Текст книги "Gideon’s Sword"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

69

A single shot rang out from the darkness. Gideon felt nothing: no pain, no impact of a bullet. His eyes flew open. At first, nothing seemed to have changed. Then he saw the blank look on Mindy’s face, the clean bullet hole between her eyes. For a moment she stood there. Then she toppled backward into the dirt.

Gideon snatched the wire from her twitching hand and ran.

More shots ripped through the seats, spraying him with wood chips and vegetation. He burst out the rear of the bleachers and made a beeline for the boat. It was his only chance for survival.

Ahead stretched the post-Armageddon suburban neighborhood. He sprinted down the leafy, ruined streets, turned a corner, then another. He could hear Nodding Crane pounding along behind him, slowly catching up.

To go into a house would mean being trapped. He couldn’t outrun his enemy. And he realized now he was never going to make the boat.

He doubled back at the next street, turning corners to keep from giving his pursuer a clear field of fire. He had no gun, no way of defending himself. He should have taken Mindy’s .45, but it was either that or the wire – there hadn’t been time for both.

Nodding Crane was gaining steadily. And Gideon was gasping so hard it felt as if his broken ribs would puncture his lungs. What now?

The last street ended. Ahead lay the open field adjacent to the Dynamo Room. He’d been here before. This was the area the guard had carefully detoured around. That field’s off-limits,he’d said. There’s a lot of places on the island that are dangerous.

What was the danger here? Maybe this was an opportunity. It sure as hell was his last chance.

He sprinted across the field, zigzagging as he went. He could hear Nodding Crane still closing the gap, not bothering to stop and fire but instead using the opportunity to get close enough so that he couldn’t miss. Gideon glanced back: sure enough, there was the running figure, only fifty yards away now.

Halfway across the field Gideon realized he had made a serious mistake. He would never make it to the other side and there was nothing here that offered any chance of escape, no unexpected danger, no evidence of pits or old structures. Just a big damn open field without cover. The ground was solid and level. It was a race – and Nodding Crane was the faster runner.

He glanced back, his legs churning. Nodding Crane was now only thirty yards behind.

As Gideon turned his head toward the unattainable far end of the field, his eye caught the monstrous, crumbling smokestack rising from the Dynamo Room. Abruptly, he understood. The danger wasn’t in the field itself – it was that smokestack. It was old and unstable. That was the reason the guard had detoured: the damn stack looked like it might fall at any moment.

An old iron stairway spiraled up to the top.

He veered off, running toward the smokestack. Clawing his way through the undergrowth, he reached its base. He hesitated just a moment: this was a one-way trip to nowhere.

Fuck it.

He leapt onto the rusting stairs and began climbing. A trio of shots sounded from behind, smacking the bricks around him, spraying him with chips and dust. But the stairs spiraled around the curve of the stack, providing cover.

The stairway was old and rusted, and as Gideon climbed it rumbled and screeched, sagging and swaying with his every step, the rust raining down on him from the sudden strain. A step broke and he seized the railing, swinging briefly out into space before recovering, grasping the next step and hauling himself back up.

As he continued, climbing recklessly higher and higher, he heard a groan of metal below and felt a new vibration. Nodding Crane was coming up after him.

Naturally. This was a stupid move. Nodding Crane would chase him to the top and then shoot him from below.

As Gideon mounted higher, he could feel the stack vibrating in the buffeting winds, with an accompanying grinding and crackling sound of crumbling mortar.

Now the true insanity of what he had done began to hit home. The storm was shaking the entire stack, which felt like it was going to collapse at any moment. There was no outcome he could imagine in which he survived this chase to the top.

A single shot rang out, the bullet snipping the railing by his hand. He scrambled upward faster, keeping the turning of the staircase as cover. A flash of lightning illuminated the ghastly scene: the island, the ruins, the crumbling stack, the rotten stair, the storm-tossed sea beyond.

“Crew!” came a call from below. “Crew!” Nodding Crane’s peculiar, flat voice pierced the howling wind.

He paused, listening. The stack groaned, crackled, swayed in the wind.

“You’re trapped, you fool! Bring me down the wire and I’ll let you live!”

Gideon resumed his climb. Another shot rang out, but it went wild and he knew Nodding Crane must be having a hell of a time firing accurately, given the swaying of the stack, the howling wind and rain. And there was something else: he thought he detected a note of fear in Nodding Crane’s voice. And no wonder. That was progress of a kind. Strangely, Gideon felt no fear himself. This was the end – there was no way he was coming down off this smokestack alive. What did it matter? He was already a dead man.

The thought gave him a strange feeling of relief. That had been his secret weapon, the one Nodding Crane was unaware of: he was a man living on borrowed time.

As he climbed higher, heavier wind gusts boomed around him, so strong at times that they almost tore him from the stairway. Another lightning bolt split the sky, the crash of thunder following instantaneously. He heard a screech of metal as a section of the stairway detached from the stack, the bolts popping loose like gunfire, and the detached section swung out over the void, with Gideon clinging to the railing. He gripped the metal with all his might as the wind swung him back, slamming him against the bricks. The iron held until the wild oscillations of the stair finally calmed down. He found purchase, his feet back on the shaking iron steps, and resumed climbing.

He looked up as lightning flashed. He was about halfway to the top.

He had to go on, to prevent his weight from remaining too long on any one rotten step, while simultaneously keeping to the far side of the stack from Nodding Crane.

“Crew!” came the shout from below. “This is suicide!”

“For both of us!” Gideon screamed back. And it wassuicide. Whether the smokestack fell or not, he couldn’t go back down that stair; it was too damaged now, and besides, he was trapped by Nodding Crane. He had no weapon. Once he reached the top Nodding Crane would close in on him and that would be it.

“Crew! You’re crazy!”

“You can count on it!”

The stack shuddered under a particularly fierce gust, and a fresh shower of bricks rained down. He pressed himself against the side of the stack as they clattered and bounced off the stairs. He looked down but Nodding Crane was out of sight around the curve of the stack. The lightning was now almost continuous, providing a glimpse every few seconds.

He looked up. He was almost at the top now. A narrow iron catwalk circled the rim of the great chimney, half of its braces gone. It slanted perilously to one side. He pressed on, one foot after the other, clinging to the railing with all his might.

Quite suddenly he was at the top, in the howling storm. He crawled through a hole onto the platform grate, clinging hard because of the slant. Bricks had broken away from the lip, giving it the look of ragged black teeth. The top of the stack was covered by a heavy grate to trap fly ash, and two brass dampers stood open, like giant bat wings. A strange hollow moaning rose up from inside the stack, as if out of the throat of some primitive, antediluvian monster.

There was nowhere to go.

One of us will die on Hart Island. That is the way you planned it and that is the way it must be.

70

Laughter echoed up. “End of the line!” came the voice from below, suddenly sarcastic.

What now? Gideon had gone up the stack blindly, with no plan.

A gust struck, and the top of the smokestack swayed, more bricks crumbling and popping off the edge. At this rate, the whole damn stack could collapse at any minute.

Suddenly he had an idea. Working a brick loose, he peered down, waiting for the next bolt of lightning.

It arrived with a boom of thunder, illuminating Nodding Crane, clinging to the ladder about fifty feet below. Gideon hustled around and threw the brick into the void.

A fusillade of shots followed, punching holes through the metal platform, and Gideon almost fell off in his effort to get back. More laughter echoed up.

Dropping bricks on Nodding Crane was a waste – he was easily able to dodge them with his night-vision goggles, while Gideon had to wait for a flash of lightning. He would only get himself shot.

The wind cut around the open dampers, making a singing noise. He peered down the interior of the smokestack, but it was so dark he could see nothing. It muttered and groaned restlessly. The wind blasted across the top, the iron platform shaking, and the stack swayed. The damn thing really was about to fall.

About to fall…

For some reason, an image of Orchid formed in his mind. You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you? Why don’t you let me help you? Why do you keep pushing me away?

He looked at the damper system. It was all brass and still in good condition, a long lever operating a set of gears that raised and lowered the semicircular dampers. Grasping the lever, Gideon pulled on it. The heavy dampers creaked and shuddered but appeared frozen in place. He gave the lever a hard yank: still nothing. Grasping the platform with both hands, he raised his foot and gave the lever a kick.

The lever flipped up and the dampers fell shut with a massive boom, sending a shock wave vibrating down the entire length of the smokestack. A dozen bricks peeled off the top, dropping into blackness, and the stack rocked violently.

“What are you doing?” Nodding Crane cried from below, his disembodied voice filled with horror.

A grim smile briefly crossed Gideon’s features.

Grasping the handle, crouching on the trembling platform, he leaned in with all his might and forced the dampers open again, the bass wheels turning, flaking verdigris. The two dampers rose back up like a drawbridge.

He pulled the lever and dropped them again.

This crash sent an even more violent shudder down the smokestack. A flurry of crackling, grinding noises came up the flue as the entire stack shook.

“You’re insane!” cried Nodding Crane. A flash of lightning revealed that he was now just below the lip of the platform and Gideon could hear his heavy gasps, the iron stairway groaning with his steps. He was amazed the man had the courage to get so far. Bizarrely, he could see fingerpicks gleaming on the fingers of Nodding Crane’s right hand.

Gideon forced the dampers open again. “Say good night!” he yelled, letting the lever drop again with a thunderous boom.

“ No!”

He forced the dampers open once more, dropped them again – and this time the entire stack seemed to shift on its rotten base. A grinding noise came from far below.

“You fool!” In a flash of lightning Gideon got a glimpse of Nodding Crane gripping the stairway twenty feet below – clearly terrified – and now descending.

A maniacal laugh erupted from Gideon. “Who’s the fool?” he shouted. “I’m the one who’s not afraid to die! You should have stayed down there, waited me out!”

He let the dampers crash shut again. The platform shuddered, tilted abruptly with the crack of snapping steel, and Gideon began to slide. He seized the damper lever and held on. With a great popping of iron stays, the platform leaned sideways, the wind catching it like a sail and jamming it over; with a final screech it broke loose and plunged down into the darkness, leaving Gideon clinging to the brass lever at the ruined mouth of the chimney, his legs dangling in space.

Another flash of lightning. Nodding Crane was descending the ladder as fast as he could. If he reached the bottom, Gideon would lose his chance at revenge. And he would still die.

With a strength he didn’t know he had, he hoisted himself up and swung his leg over the lever. From there he was able to climb onto the rim of the smokestack, clinging to the ash grating. He could feel it shifting and moving beneath him, the grinding noise rising in volume up the flue. Something was happening and it sounded like a runaway process of failure. He brought down the dampers again with another mighty crash, sending one more shock wave down the stack.

With a strange grinding, moaning noise, the immense stack listed one way, then the other, pausing, stopping – and then, in extremely slow motion, it began to lean more and more away from the direction of the wind.

This time it didn’t move back to vertical. It continued to lean, the wind pushing it over. The top shook violently, once, twice.

“Nooo!” came a scream from below.

There was a rumble of bricks splitting and grinding under the shifting weight of the smokestack. It was going over, no question about it. Both of them would die. Gideon only hoped his end would be quick.

A crack of livid lightning exposed Nodding Crane. He wasn’t quite halfway down.

“This is for Orchid, you bastard!” Gideon screamed down into the darkness.

The stack leaned out, falling faster, gathering speed. Another arc of lightning cut the sky, illuminating the turbulent sea below.

And that was when Gideon realized all was not lost. The stack was falling toward the water.

Faster and faster it fell, the wind roaring in his ears, as he clung to the lever, riding the crumbling smokestack down. His senses were assaulted by the deafening thunder of the collapsing structure; the air that rushed in his ears; the howling wind; the approaching roar of the sea. Through the flickers of lightning he could see the lower sections of the smokestack exploding against the ground in a running cloud of bricks, drawing a line of ruin in the direction of the water. As the sea came rushing up, Gideon braced himself. Just before the mouth of the stack crashed into the sea he leapt up and out, shedding some of his downward momentum while stiffening his body and clenching his stomach muscles and hands, seeking to hit the water in a rigid, vertical position.

He struck with tremendous force and was instantly plunged deep. He quickly spread out his legs and arms, slowing, then stopping, his descent into the depths. Then he swam upward, struggling in the chill water. Up and up he went, but the surface seemed too far to reach.

Just when he thought his lungs would burst, he broke through, gasping and heaving, sucking in air, treading water in the teeth of the storm. All was blackness. But then, as he rose on a swell, he could just make out the lights of City Island, and that oriented him.

Treading water, he tried to recover his breath, his strength. Then he struck out for the cobbled beach and his boat, swimming through the violent, heaving seas, the water breaking over his head and forcing him under every few seconds. His broken ribs were like veins of fire in his chest. But he kept on, the darkness complete, the boom and roar of the storm all around him like a violent womb. What little strength remained was rapidly ebbing. It would be ironic, he thought, if he survived all this only to drown.

But he was going to drown. He could hardly move his arms and legs anymore. He couldn’t keep his head above water. A big wave shoved him under and he realized he just didn’t have the strength to struggle back up.

That was when his feet struck the underwater cobbles of the beach and he was able to stand.

He didn’t know how long he lay on the beach or even how he found the strength to crawl above the booming surf. But he came back into consciousness on the high part of the strand. Next to him he could see the shattered mass of the great smokestack lying across the beach and going down to the water. Pulverized bricks lay everywhere, amid pieces of twisted metal.

Metal.He clasped at his pocket in sudden fear. The wire was still there.

Dragging himself to his hands and knees, he crawled over the rubble, using the lightning as his guide. There, after a brief search, he found the body of Nodding Crane nestled among the broken bricks, not five feet from the sea. In his fear, he had tried to descend. And that was what had killed him: he struck the ground instead of the water.

The body was a hideous, pulped mess.

Gideon crawled away and – finally – managed to rise to his feet. With a sense of emptiness, of utter physical and spiritual exhaustion, he stumbled away from the crushed remains of the smokestack to the salt marsh where he had hidden his boat.

He still had one very important thing left to do.

Epilogue

Gideon Crew followed Garza into the confines of the EES building on Little West 12th Street. Garza had said nothing, but Gideon could feel anger emanating from the man as if from a heat lamp.

The interior of EES looked unchanged: the same rows of tables covered with exotic models and scientific equipment; the same technicians and lab workers shuttling busily from here to there. Once again, Gideon wondered whom he was really working for. His phone call to DHS had confirmed, beyond doubt, that Glinn and his outfit were legit. But it nevertheless seemed surpassing strange.

They entered the spare conference room on the fourth floor. Glinn sat again at the head of the table, his one good eye as gray as a London sky.

Nobody said anything. Gideon took a seat without being asked, and Garza did the same.

“Well,” said Glinn, his one eye making a slow blink that seemed to give Garza permission to speak.

“Eli,” said Garza, his voice quiet but tense, “before we start I wish to protest in the most vigorous terms the way Crew here conducted himself on this assignment. Almost from the beginning he ignored our instructions. In every meeting he lied to me, repeatedly, and in the end he went rogue. He lied about where the confrontation was taking place, took an enormous risk, and created a huge potential problem for us on Hart Island.”

Another slow blink. “Tell me about the Hart Island problem.”

“Fortunately,” said Garza, “we were able to pinch it off.” He slapped that morning’s copy of the Poston the table. The headline screamed VANDALS STRIKE POTTER’S FIELD, TWO DEAD.

“Summarize.”

“The article says that Hart Island was struck by vandals last night. They stole a boat from City Island, tore up a bunch of graves, desecrated human remains, and vandalized some equipment. And then one of the vandals took it upon himself to climb the smokestack, which fell in the storm, killing him. He hasn’t yet been identified. Another one, a woman, was shot and killed by persons unknown. The others escaped and are being sought by police.”

“Excellent,” said Glinn. “Mr. Garza, once again you have proven your usefulness to this organization.”

“No thanks to Crew over there. It’s a damn miracle he pulled it off.”

“A miracle, Mr. Garza?”

“What would you call it? From my perspective, it was a cluster-fuck from beginning to end.”

Gideon saw a smile play briefly over Glinn’s colorless lips. “I would beg to differ.”

“Yeah?”

“As you know, here at EES we have many proprietary software algorithms that quantify human behavior and analyze elaborate game-theory simulations.”

“You don’t need to tell me that.”

“Apparently I do. Haven’t you asked yourself why we didn’t send a kill-team after Wu? Why we didn’t assemble formal, six-on-six surveillance teams to monitor Dr. Crew, here? Why we didn’t furnish him with additional information or weaponry? Why we didn’t engage police or FBI backup for him? We have ample resources to do all those things, and more.” He sat forward slowly. “Did you ever wonder why we didn’t attempt to kill Nodding Crane ourselves?”

Garza was silent.

“Mr. Garza, you know the computing power we have here. I ran allthose scenarios – and many more. The reason we didn’t go those routes was because they all ended in failure. If Nodding Crane had been killed, the Chinese would have reacted – on a colossal scale. That prematuritywas the event we had to avoid. The arc of the lone operator offered the highest probability of success. The arc in which Dr. Crew operated on his own, with no support; in which Nodding Crane remained alive to the very end, reporting back positive, reassuring news to his handlers.”

“You know that I think some of your programs are a lot of horsefeathers,” said Garza.

Glinn smiled. “I do. You’re a straight engineer – the best I’ve got. I’d be concerned if you weren’t suspicious of my psychoengineering methods.”

He turned toward Gideon. “Dr. Crew, here, has unique talents. And he labors under the most liberating psychological environment a human being can have: he knows when and how he’ll die. The Native Americans understood the power of this knowledge. The greatest vision a warrior could receive was to see his own death.”

Gideon shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He wondered if Glinn would be so smug and self-satisfied when he learned the final outcome of the op.

The gray eye turned on him, examining him with unblinking intensity. A crippled hand rose from the wheelchair, cupped, ready to receive. “The wire, Dr. Crew?”

Here it came. “I don’t have it.”

The room settled into a strange, listening stasis. All was silent.

“And why not?”

“I gave it to Falun Gong. Along with the numbers. I completed Wu’s mission. Soon the technology will be available to the entire world – free.”

For a moment, the self-assured mask left Eli Glinn’s face and something unreadable – some strong emotion – passed across it. “I am afraid our client will be mostdissatisfied to hear that.”

“I did it because—”

As soon as it had come, the mysterious expression vanished and the faint smile returned. “Say no more, please. I know perfectly well why you did it.”

There was a brief silence.

“Highest probability of success!” Garza exploded. “Was thispart of your computer simulation? I told you from the very beginning not to trust this guy. What are we going to tell our client?”

Glinn looked from one to the other, not speaking. There was something not entirely dissatisfied in his expression.

The silence stretched on until, finally, Gideon rose. “If we’re finished here,” he said, “I’m going back to New Mexico to sleep for a week. Then I’m going fishing.”

Glinn shifted in his wheelchair and sighed. The withered hand reappeared from under the blanket shrouding his knees. It contained a brown-paper package. “Your payment.”

Gideon hesitated. “I figured you weren’t going to pay me. After what I did.”

“The fact is, based on what you’ve told me, our payment structure has changed.” Glinn opened the package envelope, counted out several banded bricks of hundreds. “Here is half of the hundred thousand.”

Gideon took it. Better than nothing,he thought.

Then, to his surprise, Glinn handed him the other half. “And here’s the rest. Not as payment for services rendered, however. More in the way of, shall we say, an advance.”

Gideon stuffed the money into his jacket pockets. “I don’t understand.”

“Before you go,” Glinn said, “I thought you might like to drop in on an old friend of yours who’s in town.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got a date with a cutthroat trout in Chihuahueños Creek.”

“Ah, but I was so hoping you’d have time to see your friend.”

“I don’t have any friends,” Gideon replied drily. “And if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t be interested in ‘dropping in’ on them right now. As you pointed out, I’m living on borrowed time.”

“Reed Chalker is his name. I believe you worked with him?”

“We worked in the same Tech Area – that’s not the same as working withhim. I haven’t seen the guy around Los Alamos in months.”

“Well, you’re about to see him now. The authorities are hoping you could have a little chat with him.”

“The authorities? A chat? What the hell’s this about?”

“At this moment Chalker’s got a hostage. Four of them, actually. A family in Queens. Held at gunpoint.”

Gideon felt this sink in. “Jesus. You sure it’s Chalker? The guy I knew was a typical Los Alamos geek, straight as an arrow, wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“He’s raving. Paranoid. Out of his mind. You’re the only person nearby who knows him. The police are hoping you can calm him down, get him to release those hostages.”

Gideon didn’t reply.

“So I’m sorry to tell you, Dr. Crew, but that cutthroat trout is going to be enjoying life just a little bit longer. And now we really do need to go. That family can’t wait.”