Jack must have been doing the same examination of their opponents’ weapons load. He raised an expressive eyebrow to Kris.
“As a Marine Gunny once told me,” she said, “‘If you’re in a shoot-out, the best thing to do is not get shot.’”
The two turned back to the problem at hand. While Kris and Jack stalked the roving watch, Penny had located the night team keeping an eye on all the gadgets. These had been the subject of some hot debate back on the mountain. If they took them down, all the world couldn’t help but notice. Kris had hoped to hijack the freight elevator without doing anything to this crew.
A glance over the actual setup showed that what they had hoped was a wall was only a clear plastic plate that protected them from any freight getting loose. It did nothing to restrict their view of the elevators.
Wordlessly, Kris and Jack joined Penny to watch the unsuspecting night watch. Three of them looked at gauges, dials, and readouts, occasionally making an adjustment. One watched a bank of screens, overseeing the cameras that Nelly had pointed at innocent scenes. He seemed bothered; he fiddled with a dial intent on adjusting a camera. The camera doggedly ignored him and obeyed Nelly.
“I got a problem, here,” was the last thing Kris could let him say.
PENNY, YOU HIT THE CAMERA GUY ON THE LEFT. I’LL HIT WHAT LOOKS LIKE THE BOSS GUY ON THE RIGHT. JACK, YOU GET THE TWO IN THE MIDDLE. ON TWO.
ONE . . . TWO.
Kris put two sleepy darts into the back of her target and got her third shot into the next guy over toward the middle. Penny put two shots into her man, and also put a third into the gal next over. Jack had put one shot into each of them and was going back to service them with a second shot, but he only got one off.
All four laid sleepy heads down on their workstations.
“The freight elevator,” Kris ordered.
They made their way quickly to the bank of elevators that could take them well up the Longknife tower. Maybe even to just below Grampa Al’s penthouse. The higher up the tower you went, the more vague their schematic got.
Kris eyed the open door of the first freight elevator. There was a camera in the right corner. She checked the next one. Camera there, too. Just as she hoped, the third elevator showed hard use, and the camera there was smashed. What was left of it dangled from a single wire.
“That working?” Kris asked Nelly.
“Yep, but it’s only getting a picture of what’s below it. We stay away from there, and no one will be the wiser.”
“Here’s our ride, crew,” Kris announced.
Unlike the elevators for the finely dressed suits, you had to work to get a freight elevator moving. Kris closed the outer doors, but they didn’t come together all that tightly, being dented and dinged. She latched the inner cage door closed but paused before punching for a floor above them.
“Nelly, I’m getting sick and tired of all the beeping and ringing. What do you say we close down the alarms?”
“I’ll have to kill the lights as well,” Nelly said, and if she’d been a real girl, Kris would have heard a near giggle mingled in the words.
Kris pulled up her shirt, and extracted a set of night goggles from the foam flab at her stomach. Penny and Jack followed suit.
“Let everyone know we’re here, Nelly.”
A second later, the noise went to a deathly hush. The lighting flickered, then went to dark. Emergency backup switched on for a moment, then blinked and went out as well.
Dim red lights switched on just above the nose of Kris and her team’s low-light goggles. Kris punched for floor 198, and the elevator began to grind noisily upward.
“I told you I could keep just the power we needed,” Nelly crowed.
35
Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile cursed under his breath. He had not come this far to sit on his hands while fools piled up their mistakes “You,” he said, pointing at the man who styled himself captain. “Take me to the Security Center.”
“You can’t go there. With the alarm given, no one is allowed in.”
Rick Sanchez grabbed the older man by the arm and began moving him with the rest of Foile’s team as they headed back to his car.
“There are machine guns on the grounds. They’ll shoot the shit out of you!” the intrepid captain was almost shouting now.
“Leslie, you drive,” Foile ordered.
The young agent grinned. “You bet, boss.”
Foile took the passenger front seat. Mahomet and Rick settled the rent-a-cop between them in the back. Leslie headed toward the first checkpoint at a sedate but steady speed. The man in the tiny guardhouse made slowing motions, but when it became clear that he could either raise the rail or lose it, he hit the button and it rose barely fast enough to miss the top of Foile’s sedan.
“Smart young man,” Foile observed, as Leslie accelerated through the gate.
“There are machine guns!” the man in the brown uniform repeated in an immoderately high shriek.
“Leslie, is our car’s squawker on?” Foile asked.
“It’s been interrogated three times in the last minute, boss.”
“And it reports us as a Bureau of Investigation vehicle on official business?”
“The very same, sir.”
“They wouldn’t dare fire on us,” Foile muttered.
As the short drive to the next checkpoint proved—they didn’t.
“Do I crash the gate, boss?” Leslie asked. A “yes,” answer if not expected, was clearly hoped for.
“No, Agent. I hope we can avoid any property damage tonight. Property damages or deaths,” Foile added, and the sedan slowed to a stop at the gatehouse.
Foile produced his credentials for the guard. “I am on official bureau business. I require you to admit me.”
The guard, wearing corporal stripes, chewed his lip, clearly confronted with a problem way above his pay grade. He glanced at the captain in the back, who waved his hands in a most ambiguous fashion after Rick nudged him in the ribs.
That seemed enough for the poor corporal. The gate went up.
“There are autocannons covering this road,” the young man shouted helpfully, as they pulled away.
“Are we being checked on?” Foile asked.
“Every five seconds, sir. Do you think there are autocannons covering us?”
Foile glanced at the rent-a-cop in back. “Not unless Alexander Longknife is spending more on weaponry and equipment than he did on personnel and training.”
A few moments later, Leslie braked to a stop in the middle of the round driveway in front of Longknife Tower. They dismounted; the two agents in back had to encourage the brown-uniformed man that, yes, he, too, was going with them.
“They issue machine pistols to the guards in the tower. And they’ll use them,” he told them. Foile wondered if that information would be any more accurate than the idle rumors the captain had provided so far.
As it proved, he was correct about the machine pistols. There was a brown-suited guard at the door to meet them. And he did have a machine pistol slung over his shoulder. However, he was using both hands to unlock the door and admit them as the four of them flashed their bureau IDs.
“Take me to the Security Center,” Foile ordered the armed guard, as they entered.
“You can’t go in there sir,” the guard said as he struggled to relock the door. He was using an old-fashioned metal key. It would be amusing if Foile had time to allow himself humor.
He feared that time was something he had very little of tonight.
He stalked toward the security post in front of the four banks of elevators. There, five guards stood, covering him as casually and diffidently as men with automatic weapons could.
“I am a Senior Chief Agent of the Wardhaven Bureau of Investigations,” Foile snapped at the one who seemed, ever so slightly, to be in charge. “I require admission to the Security Center.”