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38
The elevator shot downward and ground to a stop on the 15th floor. The car was locked into position. A bell rang loudly for a moment, boots tromped off, then fell silent. They were alone. In the stuffy silence, they communicated in whispers.
David said: “Down five more floors before we reach the connecting tunnels to Tower 2 and Tower 1.”
“Let’s wait it out,” Mattoon said. “I’m so terrified I don’t know if I can ever let go of this bench and stand up.”
“So far so good,” David said. “I’m just glad it stopped moving.”
“Could we hop out here? Ease down into the car and split?”
“I wouldn’t take the chance.” Inwardly, he wondered how they’d get off. Looking up, he saw a service platform, but it was ten feet up and four feet across the abyss. As he pondered this, his hands encountered something hard. He looked closer in the dim light, and made out a hand-held control box on a cable. He lifted it, grinning. “Look, Sir. I’ll have you out of here in a minute.” The control box had buttons to make it go up or down, faster or slower. A technician was supposed to be able to ride the thing up and down while repairing the pulleys and what not, and he couldn’t very well reach the buttons inside. David grinned as he pushed green. The car lurched. “Oh Jesus, My Lord and Savior,” Mattoon said, looking terrified. Another button, and the car began moving down. Touching a bar on the side made it go faster. But only so fast. Inching down, the car slowly, slowly descended. To the 14th Floor.
“Oh my God,” David said looking up. “The door is still open on the floor.”
“Hope they don’t step without looking,” Mattoon said as 14 passed by. “Not that I care about them, but if they land on us—”
They just reached 13 when someone shouted above: “Hey! The elevator’s gone.” Someone else shouted: “Look, there’s people on top!” Another voice: “Call downstairs. Get people on every floor, every door. It’s them! We got them!” Floor 12 passed with agonizing slowness. A crowbar thrust through the Floor 12 door’s rubber center buffers, without effect, and the crowbar withdrew. “We’ll get ‘em on the next floor,” a man said coldly as if hunting squirrels.
“Can’t we cut the power?” someone else asked.
“We’re on emergency power; we’d cut the lights too. Can’t do it.”
David had a sudden inspiration. Handing the controls to Mattoon, he reached across the roof and grasped an exposed yellow cord, evidently providing power to something. He gave a yank, and the cord came free just as the car reached 11.
The car came to a dead stop.
“You cut the power,” Mattoon whispered. “Oh God what now!”
The crowbar pried through the rubber again, and a raw-knuckled hand reached in. David touched the thick twist of exposed copper wire at the end of the yellow cord to the crow bar. There was a popping sound and a smell of smoke. The crowbar fell clattering down the shaft, bouncing this way and that. On the other side, a group of men were cursing and wailing, stung by 220 volts and enough amps to drive a powerful engine.
David and Mattoon fumbled the cord back into its connector. There was a burst, a puff of smoke, but thankfully no fuse out. The elevator began to drop again. At the 10th floor, the commandos had the door open and were waiting in a flurry of flashlights. “There!” one shouted. “Hop on and get them alive!”
David kept the elevator moving. There was no escape if they went up—just minutes of agonized waiting for the commandos to come and get them. As the elevator car rumbled past the floor, three men leapt into the void. Two landed on the car, one with his boot on David’s hand. A third one grunted, groaned, tried to hang on, and then fell flailing with a long sickening scream that came to a soggy ending many seconds later. David pulled the power cord out of its connector and thrust it against the closer man’s thigh. The elevator stopped. There was a rush of smoke, a scream, a stench of burned flesh, and the man collapsed on top of David. The other man had a knife in his hand and was bending over to stab Mattoon. As he raised the knife, David applied the power to his back.
Nothing. This time the fuse must have tripped and the elevator wouldn’t move. David reached over and slid the knife wielder’s gun from his holster. The knife-wielder couldn’t quite see in the dark, and kept moving his head, trying to focus on his target. David slid the safety off and shot the man in the torso. Mattoon pulled down the sagging body and propelled it on a silent journey into darkness.
“Get some lights in here!” a voice yelled above.
David pulled on a lever that released a mechanical brake, and sent the elevator into a slow, jerky, powerless descent. Mattoon tucked the other gun into his belt. Just before the 9th floor, a service shaft opened up. As the men above beamed a light down, David and Mattoon leaped across onto a shelf like the one they’d been on near the 30th floor.
“They’re in the service shafts!” a voice yelled.
“Smoke ‘em out. Get tear gas down there!”
“No, if smoke goes in the ventilator shafts we’ll screw up the whole hotel and screw ourselves. We have enough guys. We’ll comb every inch of the shafts until we—” The rest of his statement was drowned out as David and Mattoon climbed into a different shaft.
“If we don’t get away, this is the first place they’ll look,” Mattoon said.
“There should be a shaft crossing over soon,” David said, praying Bellamy was right again. Both men continued descending down the steel rungs as fast as they could, into blackness, into blindness, into the unknown.
“I see light below,” Mattoon said.
Sure enough, they were descending into a brighter area. “It’s a ventilation duct,” David said as they emerged into a tunnel of blood-red brick, a cross between a catacomb and a baking oven. “We’re on the 5th floor.” It was one of those moments, like standing in the lobby, when the building’s immensity made itself felt. Warm air hovered in the huge corridor. There was a dead light every few feet, but there were enough emergency lights to offer visibility. Beyond the lights was a deadness, a stillness, that signified all extraneous machinery was off. In the tunnel, although a warm breeze lingered, there was no sound of propellers pushing it. The tunnel ran straight as an arrow, and they crossed the five hundred feet into Tower 2. Once or twice they heard voices, and they ducked into alcoves, but the only thing they heard close by—or felt—was a rat or two scurrying around their ankles. Mattoon lifted his ankle as though he’d kicked something. “Damn! Time for the civilians to come back with their cats and clean out the vermin.”
“More ways than one,” David said.
They came to Tower 1. The shaft ran on, but David pointed to a wall stenciled Elevators. “We’ve got to find a service shaft and go up to the 10th. That’s where we’re supposed to meet Devereaux’s people.” He blindly followed the instructions relayed by Bellamy from Devereaux, but how could the general possibly get anyone into this fortress to extricate Mattoon?
“Here,” Mattoon said, lifting a sheet of plywood from a brick opening. It was dark in there, and reminded David more than ever of an oven. Without benefit of flashlights, David reached forward and felt a ladder. He felt a gentle gust of air rise to his face. Smelled musty. Spiders fled from his face. “Careful,” David said, “the shaft drops down who knows how far. Nine floors for all I know.” As he climbed up the steel rungs, Mattoon right behind, David’s eyes became accustomed to the dark.
They climbed for several minutes.
After moving forward a few yards, David saw a dim light. “It’s another one of those shelves,” he said. He had a sense of deja vu as they climbed up there. Again, they were prisoners in a concrete tomb, with only the elevator shaft opening off to one side.
“I hear noises down below,” Mattoon said.
At that moment, they heard a shout. “Over there. On that shelf. It’s them!”
Glancing up and to the right in the four-car shaft, David saw young faces staring at them, insane with hatred. Assault rifles clicked as safeties went off. He and Mattoon barely managed to duck out of the angle of fire, pinned on a few square inches.
The shaft filled with noise and acrid powder. The air whizzed with bullets and bits of concrete nicked off the shelf. Several pieces stung David’s face, and he covered his eyes. “We can’t get back to the ladder, and they’ll be at the other door in a few seconds!” he said. He was beginning to think he’d have to let Mattoon make a run for the ladder while he offered covering fire from both handguns. That might save the Chairman, he knew, but it would cost him his life.
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