The Brotherhood of the Rose (16 page)

Two men stood halfway down the hall, facing left toward Erika's apartment. One man held a submachine gun, shortstocked, stubby-barreled, unmistakably an Uzi, while the other man tugged a pin from a grenade.

Chris saw them too late. The first man fired. In a continuous deafening roar, the Uzi's bullets splintered the door to Erika's apartment. Ejected casings flew through the air, clinking against each other on the carpet. The acrid stench of cordite filled the hall. The gunman shifted his aim, continuing to squeeze the Uzi's trigger, spraying the wall beside the door. The second man released the lever on his grenade and kicked the door's shattered lock, preparing to throw as the door burst in.

Chris fired twice. The second man spun from the impact to his skull and shoulder, dropping the grenade. The first man pivoted, shooting at Chris. Despite the noise, Chris heard a bell. He ducked to the stairwell. Footsteps charged from the elevator. The gunman kept shooting. Amid a roar of bullets, people screamed, their bodies ripped, falling.

The grenade exploded, amplified by the hall, shrapnel zinging. The stench of cordite flared Chris's nostrils. He fought to overcome the ringing in his ears, to listen for sounds in the corridor.

On guard, he peered from the stairwell. To his right, in front of the elevator, two men with Uzis lay motionless in a pool of blood.

Of course. Two pairs covering both routes to this floor. But their timing was off. The elevator arrived too late. The second pair heard the shots and charged out but got killed by the man they wanted to help.

He turned to his left. The gunman who'd shot at Erika's apartment sprawled beside his dead companion, his face blown off.

Hearing panicked voices in apartments, Chris raced-down the hall. Erika's door was shattered. Dangling open, it showed the living room. The Uzi's spray of bullets had mangled the furniture, blowing apart the television. Drapes hung in tatters. "Saul?" But he saw no bodies.

Where the hell were they?

As the first roar of bullets had erupted through the door, Saul dropped to the rug, hearing Erika do the same. His impulse had been to crawl to the kitchen or the bedroom But then the bullets burst through the wall instead of the door*, beginning at waist level, angling down. The rug across which he'd have to crawl toward either room heaved from their impact. Chunks of carpet flew in a systematic pattern, marching back,and forth from the far end of the room toward the middle where he lay. He and Erika had to roll in the opposite direction, away from the bullets toward the wall beside the door. He felt it shudder above him. Fragments of plaster pelted him. The rug heaved closer. If the gunman dropped his aim much lower... The door crashed in. Saul aimed his Beretta, hearing two pistol shots, a body failing, screams, an explosion, silence.

Close to the wall, he rose to his feet, sensing Erika do the same. He heard shouting out there and aimed toward a shadow in the doorway. "Saul!" someone yelled. The shadow entered.

Saul eased his finger off the trigger. Chris turned, peering anxiously along the wall. "Are you hit?"

Saul shook his head. "What happened?"

"No time. We have to get out of here." Doors opened along the hall. A woman screamed. A man yelled, "Call the police!"

Chris froze, staring past Saul toward something in the room. What's wrong?" Saul spun toward Erika, afraid she'd been hit. She faced the two of them, backing away from a chair beneath which she'd drawn a hidden pistol, another Beretta.

"No!" She aimed at Chris. Saul remembered what she'd told him earlier. She'd be foolish to try to kill Saul unless she also had a chance at... "No!"

Too late. She fired. Saul heard the sickening whack of a bullet hitting flesh. A groan. He whirled. Beyond Chris, a man with a pistol luvehed back against the corridor's wall, his throat spurting blood.

Chris clutched the side of his head. "Jesus!"

"I missed you," Erika said. "By a quarter-inch! The bullet singed my hair!"

"You'd prefer I let him kill you?" Past the shattered windows, sirens wailed in the night. Erika hurried toward the door. Saul quickly followed. "Where did that guy come from?" As he reached the corridor, rushing past the bodies on the floor, he saw his answer. Down the hall, from the apartment next to Erika's, a man aimed an Uzi. Erika fired. Saul and Chris shot one second afterward. The man wailed, doubling over, his finger still pressed on the trigger, spraying the floor. The Uzi jerked from his hands.

Erika ran toward the elevator. "No," Saul told her. "We'll be trapped in there."

"Don't argue, dammit!" Avoiding the pool of blood around the bodies, she pressed the elevator button. The door slid open. She pushed Saul and Chris inside, touched number 5, and the door slid shut.

Saul's stomach sank as the elevator rose. "We can't go down," she said. "God knows who's in the lobby. The police or---2' Reaching up, she tugged a panel from the elevator's roof.

Saul straightened when he saw the trapdoor beyond the panel. "Emergency exit."

"I checked the day I rented the apartment," she said. "In case I needed a private escape route.'

Saul pushed the trapdoor to raise it. The elevator, stopped. As his stomach settled, he saw Chris press the button that kept the door closed. Jumping up, Saul grabbed the trapdoor's edge and climbed through the narrow exit, kneeling in the dark. He reached down for Erika's hands, smelling the grease on the elevator cables beside him. "They didn't need to bug my apartment or watch the building from outside." She climbed up next to him. "You saw. They had two men in the apartment next to mine. As soon as you arrived, they sent for help."

From the elevator, Chris handed them the panel. Squirri-ling up, he leaned down, sliding the panel back in place. He shut the trapdoor. "Now what? God Almighty, the dust. I can hardly breathe."

"Above us. On the roof, there's a superstructure for the elevator. It's the housing for the gears." Erika's voice echoed in the dark shaft. She climbed, her shoes scraping against the concrete wall.

Saul reached up, touching a metal bar. The moment his shoes left the elevator's roof, he heard a rumble. No! The elevator was going down! He dangled. "Chris!,"

"Beside you!"

Saul's fingers almost slipped from the greasy bar. If he fell, if the elevator went all the way to the bottom... He imagined his body crashing through the elevator's roof and squirmed to get a better grip on the bar. Erika's hand tightened on his wrist. He scrambled up. "Keep your head low," she ordered. "The gears are directly above you."

Saul felt the speeding cables, the rush of air from the whirring gears. He hunched on a concrete ledge. "My jacket," Chris said. "It's caught in the gears."

Their rumble was magnified by the echo in the shaft- Saul spun to him, useless, blind. The rumble stopped. The cables trembled in place. The silence smothered him.

He heard the rip of cloth. "My sleeve," Chris said. "I have to get it out before-" The rumble began again, muffling Chris's words. Saul reached for him, almost losing his balance, straining not to fall. "I did it," Chris said. "My jacket's out."

The elevator stopped below them. As silence returned, Saul heard the door slide open. A sickened voice moaned, someone gagging. "It's worse than they told us! A goddamn slaughterhouse! Call the station! On the double! We need help!" Foot steps rushed from the elevator. The door slid shut. The rumble began once more as the elevator descended. "They'll seal off the building," Erika said. "Then let's get out of here."

"I'm trying. There's a maintenance door to the roof. But it's locked."

Saul heard a rattle as she tugged at a latch. "We're stuck in here?"

The elevator stopped. He heard the scrape of metal. "The hinge pins. One of them's loose." Erika kept her voice low. Saul heard more scraping. "There. I've got it out."

"What about the other one? Use my knife."

"It's moving. Okay, I've got it." She pulled the hatch. Through a crack, Saul welcomed the glow from the city. He leaned close, gasping fresh air. "They'll check the roof," Erika said. "We'll have to wait till they've finished." Despite Saul's eagerness to leave, he knew she was right; he didn't argue. "I can see the door to the roof," she added. "If it opens, I'll have time to shut the hatch and slide the pins back in."

The elevator rumbled again, rising. A male voice drifted up, muffled. "The coroner's on the way. We're searching the building. Who lives in that apartment?"

"A woman. Erika Bernstein."

"Where the hell is she? I searched-the the apartment. I didn't see any bodies."

"If she's still in the building, we'll find her."

Ten minutes later, two policemen came through the door to the roof, aiming revolvers and flashlights. Erika shut the maintenance hatch, silently replacing the pins in the hinges. Saul heard footsteps and voices. "Nobody up here."

"What about the hatch to the elevator?"

A flashlight glared through the grill in the hatch. Saul pressed back with Chris and Erika, deep in the shadows. "There's a lock."

"Better check it. Maybe it's been jimmied."

The footsteps came closer. "Be careful. I'll stay back and cover YOU." Saul heard a rattle as the lock was jerked. "You satisfied?"

"The captain said to be thorough."

"What difference does it make? He always double-checks everything himself. Then he sends us back to triple-check."

The footsteps drifted away. The door to the roof creaked shut.

Saul breathed out sharply. Sweat stung his eyes. Doublecheck and triple-check? he thought, dismayed. We're trapped in here.

All night, the elevator kept going up and down, raising dust that smeared their faces and clogged their nostrils, making them gag. After Erika reopened the maintenance hatch, they took turns straining for fresh air through the gap. Saul kept checking the luminous hands on his watch. Shortly after six, he began to see Chris and Erika, their haggard features becoming more distinct as the morning sun filtered through the grill.

At first he welcomed the light, but as he sweated more intensely, he realized the shaft was getting warmer, baked by the sun's glare on the elevator's superstructure. He felt suffocated. Taking off his jacket, he pried his gritty shirt away from his chest, By eleven o'clock, he'd removed his shirt as well. They slumped in a stupor, wearing only their underwear. Erika's flesh-toned bra clung to her breasts, sweat forming rivulets between them. Saul studied the exhaustion on her face, worrying for her, at last concluding she was tougher than Chris and he. She'd probably outlast both of them, By noon, the elevator went up and down less often. The ambulance crew and the forensic squad had come and gone. In the night, the bodies had been taken away. From muffled conversations in the elevator, Saul learned that two policemen were watching Erika's apartment, two others watching the lobby. Still it wasn't safe to leave. Grimy, they'd attract attention if they showed themselves in daylight. So they continued to wait, struggling to breathe. When the sun went down, Saul's vision was blurred. His anus felt heavy. His stomach cramped from dehydration. They finally reached the limit they'd agreed on twenty-four hours from the attack.

Crawling wearily from the narrow hatch, they stumbled to stand on the roof. Fingers slack, they put on their clothes, gulping the cool night air, swallowing dryly. Dizzy, they stared toward the far-off gleam of the Capitol building. "So much to do," Chris said.

Saul knew what he meant. They needed transportation, water, food, a place for them to bathe and find clean clothes and rest. Above all, sleep.

And after sleep, the answers. "I can get us a car." Erika pushed her long dark hair behind her shoulders. "Your own or from the embassy?" Chris didn't wait for anin answer. He shook his head. "Too risky. The police know who you are. Since they didn't find your body, they have to figure you're involved. They'll watch your parking spot beneath the building. They'll find out where you work and watch the embassy."

"I've got a backup car." Her breasts arched as she put on her blouse, She buttoned the sleeves. "I used a different name to buy it. I paid cash-a slush fund from the embassy. The car can't be traced to me. I keep it in a garage on the other side of town."

"That still leaves us with the other problem-a place to go," Chris said. "The police have our descriptions from the neighbors who saw us outside your apartment. We can't risk going-to a hotel. Two men and a woman-we'd be obvious."

"And whoever's hunting us will check your friends," Saul added. "No hotel. No friends," she said. "Then what?"

"Stop frowning. Don't you like surprises?"

The captain of homicide clutched the phone in his office, staring bleakly at the half-eaten Quarter-Pounder on his cluttered desk. As he listened to the imperious voice on the phone, he suddenly lost his appetite. His ulcer began to burn. Past the screen of the open window, sirens wailed in the Washington night, "Of course." The captain sighed. "Sir, I'll take care of it. I guarantee no problem."

Curling his lips in disgust, he set the phone down, wiping his sweaty hand as if the phone had contaminated him - A man appeared in the doorway. Glancing across his desk, the captain saw his lean-faced lieutenant-jacket off, tie loosened, wrinkled shirtsleeves rolled up-light a cigarette.

Beyond the lieutenant, phones rang; typewriters clattered. Weary detectives searched files and questioned prisoners. "That scowl on your face," the lieutenant said. "You look like you just heard the department's forcing you on another exercise program."