Jim DeFelice - Threat Level Black

“This is war,” said Somers. “You can’t see everything. The other side has a vote.”

“That’s right,” said Tyler.

The Ranger captain had a pained expression on his face; he didn’t believe him. Tyler grabbed his arm. “That’s right. It’s not your fault. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s my fault.”

The man blinked, not understanding, then nodded.

“It’s my fault,” said Tyler.

“Thank you, sir,” said the captain.

“No, I mean it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me talk to the helicopter people and see if they can rig up another sling with the other UAV,” Tyler said. “Get it the hell out of here before we’re attacked again.”

Howe walked toward the warehouse, his heels kicking against pebbles and broken glass. A railroad track was embedded in the macadam; he stepped on the worn rail, sole scuffing. The gun was now a few feet away, on his left, behind him just enough so he couldn’t see it without turning back to look at his captor. Another of the thugs pulled Alice ahead to the right, heading toward a door. The third was behind him somewhere-but where?

Rusted oil drums sat in a pile at the corner of the building; the other direction lay bare.

He could grab the gun, shoot the thug with Alice, take her around the side of the building.

Guy in the back would nail him, then her.

He turned right, trying to see. The low groan of the highway filtered past the buildings, making its way up the embankment. They were alone here, very alone. He heard a Cessna nearby and realized the civilian airport sat on the other side of the highway.

Someone would see them. Someone.

He heard a helicopter approaching.

“Move it.” The thug on his left took a step forward and smacked him in the ribs with the blunt grip of the gun.

He can’t shoot me that way, Howe realized, and in that second he sprang.

“There-go!” yelled Fisher into the headset. He grabbed at the door of the helicopter, pushing his elbow hard against it, only to have the wind slap him back into the seat.

“How close do you want to get?” asked Maureen Justice.

“Hit them!” Fisher undid his seat belt and leaned forward against the side of the forward panel of the traffic helicopter.

“Hit them? Andy, I don’t owe you that much.”

“You’ll be able to broadcast it live. You’ll be as famous as the helicopter pilot in the O.J. case.” He pulled out his pistol.

“Hey, wait a second,” she shouted. “You didn’t say you were going to shoot somebody.”

“I told you, it’s national security.”

“Andy!”

“Got to get their attention!” said Fisher, firing off two rounds from his revolver.

“Good, they’re taking out guns! They’re shooting at me!”

“Took ’em long enough. Come on, run ’em over.”

“Jesus!”

Maureen swung the helicopter in an arc to the north, tilting wildly as she lurched away from the gunmen. Fisher was sure she’d seen much worse on her daily traffic reports, but there wasn’t time to argue.

“Put me down on the roof!” he told her, whipping off the headset.

“The roof?”

Fisher hung on the helicopter door with one hand, belatedly realizing that the metal was thinner than it appeared. He swung his feet around, searching for the skids beneath. He looked down, saw gray concrete.

Between the wind and the engine noise there was no way the pilot could hear him, but Fisher knew that there were moments in every case when a strategic shout was your best and only option.

“The roof!” he yelled. “The roof!”

Ribs of white metal appeared below. Fisher felt his grip slipping and tried to swing his body toward what he thought was the thicker part of the roof as he fell. He misjudged both his direction and the distance, crashing down four or five feet from the gutter. But the mistake was fortuitous: He hit between two rafters, and the metal absorbed a good deal of the shock as he rolled down against the surface. His pistol flew away, spinning wildly before sliding into the gutter, its long nose pointing skyward. Fisher threw himself out after it, sliding hands-first down the slope.

Howe grabbed at the thug’s weapon, shoving his shoulder into the goon’s midsection. The world narrowed to a blue-smoke oblong, a thick hard rectangle in the middle of his eye, the middle of his head. Everything around him blackened, became a void. He felt the warmth of the metal on his fingers, then nothing; ice froze his eyes and chest and hand. He found himself revolving, then floating, then on the ground.

The gun sat a few feet away. Something clawed at him, a wild animal, a lion. A howl shook his ears. Howe threw himself in the direction of the screech, then flew toward the L-shaped metal, the Beretta in the gravel. Something stomped on the back of his head, and the black void squeezed the side of his face. Howe pushed forward, determined to get the gun now, determined to get it and beat the blackness back.

Fisher couldn’t stop his momentum as he hit the end of the roof. He grabbed at the gutter but the metal wasn’t tightly fastened; the lightweight aluminum shot out from the building and then immediately bent downward under the FBI agent’s weight. Fisher tried swinging his legs up and over as he fell, but he could only get them halfway before the other end of the gutter gave way. He tried to get his feet down to hit the ground in a reasonable manner, but instead slapped against the building and then crashed into the pile of barrels, which fortunately broke most of his fall as he hit the ground. He rolled in the middle of them, head spinning so badly that he had trouble reaching for the small gun in the holster on his leg.

Howe realized he had the gun in his hand and scraped against the pavement, his skin tearing away as he tried to get up. He jerked around, saw his captor running back toward the car.

Where was Alice?

“ Alice!”

Where was Alice?

Fisher struggled to his feet, both hands on the hideaway Glock and ears ringing loudly. He fired twice, winging the man who’d started to run to the car and sending him to the pavement. Fisher saw Howe on his right, just getting up; the girl must be inside the building.

There was a window on the side of the building behind him. Fisher took a step backward toward it. Howe yelled something.

“Yo, Colonel, cover those assholes near the car until the cops come,” Fisher said, shouting over the banging that had taken over his head. Then he went to the window and smashed it open with a metal shovel that lay in the grass and jumped through.

Or at least tried to jump through. A piece of glass snagged his trousers and then his shoe, ripping them and sending him crashing to the floor off balance.

“My third-best pair of brown pants,” he complained, pulling himself against the wall and looking at his exposed calf and sock. “Now I’m pissed.”

Howe leaped through the open door, throwing himself to the ground. Something crashed on the far side of the building; he cringed, expecting bullets to slash through him.

Still cringing, shaking now with fear, he got to his knees. He had the gun in his hand.

Where was she?

He was in a large, empty room. There were two doors twenty feet across from him, hallways into the back. Howe got up and started for them, his knees stiffening. He got to the wall and leaned against it, listening.

Fisher saw something move in the filtered light across the open space.

“FBI. Give it up,” he yelled.

“I’ll kill her!”

“That’d be really stupid,” said Fisher.

The man replied by firing three times in Fisher’s direction. The FBI agent hit the deck, crawling around the back of what appeared to be a desk.