Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'Look,' said Helen, pointing down towards the piazza side as Hope Street began to fill with flashing blue lights. 'Someone must have seen them. Or maybe Mitch got out after all.'

'Thank God,' said Jenny. But as she said it she thought that help would come too late for Richardson and Curtis. She searched desperately for some way of stopping the Mannesmann on its track. Noticing the Stillson wrench lying on the rooftop where Richardson had dropped it, she ran and picked it up. She dashed into the path of the machine and forced the wrench into the gap between the rail and the runner wheel. For a moment the Mannesmann continued its course. As Jenny scrambled to get clear it suddenly stopped moving. She pushed herself up and returned to the parapet in time to see the abseiling rope snap and the cradle it had been restraining catapulted back across the facade of the Gridiron. For several moments it swung like a pendulum. Such was the force of the separation that both women were certain they would see the men flung across the downtown sky to certain death. So when Jenny let out a scream it was not for grief or fear but the relief at seeing them still aboard the suspended cradle and, for the moment at least, still alive.

Bunkered in the earthquake-proofed fourth and fifth sub-levels of City Hall East, Police Captain Harry Olsen commanded the Gridiron operation using ECCCS, the LAPD's state-of-the-art Emergency

Command Control Communications Systems. Designed by Hughes

Aerospace and NASA at a cost of $42 million, the control centre resembled a smaller version of NASA's own mission control room in the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. Cameras on the ground and on the helicopters of the LAPD airforce gave Olsen an almost complete picture of what was happening outside.

His computer assessed the fragmentary account given by Mitchell Bryan and judged that it would not be safe for a SWAT team to enter the building until the main power supply had been interrupted.

The ECCCS maintained a dedicated telephone line to all the major utilities, including the city's electrical engineers. As soon as Olsen had considered the computer's recommended course of action he spoke to the night-time supervisor and requested that they cut off the relevant circuit.

The helicopter pilots were already lowering safety harnesses to the two women on the roof. They looked like they had had a pretty rough time of it, he reflected. It was a simple enough rescue. But the two men on the cradle might turn out to be a little more tricky.

'We've got to get off this fucking thing,' said Richardson, 'before we're kissing the sidewalk, like the Pope.'

He unscrewed the karabinier joining him to the end of the abseiling rope, waited for the cradle to steady a little and then stepped smartly on to one of the huge cross-braces that characterized the building's distinctive facade. It provided a ledge about eighteen inches deep. Here, at the very edge of the building, there were no windows, just concrete. And the cradle was three or four feet farther away from this part of the facade than it had been when it had been hanging in front of the windows.

Curtis surveyed the gap uncertainly, even as he undipped his harness and prepared to make the jump. It was, he knew, hardly any distance at all. On the ground he would have done it without thinking. But two hundred feet in the air, it seemed greater. Especially since his legs already felt like two columns of jelly.

'Come on, man, jump. What the hell's the matter with you?'

The cables supporting the cradle tightened ominously.

'Quickly!'

Curtis jumped and caught Richardson's hand as he landed on the cross-brace. He steadied himself, then turned to face the city and found that the cradle was no longer where it had been a couple of seconds before. It was gone. There were only the two cables from the hydraulic jib on the Mannesmann above their heads to remind him of where they had just been standing. The realization unnerved him, and, closing his eyes, he pressed himself back against the concrete wall and took a deep breath.

'Jesus fucking Christ, you cut that fine,' said Richardson. He sat down and carefully dangled his legs over the edge.

Curtis opened his eyes and watched Richardson tear off one of his shirt sleeves and tie it around his bleeding head, apparently oblivious of the yawning height in front of him. 'Jesus, I don't know how you can sit there like that. Like you were paddling your feet in a river. It's twenty floors.'

'More comfortable than standing.'

'I'd puke if I wasn't so damned afraid of falling over while I was doing it.'

Richardson glanced coolly at a sky full of the throbbing noise of helicopters. From time to time the 'Nightsun' was so bright he had to shield his eyes against it.

'That's a comforting sound,' he said. 'A Bell Jet Ranger. I know, I've got one myself. So take it easy, I doubt we'll be here very long. Shit. It looks like we're going to be on TV.'

'What?'

'One of those choppers has KTLA painted on the side of it.'

'Assholes.'

'Your ordeal is nearly over, my friend. But I suspect mine is just beginning.'

'How's that?'

'This is lawyers' country. They'll be after me like fucking barracuda. Even you, Frank.'

'Me? Why should I sue you? I hate lawyers.'

'You'll get calls, you mark my words. Your wife will persuade you to do it. Nervous shock, they'll call it, or some such shit. I guarantee that within seventy-two hours of getting home, you'll have a lawyer working on your case. With contingency fees, what can you lose?'

'Hey, you're insured, aren't you? You'll be OK.'

'Insurance? They'll find a way out of it. That's what these people do. That's business, Frank. Lawyers, insurance companies. The whole rotten edifice. Just like this lousy building.'

'Well, you've got to be alive to be liable,' said Curtis, 'and we're not off this silver rock yet.'

The city engineers called Olsen on the ECCCS.

The street circuit controlling the Yu Building side of Hope Street has been switched off,' said the night supervisor. 'It should be safe enough now. Let me know when you want power back. And I'll need something in writing to cover us for liability.'

'The computer is generating the E-mail now,' said Olsen.

'Yeah, you're right. It's coming through.'

'Thanks a lot.'

Olsen spoke to the commander on the ground on the piazza in front of the Yu Building.

'OK, listen up. The power's off. The place is secure. Check for survivors. One of the women on board the chopper reckons there might be someone left alive on level 21. Name of Beech.'

'What about the two men on the front?'

'Chopper will get them down ASAP. But there's a lot of heat coming up from the building and it's making for some air turbulence. Might take a while yet. One of them is LAPD Homicide.'

'Homicide? What the fuck's he doing up there? Making business for himself?'

'I don't know, but I hope he's got a good head for heights.'

A power failure was a relatively rare event in Los Angeles. Usually it signalled a major disaster — an earthquake, or a fire, or both. The standby power system at the Yu Corporation was designed to protect the company against any breach in the supply without loss of data. A static unit powered by solar-energy cells existed to provide a precious ten minutes' supply while the standby generating set was started by the computer.

Liquid fuel, pure refined oil, gushed into the turbine's combustion chamber as yellow as the first press of the best white grapes, mixed with a portion of air and burned deep in the bowels of the Gridiron at a constant pressure like something infernal, until the moment when the hot, tormenting gas turned the blades of the turbine motor and Ishmael, that algorithmic leviathan, had recovered sufficient strength for its last act.