'We've got to get off this fucking thing,' said Richardson, 'before we're kissing the sidewalk, like the Pope.'
He unscrewed the karabinier joining him to the end of the abseiling rope, waited for the cradle to steady a little and then stepped smartly on to one of the huge cross-braces that characterized the building's distinctive facade. It provided a ledge about eighteen inches deep. Here, at the very edge of the building, there were no windows, just concrete. And the cradle was three or four feet farther away from this part of the facade than it had been when it had been hanging in front of the windows.
Curtis surveyed the gap uncertainly, even as he undipped his harness and prepared to make the jump. It was, he knew, hardly any distance at all. On the ground he would have done it without thinking. But two hundred feet in the air, it seemed greater. Especially since his legs already felt like two columns of jelly.
'Come on, man, jump. What the hell's the matter with you?'
The cables supporting the cradle tightened ominously.
'Quickly!'
Curtis jumped and caught Richardson's hand as he landed on the cross-brace. He steadied himself, then turned to face the city and found that the cradle was no longer where it had been a couple of seconds before. It was gone. There were only the two cables from the hydraulic jib on the Mannesmann above their heads to remind him of where they had just been standing. The realization unnerved him, and, closing his eyes, he pressed himself back against the concrete wall and took a deep breath.
'Jesus fucking Christ, you cut that fine,' said Richardson. He sat down and carefully dangled his legs over the edge.
Curtis opened his eyes and watched Richardson tear off one of his shirt sleeves and tie it around his bleeding head, apparently oblivious of the yawning height in front of him. 'Jesus, I don't know how you can sit there like that. Like you were paddling your feet in a river. It's twenty floors.'
'More comfortable than standing.'
'I'd puke if I wasn't so damned afraid of falling over while I was doing it.'
Richardson glanced coolly at a sky full of the throbbing noise of helicopters. From time to time the 'Nightsun' was so bright he had to shield his eyes against it.
'That's a comforting sound,' he said. 'A Bell Jet Ranger. I know, I've got one myself. So take it easy, I doubt we'll be here very long. Shit. It looks like we're going to be on TV.'
'What?'
'One of those choppers has KTLA painted on the side of it.'
'Assholes.'
'Your ordeal is nearly over, my friend. But I suspect mine is just beginning.'
'How's that?'
'This is lawyers' country. They'll be after me like fucking barracuda. Even you, Frank.'
'Me? Why should I sue you? I hate lawyers.'
'You'll get calls, you mark my words. Your wife will persuade you to do it. Nervous shock, they'll call it, or some such shit. I guarantee that within seventy-two hours of getting home, you'll have a lawyer working on your case. With contingency fees, what can you lose?'
'Hey, you're insured, aren't you? You'll be OK.'
'Insurance? They'll find a way out of it. That's what these people do. That's business, Frank. Lawyers, insurance companies. The whole rotten edifice. Just like this lousy building.'
'Well, you've got to be alive to be liable,' said Curtis, 'and we're not off this silver rock yet.'
The city engineers called Olsen on the ECCCS.
The street circuit controlling the Yu Building side of Hope Street has been switched off,' said the night supervisor. 'It should be safe enough now. Let me know when you want power back. And I'll need something in writing to cover us for liability.'
'The computer is generating the E-mail now,' said Olsen.
'Yeah, you're right. It's coming through.'
'Thanks a lot.'
Olsen spoke to the commander on the ground on the piazza in front of the Yu Building.
'OK, listen up. The power's off. The place is secure. Check for survivors. One of the women on board the chopper reckons there might be someone left alive on level 21. Name of Beech.'
'What about the two men on the front?'
'Chopper will get them down ASAP. But there's a lot of heat coming up from the building and it's making for some air turbulence. Might take a while yet. One of them is LAPD Homicide.'
'Homicide? What the fuck's he doing up there? Making business for himself?'
'I don't know, but I hope he's got a good head for heights.'
A power failure was a relatively rare event in Los Angeles. Usually it signalled a major disaster — an earthquake, or a fire, or both. The standby power system at the Yu Corporation was designed to protect the company against any breach in the supply without loss of data. A static unit powered by solar-energy cells existed to provide a precious ten minutes' supply while the standby generating set was started by the computer.
Liquid fuel, pure refined oil, gushed into the turbine's combustion chamber as yellow as the first press of the best white grapes, mixed with a portion of air and burned deep in the bowels of the Gridiron at a constant pressure like something infernal, until the moment when the hot, tormenting gas turned the blades of the turbine motor and Ishmael, that algorithmic leviathan, had recovered sufficient strength for its last act.
Mitch sat in an ambulance having a temporary dressing applied to his injured eye.
'You could lose the sight unless you get to a hospital soon,' advised the paramedic.
'I'm not leaving here until I know my friends are safe,' said Mitch.
'Have it your own way, fella. It's your eye. Here, hold still, will you?'
On the other size of the piazza., a SWAT team was entering the Gridiron.
'What the hell do they think they're doing?' said Mitch. 'I told them — '
His dressing finished, Mitch stepped painfully out of the ambulance and limped towards an enormous black articulated truck that had
'LAPD' and 'SPECIAL RESPONSE' painted on the container. He mounted the steps at the back and found the ground commander and a couple of plainclothes cops inside, staring at a bank of television screens.
'There are people going in the front door,' said Mitch.
'You should be in hospital, sir,' said the commander. 'You can leave things to us now. The city engineer has turned the street circuit off. And your friends will be taken off the front of the building any minute now.'
'Jesus Christ,' said Mitch. 'Anyone would think you were the one who was injured, you dumb motherfucker. I warned you not to go in there without speaking to me first. Goddammit, why don't you people use your fucking ears? Switching off the local power supply doesn't make any difference. This building is smart. Smarter than you, anyway. It's adaptive. Even to a failure in the power supply. Do I make myself clear?
There's a solar-powered, uninterruptible power supply and there's a gasturbine standby generating set. So long as there's oil to burn, the computer can keep going which, if you had been listening to me, makes the Gridiron an extremely hostile environment for your men.
'It's possible that the computer might start a fire,' he said. 'Blow up the generator, maybe. Either way, the bottom line is that the building is dangerous.'
The commander pulled the mouthpiece of his lightweight headset up over his chin and started to speak:
'This is Cobra leader to Cobra force. Power supply is uninterruptible. Repeat uninterruptible, Exercise extreme caution. Computer may still be active, in which case your environment may very well be hostile.'