"We need an ambulance!" Cavanaugh shouted into his lapel mike. Rushing, he unlocked the door.
Jamie and the agents hurried in but stopped at the sight of the gunshot victims. One agent knelt, trying to help them while Cavanaugh and the others raced along a corridor.
In an office, a man peered up, hiding behind a desk. In another office, a man lay bleeding.
Reaching a lobby, Cavanaugh saw a receptionist trembling in a corner behind her desk. Glass doors led to an elevator and stairs.
"We've got operators waiting on the street outside! He can't get through!" an agent told him. Gun drawn, the agent ran past Cavanaugh and charged down the stairs, the others following.
But Cavanaugh and Jamie lingered.
"What's above us?" Cavanaugh asked the trembling receptionist.
She opened her mouth. No sound came out.
"You're safe now," Jamie said. "What's above us?"
"Other offices."
"And?"
"A roof garden."
33
Three minutes to ten.
A team member stood against a wall as the crowd passed. Impatient, he checked his watch, looked up, and paled when two men confronted him, aiming pistols.
"Hands up!"
*
"Turn around! Against the wall!" an agent shouted to another team member, this one a block away. "Jay, get the knapsack off him!"
*
"I think it's safe to take the knapsack!" an agent yelled to his partner three blocks away. "If it's a bomb, it doesn't have a manual trigger. Otherwise, he'd have blown himself up by now."
Someone in the crowd overheard. "Bomb?"
"Where?"
"A bomb!"
"Run!"
*
"Keep your hands away from the knapsack!" an agent shouted.
When the team member drew a pistol, the agent protected the knapsack and shot the man in the head.
The dying man fired into the sidewalk, fragments hitting the crowd.
Panicking, a woman tripped. Stampeding, three men fell over her. Screams filled the street.
34
Cavanaugh and Jamie hurried up the stairs. An office door was open, startled faces peering out.
"Close the door," Cavanaugh told them.
"Take cover," Jamie warned.
Continuing higher, they reached an open door, sky beyond it.
"Stay here," Cavanaugh said. "You don't need to do this."
"Babe, I'm not letting you do it alone."
Cavanaugh went first, aiming to the right while Jamie aimed to the left. Amid blazing sunlight, potted trees and shrubs surrounded them. Patio tables, chairs, and sun umbrellas provided a lunch area through which Cavanaugh and Jamie darted, searching for a target.
"Over there," Jamie said.
Fifty yards away, a shed-like structure had an open door. With the Mississippi spread along their right, they raced toward the exit.
"He used the roof to head east! Farther along the block!" Cavanaugh shouted into his lapel mike. "The corner!"
They entered a stairwell in time to hear footsteps rumbling below them.
"He's almost onto the street!" Cavanaugh shouted.
"We're waiting!" a voice shouted through his earpiece.
Shots made Cavanaugh pause. Even in the stairwell, he heard screaming along the street.
35
Two minutes to ten.
Nearing the ground floor, Carl heard shots outside. Beyond a window, a frenzy swept through the crowd, people swarming to get away. He veered into an office, where workers stared in alarm at the chaos outside. Turning toward him, they reacted with greater alarm to his bare chest, the water dripping from his face, and the gun in his hand.
"Out!" Carl yelled. When they didn't respond, he chose a man with red hair and shot him. "Out! Out! Out!"
The survivors collided with each other, all of them trying to get through the door at once. Firing above their heads, Carl watched them surge out, joining the turmoil on the street. Agents out there would be totally overwhelmed.
He grabbed a suit coat off a chair and put it on. He picked up a chair and hurled it through French doors. He surged through and joined the screaming, stampeding crowd.
36
Reaching the ground floor, Cavanaugh saw that the door was open, people rushing past. Taken aback by the chaos, he heard a window shatter in an office to his left.
"Go that way," he told Jamie, indicating the open door. "I'll take the side!"
He rushed into the office in time to see Carl leap through the window and charge into the crowd. Immediately, Cavanaugh followed, shouldering past men and women, straining to keep Carl in sight. Another distant shot increased the crowd's panic. "Bomb!" he heard somebody say. The hysterical need to get away was so powerful that, for a moment, Cavanaugh was actually lifted off his feet by the crush of people around him. It was like being swept along in a flood while he tried to break free of the current and maintain a direction.
Ahead, he saw Carl struggling to go sideways through the crowd. But that didn't make sense. Where Carl seemed determined to go-to the right-was a dead end. He couldn't escape there. Abruptly, Cavanaugh realized he was mistaken. What he thought of as a dead end was actually the Mississippi River. The river. That was how Carl planned to get away.
37
One minute to ten.
No matter how hard Carl strained to break free from the crowd, it caught and squeezed him, carrying him with it. The force was so great that he had trouble breathing. Jabbing with his elbows, ramming with his shoulders, he managed to clear a space and thrust closer to the river.
He was too confined to be able to look at his watch. But he sensed that ten o'clock was almost upon him. Any second, the few remaining members of the team would pull the cords on their knapsacks, the police radio frequencies would trigger the detonator, and black clouds filled with nerve gas would drift across the remaining demonstrators.
Vaguely aware of a building on his right, he jabbed harder with his elbows and cleared enough space to draw his pistol, firing into the air. The deafening shots made people scream and run faster. Several fell, others piling onto them. Carl scrambled over them.
Ahead, part of the crowd raced across train tracks, up steps, and into a tunnel. He fired several more shots to keep the crowd hurrying and charged into the shadow of the tunnel. When he broke into sunlight, a wide expanse of concrete ended at the water. Barges and tugboats chugged along the Mississippi. He vaulted a waist-high fence and dove past a paddle wheeler moored at the shore, plunging beneath the surface.
38
Racing after him, Cavanaugh saw Carl sprinting toward the river. He stretched his legs to their limit and sped closer, but not enough. There wasn't sufficient time to close the gap. As Carl vaulted the fence, Cavanaugh didn't have time to stop and try to control his exertion-trembling body enough to aim. In a blur, Carl dove past a paddle wheeler into the river. Three seconds later, Cavanaugh vaulted the fence. Afraid of being weighed down, he dropped his gun and the knife on his belt. He threw off his jacket, tugged his claw knife from its neck sheath, gripped it securely, and dove.
The river was cold. Gritty. Greasy. Submerged in the weight of the muddy water, he heard the muffled vibrations of engines. The water was so murky that when he opened his eyes, he couldn't see. All he could do was keep kicking with his heavy shoes, blindly sweeping his arms, following the course that Carl had taken into the water. As he thrust with his hands, he gripped his claw knife, slicing, hoping to wound Carl's legs. Already short of breath from running, he felt pressure in his chest, his lungs demanding air. He kept thrusting, his clothes weighing him down.
Caught in the current, no longer hopeful that he was on Carl's trajectory, he thrust again with the knife. The engine vibrations were louder. Then he realized that what he heard was the pounding of his heart. Lungs feeling as if they'd explode, he kicked upward, pawed through the water, broke the surface, and gaped at a tugboat looming toward him. It was so close that he had to shove his feet against its hull, thrusting his body away before he was struck. Nonetheless, the suction of the current pushed him back against the hull. The propeller, he thought.