John Gilstrap - Damage Control

As they started moving again, Boxers pointed out his mirror at the column of black smoke that was beginning to fill the sky from the spot where the Sandcat had crashed. “Yes, siree,” he said. “Better and better.”

Either Harriett hadn’t heard, or she’d chosen to ignore Gail’s warning. Either way, she was dashing toward her own death.

“Harriett!” She yelled it louder this time.

The clacking stopped.

“Come back up! They’ll be waiting for us in the lobby.”

“Waiting for us? They’re here for you.”

Gail moved faster down the stairs. Even though she was confident that they would not be followed, she kept her eyes and her weapon trained up the stairs. “They shot at you, too,” she corrected. “Do you know who they are?”

“I don’t know who you are,” Harriett countered. “You sure aren’t any cop.”

Gail stopped at the thirteenth-floor landing. She had to get out of this death trap of a stairwell. “I’m not going to argue with you,” she said. “If you want to have a chance at seeing tomorrow, you need to come with me.”

“Where are you going?”

“Not out the door to the lobby. Now, Harriett. Decide.”

From up here, Gail could just see the top of her head down on the eleventh-floor landing. Harriett’s hands were to her mouth, a posture of stress and indecision. This was taking way too much time, but Gail couldn’t just leave her. If it hadn’t been for Gail, Ms. Roller Derby wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.

The clacking started again, and Gail was thrilled to see that Harriett was coming back up.

“Faster!” Gail hissed, and she headed down to meet her at the twelfth-floor landing. “What’s in here?” she asked, reaching for the door handle.

“Storage, I think,” Harriett said. “Used to be offices, but they moved everybody out.”

Gail pulled the door open carefully, revealing a large unlit space that looked like it used to be a cubicle farm, but was now home to a maze of boxes and assorted junk. On the far side, a building width away, she saw what she hoped to see: another emergency exit, with a reasonably clear aisle leading to it. As she closed the door behind her, it all went black.

“I can find the light,” Harriett said.

“I don’t want the light,” Gail said. “Why are there no windows?”

“The office doors are closed. Only the executive offices have windows.”

Then Gail got it. The lights would stay out. This cubicle farm was the center ring of a square. The bad guys had all the advantage now as it was. If darkness could give Gail a tiny edge somehow, she was all for it. “What do you know about the security systems here?”

“Why are those people after you?” Harriett’s mind seemed stuck on stuff that just didn’t matter.

“Focus, Harriett. The security systems.”

“I have no idea. You saw the guards.”

“Do you know where the cameras are?”

“Everywhere, I guess.”

Useless.

Gail reached out into the darkness. “I’m going to grab your hand,” she said, “and I’m going to put it on my belt. I want you to hang on and keep up.” Once linked, she started moving down the center aisle, placing her feet in spots where she saw in her memory were not occupied by junk. After twelve steps-a number chosen because she knew that her full strides while walking equaled about twenty-six inches (see what routine exercise does for you?), and correcting for the smaller steps in the darkness, she figured that twelve steps gained her about twenty feet of distance.

From there, she pivoted what she estimated to be ninety degrees to her left, and she started walking more carefully, cautious of bumping into something.

“I want you to listen to me carefully, Harriett,” she said. “If the lights suddenly come on, or if the door opens, I want you to drop to the floor right away. And I mean drop where you stand.”

“Why?”

“Sweetie, you just need to stop asking questions for a little while. But the answer is so you don’t get shot. The bad guys won’t hesitate to fire, and I need a clear lane of vision to fire back. How’s that?”

“I wish I didn’t ask.”

“I get that a lot from people at times like these.”

“You mean you get a lot of times like these?”

If only you knew, she didn’t say. In fact, she didn’t say anything.

Gail holstered her weapon and walked with her arms outstretched before her with her forearms crossed. That way, if they ran into an unseen vertical obstacle that was thin-say, a pillar or an open door-there was zero chance that the obstacle would smack her in the face. She moved with frustrating caution, fully conscious of the fact that a stack of tipped-over stuff would be a clear indication for the bad guys of where she’d gone.

The destination was an office. She didn’t care which one; she just wanted a place where she could make the most important phone call of her life.

Harriett turned out to be more adept at following than Gail had expected. She stayed with her every step, never going faster, never dragging her down, and, most important, never falling, which is more difficult in a dark environment than most people think.

Finally, Gail’s hands found a wall. From there, she started moving to the right. In theory, sooner or later they’d encounter a doorknob, and that’s where she’d declare that they’d found a place to stop.

It turned out that the doorknob was only a few steps away.

Gail drew her weapon again-not because it made any sense that someone might be on the other side, but because she wanted to have a weapon in her hand.

As she pushed the door open, the splash of sunlight was startling.

“Quickly now,” she said. She pivoted her hips to sort of sling Harriett into the office, and then she followed behind quickly.

“Why are we here?” Harriett asked. “What are we going to do from here?”

“We’re going to call the cavalry,” Gail said. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and hit the speed dial. When the other party picked up on the second ring she said, “Mother Hen, this is Gunslinger. I need help.”

Venice’s mind raced as she listened to Gail over the open phone line, leaning on Venice to engineer a way out of the predicament. As she pulled her keyboard out from under the edge of her desk, Venice slipped her headset into her ear and hit the button to redirect the sound.

“It’s not that easy to pull up security plans,” she said as her fingers flew across the keyboard. With advance notice, she could research sites and steal passwords. With a little planning she could be brilliant with this sort of thing. Doing it on the fly was second to impossible. “It could take some time.”

“I don’t have time,” Gail said. “They have to know that we ducked into one of the floors. If they have enough cameras in place, they may even know exactly where we are.”

Venice’s stomach clamped. Gail had stated it exactly: when a commercial facility had any security at all, they tended to have a lot of it. It was an either/or kind of thing. The bad guys probably knew exactly where she was hiding. Even if Venice could pull up the access she needed, it was likely too late to be of much help. With advance notice, she could have recorded empty hallways and played them on the security screens in real time, but even that would have been difficult.

“I just don’t know what kind of help I can be.” She searched for some way to gain access into a system that she’d never researched.

“Then take a few notes,” Gail said. “Dennis Hainsley is the key player here. Remember-” Venice heard chatter in the background as Gail turned away from the phone. “All American Industries. One of the big last-minute donors. He’s very important to Reverend Mitchell. Harriett Burke says that his meetings had a big negative impact on Dr. Mitchell’s mood.”