Now he grinned, a terrible, sadistic white smile shining down on her like a lopsided moon. “Yes — brings back lovely memories — like slaughtering your precious Chinese Clan...”
The Russian was unbuttoning the coat, so he could peel it and let her plummet!
Locking eyes with Kafelnikov, she let go of one lapel; in the murk, he couldn’t see her grab on to the rope with that now free hand.
“This is for Fresca,” she said, ice in her voice.
He had the jacket half unbuttoned. “Who the hell is that?”
“Nobody. Just another of your victims...”
And she yanked on that lapel and carried the Russian past the wall, and over her head, pitching him into the rain-tossed night.
Kafelnikov screamed the whole way down and, as a benefit of her Manticore-heightened hearing, Max was able to hear the satisfying splat of his landing.
She climbed the rope and hauled herself back over the wall and leaned over to start pulling the other two up. Seth remained quiet, almost placid, while Sterling was weeping, praying, and might have been wetting himself, for all she knew... if the rain hadn’t been covering up for him.
Behind her the trio of elevators all dinged at once.
Her eyes flew to those of the dangling, wounded Seth: they knew, the siblings knew...
Lydecker was here — he and his TAC team would be pouring out of those three elevator cars in moments!
Looking down at Seth, she saw him shake his head slowly but decisively. He didn’t say, but she could almost read his thoughts: he was wounded, and couldn’t escape; and he was not going back to Manticore...
Was that a single tear, trailing down his face, she wondered, or just more rain?
“Sorry, Max,” was all he said...
... and he let go of the rope.
Seth fell silently, bestowing the faintest smile up at the sister who reached yearningly down for him.
Jared Sterling, on the other hand, screamed and flapped his arms and hands, as if God might suddenly grant him the gift of flight; but the Almighty was apparently in an ironic mood, because all the wealthy fool got for his effort was the briefcase lid flipping open, raining money down on the parking lot.
Max turned away, before either man hit the pavement, and right now she did not relish her ability to perceive the subtleties of sound on this violent night.
A voice behind her yelled, “Freeze!”
But it wasn’t Lydecker, just one of the TAC team members.
“Don’t move — show me your hands. Now, now, now!”
Under other circumstances, she might have smiled, imagining the astonished expression on the squad member’s face when she vaulted over the wall, and dropped out of sight, apparently plunging into the night.
Which she did. The TAC team couldn’t see her snare the end of the dangling rope, swing out, then back in, through glassless windows into the restaurant below.
She landed like the cat she partially was, head up, alert — she had only seconds, now. Lydecker would be sending his men after her, some down the stairs, others down the elevators. She ran over and pushed the DOWN buttons of all three, hoping to at least slow the pursuing team, and hit the stairs running.
Her brother had given his life to avoid falling back into Lydecker’s hands; she would risk hers to escape that same fate, and mourning would just have to wait.
The observation deck was like a ship plowing through a stormy sea, and “Captain” Lydecker was royally pissed.
“He jumped over the side? ” he roared.
The soldier nodded, decked out in black fatigues with goggles, Kevlar vest, helmet, and MP7A. “But it didn’t look like... a him, sir.”
“What the hell are you—”
“Sir, the pictures you showed us. I was at the elevator, and he... or she... was at the wall, a girl, and with all that rain—”
Lydecker got in the soldier’s face. “Mister, how in God’s name can you mistake a nineteen-year-old man for a ‘girl’?”
“Sir, I—”
Lydecker silenced him with a look, brushed him aside, and strode to the edge of the observation-deck wall, where the carnage below could barely be made out through the slashing rain. This would be one hell of a mess to cover up.
Then he noticed the rope, flapping in the wind, tauntingly.
He spat into his handheld radio: “TAC Five.”
The radio crackled, and a voice from the ground floor said: “TAC Five.”
“Anyone come down in the elevators?”
“No, sir.”
“Watch them closely. We may have another X-Five on the premises. Possibly female.”
“... Yes, sir.”
Lydecker motioned with his head to one of the men. “Down the rope, soldier.”
The man unhesitatingly slung his weapon back over his shoulder and shimmied over the edge and down out of sight. Lydecker was roaming the observation deck now, surveying the casualties up here — half a dozen anyway. Most of them seemed alive, and were coming around, after the kind of beating an X5 could deliver...
“TAC Two,” he said into the radio.
“TAC Two.”
“TAC Two, take half the team and search the building for our man. Possibility of a second X-Five on site, female.”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned to the team member nearest him. “TAC Three, dispose of the bodies and cleanse the site.”
The man hesitated.
“Can’t you hear me in this weather, mister?”
“No, sir. That is, yes sir.”
“Then carry out your orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lydecker turned and marched back to the elevators, where another six men in combat black stood waiting. Behind him, Lydecker heard a pistol shot, then another and another.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“The elevators, sir,” one of the soldiers said. “The doors closed...”
“You might trying pushing DOWN,” Lydecker said through smiling teeth, though he was not at all happy. “They just might come back up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Something tugged in Lydecker’s gut. He got on the radio. “TAC Two?”
“TAC Two. In the stairwell, sir. No sign of anyone.”
“Keep looking, TAC Two. Time’s running short.”
“Yes, sir.”
The middle elevator dinged and its doors slid open.
Into the radio, Lydecker said, “TAC Five.”
“TAC Five. No movement, sir.”
The other two elevators arrived, and three men got onto the cars at either side, with Lydecker flying solo in the middle one; he went down one floor and the doors opened onto the vacant restaurant — vacant, that is, but for the soldier he’d sent down the rope, who approached.
“Anything?” Lydecker asked.
The soldier pointed. “Sir, wet footprints all over the place — more than one set.”
Lydecker didn’t like that; what it might mean made him very unhappy. “Did you search the entire floor?”
“I followed the prints to the stairwell, sir, but some went up and some down.”
Exasperated, Lydecker said, “Stay at this position.”
At the lobby, Lydecker emerged from the elevator to find that the cleanup crew — in yellow TOXIC WASTE suits and carrying no weapons — had arrived. In the parking lot, they were already dealing with the splattered remains of what appeared to be four different bodies.
Several of the yellow jumpsuited Manticore specialists were scraping up parts and filling body bags. One of them broke away from the group and scurried over to Lydecker, displaying a plastic bag from the thick fingers of a yellow glove.
“You’ll want to see this, sir,” the yellow-jumpsuited man said, his voice muffled by his headgear.
Holding the plasticine bag up in the rain, Lydecker could see a fragment of human flesh, but nothing significant. He pulled out a Mini Maglite and took a closer look at the bag’s contents: a chunk of skin with a series of black numbers, four in a row, and a barcode, the others numbers abbreviated on either end, probably from the impact with jagged concrete that had separated Seth from his head.