Before the Dawn (27 page)

Max hadn't seen it, but when Morales had fired at her, both Sterling and the Korean turned toward the shot. Each had a hand on both the briefcase and the portfolio, and the Korean apparently misread the situation as a Sterling betrayal, and tried to hold onto both items in the exchange.

When Max turned her attention to them, the two art collectors were wrestling back and forth in an almost comic tug of war, as each now tried to claim both prizes.

Seth was in the meantime mixing it up with the remaining Korean thug; he caught his opponent with a left and two quick rights, staggering the burly Korean, the man's arms dropping to his sides as if begging Seth to strike—which Seth did, leaping, kicking him in the chest. The Korean flew backward, his skull bouncing off the cement wall next to the elevators, where he slumped to the floor, either unconscious or dead.

Then Seth took off toward Sterling and the Korean buyer, only to be cut off by another pair of oversized Asians, bodyguards who had been around the far corner of the elevators and were on their way to intercede for their employer in his tug-of-war with the American art dealer.

Rain lashing, Seth was between the two Asians, keeping them back with martial-arts kicks, when two more of Sterling's security men seemed to materialize before Max: a gangly white guy, and a compact, muscular Latino. She did a back flip, each of her feet kicking one of the men and sending them both onto their backs, apparently out.

She leapt to her feet and headed toward Sterling; but the gangly security man reached out and grabbed her ankle and brought her down, hard.

This didn't hurt Max nearly as much as it pissed . . . her . . .
off!
On her side on the damp concrete, as if doing an exercise, she kicked back, her foot taking on his face, his face losing, the nose and jaw snapping, a small crack followed by a larger one. He went to sleep, like a good boy. . . .

Only now the Latino was back on
his
feet, and obviously knew better, now, than to try to match Max blow for blow; he reached under his arm for his pistol . . . but never made it. Max sprang onto her feet, and then swung one of those feet around, connecting with the side of the face. The blow wasn't that hard—and merely caught his attention, his eyes rolling like ball bearings, but his feet staying under him. Max jumped and spun in the air, this kick practically tearing the nose off the man's face as he fell unconscious, and probably glad to be.

Sterling and the Korean collector had worked their way over to the three-foot wall that surrounded the observation deck, where the wind and rain ruled. They continued tugging back and forth on the briefcase and the portfolio, each unable to gain an advantage over the other. The sky growled at them and the wind beat on them and the rain pelted them and the deck, making their footing treacherous.

Sterling jerked on the briefcase just as he let go of the portfolio, a sudden shift that took the Korean's feet out from under him, and he pitched back against the edge and seemed to be reaching out with one hand to Sterling, even while holding on to the art portfolio with the other, his eyes pleading. But Sterling merely watched as the man tumbled over into the night, his screams barely discernible over the storm, the portfolio flapping like a big broken wing as the man fell five hundred feet to a certain death.

Coming out of her most recent spinning leap, Max caught the final moments of that confrontation, and now she whirled to find Seth, to aid him; but she saw only the two Korean bodyguards, piled on top of each other, like slabs of butcher's meat.

Finishing her pirouette, she finally saw Seth, on the move, heading for Sterling and that briefcase of money. Beyond her brother, she could see—coming around the far end of the observation deck—the Russian, his long blond hair darker and flattened by the rain, wearing a flowing long dark coat buttoned from knee to neck; the rock-star-like gangster was pointing at Seth, but not with a finger: a nine-millimeter Glock.

Seth didn't see Kafelnikov, and Max yelled a warning, but the Russian's pistol barked and a bullet tore through Seth's left shoulder, sending the X5 flying off-balance. Her brother wobbled on toward the trench-coated Sterling, who grasped a briefcase handle in one hand and held the other up as if it would stop the human freight train barreling toward him.

Sterling even shrieked, “Stop!”

As if that would do any good.

Max ran toward them, from one direction, as did Kafelnikov from the other, his pistol still raised. The Russian's second shot went wide, just as Seth was grabbing the briefcase in the hand of his good arm. But Kafelnikov's third shot caught Seth in the right calf, and the X5 pitched into Sterling, the boy's momentum carrying them both to the edge of the wall.

Executing a perfect jump kick, Max knocked the pistol out of Kafelnikov's hand and, at the same time, jarred him off-balance. Pressing her advantage, Max kicked at him again and caught him a glancing blow that sent him tumbling back. When the Russian tried to rise, she grabbed a lapel of his coat in her left hand and hit him with a hard right. His eyes closed and he sagged, the big man hanging by his coat from her tiny hand.

Dropping him to the cement, Max turned to see Sterling and Seth wrestling precariously close to the edge of the wall, wind and rain taunting them. Glad she'd held on to that rope, she grasped the coil like a cowboy prepared to twirl his lariat, and moved toward the pair. As she neared, the pair teetered, Sterling slipped on the wet cement, and they both pitched over the edge.

“Seth!”
she cried.

Running to the wall, Max looked over and down to see Seth a few feet below, at the bottom of the guard wall, gripping a lip of cement with the fingers of a hand that belonged to his bad arm. His good arm held the briefcase while Sterling dangled like an earring, also clinging to the case. The howling night sky seemed to be laughing now; but the tycoon was whimpering, his eyes wide and wild, as his grip started to slip in the wetness.

Max knew she had only seconds.

She tied the rope off around one of the steel rods, then whipped it down to Seth, who was just able to let loose of the wall and grab on. Sterling yelped as he nearly dropped off, but managed to keep his hands attached to that briefcase.

“I'll pull you up!”
she yelled into the wind and rain, and from below, Seth nodded—in an almost businesslike way that went back to their Manticore training—and Sterling screamed, “Hurry, for God's sake, girl—hurry! I'll pay you
anything!
”

Before Max could do a thing, however, she felt hands on her and someone lifted her bodily, swept her off her feet in a very bad way, throwing her over the side the way a kid visiting the Needle might toss a candy wrapper to earth.

Spinning in midair, Max reached out and up, grabbing blindly for the rope and instead gripping on to cloth with first one hand, then another . . .

. . . and once again she found herself hanging high above a city street, with only the lapels of Kafelnikov's jacket to keep her from falling. Her feet banged into Seth and Sterling, dangling below her, as she struggled to hang on to the Russian, who was now pressed against the wall, trying to keep from being pulled over himself. He clawed and pulled at her hands with one of his, the other tight around the grip of the Glock.

He snarled down at her: “You miserable bitch!”

Swaying, clinging to his coat, she grinned defiantly up at him, as the rain and wind had at them both. “Déjà vu all over again, huh, Mikhail?”

Now he grinned, a terrible, sadistic white smile shining down on her like a lopsided moon. “Yes—brings back lovely memories—like slaughtering your precious Chinese Clan. . . .”

The Russian was unbuttoning the coat, so he could peel it and let her plummet!

Locking eyes with Kafelnikov, she let go of one lapel; in the murk, he couldn't see her grab on to the rope with that now free hand.

“This is for Fresca,” she said, ice in her voice.

He had the jacket half unbuttoned. “Who the hell is that?”

“Nobody. Just another of your victims. . . .”

And she yanked on that lapel and carried the Russian past the wall, and over her head, pitching him into the rain-tossed night.

Kafelnikov screamed the whole way down and, as a benefit of her Manticore-heightened hearing, Max was able to hear the satisfying
splat
of his landing.

She climbed the rope and hauled herself back over the wall and leaned over to start pulling the other two up. Seth remained quiet, almost placid, while Sterling was weeping, praying, and might have been wetting himself, for all she knew . . . if the rain hadn't been covering up for him.

Behind her the trio of elevators all dinged at once.

Her eyes flew to those of the dangling, wounded Seth:
they knew, the siblings knew. . . .

Lydecker was here—he and his TAC team would be pouring out of those three elevator cars in moments!

Looking down at Seth, she saw him shake his head slowly but decisively. He didn't say, but she could almost read his thoughts: he was wounded, and couldn't escape; and he was not going back to Manticore. . . .

Was that a single tear, trailing down his face, she wondered, or just more rain?

“Sorry, Max,” was all he said . . .

. . . and he let go of the rope.

Seth fell silently, bestowing the faintest smile up at the sister who reached yearningly down for him.

Jared Sterling, on the other hand, screamed and flapped his arms and hands, as if God might suddenly grant him the gift of flight; but the Almighty was apparently in an ironic mood, because all the wealthy fool got for his effort was the briefcase lid flipping open, raining money down on the parking lot.

Max turned away, before either man hit the pavement, and right now she did not relish her ability to perceive the subtleties of sound on this violent night.

A voice behind her yelled, “Freeze!”

But it wasn't Lydecker, just one of the TAC team members.

“Don't move—show me your hands. Now, now, now!”

Under other circumstances, she might have smiled, imagining the astonished expression on the squad member's face when she vaulted over the wall, and dropped out of sight, apparently plunging into the night.

Which she did. The TAC team couldn't see her snare the end of the dangling rope, swing out, then back in, through glassless windows into the restaurant below.

She landed like the cat she partially was, head up, alert—she had only seconds, now. Lydecker would be sending his men after her, some down the stairs, others down the elevators. She ran over and pushed the
DOWN
buttons of all three, hoping to at least slow the pursuing team, and hit the stairs running.

Her brother had given his life to avoid falling back into Lydecker's hands; she would risk hers to escape that same fate, and mourning would just have to wait.

The observation deck was like a ship plowing through a stormy sea, and “Captain” Lydecker was royally pissed.

“He jumped over the
side?
” he roared.

The soldier nodded, decked out in black fatigues with goggles, Kevlar vest, helmet, and MP7A. “But it didn't look like . . . a
him,
sir.”

“What the hell are you—”

“Sir, the pictures you showed us. I was at the elevator, and he . . . or she . . . was at the wall, a girl, and with all that rain—”

Lydecker got in the soldier's face. “Mister, how in God's name can you mistake a nineteen-year-old man for a ‘girl'?”

“Sir, I—”

Lydecker silenced him with a look, brushed him aside, and strode to the edge of the observation-deck wall, where the carnage below could barely be made out through the slashing rain. This would be one hell of a mess to cover up.

Then he noticed the rope, flapping in the wind, tauntingly.

He spat into his handheld radio: “TAC Five.”

The radio crackled, and a voice from the ground floor said: “TAC Five.”

“Anyone come down in the elevators?”

“No, sir.”

“Watch them closely. We may have another X-Five on the premises. Possibly female.”

“. . . Yes, sir.”

Lydecker motioned with his head to one of the men. “Down the rope, soldier.”

The man unhesitatingly slung his weapon back over his shoulder and shimmied over the edge and down out of sight. Lydecker was roaming the observation deck now, surveying the casualties up here—half a dozen anyway. Most of them seemed alive, and were coming around, after the kind of beating an X5 could deliver. . . .

“TAC Two,” he said into the radio.

“TAC Two.”

“TAC Two, take half the team and search the building for our man. Possibility of a second X-Five on site, female.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned to the team member nearest him. “TAC Three, dispose of the bodies and cleanse the site.”

The man hesitated.

“Can't you hear me in this weather, mister?”

“No, sir. That is, yes sir.”

“Then carry out your orders.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lydecker turned and marched back to the elevators, where another six men in combat black stood waiting. Behind him, Lydecker heard a pistol shot, then another and another.

“What's the problem?” he asked.

“The elevators, sir,” one of the soldiers said. “The doors
closed. . . .”

“You might trying pushing
DOWN
,” Lydecker said through smiling teeth, though he was not at all happy. “They just might come back up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Something tugged in Lydecker's gut. He got on the radio. “TAC Two?”

“TAC Two. In the stairwell, sir. No sign of anyone.”

“Keep looking, TAC Two. Time's running short.”

“Yes, sir.”

The middle elevator dinged and its doors slid open.

Into the radio, Lydecker said, “TAC Five.”

“TAC Five. No movement, sir.”

The other two elevators arrived, and three men got onto the cars at either side, with Lydecker flying solo in the middle one; he went down one floor and the doors opened onto the vacant restaurant—vacant, that is, but for the soldier he'd sent down the rope, who approached.