Dan Simmons - Hard Freeze

Mickey Kee wiped his eight-inch blade on the dead man's shirt, folded it back with his gloved hand, and glided back down the dark staircase as silently as he had ascended.

The dim green glow of the corridor above the main staircase brightened considerably as Hansen, Brubaker, and Myers stepped out under the rotunda ceiling. Ambient light from the windowed tower rooms above filled the junk-cluttered space with green-white static and ghostly, glowing shapes.

Suddenly Joe Kurtz's voice—completely identifiable as Kurtz's voice—called from across the rotunda. "Hansen. Is that you? I can't see you."

"There!" Brubaker said aloud.

Directly across the rotunda floor, perhaps sixty-five feet away, against the west wall—a human form, standing, moving behind a bench, turning as if searching out the source of the shout Hansen could see the bright glow of a titanium briefcase in the man's left hand.

"Don't fire!" Hansen called, but too late. Brubaker had opened up on full auto with his assault rifle. Myers swiveled and fired a second later.

God's will be done , thought Hansen. He thumbed the AR-15 to full auto and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flare blinded him through the night-vision goggles. Hansen closed his eyes to shake away the retinal afterimages and listened while the rotunda echoed from the rifle blasts and the last ricochets whined away.

"We got him," yelled Brubaker. The detective ran across the open rotunda floor toward the man slumped over the bench. Myers followed.

Hansen went to one knee, waiting for the inevitable gunfire from one or more of the mezzanines above. Kurtz was too smart to be cut down like this. Wasn't he? This had to be an ambush.

No gunfire.

Hansen used his goggles to check out the darkest shadows under the mezzanine overhang as he moved carefully around the rotunda, staying back against the wall, keeping his rifle trained on any bench or tumbled kiosk that might give a man cover for an ambush.

Nothing.

"He's dead!" called Myers, the fat man's voice echoing.

"Yeah, but who the fuck is it?" said Brubaker. "I can't see his face through these fucking things."

Hansen was fifteen feet from the two detectives and the corpse when Brubaker's flashlight beam bloomed like a phosphorous bomb in his goggles.

Hansen sought cover behind a fallen bench and waited for the gunfire from above.

Nothing.

He flipped up his own goggles and looked over to where Brubaker's flashlight was swinging back and forth.

The man in the dark jacket was dead—at least three shots to the chest and one in the throat. It wasn't Kurtz. The man had been handcuffed to a wall pipe and still half hung from it, his upper torso draped across a bench. Hansen could see the face; the corpse's eyes were wide and staring in terror. Tape covered the mouth and ran all the way around the head. James B. Hansen's titanium briefcase had been taped to the man's left hand with twist after twist of the same silver duct tape.

Myers was tugging a billfold out of the corpse's pocket. Hansen ducked low, expecting an explosion.

"Donald Lee Rafferty," read Myers. "Ten-sixteen Locus Lane, Lockport. He's an organ donor."

Brubaker laughed.

"Who the fuck is Donald Lee Rafferty?" whispered Myers. The two detectives were beginning to realize how exposed they were.

Brubaker shut off the flashlight. Hansen could hear their goggles being swung down on the helmets' visor hinges.

In the green glow, Hansen duck-walked over to the trio, pulled the dead man's left hand back over the bench, and pried the taped briefcase open. It was empty.

What kind of stupid joke is this? Hansen remembered exactly who Donald Rafferty was, remembered the man's adopted daughter lying in the hospital, remembered the connection to Joe Kurtz and Kurtz's dead partner from twelve years ago. But none of this added up. If Kurtz really wanted the blackmail money, why this idiocy? If Kurtz's goal was to kill him, again why this complication? Even if Kurtz had his own night-vision goggles, there could have been no way he could distinguish one of the detectives from the other here in the rotunda. Kurtz should have fired when he had a clear field of fire.

If he was still here.

Hansen suddenly felt the deep cold of the place creep into him. It took him a few seconds to recognize the phenomenon—fear.

Fear of the inexplicable. Fear of the absolutely unreasonable action. Fear that came from not understanding what in hell your opponent was up to or what he might do next.

Quit trying to turn him into Moriarty , thought Hansen. He's just an ex-con screw-up. He probably doesn't know why he's doing what he's doing. Maybe it just amused him to have us kill Rafferty for him. He'll probably call me tomorrow with another time and place for the handover of the money and photographs .

Well , thought Hansen, fornicate that . No more games. Let Frears and Kurtz have the photographs. Let them do their worst. Time to leave. Time to leave the train station. Time to leave Buffalo. Time to leave all of this behind.

Myers and Brubaker were crouched behind the bench with him.

"Time to leave," Hansen whispered to them.

"We get to keep the money?" Myers whispered back, his breath hot and fetid on Hansen's face. "Even though it wasn't Kurtz?"

"Yes, yes," whispered Hansen. "Brubaker. Five yards to your left is the stairway to the front door. Wide stairs. Just twelve of them. The doors and windows down there are boarded over. Clear the staircase while we give you cover. Kick the boards off the door or window. Shoot an opening if you have to. We're getting out of here."

Brubaker hesitated a second but then nodded and scuffed to his right and down the staircase.

Hansen and Myers stayed behind the bench, muzzles swinging to cover the mezzanine levels across the rotunda, then the opposite main-staircase doorway. Nothing moved. No shots from the front staircase. Hansen heard Brubaker kicking the hell out of the boarded door and then the shout "Clear!"

Hansen had Myers cover him while he shuffled to the staircase and then covered the fat man while he wheezed and panted past him and down the stairs.

Outside, the night-vision goggles were almost too bright. It was still snowing hard, but the drifted expanse of the parking lot glowed like a green desert in bright sunlight. The three detectives abandoned all pretext of proper SWAT procedure and just loped away from the station, running flat-out across the parking lot. Each man ran hunched, obviously half-expecting a bullet between the shoulder blades. But as they reached a hundred feet from the tower, then two hundred, then a hundred yards and better, they began to relax slightly under their heavy flak vests. It would take a master marksman with a high-velocity rifle, night-scope, and much luck to get off a good shot at this distance, in this snow.

No shot came.

Panting and wheezing loudly now, they passed the low boulders blocking access to the lot and came down the slippery driveway. The goggles gave them a view of everything for sixty yards in each direction. Nothing moved. No other cars were visible. The only tire tracks in the driveway, mostly drifted over now, were those of the Cadillac Escalade, which had accumulated two inches of new snow in the forty-five minutes or so they had been in the station.

"Wait," panted Hansen. He used the remote to beep the Cadillac unlocked and they checked the lighted interior before approaching. Empty.

"Myers," said Hansen between gasps. "Keep your goggles and vest on and keep watch while Brubaker and I get out of this gear."

Myers grumbled but did as he was told as the other two detectives tossed their heavy vests, rifles, and helmets into the back of the SUV.