‘Be — be — behind you.’
‘What?’ Judd turns. A figure stands in the shadows, a silenced pistol raised.
Judd runs, tackles Rick as the weapon spits. Judd’s right hip burns with a bright pain as they crash into the open elevator.
Rick slumps on top of Judd, a dark-red bullet wound where his left eye once was. ‘Oh Jesus!’ He’s dead. Horrified, Judd turns, watches the figure with the pistol step out of the shadows and stride towards him. It’s a blond man, tall, in his late forties, his face somehow familiar.
‘Big Arena.’ Judd says it without thinking.
The man pauses, shocked.
‘You cut down the tree.’
The man’s expression morphs from shock to anger and he raises the pistol. Judd gets behind Rick’s body, pushes it up. The pistol spits. Bullets slam into Rick’s back. Judd drives the body out of the elevator. It slumps onto the man, knocks him back a step.
Judd jams his right thumb against the elevator’s CLOSE button. The door slides shut as the man pushes Rick’s body aside and fires through the narrowing gap. Judd pivots behind the closing door as the bullet thunks into the back of the elevator.
The door judders to a stop, five centimetres from closing. Judd looks down. Rick’s left foot blocks it. Judd reaches to push it clear, feels a bullet pass his hand, sees the hole it leaves in the elevator’s floor. He pulls back, keeps his thumb mashed against the CLOSE button, tries to work out what to do next.
The pistol slides through the gap. Its lone eye swings towards Judd. He turns side on as it fires and the bullet slams into the wall behind him. He steps forward, brings a fist down and a knee up on the man’s wrist, hard as he can.
The man cries out and the pistol is jarred from his hand. Judd catches it and the man yanks his hand out of the elevator.
Judd bends, flips out Rick’s foot in one sharp movement and the door clunks shut. He jams his thumb against the DOWN button and the elevator descends.
‘Christ.’ Judd sucks air, arms tingling from adrenaline. He tries to process the last twenty seconds. Rick Calvin is dead. Dead. A blond man tried to kill him, a man he’s sure was once the lead singer of the German pop group Big Arena.
The adrenaline eases and Judd notices the pain at his hip. He inspects the bloodied wound where his comms box once hung. It’s not so bad, more a graze with delusions of grandeur than anything serious. Not like poor Rick Calvin. Shit.
How in hell did this happen? How did that guy get up there? It doesn’t matter how, what matters is that he’s still up there. With Rhonda. Any relief Judd feels at his escape vanishes. He must get to her. Now.
He hits the STOP button. The elevator jolts to a halt. He hits the UP button. The elevator rises. He studies the pistol in his hand, feels its weight. Even though he’s never held a gun before he’s sure it gives him the advantage.
A loud thud from the elevator’s roof. Judd looks up at the ceiling. He’s not sure he still has the advantage.
Dirk watches the elevator rise. While researching this mission Dirk had heard all the stories about astronaut Judson Bell. Apparently when Columbia broke up he pussied out. Yet here he is, rising towards the danger, doing the exact opposite of ‘pussied out’.
The last thing the German needs tonight is some guy running around the Launch Complex screwing things up, so ten seconds ago he wrenched open the shaft’s outer door, ripped the pin out of a frag grenade and dropped it onto the roof of the descending elevator. Problem solved.
Except the grenade landed on top of the elevator as it began to rise. The fuse is set to twenty seconds. Dirk wanted it to be near the ground floor when it detonated to minimise any chances of damaging the shuttle. Now it’ll be right beside where he currently stands. ‘Scheisse.’ He lets the outer door slide shut and takes cover.
Judd jams the pistol into his suit pocket, braces his left foot on the handrail that rings the elevator at waist level and drives himself upwards, right fist extended.
He punches the hatch in the ceiling with everything he’s got. It’s made of light alloy and flips open. He jams his foot down on the handrail and launches himself through the hole, pulls himself onto the roof.
A grenade lies on the roof in front of him, just as he thought. He bats it away with his left hand and it thumps into the shaft’s metal wall.
It detonates and the shaft flashes vivid orange. The explosion is massive, amplified in the enclosed space. The elevator convulses and its roof gives way. Judd’s ears ring as he grabs the cable in front of him, cool and slick with grease.
A fireball rolls past as the elevator drops. Judd hangs in space, 35 metres above the ground — then he doesn’t. The cable is yanked upwards, attached to the elevator via a pulley system at the top of the shaft. Judd’s on an express ride to the roof.
He glances down as the burning elevator hits ground level and blows apart. He looks up as he reaches the shaft’s metal ceiling, slams into it. It knocks the wind out of him and his hands slide off the greasy cable.
He tumbles down the shaft, throws out his hands to grab something, anything. .
He jolts to a stop. The three middle fingers of his left hand are hooked into the lattice of a grille in the shaft’s wall. The grille covers an air-conditioning duct two metres below the elevator’s outer door. The lattice is sharp, slices into his fingers. It hurts like hell but he doesn’t care. He’s alive.
He reaches up, grabs the grille with his right hand to alleviate the pressure on his left. The grille strains within the duct, Judd’s 85 kilograms a weight it was never designed to bear. His left foot thumps against the shaft’s metal skin and the sound reverberates.
‘Tango in Berlin’! That was the name of the German’s song. Details flood back to Judd. The lyrics, phrased in a stilted, English-as-a-second-language cadence. The lead singer, the guy who just tried to kill him, with his shrill tweeter-in-woofer’s-clothing falsetto. And the snare. For some reason Judd remembers the snare drum. It had the sonic power of a face slap. Judd loved the song despite its shortcomings and even bought Tango Time, Big Arena’s one and only album. He remembers being upset when the lead singer squashed the keyboard player with a tree.
A sliver of light cuts across his arm. He looks up. Above him is the elevator’s outer door, buckled from the explosion. Hydraulics protest as it is forced open. The shaft of light grows wider. He’s going to need a plan and quick.
The grille pops out of the duct and Judd thumps against the side of the shaft. It is only held to the bottom of the duct by two implausibly small hinges.
The forced opening of the door becomes more urgent. Judd realises he needs to get out of this shaft asap. His hands are under the grille. He works his left hand around to the top, then does the same with the right, carefully climbs it like it’s a very small ladder, makes sure not to twist it and snap the hinges that secure it to the duct.
The pistol sags in his suit’s pocket, the weapon too heavy for the flimsy material. It rolls out, thumps down the shaft. Instinctively Judd turns to watch it fall.
Bad idea. The shift in weight twists the grille and the hinges snap.
Dirk hears the noise and jams his left knee into the gap, uses it to bully the door open. Did the astronaut live through the explosion? No one has recognised the German in three years. Before that, maybe three people in the last decade had identified who he was. But that astronaut knew him instantly.
Another reverberation echoes from the elevator shaft. It’s unmistakable. The astronaut’s alive. Dirk draws his backup Glock from inside his jacket then pushes his head and arm through the gap and looks down.