Dan Simmons: Hard Freeze

Their shoes crunched on the cold stone floor. Wind howled beyond the tall, boarded-up windows. At the far end of the waiting room, Kurtz pocketed his pistol and pointed upward with the flashlight.

"That balcony should be a good vantage point for you," whispered Kurtz. "The stairway's mostly closed off and you could hear anyone climbing up it toward you. There's no reason for them to go up there—it's a dead end. If they come in the tower way, I'll see them. If they come in the way we did, they'll have to pass you here."

Kurtz fumbled in his left coat pocket, felt the Compact Witness.45 that Angelina had insisted he take—"It's served me well," she'd said as they stood in the penthouse foyer—and then found the extra two-way radio. They'd tested it in the penthouse but he wanted to make sure it worked here.

Marco dumped the groaning man and set his own earphones and radio in place.

"You don't have to actually speak into it," whispered Kurtz. "Just leave it on and thumb the transmit button if anyone passes you here. I'll hear it when you break squelch. Once if he's alone, twice if there are two guys, and so on. Give it a try."

Marco thumbed the button twice. Kurtz clearly heard the two interruptions of static. "Good."

"What if nobody shows?" whispered Marco. They'd shut off the flashlights while they huddled under the balcony, and Kurtz could barely see the big man three feet away.

"We wait until one and go home," whispered Kurtz. The cold in the waiting room was worse than outside. It made Kurtz's forehead ache.

"If I see anybody, I'm going to beep you and that's it. Soon as they're past me, I'm out of here. No one's paying me enough for this shit."

Kurtz nodded. Switching on his flashlight, he bent down, inspected the duct tape and cords, and lifted the heavy bundle. Marco climbed the littered and barricaded staircase carefully, but still made noise. Kurtz waited until the bodyguard was in place, out of sight but able to peer through the railings, and then he continued the next hundred feet or so up the main walkway into the tower rotunda.

"Jesus God, it's cold," whispered Myers.

"Shut up," hissed Brubaker.

James B. Hansen said nothing, but he made a fist and pounded both men on the chest plates of their flak vests, demanding silence.

They'd come in from the south side, through the acres of empty service buildings, across the rusted and snow-buried tracks, across the windswept boarding platforms, through the fenced-over south portal, up the boarding ramps, and now were crossing the vast main waiting room. The view was uncanny through the night-vision goggles: brilliant, glowing green-white outside, a dimmer, static-speckled greenish gloom here in the deeper darkness. But enough reflected light filtered through the boarded-up skylights and windows to allow them to see a hundred feet across the waiting room. Abandoned benches glowed like tombstones; smashed kiosks were a tumble of shadows; stopped clocks looked like skulls on the wall.

Hansen felt a strange exhilaration. Whatever happened, he knew there would have to be a sea change in his behavior. The shifting personae and the self-indulgent Special Visits would have to stop—at least for a few years. If a dullard like this ex-con Kurtz could find the pattern there, then it was no longer safe. Hansen would have to settle into the deep-cover identity he'd prepared in Vancouver and practice self-restraint for years as far as the teenage girls were concerned. In the meantime, this unaccustomed public action was exciting.

The three detectives crossed the wide space in respectable SWAT search-and-clear form: Brubaker and Hansen holding their weapons cocked and ready, swinging the muzzles as they turned their heads; Tommy Myers, his shoulder touching Brubaker, walking backward with his weapon and goggles in constant motion, covering their backs.

The loading platforms had been clear. The ramps had been clear. This waiting room and the rooms on either side—clear. That left the main rotunda and the tower.

If Kurtz had not arrived four hours early—and Hansen would be amazed if the man showed that much discipline and foresight—then the plan was for the three detectives to take up a shooting position in a front room of the tower, preferably on one of the mezzanine levels surrounding the entry rotunda. If Kurtz approached across the parking lot on the north side, or from the driveway to the west, they could ambush him from the front windows. If he came in from the east or south, they would hear him approaching up the staircase now in front of them and have a free field of fire down into the rotunda.

That was the plan.

Right now, Hansen was busy using his goggles to sweep the small balcony on the south wall to the left of the main staircase. There was enough ambient light to show no one standing there, but the darkness between the rungs of the old railings was a jumble of green static. He checked the narrow staircase to the balcony—barricaded and Uttered. Still, it was probably worth clearing before going on to the rotunda, so—

"Listen!" whispered Brubaker.

A sound from the rotunda beyond the main staircase. A rattling. The scrape of shoes on marble or wood.

Hansen held the AR-15 steady with his left hand and used his right hand to shake the collar of each man's flak vest, enforcing silence and continued discipline. But he was thinking— Got you, Kurtz! Got you!

Marco stayed flat against the floor of the small balcony, raising his head just high enough to peer through the thick marble slats of the railing. He couldn't see who was down there—it was too fucking dark—but he could hear footsteps and once he heard urgent whispers. Whoever it was, they were moving through the blackness without flashlights. Maybe they were using those night-vision lenses or something, like the ones he'd seen in the movies.

As the soft shuffling came closer and paused ten yards below his balcony, Marco pressed his face against the floor. No use exposing himself when he couldn't see the fuckers anyway.

Marco clearly heard a man hiss "Listen!" and then the shuffling became footsteps hurrying up the main staircase toward the rotunda and tower where Kurtz had gone. Marco was alone in the huge waiting room. He took a breath and got to his feet, straining to see in the blackness. Even after twenty minutes here, his eyes had not completely adapted to such darkness.

He lifted the two-way radio, but paused before thumbing the transmit button. How many men had there been? Marco didn't know. But just beeping Kurtz twice wouldn't warn him that the opposition was moving around easily in the dark, using some high-tech shit or something. He could whisper into the radio, warn Kurtz.

Fuck him . Marco had decided that his best bet after the scary cocksucker had wasted Leo was to stick with Ms. Farino, at least until the shit quit flying, but he didn't owe anything to Kurtz. Still, if Kurtz got out of this alive, Marco didn't want him pissed at him . But that didn't warrant Marco risking even a whisper with hostiles in the building.

Marco silently thumbed the transmit button twice, heard the clicks on his earphone and then turned off the radio, pulled the earphone free, and crammed it all into his pocket. Time to get the fuck out of here .

When the long blade swept across Marco's throat from behind, slicing his jugular and windpipe and almost severing his spinal cord, he didn't even know what it was, it happened so fast and cut so deep. Then there was the sound sort of like a fountain, but Marco's brain did not associate it with the geyser of his own blood flowing out onto the cold marble floor.

Then his knees buckled and the big man fell, hitting his face on the stone railing but feeling nothing, seeing nothing. The midnight blackness of the train station filled his brain like black fog and that was that.