David Dun - Overfall

He went through Weissman’s briefcase and found a small, unopened bottle of nitroglycerin tablets. Lucky again. Gaudet had them in his briefcase for such eventualities, but it was much better if the victim actually carried them.

He took an envelope with one Viagra and put it in Weissman’s pocket. From his shirt pocket he removed two paper coasters, each with a number written on it. He used the coaster with an A in the corner. He slipped it into Weissman’s wallet. Slapping Weissman about the face, he went to work waking him.

“Come on, John. John. I’m a doctor,” he said in his accented French. The voice displayed the concerned warmth of a physician. As the professor began to regain consciousness, Gaudet popped a Viagra in his mouth.

“Chew and swallow, John. You’ve had a little heart problem-this pill will help. Chew and swallow.”

John made a halfhearted effort at chewing.

“Swallow, John.”

John swallowed. Then he chewed a little more.

“Keep chewing, John.”

Next Gaudet took a syringe containing a gel form of concentrated Viagra solution and put it directly into Gaudet’s nostrils.

He popped two nitroglycerin tablets under John’s tongue. “More pills, John. These will help.”

As he worked, the bug under May’s desk carried a new sound into his earpiece: heavy boots thumping the floor; grunts and words spoken in Spanish. Two men. They were right on time.

Gaudet had worked hard and carefully to set this up. These men believed they had been hired by a Lebanese businessman. It would not surprise anyone that Aziz might have Latins do his bidding. Samir Aziz would not send Arabs-it could take weeks to get them into the country using Middle Eastern passports. Samir would use people already here or hire Europeans or South Americans. It was such an ecumenical world these days, one never knew from which direction one’s enemy was coming.

Gaudet took the CD from the computer. Before leaving he wiped all the gel from inside Weissman’s nostrils.

When he closed the door Weissman was nearly dead. It was unfortunate that Anna had given the man the disk. She had killed this man. Gaudet shrugged. Soon he would kill her.

Sam watched the leader once again start to circle, two of his men on the ground, now groaning, struggling, rising to fight on. There was tension that felt like a quivering note on a steel guitar. And then, as if the place were growing too quiet for the stress, the access door to the roof slammed open.

Two quick shots and someone had put bullets through Grubb and Scott, their foreheads opening like exploding pomegranates. Sam stepped back to defend Anna. Two men dressed in black and masked rushed through the access door onto the roof with guns aimed at Shohei. Sam drew down on one of them and dropped the first gunman with a hit to the chest. Flak jacket, Sam thought. The sound of the strike indicated body armor.

The second man fired. A bullet sliced the air and slammed into Shohei’s upper torso. There was a contortion of his face, a snapping of his body, and a gush of air from Shohei’s lungs, as he crumpled around the wound. Sam shot even before he comprehended, parting the gunman’s head in a red spray.

Things happened in a blur, with the remaining gunman firing too fast from the ground, first at the wounded Shohei, then at Sam. Sam jumped back into the equipment room, thinking of Anna.

Now diving and rolling to escape his pursuers, Shohei left a thick blood trail. The leader and the two others went for Shohei with the energy that comes with a second chance, grabbing him and making such a tangle of flesh that Sam saw only struggling bodies. They were a foot from the roof edge. Sam could not risk a shot into the knotted bodies.

Sam saw the remaining gunman jump over and behind a planter box. Without waiting Sam charged the planter and dived, certain the man was popping a clip. Sam hit the middle of the man’s body and took out his eyes with finger jabs. Another strike to the head and the man was finished.

Sam turned to Shohei and saw him head-butting and kicking, throwing his own blood everywhere as he struck. The bullet had ripped a lot of flesh. Sam looked at his eyes, certain that the color of life was fading.

The Frenchmen were pushing him to the edge. Not one of them seemed fearful of dying so long as they got Shohei.

Having no choice, Sam threw his knife into the bodies, hoping he wouldn’t kill his friend. The dull silver of the razor-sharp blade sank deep in the leader’s back. There was a pause as they teetered on the edge; a quiet wind was nature’s sigh before receiving her own. They fell.

Sam stepped to the edge.

His breath caught in his throat. Ten feet below, dangling on a harness suspended by two cables, an aluminum window washer’s platform shone gray and pitted under the dull November sky. All three men lay on the platform. The two had their hands on Shohei’s chest and chin, trying to shove him into space. Sam jumped. From behind him Anna screamed.

The platform shook and swayed with the impact of Sam’s landing. One swift kick and a fist strike and Sam had the two men unconscious. In seconds the leader would be gone forever. There was no key to operate the electric motors that would raise the platform. Reaching down, he found a hole in Shohei’s shoulder and compressed it with his fist. Then a second hole closer to the chest. Shohei coughed. Death was near. His face was ashen. Sam had to move him to the roof.

Then he saw it. Running down the first twenty feet of the building was a row of steel protrusions held fast in the concrete. The entire logic of a twenty-foot ladder on a fifty-nine-story building escaped him, but the fact of it filled him with hope. His soul was now slightly less bleak than the sky. Putting Shohei in a fireman’s carry, he climbed. Anna’s worried eyes peered down.

“Shohei, you look a little bruised there,” Sam said as he laid his friend on the rooftop.

“Never mind,” Shohei whispered.

“It was a great show until somebody brought a gun. You know I’m gonna be really screwed up if you die on me. Damn you.”

“You should take Anna to see the cherry blossoms of Hokkaido,” Shohei whispered.

“Please don’t die on me.” Sam heard his own voice crack.

Sam did what he could to stop the bleeding while Anna used his cell phone. He told her who to call. A helicopter ambulance arrived five minutes later to lift out a nearly dead Shohei.

“I’m going with him,” Anna said.

“They won’t let you.”

“They will.”

“We can’t protect you as well if you do that.”

“I don’t care. I’m going. Do plan B.”

“I have to go get Weissman-we don’t have time to argue.”

“Good, you can save your breath. Good-bye.”

The jet turbines began to whine.

Sam watched her scream at the pilots, gesturing her determination. He couldn’t imagine what she would say to get them to bend an unbendable rule, but he wasn’t surprised when she climbed in.

The Frenchmen had by now all slunk away, or died, or carried one another off. He didn’t care. The only bad guys who’d succeeded in doing any real damage were corpses. There was apparently a second player after the CD who cared not a whit for the French or anyone else.

Anna Wade watched as the medics worked on Shohei.

“Take care of Sam,” he choked.

They ran IVs and got blood started.

“Oh, God,” one of them muttered, trying to stop the bleeding with a plastic bandage.

They injected medicine, got him an airway, a respirator, blood, oxygen, and stuck electrodes to the part of his chest that wasn’t raw meat. Anna saw Shohei watching her from the corner of his eye. His fingers moved like fish fins in calm water and knowing what he wanted, she took his left hand and tried to send her love. But she doubted that he was conscious for more than seconds.