Agent X - Boyd Noah - Страница 21

He flashed the light in and saw Charles Pollock slumped in the corner of the room. A syringe was stuck in his arm, and his throat had been cut.

Before entering, Vail scanned the light around the room, because he could see that Pollock had been dead for a while and couldn’t have been responsible for the light Vail had seen from the street. There was another door. He and Kate entered the room and felt something sticky on the soles of their shoes. He moved the light to the floor and could see that it was blood in an inordinately large pool, starting to coagulate. Vail noted that there were no drag marks from there to the corner where Pollock’s body was now propped up. They went over to him.

Vail pulled the syringe out of Pollock’s arm and held it up to the flashlight. “The color of the residue looks too dark to be heroin.”

Suddenly a burst of gunfire came through the unexplored door. Both agents dove to the floor. Vail opened fire, letting his Glock stitch the door as he emptied the magazine. He rolled back into a safe position, dropped the empty magazine, and jammed in a fresh one, letting the slide go home.

He nodded to Kate, and she knew what he wanted. She fired a half-dozen rounds slowly at the door while he crawled forward. He pulled himself up against the wall next to it and pointed his automatic at the doorway as Kate got to her feet, rushed forward, and pinned herself against the wall on the opposite side of the door. Vail pushed it open, again trying to draw fire. None came.

He rolled around the doorjamb, his automatic at eye level. A hole large enough for a person to escape had been cut through an adjoining wall. “Come on.”

She followed him as he went back the way they’d come and into the hall, running to the stairwell. He opened the door and listened for whoever it was that had shot at them. Kate could hear faint footsteps. Vail’s head cocked to the side in disbelief. “He’s going to the roof.”

Taking the stairs two at a time, Vail tried to close the gap. Kate was right behind him, pushing a fresh magazine into her automatic as she ran. Then they heard a door slam.

When they got to the roof entrance, the door was closed. The lock had been taken out, leaving a two-inch circular hole in the steel door. Vail pushed on it carefully, but it would not give. “He’s blocked it with something.” With measured force, he bounced his shoulder against it, testing its resistance. “There’s some give.” He stood back and kicked it hard, but it held. He took two more steps back and leaped forward, landing his foot where he thought the device was holding it closed. He did it again, and still the door remained blocked.

Kate said, “Do you smell smoke?”

Vail turned toward the stairs and inhaled. He holstered his gun and grabbed Kate’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.” When they got down to the next floor, he could smell gasoline mixed in with the choking odor of the smoke. He looked over the railing and could see that the stairwell two floors below was engulfed in flames. “Back to the roof.”

When they got to the door again, Kate said, “Can’t we shoot it open?”

“I doubt it, it’s steel, and whatever is jamming it is below the lock hole.” Once more he took a couple of steps back and this time charged the door, ramming his shoulder into it, but it held. “I have to find some way to get a little more into it. It’s close to going.” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to his side. “We’ve got to ram into it as one body. When I say go, keep pasted against me so our weights combine into one. Ready?”

She drew her hips up so they were touching his and nodded.

“Go!” Vail said, and they lunged at the door. Their timing was a little off. Vail hit it first and a fraction of a second later she slammed into his ribs. Both of them stepped back a couple of strides, and he said, “Again . . . set . . . go!” This try their timing was in sync, and there was a loud wooden crack as the door flew open. They both fell over the threshold.

“I’ll check for a fire escape. Call 911,” he said.

Vail ran to the side of the building he hadn’t seen before breaking in. When he came back, Kate was giving the address to the emergency operator. She looked at him anxiously. He said, “There are no fire escapes.”

8

The tall, slender man with the splayed nose sat behind the wheel and watched as one of his men lowered himself carefully down a rope that hung from the roof of the burning building. A second man came from around the back of the building and stood underneath until the first man was safely on the ground. Once he was, the two of them looked up before casually walking back to the waiting black SUV. They got into the backseat without saying a word. One of them smelled of gasoline and smoke. Sitting next to the driver was the big man with the eyes that barely moved. “Was either of them shot?” he asked in a heavy accent.

“I’m not sure. Possibly,” answered the man who had come down the rope.

“Which means they weren’t,” the driver said, his voice both apologetic and angry.

The passenger shifted himself in the seat and watched the top of the building as smoke continued to pour out of it. “It will be more entertaining this way.”

“Then how did the guy we chased get off the roof?” Kate asked.

Vail saw what looked like a cable hanging over the side of the building. They both went over and examined it. It was about thirty feet long but was tied to a much longer rope. Both together were long enough to reach to within ten feet of the ground. “That’s how.” The end of the cable was anchored in a nearby water drain. Vail pulled on it, testing his weight against it. “Think you can make it?”

She looked back at the smoke billowing out of the door they had forced open. “You mean there’re other choices?”

Holding on to the cable, she was starting to climb over the low wall when he said, “Hang on a minute.” He went back and closed the door. The smoke started streaming out of the cracks around it and from the lock hole. He picked up the now-broken board that had been snapped in half when he and Kate forced open the door. It was a length of two-by-two that had been jammed against a short section of two-by-four nailed to the roof. The two-by-four had a notch cut into it to hold one end of the two-by-two in place. The other end had been notched also and jammed up under the door handle. “If they’d used a two-by-four, we’d still be in there.”

“Maybe they didn’t have any.”

“Two-by-fours are a lot easier to find than two-by-twos.”

“At the risk of sounding like I’m giving you an order, can we discuss this on the ground?”

Vail walked back to the braided cable and examined it more closely. He took out his lockback knife and opened it. “Are you still carrying that thing?” she asked.

Carefully, he cut into one of the strands and sniffed it. He looked at her soberly. “It’s det cord.”

“Det cord as in detonation cord?”

“I’ve seen it on demolition jobs. When it’s ignited at one end, it explodes so fast you can’t tell which end was set off.”

“Why would they use that?”

“That’s something we have to figure out before we go any further.” He got down on his knees next to the drain that the end of the cable disappeared into. “Let me have that flashlight.” He tried to pull the drain cover off. When it wouldn’t budge, he said, “It’s been spot-welded.” He got closer and used the light to peer down into the small crack surrounding the cable. After a few seconds, he stood up and snapped the light off with finality.

“What is it?”

Vail didn’t answer right away but instead looked over the side of the building and tugged easily on the braided cord.

“What is it?”

“There’s a device connected to the end. Det cord is set off with a blasting cap. There’s one of those in there, too. There’s also a battery and a large, heavy-duty spring. What happens is when there’s enough weight on the cable and rope, the metal spring lengthens and makes contact, closing the circuit between the battery and the blasting cap, which in turn sets off the det cord. If we’re both hanging on it ten stories up—poof. It’s gone, and so are we.”