Quraishi took his chance, leaping to his feet and pulling his ID, screaming at the men in Arabic and pointing over his shoulder at Cole.
Quraishi was ushered into the protective phalanx of guards, pulled away down the stairs, and Cole had to physically resist the urge to follow him; there were too many guards, too many guns.
It was no use; Quraishi was gone.
But Cole knew he still had to get out of this place, and his mind raced furiously as he tried to come up with a plan.
The chopper was rounding the other side, the side Cole had run to; in the restaurant, armed men were already raising their handguns and machine-pistols to him. Still on the staircase, they had blocked his only escape route.
There was only one thing for it, Cole decided.
Breaking into an all-out sprint, Cole raced back across the restaurant the way he had come, bullets tearing after him from the security guards on the stairs. Jumping over shattered tables and broken chairs, eviscerated bodies and bleeding casualties, Cole neared the shattered glass, increasing his pace; he knew the Apache would be opening up soon, maybe this time with more than just its cannon.
The firing from the guards had stopped, and Cole turned his head, seeing instantly why; they had run back down the stairs, the Apache hovering outside, ominous flashes coming from its side pylons.
Cole knew exactly what it meant; the Hellfire missiles had been fired, and The Globe was about to be completely destroyed.
The shattered window was now only feet away, and Cole jumped for it, his body passing through the jagged tangle of broken glass even as the Hellfire missiles blasted through the other side of the restaurant, exploding in an enormous concussive blast.
Cole’s body hit the floor of the half-destroyed basket, the force of the impact pulling the damaged, deflated silken balloon material free from its mooring around the corner support above.
Cole felt the basket moving, and kept his head down as a wall of fire exploded above him from the restaurant, the missiles igniting inside the huge golden orb.
The hot winds from the violent explosion served to rip the balloon completely free from where it had entangled itself, the support beams themselves breaking and toppling.
Cole felt his stomach lurch again as the basket dropped; held for a moment; and then dropped again, this time picking up speed as it skittered down the side of the skyscraper.
Cole held on for dear life as the damaged basket bounced its way down the side of the building, glad that its sides were not entirely vertical but rather widened out towards its base, acting like a gigantic slide for the basket.
And then the ripped and torn balloon itself partially filled with air from the fall, billowing out and slowing his momentum yet further; then it collapsed again and the basket fell faster for a few heart-stopping moments; and then the balloon caught the hot midday air again, filled, and slowed his progress once more.
Cole had no idea how fast he was falling, or how far; he just felt the jerking, terrifying, bumping journey as the basket slipped, slid and sailed down the angled surfaces of the Al Faisaliyah Center, his knuckles white as his fingers gripped the wicker base for all he was worth.
And then he felt the massive impact as the basket finally reached the concrete plaza, jarring him violently and leaving him shaken and dazed.
But alive, he thought with amazement as he looked upwards to see the silk of the balloon fluttering in the breeze above him, until it finally came to rest on the ground to one side of the basket, still giving the odd flicker of movement as the wind caught it, like a dead body twitching with the last of its nerves.
It was the sound which drew his attention upwards again, the enormously loud screeching of metal and concrete being ripped apart, a noise of destruction and annihilation.
And in the clear blue skies above him, he saw the entire, broken and shattered three-story golden globe of the skyscraper’s restaurant and viewing complex, hurtling down towards him, its crushing mass filling his vision completely.
Quraishi could barely believe his eyes as he watched the carnage unfold.
The security guards had managed to get him down the stairs, out of the suspended golden orb, and into the main bulk of the building, just in time.
The Apache must have fired its missiles into the globe, destroying the interior completely, and Quraishi recoiled from the fortieth floor windows as the huge globe itself — presumably having been ripped from its moorings — smashed into the side of the building, before continuing its downward descent.
Quraishi stood breathless, the windows, walls and some of the floor in front of him entirely gone from the globe’s impact, leaving just a gash in the building’s surface, a giant hole out into the blue sky beyond.
Quraishi backed away from the crater, instinctively gripping hold of the nearest wall, steadying himself for the impact which he knew was to come, the guards doing the same.
And then it happened; the globe reached the concrete plaza below, the colossal impact sending a concussive shockwave back up throughout the entire structure.
Quraishi held tight as the building shook with violent force, the office furniture of this level thrown around as if hit by a powerful earthquake.
For a moment, Quraishi thought that the entire building might collapse, the force of the globe’s impact with the ground enough to shake the skyscraper free from its foundations, resulting in a crippling, complete failure of its structural integrity.
But the reverberations finally settled down, and the huge skyscraper seemed to regain its equilibrium, coming to a peaceful rest.
Quraishi looked around at the frightened guards, dust swirling through the room, and swore that he would have the Apache crew court martialed; perhaps even executed.
But, he considered, at least the American agent was dead.
That much was a certainty.
Cole looked at the huge, damaged golden globe in wonder.
Wonder that it hadn’t killed him, crushed him beneath hundreds of tons of glass and steel.
But he had managed to get clear of the basket just in time, following the running crowds away from the base of the building as the globe hit the ground with a massive impact, then bounced and rolled down the streets after them.
There had been so much panic, so much chaos, so much screaming and terror, that nobody realized that Cole had been the man to escape from the basket. In fact, nobody even realized that anyone had escaped from the basket; by the time Cole was moving, everyone had already seen the globe ripped from its position at the top of building, and were heading across the streets in horror.
And now, as Cole stood amongst the crowd which was packed down the side street of Al Amiriyah, the huge gilded orb blocking the western end completely — it had finally come to rest against the two buildings on either corner — he joined them in their near-ecstatic realization that the globe hadn’t killed them, that they were still alive.
And although some of the crowd started tentatively forward, to get a closer look at the globe which had almost killed them, Cole joined the vast majority which filtered away from the damaged skyscraper, east to Olaya Street and the freedom beyond.
PART SIX
1
Jeb Richards sat down in one of the chairs set around the huge table in Conference Room One, nodding greetings to his colleagues.
There had been yet another emergency meeting called, and he wondered what the hell was going on now. He shook his head, still suffering from the effects of his recent flight home from Riyadh. Couldn’t they have waited until he’d slept?