Vertical Run (32 page)

The building had been erected in the early sixties. Now, after thirty years of wind, weather, and pollution, the stone had begun to decay. Some cracks were thick enough to insert a pencil. It wouldn’t be long now, a few years at most, before the stonework began to crumble. Then chunks of rock would start raining on the street. Dave wondered how many other buildings in New York were in the same condition.

He passed the fiftieth floor. The lights were out. He should have checked the lights before starting down. It would not do for some late night worker to glance out his window and see a man with a brace of pistols in his belt dangling fifty stories above street level.

He peered down. No lights until 45. He was safe.

You call this safe?

The coaxial cable was a poor substitute for rope. It was slippery; grasping its thinness strained his hands. Too much of this and he would get a cramp. And that would be a problem.

Between the forty-seventh and forty-sixth floors, Dave’s heel knocked a pebble-sized piece of granite loose from the building’s facing. Six seconds later it detonated on a green trash dumpster, making a noise that sounded, for all the world, like a mortar shell exploding. Unless Myna, the man in the lobby, was an utter fool, he’d send people out to investigate.

On the other hand, New York is full of odd and inexplicable noises. At all hours of the day things growl and whine and sometimes sound like bomb blasts. People get used to it. Maybe Myna would ignore the sound.

Forty-fifth floor coming up. Last stop—last in more ways than one if Ransome and his goons are in Bernie’s office
.

He had left the roof of the building near the northeast corner. When he reached 45, he would be just to the left of the window that Bernie had smashed open.

They would have covered the window. The building management would insist, and so would the police. With the weather forecast calling for rain, neither would
want the office open to water damage. The only question was whether they’d use canvas or—as they’d used for the shattered lobby windows—plywood.

The broken windows down there—that
’s
what gave you the idea for this, right? You knew you couldn’t go through Ransome. You had to go around him. And yeah, I agree. This idea is crazy as hell
.

He came level with the window. It was sealed with canvas.

He had misjudged the length of cable he needed. Three or four yards of slack dangled below him. It could be dangerous if he had to leave Bernie’s office in a hurry.

Dave braced his feet against the stone and twisted his right arm, wrapping the cable around it. Once, twice, three turns. He released the grip he held with his left hand. The cable sliced into the flesh. Grimacing, he coiled up the few yards of slack beneath him, fastened it, and then wound his right arm free.

And now for something truly dangerous. He asked his inner voice, are you ready for this?

Why not just make yourself a noose and get it over with?

Forty-five stories above the street—
but only six seconds to fall that far
—David Elliot pushed away from the side of the building and flung himself toward the canvas covered window. At the height of his arc, he leaned his torso back, stretched his legs, and pumped like a child on a swing.

He swung away from the covered window, pumped again, and swooped back. The cable creaked. He wondered what its tensile strength was.

Isn’t it a little late in the game to be asking that particular question?

He was oscillating like a pendulum. The curve of his flight carried him past the canvas covered window. He almost reached the glass window beyond it. Almost, but not quite. He swung back.

The windows were set in aluminum curtainwall. Curtainwall … For nine grim hours a night, five days a
week, every week of his college years, he had worked in an aluminum extrusion plant, being paid seventy-five cents an hour, making curtainwall. Maybe the people who built this building had bought their curtainwall from the very plant he had worked at. The timing would be about right. Wouldn’t that be a coincidence?

He reached the top of his backward swing. He pulled and pumped and started back down.

This time he would make it. The curtainwall protruded two inches from the granite stonework. He would be able to hook his fingers around the metal, stop his swing, and pull himself forward. Then he could look through the window. If Ransome had left any little surprises in Bernie’s office, he’d be able to see them.

The ridged edge of the glass window was coming up. Dave snatched at it, wrapped his fingers around it. The momentum of his flight reversed itself. The force nearly tore his grasp loose. He held fast, gritting his teeth.

Blew it. You shortened the cable too much
.

He could make it. He tensed, drew himself forward, almost there, fingers slick with sweat, heels trying to find purchase on the granite, slender cable slicing his thigh muscles …

He was there—clutching the narrow sill, pressed against window glass, looking into Bernie’s office.

The lights were lit. What Ransome had left for him was on display. And, yes, the thing that Ransome had called his masterpiece was precisely that.

Dave’s fingers slipped from the curtainwall. He tumbled away from the window. For some several moments he swung back and forth until the motion damped.

No longer entirely conscious, David Elliot hung limp and still above the streets.

Emerald green.

With ruby eyes.

A centipede like a jewel.

On a leaf like jade.

He hears a whistling come down through the sky. He knows the sound. It’s a Soviet made RPG-7 rocket. He closes his eyes.

The rocket explodes. He opens his eyes. The leaf is shaking. The centipede seems impervious to the bombardment. It goes on eating.

Someone is screaming orders. They don’t make sense.

The centipede is toxic. In survival training they teach you which insects you can eat and which you cannot. This one will give you severe cramps.

He isn’t hungry anyway.

An AK-47 empties its magazine. The bullets whip through the brush. Several thump into a nearby tree. Someone is yelling, “Fall back!” It’s Kreuter. What he says makes sense after all.

It’s not the Vietcong, and it’s not a patrol. Whoever said it was a patrol didn’t know what he was talking about. It’s two full North Vietnamese brigades. They have armor and they have artillery. It is part of a major offensive. It is not the kind of thing three undermanned fire teams want to deal with.

“Fall back! Fall back!”

Falling back is not quite what’s called for. Running like hell is what is called for.

His rifle is lying in the mud. He stretches out his left hand to pick it up. He can’t get a grip on it. It slips through his fingers. That’s odd. There seems to be something wrong with his hand. Maybe it has something to do with the piece of metal that juts from his upper arm. It’s the length of a railroad spike, but thinner and twisted. It seems to go in one side and out the other. There’s not much blood.

Using his right arm, he takes the rifle, a CAR-15, and pushes himself up. He is shaky and almost falls.

Over to the left, two people are hobbling through the undergrowth. He can’t quite focus on them. Oh, now he sees who they are. Latourneau and Pasceault. They enlisted
together out of some New Hampshire mill town, and are best buddies. Latourneau seems to be helping Pasceault, who is having trouble walking. His right leg is missing. That would account for his not being able to walk very well.

An actinic flash blinds Dave. When he can see again, Latourneau and Pasceault are gone. There’s only a muddy crater, and smoke.

“In line! Fall back!”

That’s ridiculous. People who’ve walked into a meat grinder do not form up for an orderly retreat.

He stumbles toward Kreuter’s voice.

The sound made by a Kalashnikov AK-47 is quite distinctive. You never forget it. Several of the North Vietnamese seem to be carrying the Type 56 modification with 40 round box magazines. They fire at a cyclic rate of about 350 rounds per minute. There’s a lot of lead in the air.

Sparky Henderson is on the radio crying for air support. Kreuter wrenches the handset out of his fingers and coolly gives their coordinates. Dave trips at his feet.

Jack pulls him up. “Need a medic?”

“Feeling no pain.” Just like they tell you. It can be hours before it begins to hurt.

Jack and Sparky and Dave run.

Above them the skies fill with the roaring of great waters. Behind them the jungle is swallowed in flame. The very drums of God thunder and boom. An air strike is under way.

Dave’s head is almost clear now. He knows where he is, what has happened, and where he is going. There will be an air evac near the village they’d passed earlier in the day. It’s the only place the copters can set down. They’re scheduled to arrive at 19:15 hours.

He pushes through the brush. The great green leaves are heavy and wet. Tangled vines snatch at his feet. He’s far away from the fighting. The shriek of fighter-bombers is distant, the sound of explosions mere thumps.

He’s managed to get separated from the others. Or, perhaps they’ve managed to get separated from him. In either event, this particular retreat is not being conducted with military precision, sound off, by the numbers. It’s a rout. Everyone is fleeing in panic. Kreuter will be furious.

It was the surprise and the ferocity of the Vietnamese attack that did it. The patrol walked right into it. The enemy was waiting, flanking fire positions nicely set up, an ambush calculated to annihilate.

They’d known an American patrol was coming.

Dave stops and glances at his arm. It’s aching now. There will be a large scar and maybe some muscle damage. He’s going to be on the noncombatant roster for a while.

He gingerly pulls a plastic box out of his shirt pocket. There is a pack of Winstons and a butane lighter in it. He fumbles the box open with his mouth, taps a butt between his lips, and lights it. The nicotine helps.

He carefully closes the box and puts it back in his fatigues.

Tnere’s a lensatic compass in his left pocket. He doesn’t have the use of his left hand. It takes him some time to fish it out. He pops the compass’s lid, takes a reading, and adjusts his course. He thinks he has another hour or so to go. He has all the time in the world.

He comes out of the jungle by a rice paddy. The village is over there, to his right, about two hundred meters away. He can hear wailing and crying coming from it. He can’t imagine what’s causing it.

He glances at his watch. Twelve dollars from the PX at Cam Ranh Bay. Twelve dollars he had to spend after he’d blown his old watch to fragments. He’d like to blow this watch to fragments too. 18:30 hours. Forty-five minutes before the choppers are due at the LZ.

The wailing rises and falls in ululating waves. Dave wonders what’s going on. Maybe someone’s fragged an
ox. He starts slogging through the rice paddies, heading toward the village.

He comes into the place from the south. All the crying and shrieking are at the north end.

His rifle is slung over his shoulder. He can’t use it anyway, not with his left arm out of order. He tugs his pistol out of his holster, a good old standard issue .45 caliber Army model 1911A.

He eases past the hooches. Very carefully, he peeks around the corner of the last one. What passes for the town square is right ahead of him. What he sees there doesn’t entirely register.

Behind him a voice whispers,
Hey, pal, if I were you, I’d just turn around and walk the other way
.

Dave spins. There is no one there.

He shakes his head. Must be shock. Hearing voices.

He turns back to look at the village square.

He still doesn’t quite understand what he sees. Exhaustion. Confusion. The inner shivering of combat not yet manifest in exterior form. He shakes his head again, tries to clear his mind.

Sergeant Mullins is there, and a handful of men. Kreuter and the majority of the unit haven’t come in yet.

For a second, he asks himself what the majority of the unit is these days. How many casualties did they take back there?

He looks closer. The villagers are huddled by the side of a dike. Two American soldiers hold their rifles, covering them, keeping them back. The villagers aren’t the only ones they are holding back. There are a dozen American GIs standing with them. Their weapons are gone and their hands are in the air.

Curious.

Mullins is doing something. He’s kneeling on the ground with his back to Dave. Three men are with him, two on hands and knees, and one standing.

Mullins is working his arm back and forth. The villagers are bawling.

Mullins stands. He has something in his hands. He is walking toward the crowd.

There are some poles stuck in the ground there, right in front of the dike. Some of them have sharpened points. Others don’t seem to. Instead they have objects sitting on them.

No, not sitting. “Sitting” is the wrong word. The right word is “impaled.”

Mullins places another woman’s head on a pole.

Ransome, having neither sharpened stakes nor soft ground into which to set them, had used tripods—the ones that Bernie kept in his closet.

His cutting work was neater too, almost surgical, not anywhere near as messy as the hasty butchery of Sergeant Mullins and his trusty K-Bar knife. All in all, Ransome had done a clean and tidy job, precisely as one would expect of a highly skilled professional.

Ransome had, of course, placed them facing the door. They’d produce their best effect that way.

He might even have sewn their eyelids open.

Marge Cohen with open eyes. That would be a nice touch.

That surely would have made Dave scream.

Dave screams.

Mullins whirls. The men with him hit the dirt. Dave aims his pistol at Mullins’s chest. Mullins steps toward him. Dave yells something at him, he’s not sure what. Mullins marches forward, right into the barrel of Dave’s gun. Dave squeezes the trigger. The chamber is empty. With his arm shattered he is unable to work the slide. He
shouts something. He’s not sure what. It might not even have been words.