“Maybe not for your guy, but we’ll need it for the people there to see what they’re doing,” Andy said.
“This is logical,” Boss said. “Take the flashlight.”
Zach accepted the flashlight and descended the ladder into the shadows. They heard him step off onto the car roof, his footsteps heavy, and Andy called down,
“Be careful! Stay off the sheet metal, walk on the support struts or you’re probably going to go straight through!”
“The switch you spoke of has been set as you requested,” Boss said.
“There’s an emergency access door,” Andy said. “It’s secured — I don’t know how — bolts, or screws, or something — need to get that open, and then there is the ceiling panel of the car right underneath, you need to get rid of that, it won’t go through, you’ll have to push it in, just warn the guys underneath to go into the corners and protect their heads when it comes down…”
Small clunks and grinding noises came from the shaft, and then a clang as something metallic was opened and dropped onto some other metallic surface. Then Zach’s voice, from below, warning the occupants of the car as Andy had suggested. Then a crash and a splinter. Then silence for a moment.
“Everybody okay?” Dave called out from behind Andy.
Xander’s voice, clearer now, came floating back out.
“It’s pitch black in here right now — ah, all right, I can see the flashlight — just get us outta here!”
“Second ladder,” Andy said, motioning behind him. “Pass down the second ladder. We need to get that through that hatch and they can climb up and out — carefully — this thing doesn’t look very solid — it’s at a funny angle…”
Several helping hands passed the second ladder down into the hatch, and Zach received it and passed it down into the elevator car.
“In theory we should have at least one more person assisting from the inside — my son says that there’s a firefighter who goes down and helps them get out — but we don’t have time,” Andy said. “Guys — can you hear me? — climb out, one at a time, very slowly, very carefully, I’ve another flashlight up here you’ll see where you’re going — but hurry up about it?”
“Well, do it slowly or hurry up?” Xander asked from inside the elevator, aggrieved. “Where’s that ladder — Vince, you’re closest — go first — get out of here…”
“Coming up,” Vince Silverman’s voice said from the darkness.
The people on the landing floor held their breath, but the first rescue went off without a hitch, almost an anticlimax — they heard someone scrambling on metal, and then climbing the ladder, and then Vince Silverman’s disheveled head popped out from the hole.
“Well, hello,” he said. “A welcoming committee.”
Dave extended a hand and Vince took it, hauling himself out of the elevator shaft and dusting himself off as he got to his feet.
“You all right?”
“You guys sure know how to throw a party,” Vince said. “I’m fine. Get your friend Xander out of there, though, he’s starting to go a little spare…”
“Who else is in there?”
“That kid — what’s his name — Marius something — ”
“Sam’s protégé,” Andie Mae said. “I remember him, he was up in Callahan’s last night. That’s it? Just the three of you?”
“Just us. We were on our way to the panel — and Xander said…”
“Xander! Come on up! We’re waiting for you!” Dave called out into the shaft.
“Did somebody say there’s a kid in there? Shouldn’t we get the kid out…?” Andy said, rousing.
But there was more scrambling below, and it was Xander’s head that popped up next, wide — eyed and ashen — faced. Dave helped pull him up all the way, and Xander collapsed in a boneless heap on the flowery hotel carpet, rubbing his temples.
“Dear God, that was unpleasant,” he said conversationally. “There’s one more…”
But Andy suddenly lifted his head, and then jerked back from the edge of the landing.
“Watch it! Cable! Get away from the doors!”
Everyone dived for cover as they all heard it now — a whipping, whistling, swishing noise, just before something blurred past their field of vision and fell into the dark below, hitting the elevator car with a stomach — churning crash and then tumbling off falling somewhere below making more noise as it bounced off walls and other cables. The car shuddered and dropped a couple of inches. Andie Mae cried out.
And then there was silence.
Xander was still sitting there, frozen and staring; Andie Mae stood with both hands over her mouth, as if she had been trying to stuff her cry back inside. It was Dave who stepped forward, very carefully, and called out in a voice which was commendably calm and level,
“Hello? Down in the elevator…?”
“They are safe,” Boss said.
In echo of that, Marius’s voice, sounding thin and reedy, came up out of the shaft. “I think we’re all right. Your guy jumped in here before that thing hit, and didn’t get creamed. But if it’s all the same I’d like to come out now…”
“I think we lost the ladder from the car to up here,” Dave said. “Unless it’s just fallen on top of the car…?”
Andy sidled up and shone his flashlight down into the shaft. “Looks a mess,” he said. “Be careful where you step. Looks like there are edges that you don’t want to — maybe if your guy came up first, and handed you up to us — ”
There was a moment of silence, and then, in the beam of Andy’s flashlight, they saw Zach emerging from the opening on the top of the car. He made a gesture, presumably to Marius who was still in the elevator car, to stay down until he steadied himself and found his footing, and then motioned for him to come up. They watched as Marius, his hair dusted with debris until it looked disconcertingly white in the flashlight beam, climbed slowly and carefully from out of the elevator car. He finally emerged, standing with one hand on the low safety railing around the roof panel and one clutched around Zach’s wrist, and looked up into the light, squinting and blinking.
“I don’t see the other ladder you were talking about but it will be fine — someone just give me a hand…”
Dave and one of Simon’s security people knelt on the lip of the landing and reached down; with a bit of help from Zach, below, Marius locked his hands around both his helpers’ wrists and was hauled out bodily until he rested on hands and knees on the floor, panting.
“Well,” he said, “thank you. That was an adventure. Get the other dude out I have a horrid feeling that with that one cable down that thing is hanging by a cobweb thread.”
“It isn’t,” Andy said helpfully. “There are a number of redundant cables — but still, point well taken. In theory we should at least secure that hatch….”
“In practice, that hatch is probably in six pieces,” Xander said. “A steel cable just smashed into the thing. We’re lucky the whole thing didn’t go down with it. You okay, kid?”
“Perfectly,” Marius said, but his breath still caught a little at the word.
“Maybe we should get the doc to look you guys over,” Dave said. “Just in case. “You know, if this were a real rescue they’d probably have EMTs with oxygen tents out here for you guys or something.”
“We’re fine,” Vince said. “We’re all perfectly fine and in one piece.”
They had hauled Zach out of the hole now, and Marius’s head came up, eyes narrowed in sudden and concentrated attention. But nobody noticed him looking, or what he was looking at… nobody, that is, except Boss, whose pale eyes went inexorably from Marius’s face to the thing that Marius was looking at.
Zach’s right hand.
Which was missing two fingers.