The thirty-sixth floor was like the thirty-third, a gridiron of tiny cubicles surrounded by equally tiny, but color-coordinated offices in a big corporation, you always knew where you stood in relation to the top.
It had no status now, with bulletholes, splintered panels, and broken glass everywhere. He was on the north side again, sitting on the floor behind a desk, looking down into Wilshire Boulevard. Three blocks away, he could see the flash of a boiling light against a building. A helicopter appeared over the hills, then swung around abruptly and headed north, toward the San Fernando valley.
Leland was eating his Milky Way. He'd finished the Oh Henry!, and he was saving the Mars bar for last. He felt like a kid in the movies, or a young cop eating for energy in a prowl car...
He'd taken the 310 straight out to sea at a height of a thousand feet, across the New Jersey suburban blight where every tacky, upright swimming pool stood revealed, every van, every bolt-together aluminum tool shed at a thousand feet, at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, the suburbs looked like an enormous junkyard.
But then he'd gone on, out over the ocean. Two miles out, he was at five hundred feet; ten miles, fifty feet. By then he was making better than two hundred knots, faster than he'd flown in almost twenty years. It was a brilliant, blue-sky day, with only a few cirrus clouds far above. The sun was over his shoulder and the water looked very dark, so close the wave's seemed to be nipping at the plane. He passed a sport fishing boat and waggled his wings. The 310 was his second twin, with wingtip fuel tanks, as pretty as any general aviation aircraft ever, loaded, equipped for IFR, one of the first small radars he had world-wide capability At thirty miles out, he came upon two freighters, five miles apart, making for the Ambrose Light Using their superstructures as pylons, he flew figure eights; and when the crews came out on deck, he waggled his wings, climbed straight up, rolled, stalled, let it fall, and finished with a full loop between the ships where both crews could see. When he headed back to the land, he could see arms waving from the decks.
He pressed the "Talk" button. "You guys still there?"
"Ah, how you doing? What happened to you?"
"I had to get the show on the road. For the last ten, I've been cooping."
"Right. A couple of us heard your earlier transmission, and we agree that you're the real thing. We're going to take a chance on you. Now how do you make the situation?"
"The roof is easier to defend than to take. They're very heavily armed..."
"How about you?"
Leland thought of the Browning, and that Little Tony might be listening. "I'm in business," he said.
"How do we recognize you?"
Leland smiled. "I'm black. I wasn't when I started, but I am now."
"I hear you. We'll talk about that later. What about the radio? How did you come into that?"
No wonder: they hadn't figured out that he had one of the gang's radios.
"I came into this the same way I came into this sweet little Kalashnikov machine gun. It's logical to assume they're tuned in, too. Do you know who Little Tony is?"
"Hey, I usually work out of Hollenbeck. I was on my way home to West L.A."
"Okay," Leland said. "He's third generation Red Army Faction, West Germany. After Andreas Baader died, his people went deep underground Nobody knew where they would turn up, but the stories were always that they would do something big. Here we are." Leland had a sudden thought: what if the marshal on the plane from St. Louis had been responding to some wild, incoherent information? If Leland had been paying attention and identified himself, he might have learned something that could have prevented this.
"How do you know all this stuff?"
"Just say it's a long time since I worked Hollenbeck. Look, I told you: These guys need me, and it's not a good idea to stay on the air too long."
"Well, we're going to give them a taste now."
Leland froze. The police still did not understand the situation. He had become convinced that Little Tony was listening. Leland moved closer to the window and now, faintly, he heard one of the elevators running. He couldn't be sure that they weren't coming for him. No, such a short trip would have been completed already.
They had been listening! They were headed down to meet the police!
Leland pressed the "Talk" button. "Our conversation was monitored. They're coming to meet you."
"Right on," the black voice said. "Thanks a lot."
With only seven of them left, Leland didn't think they would mount another mission against him. He got up he needed a cane, or even crutches. He made his way from one doorway to the next. If he was going to continue to be effective, he would have to figure some way to make the gang come to him. There was no point in staying at the window. If there was to be a firefight down in the street, this was the best place to get hurt. He had an idea, anyway. And a thought to bear in mind later: on the basis of the information he had given them, police snipers could assume they could shoot at any target above the thirty-second floor.
He had to give an account of himself, or the gang would know how badly he was hurt. If they sent someone after him while he was exposed and vulnerable, that would be the end, surely. But he knew he would be better off in the long run if he could keep them thinking that with him they still had more than they could handle.
He needed a chair on casters, an electric typewriter, and a fireax. The floor was quiet. His bleeding had stopped, but the pain was intensifying. He remolded his ball of plastic explosive until it was the shape of a football, with the detonator in the middle. He put it on the seat on the chair. Carefully he put the electric typewriter on top of the explosive, tied the typewriter to the chair with its cord, then pushed the chair toward the elevator banks.
Now he heard popping of gunfire out on the street. The position of the elevator banks on the lobby floor and the locations of the garage entrances below that, limited the terrorists' field of fire in all directions on the street level, but from above, three or four stories up, they could keep the police from ever getting near the building.
The gang would be ready for armored cars. There were iron gates across the garage entrances, and an armored car with wounded men in it stalled at the bottom of the ramp would be impassable. This wasn't wartime, when the order would be given to blow it away. Policemen did not kill brother officers in the line of duty. It was more than society had a right to ask.
He could hear gunfire coming up the elevator shaft. What he was waiting for was the sound of a car in motion. He would not have a lot of time, and there was nothing he could do in advance, for it involved using the fireax on the door. As soon as it was heard and understood on the thirty-second floor, they would be after him. He heard automatic rifle fire from outside.
He got out the radio. "How are you guys doing?"
"Well, I guess you were telling us the truth. Some people thought you were a psycho. They're kicking the shit out of us. You say there were twelve?"
"Now seven."
"Well, you're one tough fucking dude, let me tell you."
"Stay tuned." Leland said, and put the radio away. One of the elevators was in motion. He wheeled the chair into position, then turned to the elevator door with the ax. With the first swing, the pain in his left foot was so severe that he nearly dropped the ax on it. The next swing got the blade of the ax into the crack of the door and broke something inside, because the door opened, then was forced shut again. He rotated the handle of the ax so that the door came open again, enough for him to get his hand in and pull it open wide, and block it open with the length of the ax handle.
He looked in and bullets hit the top of the door. The car, coming up, was still a long way down. Leland had to return the fire he had to show he was still fit. He poked the Kalashnikov into the shaft and fired a burst down toward the car on the thirty-second floor from which the firing had come. Far below, someone in the ascending car fired at him, the round pinging upward toward the roof. Leland got behind the chair and rolled it like a baby carriage into the shaft. If the guy saw the thing coming down, he might think it was Leland. Even if it didn't go off, his chair-bomb would go through the roof of the car.