Bullets continued to hiss overhead and security kept punching through the steel wall with their goddamn elephant gun, but all that seemed to fade away for a moment. Jon was alive and they’d done it. They’d actually pulled it off.
The moment of elation wasn’t particularly well reasoned, she knew — her chances of survival had actually just taken a turn for the worse. After his partial heart attack, she’d be lucky if Smith could operate at half speed. And he was almost certainly going to frown on her plan to use him as a human shield. But why question the sudden surge in her mood? Better to just enjoy it while it lasted.
She slithered forward and rolled over de Galdiano’s body, landing on her back next to a very confused Smith.
“You got him, Jon! Dresner’s dead. But we will be too unless—”
A gun appeared over the steel wall and she aimed at it, waiting for the top of the guard’s head to appear before firing her last round. It got close enough to make him drop behind cover again but confirmed her initial impression that the manufacturer had exaggerated the accuracy of her weapon.
She shoved Smith onto his stomach and pulled the pistol from his waistband, then started dragging him toward the empty window frames at the back of the room. There wasn’t much time. If one of the security men had made it to the wall, the others weren’t going to be far behind. And when they all got into position, they’d jump up in unison and spray the entire office. Game over.
“Marty!” she shouted as Smith came around enough to start providing some of his own propulsion. “Get off that damn computer and go to the windows. We’re leaving!”
He ignored her and she swore under her breath, knowing that she’d have to go back for him. There was no time for this crap.
Smith’s eyes had cleared by the time they made it to the windows and he grabbed her arm when she started back for Zellerbach. He didn’t seem to be able to speak, and instead motioned toward the edge of the floor where it dropped to the parking lot below. She leaned out, careful not to cut herself on the glass still clinging to the frame, and immediately understood what he was trying to communicate. The building’s facade was even smoother than she’d anticipated — making getting to the floor above or below unlikely for her and virtually impossible for the two men she was saddled with.
Another face appeared over the wall and she fired at it, but this time the man got a few rounds off first, taking out the leg of a pinball machine only inches from Zellerbach’s head. Randi looked around for anything they could use, but there was nothing. With more time, they could probably string together some cables, but time was something they didn’t have. She looked over at Smith, hoping for one of his inspired plans, but got just a smile and a shrug.
“I’m in!” Zellerbach shouted, and a moment later the sprinklers in the ceiling were dowsing them with frigid water.
“You get ’em, Marty,” Randi said, appreciating the effort. With a little luck, a few of the sons of bitches who were about to kill them would go home with nasty colds.
“I have access to security’s personnel files!”
She fired at a man sprinting for the barrier while Smith crawled toward a basketball goal and pulled it over, providing them with cover that was probably more psychological than real.
“Give ’em all a pay cut, Marty!” she said, opting not to bother with the few visible inches of a man’s back as he ran from right to left across some cubicles.
“How many rounds left?” Smith said, speaking for the first time since he’d revived.
“Not many. Doesn’t matter, though. Can’t hit the broad side of a barn with this thing.”
Randi tensed when someone shouted orders for the final assault, but instead of the rush of armed men she expected, everything just went silent.
She kept her gun leveled at the steel wall and Smith rolled to the edge of the basketball goal to spot for her. But there was nothing. No security forces pouring into the office, no barked orders, no gunshots. Just the sound of the wind coming through the empty window panes.
Zellerbach slid his keyboard away and stood, putting a hand up to block a sprinkler spraying in his face.
“Marty!” Smith shouted. “Get the hell down!”
He ignored the order and instead stepped gingerly through he broken glass at his feet. “I hate this place. Let’s go home.”
“Marty!” Randi cautioned, trying to cover the man, but still finding no targets.
“Don’t be scared,” Zellerbach said, heading for the door. “It turns out that the entire security detail loved dachshunds and hated their mothers.”
Epilogue
Jon Smith eased through the gate of the Anacostia Yacht Club, enjoying the illusion of calm. Tiny snowflakes drifted through the empty branches of trees, the car he was driving was rented, not stolen, and Randi was sitting quietly in the passenger seat trying not to rip out the stitches he’d put in her back.
They came over a small rise and he leaned a little closer to the windshield, examining the car parked in front of Fred Klein’s office: a 1968 Triumph.
He pulled up and stepped out, barely noticing the icy wind penetrating his jacket. It was stunning — a professional restoration that had virtually nothing in common with the hack job he’d done on the one Whitfield wrecked. Reluctant to touch the flawless paint and gleaming chrome, he crouched and looked through the side window at an equally stunning interior. A set of keys dangled from the ignition.
“Fred wanted to show his appreciation,” Randi said, coming up behind him. “He asked me what you would want and I figured this was it.”
“He asked me the same thing about you,” Smith said, going around to the front and admiring the reflection of the clouds in the hood.
“And what did you say?”
“Deuce Brennan.”
A cruel smile spread across her lips. “You know me so well.”
You don’t look too much the worse for wear considering the incredible disaster you’ve created,” Maggie said as they entered the office.
The comment hit Smith harder than was intended. He hadn’t slept much since Granada and didn’t expect to anytime soon. The toll of the plan he’d come up with had been terrible. And casualty estimates just kept climbing.
Klein appeared in the doorway. “I’m glad you’re here. Come in.”
He helped Randi with her chair before slipping behind his desk and lighting a pipe. Quiet fans started automatically, pulling the smoke into vents before it could drift out to the firmly anti-tobacco Maggie Templeton.
“So you’re both all right?”
“Nothing permanent,” Smith said. “The car’s phenomenal, Fred. Thank you.”
He gave a barely perceptible nod.
“How are you doing?” Randi said. “Damage control can’t be easy on this.”
“No, it’s pretty much a catastrophe on every level.”
“How many?” Smith asked.
“I don’t think the number’s importa—”
“How many, Fred?”
He frowned and took another pull on his pipe. Reports about what had happened were dominating virtually every news outlet on the planet but solid numbers were hard to come by.
“We’ve gone a little north of three thousand worldwide. Mostly people with preexisting heart conditions. You can’t blame yourself for that, Jon. Without you, it would have been a hell of a lot worse.”