Smith pressed his shoulder into the beam’s side, doing his best to stay in line with the metal, but the span was too narrow to provide complete cover. Smith gasped as a bullet zipped past him. He was breathing hard while he tried to gauge the shooter’s direction and angle. The man must be moving around the perimeter, getting in line for a clean shot. With nowhere to run in the gutted and open-air lower level, Smith’s options were few. It was the devil below or the demon above. Nolan was above, so Smith raced back to the stairs, taking them two at a time, heedless of the noise he made. The police siren was near, and the piercing whine had grown loud. He slowed at the floor level and rose into the room just as Khalil leaped off the back of the building. Smith ignored him while he went toward Nolan, who had risen from the chair and stood, strangely hunched over. She seemed unable to straighten. She threw the computer into a tote. When Smith reached her, she gave him a look filled with panic. Smith heard the second attacker start pounding up the stairs.
“We’ve got to jump like Khalil did. Now,” Smith said. He aimed at the stairwell and fired. The pounding of feet stopped, the sound of the siren increased.
“He’ll run from the police just like Khalil did,” Nolan said.
Smith shook his head. “He’s CIA. The police won’t worry him.”
Smith waved her to the building’s edge where Khalil had disappeared and she didn’t hesitate. She ran in a stilted manner but still managed to move. Smith reached the edge, looked back and saw the attacker step onto the second floor. Nolan jumped and Smith followed her, bending his knees to soften the impact. He glanced at the plank stairs and saw the attacker’s feet starting back down. Smith fired a round at them. The angle was off, but the shot had the desired effect because the person retreated back up.
They had landed at the back of the building, which pressed up against the neighboring buildings on three sides.
“Through the building,” Smith said. “The ceiling will protect us until we reach the street side.” Nolan sprinted next to him, still hunched over. Smith felt his heart beating in a crazy rhythm. They made it to the far end without incident, and Smith paused at the perimeter. The run to the gate would be the most dangerous part. He turned to Nolan. “Go, I’ll cover you.”
Smith burst out first, jogging backward and laying down fire in intervals, all aimed at the second floor. Nolan raced by, running in the stilted manner with her back hunched and her head down. He didn’t see the attacker, but heard a bullet hit a temporary lamppost directly behind him. The angle was beneficial to Smith, because he was still below and the attacker stuck several feet back from the ledge, but the attacker would get a much cleaner shot when Smith reached the open gate. Smith briefly considered running parallel to the building and climbing over a section of the chain link, but dismissed the idea. He’d be shot in the back as he did. He kept jogging in reverse and firing as he did. He was at the gate when he fired his last round.
He stumbled through the opening. A hole ripped through the mesh only inches from his left shoulder. Smith was relieved at the miss, knowing that he couldn’t take many more hits. Eventually an artery would be nicked and he’d bleed to death. Nolan ran on a forty-five-degree angle across the street and through the opposite parking lot. Smith glanced to his left to check the area before he followed. He ran with her through the lot and around the building on the other side. As he hit the corner, he saw the flashing lights of the police strobe flickering off the trees. Nolan was still moving fast, the tote clutched in her hand. Smith was relieved to see a lone cab turn and head toward them. He hailed it. Ten seconds later they were inside, and the cab turned left again, heading north and away.
32
Smith leaned back in the seat while he caught his breath. He’d given the cabbie a random address in Harlem to buy some time and to get as far away from the scene as possible. Nolan was sitting at a twisted angle, keeping her body from the backrest. She kept her head down, and her hair obscured her face. In her hand was her tote bag. Nothing, it seemed, was bad enough to make her leave it behind.
“We need a place to land,” Smith said.
Nolan raised her head to look at him. The pain in her face was clear, even in the dark of the cab.
“A hotel?”
Smith shook his head. “No credit cards. Perhaps an SRO that takes cash.”
“Worried about being traced?”
Smith nodded.
She pulled out her computer.
“Keep it off,” Smith said.
“I just need one minute, no more.”
“Every minute it’s on, they can track us. I don’t need them to know which way we’re headed.”
“Then let’s pull over. It will be just a minute, I promise. When I turn it off he’ll drive on, and they won’t know where we went.”
Smith leaned forward to address the cabbie. “Can you pull over for a second? We need to do something.” The cabbie shrugged and pulled to the curb.
“One minute only,” Smith warned. She nodded, but kept her eyes on the tablet.
“No accessing bank accounts either. Whatever you’re doing, it has to be untraceable.”
“Don’t worry, it is. I’m accessing my kilodollars. They’re on the hard drive. I don’t even store them in the cloud. The only place they exist is on this computer.”
“Is that money?”
Nolan rocked her hand back and forth. “It’s a form of currency, yes, but a cybercurrency. No paper bills or gold or silver coins. I store the bits on my hard drive and can transfer them to any other person who will accept them as payment.”
Smith had never heard of such a thing. “Are they backed by any government?”
“No. A central computer located God knows where spits them out and scatters them across the net. You download and run a mining program that locates and collects them and offers them to you in an anonymous computer-generated transaction. Then you use them to pay for goods and services. The main computer controls how many are produced so that they can never be devalued.” Smith was having a hard time wrapping his head around the concept.
“So you don’t earn them or work for them? You just mine them from the Internet?”
Nolan nodded. “The same as if you would mine gold or diamonds.”
“Who accepts such a thing as payment for anything?” Smith said.
“Mostly people who want to remain anonymous. Because no central bank holds the funds the accounts can never be frozen, no one can garnish them, and the IRS can’t confiscate them.”
“So the primary use is for illegal transactions.”
Nolan shot him a glance. “That’s probably true, but isn’t that the same when one uses paper dollars? That’s anonymous as well, and cash is the favored currency used to purchase drugs.”
“How in the world did you learn about this?”
“It’s money.” She acted as though that was explanation enough.
“And you love money,” Smith said. He kept his voice light to avoid making his statement sound like an accusation.
“I love the accumulation of money. The math of it. The puzzle of how to arrange trades that result in a net win. It fascinates me. The kilodollars are just another form of it.”
Smith decided he didn’t need to understand the details right then; he just needed to be sure she logged off in ten seconds. He was relieved when she did, shutting down the computer. She leaned forward and gave the cabbie a new address north of Harlem. The cab pulled back into traffic and Smith watched behind them, searching for any possible tails.