“Anna and John, come with me.”
Anna and John followed Sam out the door and down the hall, away from reception. Sam was watching May, as if to make sure that she didn’t see which way they were headed. Glancing back, Anna saw Grubb take a position outside the conference room door with one hand in his suit jacket.
Offices lined the outer wall, each simple and fairly small. To their left were cubicles with four-foot dividers and the usual array of baby and spouse pictures, grade-school artwork, and the typical postings of office humor.
People were moving past them through the hall, looking busy and distracted.
They stopped at an empty office with the placard announcing Norman Rawles and went inside.
Sam closed the door. “I told you I hoped this wouldn’t happen, John, and I’m sorry. But it’s probably a little safer for you on the roof with us. On the other hand they will expect that you are there. What’s best for the safety of this data is for you to use the computer in this office to upload it to your computer at the university.”
“I can do that. Hopefully they have a fast pipe here to the Internet.”
“It’s a couple of T-ones,” Sam said.
“I’ll do it.”
Sam called a woman named Olivia and got a password that would access the computer. “John, you are Norman Rawles until I call and tell you otherwise. Close and lock the door. Leave the blinds open. Start the download, put your feet on the desk, and call the police. Tell them that you have reason to believe a robbery is in progress. If you hear shooting call them again and let them know about the guns. Don’t come out for anything. After the download is complete, hide that CD in a drawer or the computer. Don’t take it out until you leave. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Look natural and absentminded, like you haven’t a care in the world. Come on, Anna.”
At the end of the hall a placard announced the offices of one Oscar Feldman, obviously an executive.
Sam and Anna walked in. “Head down, hat on, and stay behind me,” he said.
Oscar, a balding man with black bushy brows, barely had time to open his mouth in surprise. Sam bee-lined for a back door that led to a hallway with rest rooms and janitorial and utility rooms. They came to a plainly marked door with a green sign that said ROOF—HELIPORT. Through this door they came to another hall, which led to a set of stairs.
“You’ve been here before.”
“Yes.”
“I thought it was illegal to land helicopters on rooftops in Manhattan.”
“It is. But this building has always had one and if you know the right Feds you can get a permit. Cost me a big favor, though.”
As they climbed the stairs, Shohei fell in behind them. On the roof waited a large, white Bell jet ranger helicopter.
Sam paused, turned to Shohei. “It was supposed to be a twin engine.”
Shohei shrugged. “I don’t know how they screwed it up.”
“I never put my clients in a single-engine anything. We’re not going.”
Shohei appeared surprised but nodded agreement.
“Tell the pilots to leave or stay; their choice. Tell them there is danger.”
Shohei ran to the chopper. Anna studied Sam, who frowned and studied the roof.
She let her eyes follow his. Well out of rotor range, the roof accommodated the house over the stairwell, an elevator room, a storage room, and beyond these a lounging area complete with a planter box garden. The patio furniture was bolted down.
The helicopter began to make a loud whining.
“Now what?” she said above the din. “How do we get out of here?”
Sam handed his radio to Shohei. “You might want to tell Scott and Grubb to follow those guys up here.”
Just then the chopper lifted off, climbing steeply and away from the building. Perhaps three hundred yards from the building the jet engine skipped horribly, went silent, and the bird dropped with its rotors nearly motionless. A loud crash came from the street level a quarter mile or more distant.
“Come on, come on,” Sam said to a stunned Anna. “I need your shoes.” She looked bewildered but took them off. Inside the utility building in the far corner, Sam found a green tarp and some sacks of fertilizer and vermiculite for the potted flowers. Turning the shoes upside down to create the appearance of someone kneeling, he jammed the heels under the bags and allowed the very tips of the soles at the toe end to protrude from under the tarp. With the tarp over the bags it was a powerful and convincing illusion.
“Sam, what are you doing?” He was rummaging through some tools; he pulled out a big wrench.
“Stay here,” Sam said, walking out the door to the elevator building. Sam used the wrench to break off the door handle with one big whack. The building was a mechanical room for the elevator motor, the cables, and assorted equipment.
Sam returned and grabbed a ladder from against the wall.
“Crawl up on the shelf,” he said.
“What are you gonna do?” she asked as she climbed.
“I’m going to invite some gentleman to beat me up. We hope it will be a form of aversion therapy. Shohei will be right here and he will make sure that nobody hurts you.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Self-defense is the only way we can legally break their body parts.”
Things were not going well for Gaudet. When he exited the rest room he saw Chellis’s little squad standing outside the glass entry door to the Dyna Science offices. He didn’t want them coming in and making people nervous. Reversing course, he got on the cell as he went back to the rest room.
“Go up to the roof. Verify that Anna and her group have left in the chopper. If they are still there call me. Don’t kill them unless and until I say so.” There was a second part to the plan, if they didn’t take the chopper. The backup was known only to Gaudet and he savored it. But he detested being thrown into a situation where he had to work with others. He hoped the morons could follow instructions.
Anna’s group had left an obvious meat man outside a conference room door. Good trick. Two seconds later a big blond athletic sort, the guy who no doubt could hook and jab in blurs, exited and Gaudet breathed a sigh of relief. Then he realized they also might be headed for the roof. With a throng of body mechanics up top he couldn’t be sure what would happen.
Gaudet peeked in on the man who’d met with Sam and Anna Wade. The good doctor looked like the real thing with his feet up on the desk, talking on the telephone. Gaudet walked swiftly but calmly to May at reception.
“I need to get into the offices and I forgot my fob. At the end of the hall they told me I might obtain a general-purpose fob that will access the various office doors.”
“For all but the executive offices,” she said. “I’ll need to check with Olivia or Mr. Feldman, though, before I hand it out. I’m sure you’re authorized, but they are so careful about giving these to contract maintenance personnel.”
“Of course. Maybe you could just come with me to Olivia’s desk? They asked if I’d go get you.”
She looked uncertain but rose anyway, then touched a button on her phone.
“Grace, could you handle the calls for a minute? I’m going down to see Olivia.”
As they walked down the hall, Gaudet waited until they were twenty feet from the women’s rest room and glanced around. No one was in the hall. Taking a significant risk—something he almost never did—he clipped her at the base of the skull and erased her consciousness, grabbing her as she slumped forward. Likely she would remember at least some events just prior to the blow. If it were not for his beard it would be a real problem, but then he never worked as himself. Quickly he pulled her into the tiled and mostly pink, beautifully papered, and wainscoted ladies’ room, where he peeled down her hose and her sky-blue panties and set her on a toilet. To make sure she remained unconscious, he squeezed off her carotid arteries for what seemed like a reasonable time.
After locking the stall door he slid underneath, and could barely imagine his good fortune when he got back to the hall undetected. The plastic fobs were in her top drawer right where he expected to find them. With the fob he entered the office of one Norman Rawles and had the good doctor unconscious in seconds.
After Anna was tucked away in the storage building, Shohei stood by Sam at the entrance.
“You should let me do this,” Shohei said to Sam. “These guys too easy for you. Not even good practice. Besides, your arms are not even healed.”
“I don’t know, Shohei. You’re good, but maybe a little light for a whole crowd?”
“You are just jealous.”
Sam smiled. “Have it your way.”
“Grubb,” Shohei said into the radio.
“Yo.”
“They show up yet?”
“Just here. But they turned around and walked out right after they came through the door.”
“Where did they go?”
“Don’t know.”
“Pull your guns and get up here. I’m guessing you’ll be right behind them.”
“Roger that. Say, there was a guy around here with a beard, May said he’s looking for spores. Some kind of
Stackybachus.”
“Does she know him?”
“Seemed to.”
“Where is this guy?”
“I don’t know. He went down the hall somewhere. Seemed like he was taking dust samples from the carpet with a little vacuum machine.”
“Get up here.”
Shohei removed a 10mm pistol from his shoulder holster and stood back behind the elevator house. Sam retreated inside the supply room. Five men came through the door onto the roof. They spoke French. All but one were six feet plus. The small one seemed to be the leader and talked on a cell phone. They were apparently interested in where the helicopter had crashed.
Oblivious of any danger, perhaps because of their numbers or just foolishness mixed with bravado, they made for the roof edge. Only one held a visible gun—a nasty little Mac 10. The others had their hands under their coats, looking as if someone had told them to dress business casual.
“Hey,” Shohei shouted, and leveled his gun just as his own men burst through the access door, each with a semiautomatic pistol aimed at the Frenchmen.
“Drop the Mac,” Shohei said. “Hands up.” The leader was staring at the broken handle on the utility building door.
“Over here,” Shohei motioned.
The foreigners walked over, looking sullen, with soulless eyes and tough-guy stubble. They appeared either drugged or bent on a good round of senseless killing. Sam was almost surprised when they let Shohei put them against the wall to frisk them. He removed two guns and a knife each. When he took the cell phone from the leader, the man snarled some words in French.
“Perhaps you suffer the pain of a bad choice,” Shohei said to the leader. “You seem like you don’t like me. This is your chance to prove it.”
“Which one of us?” the leader said in good if heavily accented English.
“I think you bring all your friends,” Shohei said.
“What about those guns?” the leader said, nodding at the two men with Shohei.
“They are to protect them, not me,” Shohei said.
“I should throw you off the roof,” the man said.
“You are free to try.”
From his stance the man appeared to be a street fighter pure and simple. Undisciplined but not to be underestimated.
The man circled Shohei.
The leader muttered something and his men began to circle as well.
Shohei launched himself at the man that seemed most eager, his flying body shaped like a wedge with his left foot leading. Shohei knew to use power on a big target. Sam heard the clavicle bone shatter. As the man went down, Shohei passed over him, raking his face with a trailing foot.
The man floundered on the ground, as if for a moment he had awakened in a bad dream, then put the good arm down and jumped up. Without waiting, Shohei feigned an attack on a second man, but whirled, kicking the knee of a third man, dislocating it with the hard snap of dry wood.
The man held the pain with a tight jaw while his dark determined eyes followed Shohei, then uttered a scream while he quite deliberately snapped the knee back into place. This man had no fear.
The other two men charged with fists cocked. They came with watchful speed like experienced street fighters, but Shohei spun away, dodging their blows and breaking out of the circle. Now he used the wall of the storage room to limit their angles of attack. The leader launched a roundhouse kick, missing Shohei’s head by inches. Before he had the striking foot down, Shohei did a judo sweep to the leader’s pivot leg, upending him and dumping him with the hollow slap of flesh on concrete.
Shohei kicked another man in the solar plexus, the breath erupting from the man’s lungs. He ended the motion by putting his elbow hard into the nose of the leader, who by now was springing to his feet.
Although there were many of them, they were fumbling for the available space, fighting apart rather than together.
Blood streamed from the leader’s nose. Apparently the popped-knee man was moving and, judging from the determined line of his thin-lipped mouth, ready to fight again. Even the fighter with the crumpled clavicle was ready.
Too late Shohei realized the man who had been by the door was charging. The attacker used his shoulder to drive Shohei toward the building’s edge. The man was a bull in body and mind, pushing him effortlessly backward, even lifting him completely off the ground. Normally a fighter would use the edge of a rooftop to his advantage by playing on the knowledge that his assailant would not want to fall with him and causing the opponent to disengage. Sam could see that Shohei’s instincts were telling him otherwise; the man seemed ready to risk pushing him off the building to their mutual deaths. Shohei slammed a palm down onto the man’s nose as they moved closer to the edge, but nothing slowed the bull. The second time he was able to rotate his palm striking upward with vicious force. It was a blow that could kill.
There was a near scream, the man stumbled. They were ten feet from the edge. Shohei moved his right arm overhead in a vertical arc, and Sam knew he would land the elbow squarely on the bull’s seventh cervical vertebra. It was one of the hardest blows Sam had witnessed in combat. Then in a blurring flurry Shohei struck inward to the bull’s throat, crushing the larynx. When the bull hit the ground he didn’t move.
The bull’s attack had moved Shohei away from the others, spreading them out. Their comrade’s death appeared to have no effect on the remaining men. Shohei seemed indecisive. Like Shohei, Sam had fought many men, but these men were clearly blind to their own emotions and without caution. Neither the threat of death nor serious pain seemed to have any impact on their will.
“What do you want with Anna?” Shohei asked the leader, whose nose was literally spouting blood.
“I want only to beat you,” the leader said.
Just then the man he had dispatched with a gut strike attacked with his fists. The first blow missed altogether, the second Shohei parried with his left hand, and before the next landed Shohei trapped the fist and delivered an elbow strike to the floating ribs. The wet grunt told Sam a rib had pierced a lung. Involuntarily the man’s head snapped down, following the pain, while Shohei twisted the wrist, bending him farther. In close, Shohei brought a knee slamming into his opponent’s face, then retracted the knee into a twisting back flip to move away from the charging leader.
Catching Shohei, the leader began punching fast powerful punches. Shohei stepped against the man to take away swinging distance, but took one punch to the jaw and two to the body. Shohei head-butted the man’s nose, then smashed upward with locked fists striking under his chin. Since he had nearly bitten his tongue in half, the leader’s mouth was filling with blood. Shohei put an elbow into the leader’s face on the way to kicking one of the others in the groin. Instantly Shohei came back for three successive punches to the leader’s already broken nose, staggering the man before he stepped back to watch.
Two assailants were unconscious or dead, two badly injured, and the leader teetering woozily.
“Perhaps we agree that you and your men need more practice before we do this?” Shohei said.
The leader shook his head. They were coming at Shohei again.
“You lack the discipline to fight me. You cannot win,” Shohei said, trying to enrage the leader.
His enemy with the bad knee was looking for a way to strike with his fists. Shohei saw an opening and kicked to the remaining good knee, knocking him down. He followed with an elbow to the ear. This time the man was rag-doll limp when he hit the deck. Over-protective of the collarbone that was by now twisted bone in flesh, the next man wasn’t thinking about his lower body. Shohei went for the knee. The man was quick and blocked the kick. Shohei feinted a fast punching motion at the man, then whirled and struck him down with a kick that snapped his head and turned his eyes vacant.
Whirling the opposite direction, Shohei kicked the leader square in the jaw but not before taking a powerful kick to the ribs.
Amazingly, the leader was still standing. Sam could not recall seeing a man hit repeatedly with that much force without definitive results. Four men were on the deck unconscious; only the leader remained. Normally a leader in this situation would give up, but this man would neither quit nor talk. Instead he studied Shohei, looking for some weakness.
Shohei could hang this man from the roof and get nothing more than
Drop me.
Sam stepped out from inside the utility building. “Ah, sir, I hate to interrupt but Japan here is wreaking havoc on France. Surely you don’t want something more than your nose broken.”
“I want to continue,” the leader said.