Conviction (2009) Page 6

  He stopped, listened.

  From the floor above, he could hear shuffling and whispered voices: “Snagged . . . Go down there . . .”

  Fisher climbed the ladder to the open floor hatch and peeked up. Thirty feet away he could see Hansen’s hunched form. Standing behind him were two figures—Kimberly and Ames, judging from their outlines.

  “Go down there. . . .”

  Kimberly trotted off toward the stairs. Ames stayed behind.

  Fisher climbed the last few feet and crab-walked away from the hatch, then stopped behind a stack of bricks. An impulse popped into his head; he debated it briefly, then flipped a mental coin. More chaos it is, then.

  The ankle-deep loam on the floor made the crossing almost too easy. Twenty seconds after leaving his hiding place, he was standing behind the pair. Hansen, stuck up to his crotch in the floor trap, couldn’t turn around; Ames could do nothing but stand watch over his team leader.

  Fisher waited until Hansen said via SVT, “What? What kind of cord?” then reached forward, circled his right arm around Ames’s throat, and clamped down with Ames’s larynx in the crook of his elbow, his left fist pressed against Ames’s carotid artery. He leaned back, lifting Ames free of the floor. Fisher began reverse walking, taking wide, balanced strides on flat feet to compensate for the extra weight. The levered grip on Ames’s throat took immediate effect, shutting off the oxygen spigot to his brain and rendering him limp within four seconds.

  Occasionally glancing over his shoulder, Fisher retreated to the hatch, where he stopped and stepped sideways behind the brick pile. He laid Ames flat, stripped the OPSAT (operational satellite uplink) off his wrist, then unhooked his SC-20 from its shoulder sling. He smelled the barrel; it had been fired recently. He ejected the magazine and found only two rounds missing. He hadn’t been the only one shooting at the reservoir.

  Fisher laid the SC 20 aside and took Ames’s SC pistol from the holster and stuffed it into his waistband. He turned his attention to the OPSAT, tapping buttons and scrolling through menus until he found the first screen he wanted. In sequence, he tapped the buttons marked POSITIONING > ONBOARD GPS > OFF, then scrolled back to the diagnostics screen and tapped SELF-REPORT > SVT > MALFUNCTION > TRANSMIT INOPERABLE, then hit SEND. Next he switched screens to TACTICAL COMMS > INTRAUNIT, then called up the on screen keyboard and typed, MOVEMENT ON LOWER FLOORS, NORTH SIDE; INVESTIGATING, then hit SEND again.

  Across the floor Hansen was moving, rolling to the left and withdrawing his leg from the hole. Kimberly had freed him. Fisher strapped the OPSAT to his wrist, returned to the hatch, and started downward. Footsteps clanged up the ladder across the room and, as his head dropped below floor level, he saw Kimberly’s figure sprinting across to Hansen, who was climbing back to his feet. Hansen’s taut posture told Fisher the team leader had failed to see the humor in his paracord trick.

  Fisher repeated his trapeze act until he was back on the lintel shelf. Crouched over and taking careful, quiet steps, he headed south, stopping every ten feet to listen. Whether his ruse was working, he couldn’t tell. As he drew even with the hole in which he’d entered the foundry, a pair of figures—Vin and Blondie—appeared on the floor below, silently sprinting north, trailing a cloud of dust. Fisher stopped, crouched down, and checked the OPSAT. It appeared Hansen had bought, at least for the time being, Ames’s malfunction message, having used his command function to switch the team’s comms from VOICE to VOICE + TEXT TRANSCRIPTION. As the transcription was coded by OPSAT number rather than name, Fisher couldn’t tell who was who, but with Ames having gone solo, Hansen would have teamed up with Kimberly. In near-real time, Fisher watched the dialogue pop on the screen:In subbasement, north side . . . nothing yet . . .

  Third-floor north clear, heading south . . .

  Ames, report. Say position. Ames, respond . . .

  Starting to get worried now, Fisher thought. He stood up and continued on.

  Hansen was sharp; at most, he’d give Ames another minute to respond and then order a regroup. If he and Kimberly had, in fact, seen the footprints heading toward the ladder hatch, Hansen would realize his mistake, his assumption. By then it wouldn’t matter. With the now-four-person team converging on the second-floor north wall, he would be moving south, toward—

  Even before Fisher shifted his weight to his forward foot, he knew something was wrong, could feel the sole of his boot sliding sideways on the spot of grease or rainwater or whatever it was on the concrete. Before he could react, he was falling through space. The floor loomed before him. At the last moment he reached out and smacked his palm against a section of pipe. He twisted sideways, slowed ever so slightly; then his body was horizontal and falling again. He curled himself in a ball, arms wrapped around his head, legs tucked to his chest.

  The loam softened the impact, but he still felt as if he’d taken a body blow from a heavyweight boxer. Swirling sparks burst behind his eyes.

  He heard a crack, then a pop, then silence.

  The floor splintered beneath him; then he was falling again.

  7

  HAVING punched a ragged, man-sized hole through the floor, Fisher found himself falling amid a cloud of dust and ash that obscured his vision save for a few jumbled glimpses of concrete, steel pipes, and moonlight glinting off water. Water. The canal. With no way of knowing how deep it was, he scrambled to right himself, twisting his torso and flailing his arms until his internal gyroscope told him he was right side up. He spread his limbs like a parachutist, sucked in a breath, and set his jaw.

  The impact felt like someone had slapped him in the sternum with a twelve-inch plank. His world went dark and quiet. Despite being shielded from the sun, the water was surprisingly warm. His head broke the surface. He checked his waistband: The SC pistol was still there. He checked his wrist: The OPSAT was gone.

  The stench of algae, mold, and animal decomposition filled his nostrils. The surface was covered in patches of greenish gray slime. Here and there he saw clumps of what looked like fur and feathers. This answered one of his earlier questions: This canal, wherever it began and ended, saw little freshwater circulation. Flanked on both sides by narrow concrete walkways and high walls interspersed with arched doorways, the canal was about thirty feet wide; whether it extended the length of the foundry proper, he couldn’t tell.

  Through the hole in the floor/ceiling he saw the glimmer of approaching flashlights accompanied by the muffled plodding of multiple sets of feet. Fisher looked around. The canal walls were smooth, vertical concrete rising at least four feet off the water’s surface. Thirty yards away, on the right side of the canal, he could make out a set of steps rising from the water and, opposite them, an archway through which pale moonlight streamed. He’d never reach the steps in time, and with the team’s adrenaline and anger levels spiked, he had to assume at least one of the gun barrels about to be jammed through the ceiling hole would be spitting bullets. Above, powdery loam gushed through the hole as feet skidded to a stop at its edge.

  Fisher blew out all the air in his lungs, refilled them, and ducked beneath the slime. Immediately, he realized his belly-flop entry had been the right move: The canal’s muddy bottom was only four feet down. His submersion had improved his situation only slightly. They would see the ripples he’d left behind. He was just rolling over, sweeping his arms and legs into a powerful, scissoring sidestroke, when he heard the first pfft strike the water behind him. Whether it was a bullet or an LTL projectile, he didn’t know, but the first shot was immediately followed by several more, then a dozen in rapid succession, punching into the water to his right, to the rear, and in front as the shooters tried to bracket him.

  He arched his back into a left-hand turn, heading for the canal wall, hoping the combination of the acute angle and the hole’s jagged shape would make aiming more difficult. It did. The gunfire tapered off, then died away. Fisher kept stroking, gaining distance until he judged he was opposite the steps. Using his palms against the wall to control his ascent,
he stopped a couple of inches below the surface. The murk made it impossible to see either the hole in the ceiling or any signs of light. He shifted his head a bit so he was centered under a plate-sized patch of slime, then let his eyes break the surface. He blinked rapidly to clear his vision. Now he could see the hole. Nothing moved. No light visible. Someone was there, if only to serve as overwatch as the rest of the team tried to find a way down to the basement. He couldn’t wait any longer.

  Keeping his head still, he reached behind his back, drew the SC out of his waistband, brought it around, and shut off the LAM, or laser aiming module, with his thumb. No use advertising his intentions. He let the pistol slowly rise to the surface until just the barrel was exposed. The angle was difficult and he was shooting from the hip, and he was trying to miss—a contradiction at which the tactical part of his brain balked.

  He fired. The bullet punched into the closer edge of the hole. Another equipment improvement: The SC’s noise suppressor was quieter still; the shot was no louder than a gloved hand clap. Fisher snapped off three more shots, then dove under, pushed sideways off the wall, and kicked to the steps. Five seconds later he was out of the water, through the arch, and crouched against the brick wall.

  He was in a courtyard, roughly a hundred feet square, bordered on the left and right by window-lined wings of the main building; opposite him, a twelve-foot-high hedgerow leading . . . where? In the distance he heard the faint roar of a crowd and a tinny voice speaking through a loudspeaker. The soccer stadium. Fisher thought it over: It might work. First, he’d have to get there in one piece.

  He heard the screeching of rusted steel. He looked up. On the wing’s fire escape, a door was being shoved open. A body appeared in the gap, trying to push its way out. Fisher glanced across at the hedgerow, then back at the emerging figure.

  A voice shouted, “In the arch! Three o’clock low!”

  That settled it. Fisher dashed back through the arch, turned right, and sprinted down the walkway. The basement was cavernous, at least the length of a football field. He reached the far wall, turned left onto a catwalk suspended over the canal, then left again onto the walkway, then a quick right into the next arch. He stopped, listened. In the courtyard the door gave one final shriek, then slammed open. Boots pounded the fire-escape stairs. He closed his eyes, trying to gauge how many sets of feet; it was impossible to tell.

  Fisher clicked on his penlight. He was in a maintenance tunnel. Just a few inches wider than his shoulders and lined with yet more conduits, pipes, and wall-mounted ladders, it ran from south to north. He tried to place himself on the mental map he’d been keeping. He was somewhere beneath where he’d first entered the building. He turned off his penlight.

  The pounding of boots stopped, and in his mind’s eye he could see figures racing across the courtyard.

  Give them something to think about. Slow them down.

  He ducked around the corner, took aim on the center of the canal, and fired three shots. All three rounds impacted within a half inch of one another. A second later a pair of figures—one on either side of the courtyard arch—peeked around the corner.

  Fisher took off, sprinting on flat feet until he reached the first ladder. He started upward. After ten feet he found himself enclosed in a shaft; another twenty feet brought him to what, in the dim light, looked like a door. He clicked on his penlight, saw a rusted doorknob, clicked it off again. First floor, he assumed. He kept climbing, passing the second and third floors. The ladder came to an abrupt end. He groped above his head and traced out a square of sheet metal. A hatch. He found the handle and gave it a test push, expecting to feel resistance and hear the grating of steel on steel. Instead, the hatch opened smoothly, noiselessly. He froze. Someone had been here recently.

  Probing with his index finger, he found one of the hinges; it was coated in oil. He brought his finger to his nose and sniffed. Then smiled. Bacon grease. This ruled out Hansen and company and ruled in urban explorers or, more likely, poor teenagers looking for a nocturnal adventure in their small Luxembourgian town.

  Down the shaft he heard the scuff of a boot, followed by a pebble skittering across concrete. He eased the hatch shut and turned himself on the ladder so he was pressed against the wall. A flashlight beam appeared in the maintenance tunnel, widening and growing brighter as its owner approached. The flashlight went dark.

  Then on again—this time pointing directly up the shaft. Half expecting this, Fisher had shielded his eyes with his palm. Still, he felt a deer-in-the-headlights moment of panic. He quashed the sensation. He was sixty feet off the ground. The flashlight beam was strong, but not strong enough to reach him. If, however, the person at the end of the beam decided to fire an exploratory shot . . . The cliché “fish in a barrel” came to mind.

  The flashlight blinked off. Fisher took his hand away in time to see a figure move past the shaft opening and out of sight. Where’s your partner? Come on . . .

  A second flashlight popped on, probed the shaft, then went out again.

  Fisher waited a full minute, then eased open the hatch, lifted the prop-arm into place, then climbed out and shut the hatch behind him. The E-shaped flat roof was an expanse of patchy gravel, peeling tar paper, and exposed ceiling planks interspersed with skylights and squat brick chimneys. On the western side he could see the roofs of three of the complex’s watchtowers, for lack of a better term. He assumed they’d served as control booths from which foremen oversaw the foundry floor. To his east were upper (north) and lower (south) arms of the E—the two wings enclosing the courtyard. Overhanging the north wing’s roof, and silhouetted against the night sky like a massive ball of cotton, were the boughs of an oak tree.

  Not the most noble of exits, Fisher thought, scrambling down a tree like a kid, but it would work all the same.

  Taking careful steps and sticking to exposed wood, he picked his way across the roof to the north wing. Closer up, the oak was even more massive than he’d imagined, reaching nearly 120 feet into the sky. The smallest limb overhanging the roof was the size of his waist. He’d taken his first step onto the branch when he heard a female voice behind him say, “Don’t move a muscle.”

  Fisher neither turned nor hesitated. He jumped.

  8

  FISHER bolted awake to screaming and the pounding of feet, but his mind immediately clicked over, translating the sounds from potential threat to reality: children giggling as they ran down the hall outside his room. Youth hostel . . . Luxembourg city. He checked his watch. He’d been asleep for four hours. It took a few more moments to piece together the events of the night before.

  Knowing the oak was sturdy enough to take his weight, he had been less worried about plunging to the ground after leaping off the foundry’s roof than he was about catching a bullet in the back. Whether the shooter, whoever she was, had been too startled to fire or had simply decided her chances of a hit were nil, Fisher didn’t know, but his descent through the boughs had prevented any further attempts. So far Blondie and Kimberly had exercised good fire discipline; it seemed unlikely they’d hose down the oak.

  Mostly bouncing from limb to limb but occasionally managing to swing himself closer to the trunk, Fisher crashed through the tree, picking up plenty of bruises and scratches but no serious injuries. He managed to arrest his fall ten feet from the ground. Hanging from the lowermost limb, he waited for his body to stop swinging, then dropped the remaining distance.

  He raced across the side street behind the foundry, rue Barbourg, then zigzagged his way through alleys while keeping the lights of the soccer stadium in view. Three minutes after dropping from the tree, he was standing at a ticket booth outside the main entrance, and a minute after that he was in the stadium itself, along with five thousand cheering fans who’d come to see the match starring the home team, the Jeunesse Esch. He took a few moments to consult a Plexiglas board showing the stadium’s layout, then found a bathroom and ducked into a stall, where he changed clothes. A quick stop at a souvenir sho
p and he had a Windbreaker and baseball cap bearing the team’s distinctive black and yellow logo. Finally, he made his way around the field to the east-side exit, then across the frontage road and down another embankment into some trees.

  The CFL train station was now out of the question; upon realizing they’d lost him at the foundry, it would be the first place they’d stake out. The same with Esch-sur-Alzette. They would assume he’d look for the next easiest mode of escape, namely a bus or rental car; with the town’s population less than twenty-seven thousand, Hansen and his team would have little trouble scouring stations and agencies. Fisher needed distance, as much and as quickly as he could manage.

  Fisher got out his iPhone and called up Google Earth. To the east were three towns within three miles: Rumelange, Kayl, and Tétange. Fisher chose the latter. It had a train station and the intervening terrain was mostly farm fields and forest. After downing an energy bar with a few gulps of water, he started running.

  IT took him forty minutes to reach Tétange’s western outskirts. From there it was a quarter mile stroll to the station. His luck was holding. He bought a ticket on the night’s last train heading north and, after a brief stop in Bettembourg, he was on his way toward the city of Luxembourg—and a youth hostel full of, predictably, young tourists and their even younger children. On the plus side, Luxembourgian hostels were rarely fully occupied, so he had a communal room to himself and, most important, no credit card was required.

  He made his bed, then opened his rucksack and removed its contents and went about checking supplies. The SC he’d taken off Ames was gone, disassembled and tossed into a river during his jog to Tétange the night before. The rest of his delicate gear seemed undamaged, tucked safely away in Aloksaks. He would need to restock his staples, but a few quick stops to military surplus, hardware, and hobby shops would do the trick. Of course, with any luck by dawn tomorrow he’d have all the gear he needed for the foreseeable future.