Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job (The Kim Oh Thrillers) (21 page)

“There’s somebody in there! Get back –”

There was an emergency control button on the wall up there. I had seen it myself, when I had still been working for the company. Louie hit the button with the flat of his palm and another steel barrier, like the one in the stairwell, slid down and sealed the reception area off from the elevator doors.

By the time that happened, I was already in the stairwell, running up the steps to the landing above.

And Cole had recovered himself enough to move on to the next thing he had to do. Ripping the paper from the package I had handed him, he pressed the soft brick of RDX at the top of the elevator doors. But his hands were too slick with his own blood to get the explosive to stay in place. He wiped it off on the front of his shirt and tried again. This time, the explosive stuck to the inside of the door panels.

Reaching behind himself, he touched the two bared electrical wires together again. The machinery ground into life, the cables looping through their spoked wheels as the elevator started back down the shaft. Cole grabbed onto the steel frame at the top of the doors and let the elevator drop away beneath him, his legs dangling free in the dark space.

The elevator stopped halfway down to the floor below.

Holding on to the frame with just one hand, he used the other to reach inside his jacket and pull out a battery-powered timer fuse. He jabbed its metal prongs into the RDX and pressed the switch to start its red LED numbers running, counting down in tenths of a second. He let go of the door frame and dropped to the roof of the elevator below him.

Lying on top of the elevator, he dug his fingers between the outer elevator doors, but couldn’t pry them open. Glancing up, he could just see the bright numbers jittering down on the side of the timer fuse. He used his elbows to drag himself over the edge of the elevator. There was just enough space between the elevator and the inside of the shaft, for him to lower his legs through the gap and then let himself slide downward, chest scraping against the front of the elevator.

In the space beneath, Cole grabbed the machinery beneath the elevator and swung himself out to the center of the shaft. He eased his arms straight as he hung on, letting himself dangle beneath the elevator.

At the top of the shaft, the fuse’s numbers reached red zeroes all the way across. A spark shot through the device’s metal prongs, igniting the explosive. A fireball filled the shaft, snapping the elevator cables, and whipping them loose in air.

In the reception area of McIntyre’s offices, the explosion burst through the steel security barrier, sending a couple of the security guys toppling backward. Flames and smoke churned out of the ragged opening.

The explosion had smashed through the ceiling of the empty elevator as well, and on through its floor. The force of the blast shoved the broken elevator downward in the shaft. The machinery peeled away from the underside of the elevator, Cole still managing to cling to it.

In the stairwell, I heard the sharp, then quickly rumbling noise of the explosion.

On either side of Cole, the elevator’s emergency brakes sprang outward, jamming against the sides of the shaft and showering Cole with sparks. The ruined elevator ground to a halt, with a battered Cole hanging on below.

TWENTY

Something had gone wrong. I realized that, not when I heard the roar of the explosion in the elevator shaft – that was something I’d been expecting, part of the plans we’d made – but when I didn’t hear Cole shouting to me from the empty floor where we had started out.

Carrying the assault rifle, I ran back down the stairwell and then across the bare-walled level to the elevator doors. Black smoke poured out from between them, but they hadn’t opened. That was a bad sign – it meant that Cole was still trapped somewhere inside the elevator shaft. If he was still alive.

It might’ve been better for Cole if he had been killed. More things were starting to go wrong – and not the way we’d planned them – inside the shaft. Outside the blackened doors, I could hear deep-pitched, groaning metal sounds . . .

I couldn’t see him, but Cole had managed to climb up into the elevator, through its floor that the explosion had torn open. Collapsing against its side, he was only able to catch his breath for a moment. The emergency brakes, that had prevented the elevator from free-falling all the way to the bottom of the shaft, were giving way. Damaged in the explosion, the machinery had begun shedding pieces of itself, the fragments falling into the smoke-filled darkness below.

Through the blown-open ceiling, the elevator’s thick cables looped down into the narrow space. Cole grabbed hold of one and began hauling himself, hand-over-hand, up above the elevator. He had barely cleared his upper torso through the jagged-edged opening when the emergency brakes came apart. The elevator battered him from side to side as it fell away from him. One sharp angle of metal caught at his jacket pocket and ripped it open. Tightening his grip on the cable, Cole saw his black .357 falling away from him. He held on to the cable with one hand, trying to catch the gun with his other. He missed – the gun fell down the shaft beneath him, following the wreckage of the elevator.

He watched it disappear, then got both hands back on the cable and started climbing upward again.

On the floor above me, other people were in motion as well.

McIntyre’s security guys had gotten to their feet, pulling their boss upright between them.

“We can’t stay –” McIntyre shoved against one of the security guys’ shoulders. Smoke poured through the gap that the explosion had ripped through the protective steel barrier. “Get me out of here! Now!”

At the side of the company’s reception area, Louie pointed to the door at the end of the space. “Take him down the stairs – get going!”

The other guards hustled McIntyre toward the back of the offices. Louie, gun in hand, stepped cautiously toward the ripped-open steel security barrier.

On the level below, it was clear that with the elevator doors closed tight, there was nothing I could do for Cole. If he was still alive, he was on his own now. I turned and ran back toward the stairwell.

Up above, McIntyre and his pair of security guys had already reached the stairwell. The only thing blocking them from hustling their boss down to safety was the protective steel barrier on the other side of the door. One of the security guys slammed his fist against the control panel button and the barrier began retracting up into the ceiling.

On the landing below, I heard the grinding of the machinery lifting the barrier. With the assault rifle in my hands, I crouched and peered up toward the landing at the top of the stairs.

As the steel barrier drew upward, the blade of the door-jammer device scraped against the metal, where I had mounted it on the stairwell’s wall. The barrier rose high enough to clear the door-jammer and the compressed springs shot the blade underneath the bottom edge of the barrier.

The security guys were in too much of a hurry to notice the door-jammer. With the barrier finally out of the way, they pushed McIntyre through the doorway and onto the stairwell landing.

Before they set foot on the next metal step leading down, I ripped off a burst from the assault rifle. I had just enough of an angle, looking up the curve of the stairwell, to catch the first security guy in the chest. He collapsed head-first along the metal steps, his gun clattering to the landing below where I was hunkered down. When he landed on his back, I could see the hole that the shaped epoxy cartridge had torn through the body armor under his shirt.

The other security guy shoved McIntyre back through the stairwell door. He hit the control panel button inside with his palm – the steel barrier started to come back down. But about halfway down, the barrier hit the blade of the door-jammer device mounted on the wall. The barrier motor ground away, but couldn’t force the barrier past the blade. At the doorway, the security guy saw the problem. But before he could try to do anything about it, another shot from my rifle hit the wall inches from his head. He retreated back inside, the steel barrier still stuck uselessly in place.

With the assault rifle ready, I cautiously headed up the stairs. Halfway along, I could see that the security guy wasn’t waiting for me – the door into the company offices had been pulled shut. On the landing at the top of the stairwell, I tried the doorknob – it was locked from the other side, as I expected. One burst from the AR-SF shredded the metal, and I was able to push the door free. I peered inside and saw no one. I looked back down the stairwell, as though somehow expecting Cole to have turned up. But the stairwell was empty as well.

Which meant that it was up to me. The remaining bits of our plan. I took a deep breath and slid into the offices, keeping my spine close to the wall inside the doorway.

* * *

I might have been hoping that Cole was still alive – that he had somehow survived the explosion in the elevator shaft – but there was no way I could know for sure.

If I had been able to look inside the shaft, I would have seen that Cole had managed to climb up the elevator cable, to the space housing the machinery at the top. From there he could look down himself to the elevator doors that opened onto the reception area of McIntyre’s company.

He saw Louie pry the battered doors a little farther apart, then lean in and peer down the shaft. The elevator had already crashed to the bottom, leaving nothing but darkness.

Louie pulled his head back. That was when he spotted something. A trickle of blood ran down the cable dangling in front of him. He tightened his grip on the gun in his hand, then threw himself onto his back, so that his shoulders were just past the bottom edge of the opening. He fired toward the top of the shaft –

Cole dodged the shots, using his weight to swing the cable over to the front of the elevator shaft, directly above Louie. He let go of the cable and dropped onto the security guy, knocking the gun loose from his hand and grappling him around his chest. The two men toppled together into the elevator shaft.

With both hands, Louie grabbed onto the elevator cable, halting his and Cole’s combined fall. Cole slipped downward, finally catching hold of the other’s legs as the cable swayed back and forth.

Louie freed one hand from the cable and hit Cole across the side of the head with his fist. One blow after another landed, knocking Cole dazed. Louie brought one knee up hard into Cole’s gut. Cole’s grip loosened for a moment, but then clawed tighter onto the other man.

One more blow almost succeeded in dislodging Cole. He slipped farther down the security guy’s legs. Louie swung his fist down toward Cole’s skull. But before the blow landed, Cole turned his battered, bleeding face upward. Gritting his teeth, he reached up and grabbed Louie’s wrist. He reared back, pulling Louie’s other hand from its grip on the cable. Surprise and fear flashed in the man’s face as he felt himself helplessly falling.

Cole’s back struck the front side of the shaft. He reached up and grabbed the top edge of the next doorframe down. Louie’s arms flailed as he tried to grasp hold of Cole – but missed. Hanging on to the frame, Cole watched Louie fall. With blood trickling across his face, Cole dug his fingers into the narrow ridge of metal, his legs dangling below him.

* * *

The company hallways had filled with smoke.

By my count, there were at least three security guys that I had to deal with. The one I had driven back from the stairwell landing, plus another one that I knew was usually waiting in the offices whenever McIntyre arrived – I didn’t know that Cole had already taken out Louie.

Keeping the assault rifle poised in my hands, I slid my back along the wall, then stopped and listened.

I figured the ones that I was closing in on would be sweating right now. They didn’t have any idea of who it was they were dealing with. If they had been able to catch a solid glimpse of me behind the assault rifle, they might not have been quite so agitated.

Inching forward, I came to the corner of the wall, where it joined up with one of the cross-corridors. Peering around it, I got a quick glimpse of two of the security guys. I didn’t spot McIntyre – they might have shoved him into one of the offices for safekeeping. One of them gave a hand signal to the other, indicating which way he should go. They were splitting up, so that at least one might be able to circle around and get the drop on me.

I made their job a little harder, with a burst from the AR-SF, straight into the overhead light panels. The fluorescent tubes shattered, raining the carpet with bits of glass and plunging the space into darkness.

Gunfire raked the wall where I had been. I was already sprinting back down the hallway, to keep the sound of my shots from revealing my position.

My mind was weirdly quiet while all this was going on, free of thoughts and emotions. Maybe there wasn’t time for them. Or maybe I was finally just where I wanted to be.