Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense (32 page)

“How do we know it’s real?”

Then Rudiger holds up the transmitter in front of the three men and rests his finger on the left button. The men all seem to stop breathing, and not one of them moves to stop Rudiger. No time. Too late.

Rudiger smiles as he presses the button.

The men all wince, waiting for their bodies to tear apart. Instead there is nothing but a muffled boom, far in the distance. The building hiccups.

“What the hell was that?” the Senator says.

Rudiger walks to the window and parts the curtain. Within seconds something rains down past their view.

“Top corner of the roof falling down,” Rudiger says. He looks down and sees chunks of rubble smashing into the street. A wave of excitement washes over him. Steals his breath for a moment or two. Against all his purpose, he wants more. More destruction. He closes his eyes and steadies himself for a moment.

Then turns toward the men.

“The other button is for the backpack. Clear?”

One by one they all nod. Even Jonas. They will all listen to him now. No other choice.

The fire alarm screeches above them. A light next to the sprinkler system flashes. A deep voice comes over a loudspeaker in the room. No panic in that voice at all, Rudiger thinks. Must be a recording.

“Please evacuate the hotel immediately. Use the stairwells located at either end of your floor. Do not panic. Assist those who need help getting down the stairs.”

Rudiger walks around the men and opens the door. People are already in the hallway, scurrying for the stairwells. A bald man in a business suit presses the elevator button and curses at it when it doesn’t light up.

Gonna be a panic, Rudiger thinks. He turns to the three men.

What happens now will happen, Rudiger thinks. There is very little in his direct control, despite what he has told them. He’ll kill them if he has to, but he doesn’t want to.

Not yet.

It hasn’t started yet. So close. What began so long ago is now so near the end. The pain that started with the Preacherman is almost over. The heavens will open up and the good will be saved. Rudiger will be free, for the first time since he was twelve.

Rudiger shifts his weight and squeezes his right hand into a fist.

“Time to go.”

JONAS TOOK
the lead, moving past Rudiger and out into the hallway. The fire alarm blared throughout the corridor, and flashing emergency lights stabbed at him from both directions. There were at least two dozen people already headed for the stairs, with more people streaming from their rooms every second.

What the hell happened?

Jonas thought he knew. Rudiger was one step ahead. He’d detonated a charge somewhere on the roof. Probably not enough to do major damage, but enough to scare the living shit out of everyone in the hotel. Force an evacuation. Start a panic. And that makes it a hell of a lot easier to get all of them out of the building undetected.

It also proved the C4 explosive in the backpack was real.

Jonas waited in the corridor for the others, watching as the chaos started to bubble around him.

A family with small children emerged from the room across the corridor. The father was trying to soothe a crying baby while the mother told their little boy everything was going to be okay. The boy covered his ears and stared at the flashing lights. Then he looked over at Jonas, who gave him a nod.

Don’t worry, his look said.

Then Rudiger grabbed him by the arm.

“At any time,” he said, motioning to the backpack he carried.

“Let’s just get out of here,” Sidams said to Jonas. “Too many people around. We can’t take any chances.”

“Agreed.”

Jonas turned to Stages, who looked like a fat rabbit cornered by a dog, praying for a heart attack before he’s torn apart. “Bill,” Jonas said. “Stay close. This is real. Nothing stupid. Understand?”

Stages moved his head, which Jonas took for a nod.

A man shouted at a non-functioning elevator while a woman shouted at him.
We have to use the stairs, idiot!

A swarthy man with wide shoulders and a long scratchy beard walked briskly with his head down. Jonas recognized him as an adjunct from one of the Palestinian delegations. He made his way for the stairwell among the throngs of people starting to swell in the hotel corridor, but everyone left a wide berth for the Muslim. It was then Jonas realized how smart Rudiger was. The hotel was full of Muslims attending the conference. Now, with pieces of the hotel raining from the sky, everyone would only be able to think of September 11th.

This wasn’t going to be a minor panic, Jonas thought. This was going to turn into a riot.

“What’s happening to the building?” someone shouted. “Get to the stairs!”

“I smell smoke.”

There was no smoke, only the frenzied imagination of a scared hotel guest. Jonas wanted to tell them all everything would be fine as long as they just went down the stairs in an orderly fashion. He wanted to shepherd them, lead them. It was his natural instinct. But he couldn’t take the chance. He had to follow just like the rest of them, because if he did anything out of the ordinary Rudiger might just blow them all into a million chunks of flesh and bone.

Jonas grabbed Stages by the arm as the large man started to fall behind. Sidams led them, and no one around seemed to realize a United States Senator was amongst the throngs of people. Rudiger followed behind Stages.

“No talking,” Rudiger said, though none of the men had said anything.

They made it into the concrete stairwell, joining hordes of other people who were descending from the floors above them. It was more controlled than Jonas expected, though a bottleneck immediately formed behind an older woman who, guessing from the size of her, probably hadn’t spent much time in her life dealing with any kind of stairs. She apologized for holding everyone up, but it wasn’t too long before the wave started to push past her, forcing her to the side of the stairwell and against the wall. She shouted out but didn’t fall. Some shouted back at her, some apologized. A waifish young woman in her pajamas grabbed onto her hand and barked at anyone else who tried to push past her.

One floor down, Jonas heard a loud female voice shouting out instructions for everyone.

Move quickly, but don’t push. Everything is fine. No need to panic.

Jonas kept one hand on the Senator’s back in front of him and the other grabbing onto Stages’s arm, coaxing him down the stairs like he was leading a stubborn donkey down a canyon trail. Jonas didn’t know what the plan was once they finally left the stairwell and were outside, but it wouldn’t be long before they were at that point. Rudiger had chosen a lower floor for his room; their departure had been planned for speed.

Jonas’s mind raced through all the different possibilities for escape, and there were several. The most promising was here. Right now. Among the confusion and the crowds. The natural imbalance on the stairs. He could quickly make a move, shoving Rudiger down and overpowering him.

But Rudiger’s hand was on the transmitter, and it was too great a risk. If he hit that button, it would all be over. For everyone. Jonas imagined the power of the blast, which would magnify in the tight concrete stairwell. Devastating.

And once they were outside? When they finally had some distance between themselves and the other hotel guests?

Not going to happen, Jonas thought. There’s enough C4 in that bag to kill anyone within a hundred feet, and there’s too many people coming out of the hotel to get that kind of separation.

Moreover, there was Anne. Even if Jonas was able to incapacitate Rudiger without the explosive detonating, Jonas fully believed she would die if Jonas and the others didn’t do what Rudiger wanted. If Jonas knew one thing about Rudiger Sonman, it was the man didn’t bluff.

They reached the second floor and Jonas saw who was shouting out the instructions.

Agent Difranco.

He saw her before she saw him.

Shit.

“Senator!” she shouted, seeing Sidams first.

Sidams nodded and lowered his head, walking past her. “We’re okay,” Jonas said, keeping his hand on the

Senator’s back. He chanced a brief glance back at Stages, whom Jonas had lost his grip on. He was a few feet back, with Rudiger directly behind him, steering him down the stairs.

Difranco then did what a seasoned law enforcement veteran does. Amid the chaos, amid the shouts and screams, amid all the confusion, she picked up on something from Jonas. Maybe it was the way he looked behind him when everyone else was looking forward. Maybe it was the way he dismissed her without even asking her if she knew what had happened. Or that he hadn’t asked for extra help with the Senator, arguably the most important guest in the hotel.

Whatever it was, she followed Jonas’s gaze as he looked back at Stages. And then she looked at the man behind him, the pasty man with the rigid spine and hollow, sea-blue eyes, who looked like he had no business wearing a baseball hat. The man with the brutal scar running down past his ear.

She drew her weapon and pointed it at Sonman.

“Stay right there!”

Screams erupted. Those on the stairs above Rudiger fought to start going back up, pushing against the tidal force behind them like lemmings changing their mind only feet from the edge of the cliff. Those on the stairs below pushed every harder to make it down, the panic now fully unleashed among them.

Sonman stopped and smiled. Stages managed to push away and reach Jonas’s position a few feet away.

“Don’t,” Jonas said to Difranco.

“It’s Sonman. It’s him!” Her gun stayed level with his chest. Rudiger stood only feet away.

“I know,” Jonas said, as calmly as he could. “Put the gun away.”

Someone shouted about a gun above them and more people screamed. Jonas heard the words
terrorist attack
.

“No fucking way,” Difranco said.

Rudiger smiled and lifted the transmitter.

Jonas quickly leaned toward Difranco, not wanting anyone else to hear. “He got C4 in his backpack. The explosion on the roof was his. Put the gun down or we’re all going to die.”

Then Jonas saw the situation wash over her. In all her training, this was something she had likely never been prepared for. Risk the lives of several or let free a known killer?

The panic grew. The force of people from above grew too great. Three people fell onto the concrete landing, spilling at Rudiger’s feet. More shouts erupted. A child screamed out something unintelligible.

“What the hell is going on?” shouted someone from above.

Difranco kept her gun trained on Rudiger as she looked at Jonas.

Jonas shook his head.
Don’t do it
.

Three more seconds passed, and to Jonas it seemed forever. Everything seemed to be riding on this one moment, this one decision. If this went on any longer the pressure would be too great to overcome, and there would only be death and destruction to follow.

Then, finally, just as quickly as she had produced it, Agent

Difranco holstered her gun. “Goddamnit!” she yelled.

Rudiger kept smiling as he walked past her. If anyone pieced together that the thing in his hand was a wireless detonator for a bomb, no one seemed to care. All that mattered was the downward flow commenced once again.

Rudiger walked up to Difranco and said something Jonas could not hear. Whatever it was, the FBI agent did not pursue the group of men as they continued their journey down the stairwell. For all Jonas knew, she wasn’t even radioing what had happened, though he doubted it.

Which meant Rudiger had a plan to get them out quickly. Two floors later his suspicion was confirmed. The stairwell finally gave way to a direct street exit and the barely controlled order from the stairs gave way to total chaos. Once people reached the outside world they bolted, running hard and fast in any direction, as if the building was seconds from toppling over onto all of them. Police shouted, trying to control the direction and the flow of the hotel guests, but it was no use. They were merely pebbles in a stream, futilely trying to control the direction of the current.

Rudiger rounded up his three captives and led them to a nearby surface parking lot. They were never more than twenty feet from other hotel guests, so the threat of a devastating explosion from Rudiger’s backpack remained very real.

Rudiger stopped in front of a ten-foot U-Haul cargo van, double parked near the entrance of the garage. Two things jumped out at Jonas: the license plates had been removed, and the cargo trailer door was open.

“Get in,” Rudiger said.

“Oh, Jesus, no,” Stages said, his breathing labored. “I’m not getting in there.”

A woman unlocked the car next to them and scurried inside. Rudiger looked over at her and caressed the button on the transmitter. “Not a question, Ambassador.”

Stages tried to climb in the back and fell to the floor. Rudiger pushed him inside with his foot.