He wanted to try standing up again. He had walked here, to the spot on the Wilshire Boulevard side where he had squeezed out of the ventilator. His left foot was so bad that he wanted to cry out. His thigh burned. He had been grazed by a bullet in his youth, and it had felt the same. He could walk, but he could see it was going to take five minutes to get around to the other side of the roof where Hannah's body lay. He stopped why the hell did he want to go there? He was going to have to calculate every step. He got out the radio, but he waited a moment before he turned it on.
Something was bothering him. Al Hollenbeck had asked him about the number in the gang. Why? Leland had heard the same gunfire. These kids had studied this stuff in guerilla camps throughout the Middle East. They could set up a field of fire as well as the U.S. Marines. Al might not know that; his work kept him occupied around the clock.
Leland had decided that he was only going to listen. Twenty-six was quiet. On nineteen, a woman was speaking German, reciting words and numbers. Nothing on nine. The police had their own frequencies, but that did not mean that the gang could not listen to them, too, with the right equipment.
He was going to have to get ready for them. It would be more than an hour before they came for him. They would want to wait until the sun was up over the mountains. The worst of it for him was not knowing about Stephanie. He did not want to outlive her. He hadn't wanted to outlive Karen, either. He did not want to go through that grief again. He didn't think he could.
He shook his head. People were coming to kill him in an hour, and he was worrying about living too long. He made his way to the edge of the roof, but his leg made it impossible for him to get up on the sign to look down onto Wilshire Boulevard. He was wondering again about the wisdom of not getting on the air. The police could have something to tell him.
It seemed that there were many, many more lights on all around the city. He'd bought the 310 after the divorce. He'd known it was going to be his last plane, and toward the end he didn't even use it much. There was a time in your life to quit certain things. For the past six or seven years he'd devoted himself almost completely to his work. Good, interesting work, too.
He had been on the team that had devised the first antiterrorist, antikidnapping driving course. He'd designed the security system in the first of the new ball parks, and it had been copied, or adhered to, ever since. And something he had learned not to tell people, that he'd been the one to advise the national retailers to force manufacturers of small items like ballpoint pens to mount them on cards too big for people to slip into their pockets. People hated having to gouge their way through the cardboard and plastic so much that it did no good to tell them that it had to be done because shoplifting the world over was so bad that it threatened the retailing business.
What was going out of the world was the understanding that it was worthwhile to care about other people. Few people lived in a neighborhood any more. Life was being organized to keep people distant from one another. Human beings were beginning to feel like guests on their own planet. The designers of this building were more interested in glorifying a bunch of oil pirates with an impressive raised plaza than in providing a few trees and benches where people could sit and talk to each other. He turned the radio on again.
"Al?"
"Hold on. He's awake."
"Joe? Are you all right?"
"What is this, 'He's awake,' crap? I've been up here writing letters and rinsing out a few things."
"Fella was spelling me on the monitoring, that's all. Try to stay loose."
"I'm loose, you're the one who sounds tired. Listen, they're going to come up for me..."
"We've been working on that. You're going to get air support."
Leland was silent. If the police could control the roof, they could lower men onto it. They needed Leland to get that close. Support, helclass="underline" they wanted him to cover their landing. As far as they were concerned, he was expendable. They had even managed to get a public-relations face on it, calling it "air support." Now the gang had another reason to want him dead. So much time had passed since they had locked him up here that it was possible they had stopped monitoring channel eleven.
"Look, I'm not sure that will work. This roof is covered with structures that will give them damned good cover. They came to stay. It's odds-on that they have rockets."
"Only one way to find out, right, brother?"
Now they were brothers, Leland thought. Hell, he could hear the con in Al's voice! "Look, kid, we can talk about his honestly, but don't bullshit me, please."
"Something I should have told you, Joe. The networks are here, and they're picking up and sending out everything we're saying."
Leland sighed. "Am I getting paid?"
"I don't think so."
"They'll have to take their fucking chances with the rest of us."
He voice was controlled. "It's Christmas morning back east, Joe. Little kids are watching."
"They should be in church. Sure if anybody out there wants to do something for me, he can go to church."
"There you go. Everybody knows you've been through hell now you've got me doing it. Merry Christmas, everybody! Joe, we're not kidding you. With first light, we'll have helicopters overhead constantly. They're going to cover you."
"Listen to me. Listen carefully and think!The only reason I'm still alive is because they know they have the situation under control. They wantto shoot down a helicopter."
"No, Joe, they want air time. They want to patch into the networks. They want to hook up to the satellite and talk to the whole world."
"And?"
"The people we've been able to talk to so far say that it's difficult, if not impossible, to give them what they want. We're trying to talk to them about it."
And at first light, the helicopters would attempt to get what remained of the SWAT team down. If they succeeded, the men would fight their way down to the hostages, many of whom would be killed. Among the dead, Steffie, Judy, and Mark.
But the police were going to fail. The job would be surrendered to the army, which would blow its way in from above and below. The army would succeed, and then all would die. Leland decided not to argue any more.
"Joe, are you awake enough to talk to a friend?"
"You soundlike you're on television."
"Go easy on me, man. I want to go home and see what Santa left under my tree."
"People keep giving me machine guns." He was moving again, trying not to let the pain show in his voice. "Got six of them so far."
"I thought you said seven."
"Oh, I got seven of them.The last was Hannah over there."
"How do you know her name?"
The police had to get a picture of what had happened in here. "I wanted to talk to her about poetry. What's this about a friend?" He saw that he had an interesting dilemma: if he had enough light to see what he was doing, he would not be able to do it for long.
"Well, you have a choice of two, Billy Gibbs or Kathi Logan."
"Tell Billy Gibbs that I'm still flying point. He'll know what I mean."
"Then you want to talk to Miss Logan?"
"Ms."
"Hey, I had to do that in front of the whole country. Billy Gibbs heard you on television and he says to come out of the sun, whatever that means."
"It means that Billy knows who the Captain, is, that's what it means." It wasn't bad advice, actually. Leland struggled to the east side of the building.
"Was that your rank during the war?"