Bringing his knees to his chest, Jade struck the wall sideways, his body in the fetal position. A loud crunch in his hip and he knew the bone was shattered. He slid down the wall into the water's embrace.
Allander brought the boat forward, crashing hard into the side of the steel ladder that crept up the side of the Tower. It was low tide, so the lowest rung was above water. Straining, he pulled the bag up across his shoulders and seized the ladder's side rail. Laughing now with excitement at being so near his goal, he began the steady climb up. The strap from the bag dug into his shoulder, but he was too wired to pay attention to the pain. As he climbed, he stared up at the full moon, his face splitting in a grin.
Below him, a hand reached out of the water and gripped the bottom rung. Climbing hand over hand, Jade pulled his body from the sea. He was unable to use his legs, and they dangled uselessly below him. The rope burn on his palm stung horrifically, first with the saltwater and now with the pressure of his own weight. The ladder shifted under him, loose on the bolts from the speedboat collision. If he slipped, he knew he'd never be able to keep himself afloat in the water.
When Allander reached the top, he turned and looked back, noticing Jade struggling after him. In the dim light of the moon, their eyes locked for a moment. Allander smiled, then blew a kiss. He drew himself up from his crouch, his head momentarily framed by the full moon. Intoxicated by his sense of complete power, Allander threw back his head and laughed. Then he doubled over, shaking with childish laughter.
He noticed that the speedboat was drifting out to sea a little bit. He'd have to hurry through his plan before it floated farther away. Hearing a scraping noise, he turned and saw the guard lying near the Hole, gasping, his hands cupped around his throat. The bullet had nicked the side of his neck-a deep wound, but not lethal. The man's whole body heaved as he drew air, his limbs jerking almost mechanically. His hands were speckled with blood to the wrists, and his submachine gun lay on the ground a few feet from him.
Allander stormed over and kicked the gun down the Hole, then drew Jade's Glock and pressed the muzzle to the top of the guard's head. His eyes looked up at Allander, wild with terror, but he couldn't speak or even move away from the gun. He wheezed and sputtered, trying to hold his blood in his throat.
"Well, that wouldn't be very sporting, would it?" Allander said. He lifted the gun from the guard's head. "I've got better plans for you."
He walked to the edge of the Hole and peered down. "And for you, you fat wretch." He could see Claude's hands around the bars of Unit 11A, his face a fleshy white orb staring up at him. "You didn't do it, not as I'm going to. What's the fun of fornicating with a corpse? It's about cognizance-it's about looking into the eyes of the one who conceived you, holding sway over her, over life itself. It's in her knowing, you unworthy simian, not just the deed." The anger in his voice surprised him. "It's in the knowledge of what you're doing!"
He ran to the edge of the Tower to check on Jade again. He was still barely above the water's surface, hanging on and gasping for breath. Allander had time. He had plenty of time.
He walked over to a large diesel drum, hauling the heavy supply bag; he had watched them haul the drum up earlier in the week to refuel the water pump. He removed the large plug and noticed that the drum was almost empty. Pulling a tube from his bag, he siphoned some diesel fuel from the water-pump tank, sucking on the end of the tube to start the flow and spitting out a mouthful of the bitter liquid. After a certain amount of diesel fuel had poured into the drum, he yanked the tube out, letting the fuel wash over the top of the Tower. Then he removed three bags of fertilizer from his bag, raking them open with a knife. He dumped them into the drum, one after another, aiming the spill through the large plug hole.
Of course, he wasn't able to measure precisely, but he knew ANFO mixture well enough-7 percent fuel oil to 93 percent ammonium nitrate, found in common fertilizer.
Still clinging to the ladder, Jade shook his head, attempting to clear it. The water and the Tower were spinning crazily around him, and he tightened his hands around the rails, gathering the courage to raise his head. The ladder seemed to stretch up forever. He bit down on his lip and began the climb, the ladder, loose from being struck by the speedboat, shaking with his movements. He crawled willfully, steadily, pulling his straining hands closer to Allander's throat.
For the first time, he noticed how much he really hurt. He counted his injuries with each rung. The gun to my head, the cut in my cheek, the fall down the slope, the Tower up my ass. He felt for his pistol, but it was gone. He was not surprised.
Aware of the need to act quickly, Allander sprinted over to check on Jade once more. He was down about forty rungs, moving slowly, but moving nonetheless. Allander knocked the drum on its side and rolled it a few times, mixing the diesel and ammonium nitrate as best he could.
He'd taken a stick of dynamite from the site at Maingate because the only blasting caps he could find were eights, which weren't too reliable when used alone with an ANFO mixture. The his and hers cell phones he'd stolen were lying side by side in the bottom of the bag, and he picked them up, sliding one of them into his pocket. The back panel was already removed from the other one, and he had pulled out and stripped the two wires that ran to the ringer. He intertwined each one now with a wire from the blasting cap, then wound the phone, the primer, and the dynamite in electrical tape and dropped the whole thing into the drum. It landed on the ANFO mixture with a wet thud. He hammered the large metal plug back into the drum, then rolled it over to the edge of the Hole.
He crouched over the choking guard, gently peeling back the guard's blood-drenched jacket and removing the elevator control from his inner pocket.
With a click of the button, he lowered the elevator platform to roof level, then pushed the big drum onto it. He walked back and kicked the guard once in the side as hard as he could. The guard gasped as he rolled onto the platform, his head clanging against the drum.
Jade still inched up the ladder, rung by rung, ignoring the pain through his cramped arms. He had to make it. He had to get his hands on Allander, but he was still a good twenty yards away.
Allander pushed the red button and the platform started to descend into the Hole. They'd done an admirable job of repairing the elevator, he thought with a snicker.
Claude watched the bomb and the wheezing guard descend past him, his expression unchanged. He scratched himself, then looked up at Allander with unfrightened interest. The guard's rasps echoed inside the Tower, bouncing off the hard stone walls.
The platform clicked to a halt when it hit Level One. Now it was all set. Once he was a safe distance away, Allander would call in with the cell phone in his pocket, and the current would trip the primer, which would trip the dynamite. With the diesel drum containing the initial explosion, the whole thing would go. The shock wave should blast the walls right off the Tower. And Claude and the guard along with them.
A squeal rose in his throat, and he ran back to the edge, looking down at Jade.
"The dance ends here, Marlow!" he shouted. "We bring this show to a close upon the same stage on which it began." He screamed his words to be heard over the crash of the waves. "There are three things I have on you right now, Marlow," he yelled. "Just three."
Jade looked up at him, but couldn't muster the strength to speak.
"A bomb… a detonator"-Allander held his arms up to the moon, the cell phone glinting in his hand-"and your gun." He pulled out the Glock and waved it in the air.