He knew he was exhausted. "Man, you are beat," he said aloud. He had been awake twenty-two hours, and he knew from experience that the worst was to come but that with the daylight he would be good for another full day. The body was habituated to sleep, but could easily do without it for one night. He had to manage himself carefully for the next three or four hours, if he lived that long.
He stopped at the elevator banks. If the blast had blown out two floors, the chair must have hit the roof of the car when it was between, or nearly between, them. Leland was wondering what had been done to the east bank. The doors on both floors would have been blown away, but the cars and more importantly, the cables had been above the explosion. As long as you stayed above, say, the twentieth floor, just to play it safe, then everything should work perfectly. Naturally, the gang would hear the electric motor humming, unless some other noise masked it.
All right, he knew something. What did he do with it?
It was as if he had been reduced to functioning with only shreds of himself, he felt so drained. He had to make so many new, strange connections to hold himself together.
He switched the radio on. "Tony. Tony, are you there?"
"It is a matter of more than passing curiosity to me, Mr. Leland, how you happen to know my name and so much about us."
"You just happened to run into exactly the wrong guy." Leland knew it was a mistake as soon as it was out of his mouth: it contained no hint of the capitulation implicit in turning over the detonators. Silence. It was as if Leland could hear the bastard's wheels grinding.
"Tell me, Mr.Leland, why were you so interested in concealing your name from us?"
"I know so much about you that I couldn't be sure that you didn't know something about me."
"What difference would that have made?"
"You would have taken me a lot more seriously than you have."
"Yes, that's true. Very good. You're a wily opponent..."
"Look, I only called to tell you that I'm doing what I said."
"I know," the voice purred. "The reception is of a different quality, and I have to point the antenna in a different direction."
You son of a bitch.Leland was thinking of the kid who was giving his father the big screen television set. How did he know that story? Yes, the chauffeur. Asleep in his bed, bless him. Unless he had been awakened by the explosion. "Why did you kill Ellis?"
"Why did you let him die?"
Leland was moving toward the stairs again, thinking that it was what Gruber wanted: only in the stairwells did they have a chance of hearing Leland's voice and not on the radio, either. "That won't wash, Tony. I saw you kill Rivers. You had no reason to do that. You wanted him to open the safe, but you were prepared to do it yourself. You killed him because you felt like killing somebody, but you did it on the fortieth floor, where the hostages wouldn't see it. All evening you've been trying to keep them calm, and now suddenly you've changed your act."
"Well, that was your doing, Mr. Leland. Surely you understand that. The explosion set off a panic down here. You seem to be such a warrior, you must know that you left us with no choice but to show them that we have the capacity to realize our aims."
Leland was in the stairwell. "You really know how to lay it on, Tony. The people you had to convince were your own. You're not doing so well, kid. Karl wants action, doesn't he? You made a mistake. You let Karl pressure you. When you have to start showing people how tough you are, you're already finished. You're a walking corpse, Tony. Start getting used to the idea of being dead."
"Like to have a word with you, Mr. Leland." It was Hollenbeck, with his nice, easy way of talking.
"I planned to go off the air."
"Good plan. We're picking up an awful lot of traffic in German on channel thirty..."
Leland switched off and went back up the stairs.
...3:10 A.M., PST...
He continued going up. Karl had prevailed and they were after him in earnest. With Leland dead, they had control. His leg muscles were cramping from the effort of compensating for his feet. He was trying to keep himself pumped up. A cop did it automatically, just trying to remember what he'd been taught, but when the fun was into its eighth hour, the problem became more complicated. Wisecracking didn't work when you had to keep your mouth shut. He'd already thought of the 310. In the twentieth century, when relationships fail, you console yourself with things. It never went anywhere, but he wanted to think about Karen again. He wanted to remember her. One small part of him refused to understand that she would have died anyway, even if they had been able to find a way to live together successfully.
He was going to try to get to the roof if he could get there before they cut him in half. He wanted to think they were going slowly out of caution, but there was little reason for it. They knew he was hurt. If he could get to the roof, he would tell Hollenbeck. Maybe the police would be able to take advantage of the situation and get into the building.
He heard a door open below him, not too far down, either. He was between the thirty-ninth and fortieth floors, and he still had to get around to the staircase to the roof. Wait a minute!Hollenbeck on the radio? Maybe Robinson was somewhere else because the police were planning another assault. They had picked up the German transmissions and somehow understood their meanings. Maybe he was going to get a break! Hey! Hey!He wanted to shout it out loud.
He could hear footsteps, shoes on the gritty concrete. He couldn't be sure if he could be heard in return. He was even trying to breathe quietly. If the guy got much closer, Leland was going to shoot down the stairs and try to get him on the ricochet. They had almost gotten him that way when he'd dropped the chair-bomb into the elevator shaft.
He was beginning to lose track of what he'd done. Skeezix making a hit on Wilshire Boulevard. The girl at the safe. The one he'd mailed back to them, sitting in the elevator. That was the first. And the guy at the window, who didn't fall for the gobble-gobble trick, but fell for it anyway, and told Leland something about the explosive. A long night. And nobody to bill for overtime.
Leland remembered that he had an arms cache on the roof Skeezix's automatic rifle and his kit bag of ammunition. Sure, altogether, almost one hundred and thirty rounds. In the right position, it was enough to hold them off indefinitely.
He hurried out onto the fortieth floor, using the wall for support. The latch clicked audibly when he released the knob. He had to hurry. He couldn't be sure that the other person would understand the sound or accept it for what it was, instead of a trap. He had another advantage: he knew the route around to the roof staircase. They had shot up this area, too. He had to be ready. He had come this far. He wanted to go the rest of the way. He had made a hell of a contribution already. When the sun came up, the world would see that they weren't as clever, or invincible, as they were trying to tell themselves and anyone who would listen. One human being had stood up to them. That's all it took. That's what they always said. He was one human being, and everything was different because of him.
The staircase door slammed behind him. He had to run he started skipping, lost his balance, and fell against a desk. Somebody squeezed off single shots, and he could hear glass breaking. Returning the fire would only give away his position. How many more offices did he have to go through before he reached the hall to the staircase? Two, three? Now two.
From very far below came the sound of more gunfire, the heavy automatic weapons of the gang. Good! The lights of the hall were on, but he had to take the chance. As he headed down the hall, he heard a girl giggling behind him. He stopped.