make an assault entry to another room. Timing was everything now: she took the risk of looking again, saw one of the strikers fire a round into the lock, just before another shouldered the door open. Now.

Using the cover of their noise, she limp-sprinted to the elevator, wedged her arm through the partially open door, braced her legs and pushed one direction with her arms, the other direction with the shoulder-blade she had squirmed into the gap. A moment of resistance—and breath-stopping pain—and the door opened enough for her to slide through sideways.

Inside the elevator, she found what she had been hoping to find at a medical facility: handrail/bumpers lining the interior at about waist height. And at the rear left corner of the ceiling, an overhead panel.

One last agony, now. Facing into the left rear corner, she raised her shaking left leg up onto one of the handrails and wedged her left hand into the crevice between the left and rear wall panels. Trembling with the effort and pain, she hoisted herself off the floor, got her other foot up onto the rear wall handrail. Once she was steady, she pushed upward against the overhead access panel with her free hand. Stuck or locked. But flimsy. No choice. She hammered upwards with her fist, thinking: any second, they’ll hear it.

But after three blows, the panel popped up, the sheared head of a single restraining screw dropping past her. Now, both arms through the access panel, palms to either side, and lift. Slowly, she rose into the darkness of the elevator shaft, choking on the dust—and then began shaking convulsively. She couldn’t tell if it was from relief, exhaustion, pain, or noradrenal aftermath—or all of them.

Guiding the access panel back with careful fingers, she snugged it in place, thought: I just might make it—

She heard a faint metallic squeak overhead, threw herself to the side of the elevator car’s roof, almost tumbling into the gap between it and the wall. She was still, silent. So too was whatever had made the noise overhead. Where, looking up, she saw a faint hint of something other than absolute darkness. Not a light, per se: more like a reflection of twilight? And were those voices she heard? A hint of a whisper and then nothing?

Alongside her, disappearing up into the near shadows, was a ladder in a recessed channel. It was a pathway to salvation—or to death. The all-important variable was this: whose voices had she—maybe—heard up there? Was it the intruders? Had they come in that way?

She leaned back against the ladder: wondering won’t do any good. You have to think, and then you have to act. So she thought: this might be a secure facility, but she doubted it was top secret. It had the sprawling look of a complex built for, and worked by, civilians. That meant it would have high security, but was unlikely to be some remote subterranean warren that was dozens of klicks from human habitation. So the building was probably situated in a typical civilian environment. If that was the case, would the bad guys have come in through the roof?

Probably not. Aerial insertion would be risky if they were in a developed area—and aerial extraction would be suicide. Local forces would be on the way in, and the first thing they’d be able to assess and control was the surrounding airspace.

Unless this was a black op—where the “intruders” were actually the “men in black” from the government—in which case there was no hope either way. Local law enforcement would be countermanded or delayed long enough to give the hunter-killer teams plenty of time to finish their sweeps.

So it was either men in black and certain death, or honest-to-god intruders—which meant that the cavalry was probably be on the way, and they would almost certainly come by air and secure the roof first.

She turned slowly, reached out for the rungs of the ladder and hoped her legs would hold her for what looked like—judging from the distance of that little bit of grayness above her—a five story climb.

ODYSSEUS

Little Guy’s hand appeared in the shaft above him, waving sharply. All clear.

Caine yanked himself up the last five rungs, but, despite his eagerness to be outside, kept low as he came out. Little Guy, watching from a crouch, gave a nod of approval, then stared meaningfully off into the night. Caine followed his gaze.

A green and red light, blinking, about three kilometers away, and coming closer—rapidly. The roar of VTOL jets crescendoed: the approaching craft was swiveling them into more of a vertical lift attitude.