He lapsed into angry silence.
There was no time for more argument. They turned a last comer and saw that the helicopters had finished their deadly work and were leaving. Burning debris and ashes still drifted down from the upper floors of the old hotel ahead, and they bounced over beams, chunks of concrete, and broken glass to reach the parking entrance at the side.
Somebody had belatedly decided that ambulances ought not to be where they now were, and a jeep full of soldiers came racing after them. Gillem maneuvered the big vehicle into the darkness of the garage, made a hard left turn, slammed on the brakes, and shut off the engine. Four of Goddard’s PHASE-men leaped out and took up positions behind pillars. Their second ambulance roared in, just seconds behind. The fire engines slewed to a stop outside, and their crews began to unlimber equipment. That ought to put a crimp in Korinek’s style!
The opfoes’ jeep never had a chance. As it entered the garage, gunfire chattered briefly, and the little car coasted placidly on to crunch to a stop against a shiny-black Dceda sedan. The six soldiers inside were dead.
Goddard retrieved his spring-loaded blade and dumped the Black officer’s body roughly out onto the concrete. He detailed Gillem and four PHASE-men to stay with the ambulances; Korinek would send more than just a jeep next time. Ten others, equipped with fire-resis- tant garments, oxygen tanks, and rescue gear, were ordered up the main stairs to find survivors. Lessing, Wrench, and Goddard himself took five SWAT-men equipped with light anti-personnel weapons and rescue gear. They would go up by the penthouse elevator if it still worked; if not, they would take one of the staircases. The remaining five men were to spread out in the lobby and lower floors and snipe at any opfoes coming in. The weapons of the jeep’s erstwhile occupants — M-25’s, combat shotguns, grenades, a laser rifle, and even a light machine gun — would come in very handy.
The elevators weren’t working, but the stairways were open. The ringing tramp of their feet became increasingly hypnotic as they ascended. On the landing between the third and fourth floors they encountered their first survivors. The man was a clerk from Records, Wrench said; he needed oxygen, and they gave him what they could spare. The second victim was a terrified, fortyish matron who worked in Liese’s printing and publicity section. She had not seen Liese.
Goddard pointed them down the stairs, toward the ambulances: the best he could do.
Tendrils of smoke began to drift down from above, and they halted to don their oxygen masks and tum on electric lanterns. On the seventh floor they passed several bodies jumbled together in the stairwell door. These people had died of asphyxiation and from being trampled by their comrades. Lessing called out into the red-lit darkness, but the only reply was the hiss and drip of the fire-sprinkler system, heroically doing its job in the face of impossible odds. They went on.
The top two floors of the building were completely gone.
Above the mouth of the last shattered stairwell, towers of flame hurtled up to meet the sky. Steel girders and sections of concrete wall extended up above the devastation like broken branches out of a bonfire. Somewhere a parapet crumpled and went thundering down into the inferno, and embers and sparks pattered upon their plastic fire-coats. The heat was blistering.
No one could live up here.
“So much for the penthouse,” Goddard wheezed. He shielded his face and backed down into the relative coolness of the stairwell.
“Maybe so much for Mulder too,” Wrench agreed. “God, what if he’s thumbed?“He looked stricken; the possibility seemed to have just dawned on him.
“Back down,” panted Lessing. “My place. Liese.”
They retreated into the smoldering, stifling gloom once more. Around and down, around and down, until Lessing’s thudding heart told him they had reached his floor. Small efficiency apartments had been assigned to Party officers on the upper-middle floors of the hotel, to use whenever they were in Washington. Lessing and Liese had a suite here, as did Goddard, Wrench, Jennifer Caw, Morgan, Abner Hand, Tim Helm, and a few others. There were also guest rooms for occasional visitors, such as Grant Simmons.
The stairway door opened upon a hallway in Hell, a place filled with flames, smoke, and the stench of burning. At the far end of the corridor, where Wrench’s suite had been, an air-to-ground missile had torn a huge hole right through one comer of the building. They looked out upon open sky and billows of angry, spark-filled smoke roiling up toward the gunmetal clouds overhead. Far below, Korinek ‘s searchlights, vehicle headlamps, and red flashers blinked evilly upon black velvet. The building creaked, and as they watched a great comet of blazing debris plummeted down into the darkness outside. The thunder of its falling was lost in the clamor of the flames above them.
“You’re not going in there!” Wrench cried. “That’s crazy… suicide!”
“Like hell.” Lessing thrust the little man aside. “My room looks okay from here. I have to look for Liese.” “Stop him. Bill! Hey, you guys…!”
Lessing rounded on them. “Nobody stops me. Go back. Go on without me. I have to know.”
He advanced down the passage. Flames licked out at him from both sides as he went. The wallpaper developed a black, charred spot, and an eye of fire opened in it. He came first to Abner Hand’s suite. The door was ajar, and he could see the place was empty. On the opposite side of the hallway Goddard’s door was closed. Smoke eddied through the keyhole and around the panelling. Death would be waiting inside.
Sam Morgan’s apartment was next to Hand’s; it was apparently undamaged. Lessing moved past without stopping. His own suite was just beyond. He found his feet dragging, holding him back. The door hung open, but he did not want to enter.
A body lay on the threshold: a man.
It was Gordy Monk, his features unmarked and peaceful in the flickering scarlet light He had died of smoke inhalation.
Lessing checked his oxygen mask and stepped gingerly over the body. Inside, his room looked normal except for the swirling smoke. The mustard-colored carpet, Wrench’s empty coffee mug, the percolator in the kitchen nook, all were as he had left them He stooped to lay a palm against the floor; it was not hot. He prowled on over to the bedroom door. A woman’s body lay sprawled there. He caught his breath and turned her over. She wasn’t Liese, thank God! This was Janet somebody, a telephone operator from Communications. People must have retreated up here to get away from Korinek’s troops below, then found that the roof was ablaze and there could be no helicopter rescue from that direction.
He touched the bedroom door. It, too, was not hot. Oddly enough, it felt cold. Gently he swung it open.
And almost lost his balance.
The bedroom was mostly missing, fallen away into a jagged, shattered, red-glowing, charred abyss! The missile had sheered off more than just Wrench’s suite; it had gone in one side and diagonally out through the adjacent wall, leaving a cavernous, windy hole five meters in diameter! Lessing teetered on a cracked and charred concrete tongue that extended half a meter out over nothingness!
Around the comer to his left, three meters away, Lessing could see into part of his bathroom. It looked amazingly intact: the sink, the taps, the medicine cabinet — all were perfect. Even his blue-and- white-checkered bath towel still hung askew on its rack. The angle kept him from seeing more than just one end of the bathtub.
Beside the tub, on Liese’s pale-azure bath mat, a woman’s leg was visible. The leg was long and slender, the ankle well-turned and tapering, encased in a grey, silk stocking, without a shoe. Lessing thought he could just make out a wisp of grey fabric beneath the calf. He couldn’t see any other garment. He leaned out to see more, could not, reeled, tottered on the shaky footing, nearly fell, and grabbed onto the door jamb. Emptiness yawned beneath him.