Don Pendleton - Tower of Terror

Lyons grinned, looked at Blancanales. "Who said we're police?"

He saw Alcantara's sneer fail for an instant.

Speaking through an electronically secured telephone line to Washington, D.C., Lyons briefed his commander. "His son's name is Roberto Alcantara. The mother met Davis when he was working in Colombia twenty-five years ago. There was no room in Davis' career for a scandal and divorce, so he bought the woman off. Then he paid for the best schools, the best university for the boy. Along the way, Alcantara picked up some very red political ideas. He only saw eye to eye with his father when they decided to put their heads together and buy a country."

"Buy?" said Brognoia.

"Yeah. Seems so. Either buy one, or buy into one. It apparently irritated Davis that his son couldn't inherit WorldFiCor. So they worked out a scheme. Alcantara got the weapons and explosives, recruited the crazies. Davis got the money to pay for it all through a variety of international embezzlements, the latest involving a disgruntled Hungarian ex-Communist. Davis would have been the king, and his son the prince. But judging from how Alcantara operates, Davis would have died fast, and Alcantara would have been the number one man."

"This is great background," Brognola told him. "But listen now — how is this information going to get the terrorists out of the Tower?"

"There's more," Lyons said. "First of all, there's no way we can get in from the ground. Period. They have this psycho named Zuniga who spent months preparing for this. The garage and first floor are crisscrossed with booby-traps. No bomb squad or anti-terrorist team could get through in less than a day or two. Second, the Tower is wired with explosives and incendiaries. Alcantara intended to blow away the Tower with his crazies inside. That would have eliminated both the crazies and the WorldFiCor records.

"But something went wrong. Alcantara pushed the button and nothing happened.

"If Zuniga doesn't know the radio-detonator has failed, great. No problem. But if he does, there's no way he'll leave the Tower without a way to detonate the charges. Could be a fuse, a timer, something improvised. One wrong step and it's all over.

"Third, we're up against complete psychos. They won't be taken prisoner. When we rush them, if we give them time to think, they'll blow the whole show away. No doubt about it. So those are the three strikes against us."

"You're saying we can't break them?" Brognola asked.

"Not me. I'm just telling you what we're up against. On the positive side, the crazies have set their evacuation in motion. You heard that they finally asked for a helicopter?"

"Right. Three minutes ago."

"Alcantara had told them to demand a helicopter to take them from the Tower helipad to a secret location upstate. Then he'd get them out of the country. Of course, that was all make-believe. Alcantara intended them to be blown sky high. But because that didn't happen, they've followed orders and demanded the chopper."

"So how does the helicopter figure in your plans? You want to be in it when we send it, come down on the terrorists? That's exactly what they'll expect."

"No, I've got a trick they won't expect. One of those crazies in the Tower, Zuniga, knows who their leader is. He's the only one who's seen and talked with Alcantara. I want two helicopters in the air, one from the City of New York to take the terrorists away, as negotiated, and the second a big tourist chopper, with Alcantara on it. He'll come down, go straight to Zuniga, tell him it's a last-minute change of plan to confuse the feds. And in the time it takes to explain the change to Zuniga and the other psychos, we'll come up behind them and put them down. It's the only way I can figure to create confusion.

"And we can get Alcantara to do it. He's a complete coward. It's one thing for him to tell his crazies to terrorize and murder and maim people, but when we put a blow-torch up near his face, he told us everything. That poor little rich boy will do anything we tell him."

"And how does that defuse the bomb down below?"

"I'll have Alcantara ask Zuniga for the trigger unit to radio-detonate the building — so he can have the honor, et cetera. If Zuniga gives it to him, great. If not, Alcantara will ask for an explanation. We'll have Alcantara wired for sound, of course. As soon as Zuniga tells him how the charges are fused, we hit them. Then we defuse the charges."

"You said when they go up on the roof, you'll come up behind them. How will you get into the Tower?"

"That's the easiest part. There's some people trapped on the fifty-third floor. Zuniga's crew doesn't know they're up there — yet. We'll shoot a cable through the window, slide in."

"I don't like it, Lyons. You'll be taking some long chances."

"Sir, the crazies want the helicopter there in fifty-five minutes. They said they'll kill a hostage for every minute of delay. Quite simply, I can't come up with a better plan. It's the only chance they have, those thirty or forty people in there..."

Working slowly because of their improvised tools, Charlie Green and two of his office staff, Jill and Diane, carefully removed the screws fastening the window's molding to the steel window frame. In the outer office and corridor, Sandy and Mrs. Forde stood guard. The Federal Agents in the building opposite the Tower had code-signaled Green and his staff to dismantle this particular window and remove the plate glass. The agents had emphasized in repeated Morse that the lives of everyone in the building depended on the window not falling to the sidewalk. If it did, the terrorists would be alerted.

"Done up here," Green told the others. He dropped the last screw, left the molding in place, let his arms fall to his side. Standing on a desk, he'd had his arms above his head for thirty minutes. His arms ached.

"I'm going as fast as I can," Diane told him.

"Me, too," Jill added.

"How many more?" Green asked. He saw blood dripping from Diane's hands. "Take a break, Diane."

"Damn it, my blister's popped."

"Go check on Mrs. Forde and Sandy, tell them we're almost ready to take out this window."

"Done down here," Jill told him. "Look! They're flashing the code again."

Across the street, the agents signaled again. Green interpreted the blinking light. "They want us to hurry."

"Are you going to answer them?"

"I'm going to pull out this window is what I'm going to do." Green dropped the last screw from the side molding, jammed the screwdriver between the aluminum molding and the steel frame, and levered carefully. Gooey plastic caulking stretched. Green got his fingers around the molding and pulled with all his strength. The molding slowly tore away from the plastic. He threw down that strip, went to the others. Finally, he ripped away the last molding strip. Only plastic caulking held the eight-by-six-foot sheet of plate glass in the frame. Green tried to lever out the plate glass with a screwdriver. The glass chipped. He tried to pull it out with his fingertips. Blood ran from his shaved fingers.

"What's wrong, Mr. Green?" Jill asked.

"The window's glued in there with plastic!" Across the gulf between the two buildings, Green saw the federal agents' code-light blinking incessantly.

Five minutes, the code repeated. Five minutes. Five minutes.

He scraped the plastic away from the glass, cleared a foot of plastic in thirty seconds. One foot in thirty seconds , he thought. He looked at the sheet of glass. And I've got twenty-eight feet of window edge to do .

Then he looked through the edge of the glass. Plastic caulking cemented the other side, too! Even if he scraped away all the interior plastic, the exterior caulking would still hold the window in place.