The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (33 page)

‘Okay. Now tell me why he’s doing this. Where’s he likely to go?’

Mike glanced at Pete. ‘I think he’s breaking out because he thought he was looking at a comfortable relax-a-thon in the Witness Protection Program, and a new identity afterward, with
us to protect him from his former associates. Unfortunately, once Dr. James switched him to military custody we lost track of the WP program and his new identity, and he finally twigged that he was
one step away from being given the whole unlawful-combatant treatment. As for where he’s going – I bet he’s got other spare identities stashed away, from before he decided to come
in. They won’t be as good as what we could have given him
if
we’d kept him in witness protection, but it beats being a ghost detainee.’

‘Right.’ The guard offered Smith his handset. ‘Jack? Our current best guess is that the target’s still in the building, above the security zone on ten. My top priority
is, I want you to secure the entry zone and the lobby. Nobody leaves the building even if a Boeing flies into the top floor: our target may try to provoke an evacuation so he can escape in the
crowd. I want a security detail to start on floor ten and work their way upstairs, one level at a time, until they get to the roof. They will need torches, floor-tile lifters, and ladders because
they’re going to check the crawlways and overheads, and they need to be armed because our target is dangerous. How soon can you get that started? How many bodies have we got up here
anyway?’ He listened for a few seconds. ‘Damn, I’d hoped for more. Okay, assemble them. Smith out.’ He glanced back at the two DEA agents. ‘Right. Any other
suggestions?’

Mike took a deep breath. ‘Is he still valuable to us, if we can get him back?’

‘Possibly.’ Smith stared at him. ‘Your call, son.’

Time stood still. ‘I need to work on my grammar,’ Mike said slowly. ‘But of course, after CLEANSWEEP we’ll have more subjects to work with.’

Smith held out his hand for the walkie-talkie, watching Mike’s face as he spoke: ‘Sergeant? Change of plan. Hold the floor sweep, I don’t think we’ve got enough people to
risk it, if the target manages to arm himself . . . Instead I want you to stand by to execute code BLUEBEARD. That’s BLUEBEARD. I’m going to make an announcement in a couple of minutes.
If the fugitive doesn’t give himself up, we’ll execute BLUEBEARD, then ventilate and search the place afterward.’

Pete looked shocked. Mike elbowed the younger agent in the ribs to get his attention. ‘Go get us all respirators,’ he said. Smith nodded at him. ‘You really going to do it,
sir?’

Smith nodded again. ‘We need to test the security system, anyway.’

‘Ri-ight.’ The desk guard was watching nervously, as if the colonel had sprouted a second head. Mike grimaced. ‘I love the smell of nerve gas in the morning.’ Pete
reappeared and handed over a sealed polythene pack containing a respirator mask and a preloaded antidote syringe.

‘It’s not nerve gas, it’s fentanyl,’ Smith corrected him. ‘Where’s the PA mike on this level?’ he asked the desk guard.

‘Fentanyl is a controlled substance,’ said Pete, a conditioned reflex kicking in.

Mike looked round edgily. BLUEBEARD was a last-ditch antiterrorist defense; on command, compressed gas cylinders plugged into the air-conditioning on each floor would pump a narcotic mist
throughout the building. Sure, there was an antidote, and the ventilator masks ought to stop it dead, but the only time it had ever been used for this purpose – in Russia, when a bunch of
Chechen terrorists had taken a theater crowd hostage – more than a fifth of the bystanders had been killed. Gas and confined spaces did not mix well.

‘Relax, boys.’ Smith looked bored, if anything. ‘If you’re thinking about that Russian thing, forget it – they didn’t have respirator masks there.
You’re perfectly safe.’ He pulled the gooseneck PA mike toward his mouth and hit the red button. ‘Is this thing – yes, it’s live.’ His voice rumbled through the
corridors and floor, amplified through hidden speakers. ‘Matt, I know you’re in here. You’ve got five minutes to surrender. If you want to live, come out from wherever
you’re hiding, and go to the nearest elevator bank. Hit the button for the tenth floor, then lie down on the floor of the elevator car with your hands on your head. This is your only
warning.’

He killed the PA and turned to the walkie-talkie: ‘Okay, you heard me, Sergeant. Fifteen minutes from my mark, I want you to execute BLUEBEARD on all floors above ten. You’ve got ten
minutes from right
now
to do a cross-check on all personnel and make sure they’re ready. Antidote kits out, boys. Over.’

Smith unsealed his respirator kit. ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘The broken window on the twenty-third,’ Mike said slowly. ‘Has it been repaired? And has anyone secured the window-cleaning system?’ He opened the packaging around his
respirator as he spoke, peeling the polythene wrapper away and yanking the red seal tab to activate the filter cartridge.

‘The –’ Pete’s eyes narrowed.

‘We’ve agreed Matt’s not stupid. He probably guessed we’d have something like BLUEBEARD. Maybe he broke the window because he wanted fresh air to breathe?’ Mike
pointed toward the nearest outside wall. ‘That got me thinking. Someone’s got to clean the windows, haven’t they? That means a motorized basket, right? Maybe he figured he could
ride it down past the security zone while we’re busy trying not to choke ourselves?’

‘Point.’ Smith began to reach for the walkie-talkie again.

‘How about Pete and I check out floor twenty-three?’ Mike asked, pulling the mask over his head. ‘We’ve got respirators, we’re armed, we can take a walkie-talkie.
More to the point, maybe we can talk him down. Is that okay by you?’

Smith thought for a moment. Finally he nodded. ‘Okay, you have my approval. Stick together, don’t take any risks, and remember – I’m not going to cancel BLUEBEARD if he
gets the drop on you. Especially not if he takes one of you hostage. Understood?’

‘Yes.’ Mike glanced at Pete, who nodded.

Smith gestured at the charging station by the security desk: ‘Take one of these, they’re fully charged.’ He picked up his own walkie-talkie. ‘Sergeant, I want you to
check out the janitorial facilities, find out how they clean the windows above the tenth floor. If there’s an outside winch, I want it secured.’

Mike headed for the central service core, opening his holster. ‘Come on,’ he told Pete, his voice muffled by the mask.

‘What’s the plan?’

‘I want to check out the floor tiles where he smashed the window. Where is it?’

‘Twenty-third floor. You turn left at the checkpoint, then take the first transverse corridor past the service core. You want to follow me?’

‘He’s not armed, is he?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Pete sounded uncertain.

‘Well, then.’ Mike held his gun at his side and gestured at the door onto the fire stairs with his free hand. ‘Let’s go.’

They took the steps fast. Mike rapidly discovered that breathing through a gas mask was hard work. He paused, gasping for air, on the twenty-second-floor landing, leaning against a brace of drab
green pipes running up and down. Pete seemed to be doing fine:
There’s no justice
, he thought. ‘I can’t run in this thing.’
I’m too old for this SWAT-team
game. I’m not thirty-six yet, and I can’t run up flights of stairs in a gas mask anymore. What’s wrong with me?
He pulled his mask off and shoved it into the inside pocket of
his jacket.

‘You sure it’s safe to do that?’ asked Pete. Mike noticed that he wasn’t wearing his mask, either.

‘I’ll hear when Smith trips the gas tanks,’ he said with a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘Anyway, make sure you’ve got yours, right? Okay, here’s how
we’ll do it when we come out of the stairwell. I’ll go first, covering the floor. You follow me, covering the ceiling and my back. We head for the window, and if he’s not there,
we head for the security station and the PA mike for this floor and I try talking to him. What’s wrong with this picture?’

Pete shook his head. ‘Nothing obvious to me.’

‘Okay, let’s go.’ Mike shoved himself back onto the stairs and took the last two flights, paused to catch his breath just inside the door, then pushed through.

*

The twenty-third floor was eerily deserted, a high-altitude
Mary Celeste
. Beige carpet tiles, slightly scuffed and in need of cleaning, floored corridors where doors
stood open on unfurnished office suites. The black bubbles of surveillance cameras sprouted from ceiling tiles, some of them discolored by water seepage. One of the reasons floor twenty-three had
been left vacant was that it had needed more refitting than the rest of the building, thanks to a burst pipe the previous winter. Some of the lighting panels flickered erratically. Mike headed up
the corridor, cautiously checking side doors opening off it for any sign of human presence.
Just because we don’t think he’s armed doesn’t mean he isn’t
, he told
himself, whenever he felt self-conscious.

He turned the corner onto the last stretch of passageway. There was no door at the end, just a wide open-plan office space, almost a thousand square feet of it, walled in windows. Abandoned
desks and shelving units clustered in forlorn huddles around the floor. He could hear something now, the whistle of wind blowing past an empty gap in the glass side of the building. It was slightly
chilly, even though it was a hot day down below. Mike paused just outside the door and glanced over his shoulder at Pete, who was staring tensely at the ceiling behind them. ‘Going
in.’

‘Okay.’

Mike ducked through the entrance and spun round. Anticlimax: nobody was lurking in the corners behind him.
But what about the desks
– he crouched, casting his gaze around at ankle
level. No, there were no giveaway legs visible under the furniture. Nothing, no sign that anybody had visited the place.

‘He’s not here?’

‘Hush.’ Mike backed toward the wall beside the door. ‘Keep me covered from right there.’ He slid along the wall, around the edge of the room.
Three minutes left
,
he thought.
What if –

There was nobody behind any of the furniture. None of the ceiling or floor tiles had been disturbed. The room looked abandoned, except for the missing window unit. Those double-glazed cells
didn’t break easily; they were toughened glass, held in place by plastic gaskets and screws. Someone had removed the thing, probably unscrewed it, and then shoved it right out of the frame.
The breeze was rustling playfully around him, tugging at his jacket, pinching his trouser cuffs. Mike crouched down below the level of the windows and looked up, and out, letting his eyes grow
accustomed to the bright daylight above him.

There
. Outside the glass, barely visible – it ran behind one of the concrete pillars framing the stretch of glazing – a vertical wire. It was quite a thick wire, but it was
almost invisible against the bright daylight. Only a slight vibration gave it away. Mike looked back at Pete, raised a finger to his lips, then beckoned urgently. He cast his gaze along the wall.
Another wire stood out on the far side of the missing window pane.
Gotcha
.

Pete hunkered down next to him. ‘What is it?’ he whispered.

‘There’s a window-cleaning car somewhere below us, right outside the open cell. I figure he’s waiting while we run BLUEBEARD. Then he’s going to try to break back in
while everyone’s expecting him to be down and out.’

‘You say that as if you think there are other options.’

‘I can think of several, but Matt’s not stupid – he knows the more elaborate the scheme, the more likely it is to go wrong. I mean, he might have just done this as a
distraction, but then what if we didn’t notice it at all? Whatever, I think he’s down there, below us.’

‘In which case, all we have to do is get him to come back in.’

‘Yeah. But he obviously wants out, and – listen, these cars are self-propelled. He’s probably as low as he can go, waiting for everyone to clear out before he breaks another
window.’

‘Right.’ Pete straightened up, holding his pistol. ‘I’ll reel him in.’ And before Mike could move to stop him he leaned out of the window, shoulders set, aiming
straight down. ‘Hey – ’

A gray shadow dropped across the window, accompanied by a grating of metal on metal. Pete vanished beneath it, tumbling out of the window.

‘Fuck!’ Mike jumped up in time to register two more wires and the basketwork cage of a window-cleaning lift wobbling behind the glass with someone inside it: then Matt swung the
improvised club he was holding at the window cell Mike was standing next to, and to Mike’s enormous surprise it leapt out of its frame and fell on him. He stumbled backward, away from the
wall, his arm going numb.
How did he get above us?
he thought, dazed and confused. Then he registered that he’d dropped his pistol.
That’s bad
, he thought, his stomach
heaving.

Someone kicked it away from him.
Not fair
. He felt dizzy and sick. Things grayed out for a moment. When they came back into focus he was sitting down, his back to a desk. There was
something wrong with his face – it was hard to breathe.
The mask
. He looked up.

Matthias squatted on his heels opposite him, holding the gun, looking bored. ‘Ah, you’re with me again. I was beginning to worry.’

Those window cells had to weigh thirty or forty pounds each – thick slabs of double-glazed laminate clamped between aluminum frames. Matt must have unscrewed it first, then dropped decoy
lines below the window-cleaning car before retreating up top to wait like a spider above his trap. The damn thing had hit his head when Matt shoved it at him. A flash of anger: ‘Like you
worried about Pete when you pulled that stunt? We could have worked something out – ’

‘I doubt it.’ Something about Matt’s tone sent a chill down Mike’s spine.

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Because your organization has failed to protect me. It was worth a try – if you’d gone after the Clan as a police operation, that would have given the thin white duke
something more urgent to worry about than a missing secretary, no? But the military – that was a bad idea. I’m not going to Camp X-ray, Michael.’