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31
Tory started toward the stairwell to escape from Tower Three. With Bellamy captured, and David who-knew-where, she had only one recourse left now. She must make her way to someone higher up—General Devereaux! She had part of the list. Jet could show that the confession dated from just before Vice President Cardoza’s murder. She only hoped that when Jet found the full copy directory, the confession and the full list would both be in there under the same creation date.
The open elevator still rang and she knew if she got into it, she’d be on her way to Top Five. As she approached the stairwell door, she heard the thud of heavy feet as the 3045th’s goons crashed down the stairs to get her.
She ran toward the stairwell on the other side of the tower. At that moment, another elevator door rumbled open. A buzz cut commando in blue-and-yellow fatigues stepped out. Tory whacked him on the forehead with her baton. He staggered back into the elevator. The stairwell doors burst open and a half dozen football player sized bodies exploded into the lobby. Fluorescent light glittered on blue-black gunmetal. “Don’t shoot,” someone shouted, “we want her alive!” Tory jumped into the elevator and mashed the button for the garage below. A man large as a refrigerator stuck his shoulder in and pushed against the door to keep it open. His head looked like a fuzzy blond boulder. His muscular arms were bigger than Tory’s legs. “Lady, please,” he said in the sweetest voice. “Be reasonable.”
“I’m real sorry,” Tory said. She whacked him on the skull with the baton, making a ringing sound. He sank down as his eyelids fluttered, and lay prone on the elevator floor.
Another bison tried to climb over his semi-conscious compatriot. Tory hit him also, then shoved both of them away with her booted foot. As the door closed, a hand managed to insert itself. She whacked it, and the hand was withdrawn with a bellow.
Then the elevator quietly chugged downward. If they could control it like the other one, Tory thought, her goose was cooked, her turkey was plucked, her chicken was airborne, whatever the expression was. She bit her lip with cold hysterical humor and laughed at the passing number-lights: 13, 12, 11...
Luckily, it seemed they couldn’t control the elevator completely, because it hurtled downward with a mind of its own. Realizing that she might have a chance, she relaxed a bit and shifted from panicked paralysis back to a kind of adrenalin overdrive.
“Lieutenant Breen,” Colonel Bentyne said, “stop. We must talk. We have a misunderstanding.” Tory fought the ingrained discipline in every cell of her body not to obey her superior officer. She disconnected the com button, dropped it on the floor, and ground it with her heel. At that moment, the man on the elevator floor groaned and started to sit up. Tory tucked the baton under one arm and drew her gun. “Down you go,” she said. Her boot nudged the back of his head. “On your stomach, hands behind.” He joined his hands on the small of his back. She put a boot on the back of his neck, the gun in back of his head. “Don’t breathe.”
“They’ll hang you!” he raged, but made no move to resist.
The elevator door opened. She said “sorry” and whacked him on the temple just to stun him. She pulled him out enough so his legs kept the door open. She threw the baton aside and ran.
She heard barking. Oh God, she thought, they are bringing dogs in. The dogs barked and bellowed madly in the stairwell. Instead of running up the ramp that would bring her outside Tower Three, and surely into the arms of the 3045th, she ran along the twilit utility road in the underground garage, toward Towers Two and One. She had been a first string runner in Army Olympics at Ft. Constance, Texas a year earlier. Her jump boots were well broken in, and she picked a durable, near-sprinting stride. She stopped to take off her fatigue shirt and cap, and threw them over a wire fence among dumpsters, leaving her upper body comfortably clad in sports bra and olive-drab T-shirt. The castoffs might draw the attention of her pursuers and their dogs for a few minutes. They would think she’d climbed over the fence and into the storage areas that loomed shadowy beyond. The dogs would bark and sniff a minute or two after her scent. Upon reflection, she tossed her gun and gun belt over the top too. By now the gun was a liability. Better not give someone an excuse to shoot her. She pulled the blousing off her trouser bottoms and let the trousers hang over her boots. As she ran, she shook her hair loose. She figured she could pass for a civilian technician of some sort. A moment later, she passed a power company utility truck with orange cone. The driver must be upstairs. Over the tailgate hung a man’s light blue short-sleeved shirt. She snagged it as she ran past, and put it on. Far behind, she heard shouts and barks. A laboring humvee bristling with shotgun barrels roared distantly as troops pressed the search for her.
She passed the elevators of Tower Two, and could see the end of the road a thousand feet ahead. As she neared the elevators of Tower One, she heard voices and ducked behind a car. Three men and a woman, middle-aged overweight delegates, hurried out of the elevator discussing how best to escape the hotel compound on foot. When they were past, she ran to the elevator door. Just as she touched the button, she heard the ear-ripping bellows of a huge dog in the elevator—must be one of the M.P.s’ German shepherds! The animal kept barking—no, roaring—savagely.
She sprinted around the corner and up the stairs toward street level. She heard vicious barking, a scream, some yelling, then more barking. Through a narrow aperture between stairwell and elevator shaft wall, she saw that two commandos and their dog had cornered the four delegates and interrogated them while they stood with raised hands.
She emerged at street level in the circular concourse before Tower One. From the curved sidewalk, with its waiting area and taxi stand, broad stairs led up to the sheltered entrance and inside to the concierge desk of Tower One. She walked slowly, feigning casualness, to blend into the crowd. She saw delegates in suits and military people in uniform, but also men and women in work clothes, so she wasn’t noticed for the moment.
What she noticed, however, was that civilian trucks, buses, and cars were being routed out of the area. There were shaven-heads everywhere, heavily armed, in their blue-and-yellow fatigue uniforms. The reservists were being funneled out through several small gates ringed with barbed wire. Oh God! Officers were walking around circulating photos of herself, Tory saw. Desperately, she hunched her shoulders and stayed in the shadows of the great building, trying to think of an escape while danger grew with every lost minute.
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