They had gone to great lengths to track him here — extraordinary measures, really, just to sneak up on him. They had blown up a truck to cover themselves breaking in. And they were armed to the teeth.
Who were they? How could he get past them to the escape hatch?
Would there be others aboveground, waiting for him?
Giving up was the smart thing, right?
But if he put down his gun and raised his hands, what if they just smiled and then cut him to bloody pieces? He’d be dead, and he’d never even know who had killed him, or why…
He shook his head. No, he couldn’t just surrender. Not yet. He had to find out more about them, make sure it was safe first.
And to do that, he had to stay alive.
Michaels held his pistol pointed at the floor, standing fifty feet behind the last of the others. His breathing was fast, but he found he wasn’t afraid. Nervous, yes, and excited, but not frightened.
The place was a maze of corridors and doorways, and they moved carefully through it, Fernandez and Howard slipping into rooms along the way to check them out while Michaels stayed in the hall.
It was a big place, a lot of spots where a man could hide. Even with the sensors, they might miss him. And wouldn’t that be a snafu. It was good that he was thinking of retiring, because they would surely fire him if this didn’t end well.
Ames didn’t know how many of them there were, could be ten, could be fifty. He couldn’t shoot it out with them. They were obviously better armed, and however many of them there were, he was outnumbered. If he wasn’t going to give himself up, then the only other option was to hide and wait for an opportunity to escape.
After that? Well, he’d worry about that if he got that far.
His advantage was that he knew the place better than they possibly could, even if they had the floor plans. They couldn’t know where stuff was stacked, where he had put supplies, rearranged furniture, like that. If he could hide somewhere they wouldn’t immediately look, get behind them, go down one of the other halls or levels, he could maybe slip by. It was his best chance.
The main kitchen was a good place. Lots of bins, coolers, pantries. If they did find him, he could still try to surrender. If they were law enforcement of some kind, they ought not shoot him if he surrendered.
It was a chance, anyway, and right now it looked like the only one he had.
“Got a hot spot in there,” Julio said. He pointed to an open doorway. “Looks like a kitchen.”
Howard moved up. “Clear the left, I’ll take the right. Reaves, watch the door, Holder, cover that next hallway, just ahead. Commander, if you would stay right there and make sure he doesn’t somehow get behind us?”
Michaels nodded. “Got it.”
“Okay, Julio, on three. One… two… three!”
Julio went in first, low and to the left, and Howard was right behind him, higher, and covering the other half of the large room.
It was a kitchen, sure enough. A big one, with three stoves, refrigerators, sinks, tables, and institutional-sized food trays and bins.
Julio nodded at the stoves. The two of them edged that way, guns ready.
Julio put one hand on the stove. “There’s the heat source. He must have had a late supper.”
“Sensor getting anything else?”
“Negative.”
“Okay. Get Reaves and Holder in here, let them search. We’ll move on.”
Ames heard the voices, and even though they were muffled because of his hiding place in the walk-in fridge, he recognized one of them.
It was John Howard, the leader of Net Force’s military arm.
Ah. That made sense, sort of. Somehow, they had connected him to Junior. Maybe he hadn’t died right away when he’d been shot. Ames grinned. Maybe Junior wasn’t even dead at all. It could be some kind of misinformation campaign. Maybe Junior was alive and well and singing like a flock of canaries…
The fact that it was Net Force changed things. In his lawsuit, he claimed that all the Net Force personnel were violence-prone, trigger-happy vigilantes who went out of their way to find trouble and used deadly force whenever possible, but he knew that wasn’t true. And up until now he hadn’t cared.
Now, however, it mattered.
He’d read the reports himself. He had to in order to be able to spin them for a jury. And he knew that he could lay his weapon down and walk out of that refrigerator and be as safe as he would in his own offices.
Except that they would take him to jail. And if Net Force was out there, they had something concrete, even though he had no idea what it possibly could be. They’d crossed the lines before, he knew, but he also knew that his own lawsuit had turned a very bright spotlight on their actions. There was no way they’d be coming for him as part of a bluff. No way.
Which meant he couldn’t turn himself in. Not yet. Not until he’d had some time to think things through, maybe find out what they had — or thought they had — on him, and had a plan for dealing with it. Then he could be caught.
But not until he already had some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card in his pocket.
He frowned, then checked the bullets left in his magazine. Getting away would be a trick, that was for sure, given that more men were coming in here to look for him, and it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to shoot any of them. Move, he decided. Get to the dumbwaiter, go down a level, and sneak past them. It’s the only way. Go!
Michaels had his breathing under control — well, more or less — and he was still ten yards behind John. The two troopers had gone into the huge kitchen to search it. It was beginning to look to Michaels as if they might not find Ames again, which would be a real shame after all the trouble they had gone to.
He was passing a stairwell going down when he heard something.
It wasn’t much, a small click, and it probably didn’t mean anything. He leaned over and looked down the stairs. Nothing to see — wait, what was that? A flash of shadow, as if somebody had passed in front of a light source—
“John.”
Ahead of him, Howard turned. “Yes?”
“I think he might have gone down the stairs!”
Without thinking, Michaels started down.
“Alex, wait—!”
But Michaels was already four steps down and speeding up.
There wasn’t a door at the bottom of the landing, just a wide opening to the next level. Probably didn’t have to worry about fire codes when they built this place.
He was cautious enough not to run full speed through the doorway. He slowed, stuck his head through, and saw a man moving quickly away from him down the corridor, a hundred feet away. Had to be Ames.
Michaels stepped out into the hall, brought his pistol up. “Freeze!” he yelled. “Net Force!”
He was aware of Howard’s boots thumping down the stairs behind him.
Ames turned, saw him, and stared. He had a gun in his right hand, but it was pointed at the floor.
“Don’t shoot!” Ames yelled. “I give up!”
Michaels felt himself relax a hair. Good. He wasn’t sure he could have hit the man that far away with a handgun anyhow.
“Put your weapon down!”
“Okay, take it easy!” Ames bent and started to put his pistol on the floor—
— except that he didn’t. He jerked the gun back up and started shooting—!
Michaels felt the bullets hit him, at least two of them, square in the chest. Even though he was wearing armor, the impact felt like being smashed with a hammer. He lurched to the side, to get out of the way, fired his own pistol in return—