Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 18:38:56 EDT Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "N.L. Cleveland" Subject: Aloha Chapter 2 (p 127-132) c 1994 as always, comments, responses are welcome at NancySSCH@aol.com ***** Time to do down. Time to find the Director. Behind the door marked "Storage," keyed open with another murdered man's stolen access card, he found the elevator. The door locks were on a different electrical system. So were the elevators. And each floor was shielded, separated from the one above, and below. He remembered this, from his training. He had disrupted the entry floor, but had also alerted everyone in the building to his presence. There was nothing else to be done. He just had to move faster than they could follow. Jonathan grabbed a large monkeywrench from the toolbox, smashed the emergency elevator lock, pulling the key out and manually overriding the controls, then levered the door open with the screwdriver. Jamming it open, just a few inches, and sliding through the open doors.The car was stopped, a few feet above the top of the floor. He slipped through the outside doorway, and scrambled on top of the huge metal box. He shoved the monkeywrench's sturdy cast steel handle into the chain the car rose up and down on. Just above the gearbox attached to the roof of the car. He couldn't block the stairs, but at least the easiest route out was gone. The Agency had its own elevator, not tied in to the rest of the building. He listened. There was no sound, no noise from inside the car. It was empty. He slid back out to the floor, pulled the screwdriver out of the door, and turned the elevator key again, setting the car in motion, sending it up, hearing it grind into the wrench, the cables groaning, as it jerked to a halt, the gears clashing, stripping, metal splinters showering in a musical hail against the doors as he listened. It would not move again. Not for a while. Not until they got a new gearbox, and a new chain. Jonathan headed for the stairwell. Keyed the locked door open with a third stolen access card. Eased into the stairs, and dropped, flat, to the floor, as he heard a whisper of metal on metal, from below. From above. Bullets splattered on the stairs, pinging off the metal railings, raising tiny clouds of dust as they bored little craters in the the concrete block wall, inches from his face. He tasted the gritty dust on his tongue as he crawled back rapidly through the still open door, shoving it shut behind him, hearing more bullets flattening into the metal door. He rolled to his feet, and put two bullets through the guts of the electronic lock mechanism that keyed the door. The lock snicked open, then shut. The door stayed closed. He tested it with his hand. Yanked at it. It didn't move. He sprinted back to the elevator, pryed open the door with the screwdriver, letting it slide shut behind him as he swarmed up, over and down the far side of the car, searching for the access ladder, for the way down. Jonathan swung out from the car, grabbed the slender metal rungs that ran down the outer wall of the shaft, and lowered himself, holding the screwdriver in his teeth, the two pistols hanging heavy in his pockets. Beneath him he felt vast empty space. There were scattered maintenance lights in the shaft, their weak glow barely illuminating the ladder, barely allowing him to make out the floor numbers painted on the walls, as he descended. He was at the second level, now. Above him, he could hear the elevator doors being pryed open. Light flooded into the shaft, and figures crowded into the light, heads, shoulders, peering down at him, guns firing. He grabbed the edges of the ladder and slid, his hands and feet sledding along the metal edge, holding his shirt between his palms and the metal, feeling the cloth ripping, shredding, tearing away. The gloves, ripping. His skin, ripping. He gained another floor, and another, then shuddered as a bullet found its mark, scoring across his shoulder, numbing his arm. Jonathan almost fell, his grip weakening, slipping. His left arm dangled, his right hand caught, bearing all his weight. Above, shouts of triumph, a more intense fusillade of shots. He swung in to the ladder, around, swiveled, pushed himself out and across the open space, using all the power in his legs to launch himself through the void, feeling the black well sucking at him, gravity pulling at his body. Pulling him down. His hand, his arm hit the opposite wall, fingers gripping instinctively, clutching to life, to the hard, sharp metal edge of the doorframe. The number 5 glowed on the door, the luminous paint peeling, cracked and pitted, up close. He swung, dangling above the open shaft, his body twisting as he fought to reach the door, reach the tightly closed gap between the two metal halves, to dig the screwdriver in, pry it open. He forced his numbed arm to work, to respond. Fire lanced up his nerves, his fingers shook, almost losing their grasp on the screwdriver. He bit through his lower lip, using one pain to overcome the other, to force his body to obey, his mind to focus. A slim strip of light showed, widened, and he dropped, his toes scrabbling for purchase on the slender ledge, then he was through, slipping between the doors, sideways, the screwdriver holding them open, braced across the gap. This corridor was silent, except for the almost subliminal hum of the flourescent lights. No voices, no motion. Below him, in the shaft, Jonathan heard another elevator door being forced open. Heard feet ringing as they climbed the metal rungs of the ladder. The trap was closing. He yanked out the screwdriver, let the elevator doors slide shut once again, and spun, seeking a way out. Seeking a weapon. Seeking a target. The blank doors mocked him. Mute. Locked. He thought back, to his days in training, reconstructing the levels in his mind. 5th level....this whole level was supplies, a vast, secure storeroom, compartmentalized death, ready to be checked out, on demand. With the proper requisition form, in triplicate. He eyed the locks. Unpickable. His collection of magnetic cards would not work here. These were keyed differently, coded and changed daily. Or at least they had been. Jonathan slipped the handful from his pocket, slid them quickly through the sensor on the nearest door. Nothing. He felt another, last card, its shape pressing against his skin, overlooked, deep in his pocket. He pulled it out, slid it through. The lock clicked. The handle turned. He was in. He closed the door behind him, hoping to gain a moment's extra time, hoping that his pursuers might think he had left this floor, already. The lights, motion sensitive, flicked on automatically as he entered the room. He moved quickly to the far shelves, wondering if he had won this gamble, or lost. Small arms, ammunition wouldn't help him now. < Anything less than a bazooka....> He stopped. Looked closer at the boxes lining the shelves. Felt himself smiling. Plastique, detonators, landmines, hand gernades....the entire room was filled with explosives. He didn't remember any cache of combustible explosives being kept in such a sensitive location, before. In the heart of the city, in a civilian building....Certainly not officially, at least. He didn't have time to explore the question right now, but he knew he'd be looking into it later. He ripped off one of the shipping labels, stuffed it into his back pocket, and then moved rapidly through the shelves, tearing off the vacumn sealed tops of the boxes, opening the explosives to the air, piling another stack of plastique in the center of the room, and setting up the detonators in a heap on top of them. He stuffed two cubes of C-4 into his side pocket, a handful of detonators into the other, wound a few yards of fuse into a makeshift bandolier, hung a half dozen gernades from it. Left behind one of the pistols instead. Jonathan found the longest reel of fuse and unwound it in a large circle around the room, a long spiral that began at the door, and ended on the detonator pile. He took three bullets from the gun he was leaving behind, pried off the metal jackets and poured the gunpowder into a small grey pile on top of the end of the fuse that sat by him, near the door. He stepped away from the fuse, took careful aim and shot at the pile, a spark striking the small pile of gunpowder, the tiny fire leaping, sizzling, then flaring in a short, sharp fizz as the powder ignited and burned out almost immediately. He blinked his eyes, trying to clear the afterglare away. Was the fuse burning? Yes.... He wondered if they had evacuated the building, yet. Pushed the thought away. He was damned already. Damned for eternity. What were a few hundred more deaths... He gritted his teeth. Blanked his mind. Focused on the objective. As he had been taught. So well. And learned to do. Expertly. The handful of detonators he'd slipped into his other pocket clinked and clicked. He moved to the door. Opened it. Listened. Glanced out. Two men were at the far end of the hall, looking into an open storage room door there, guns drawn. He aimed, fired, as they turned towards him, their mouths open, shouting, their hands coming up, shooting. His bullets caught the first in the throat, the second in the chest. He slipped fully out of the room, and moved down the corridor. Cautiously. Heard the door close, behind him. Glanced at it for a second, to be sure it was tight. Turned back, too late, to face a second pair of agents, guns drawn, firing at him as they barreled out of the open store room door. He threw himself forward, tumbling, rolling on his shoulder, rolling back up to his feet, staggering as a bullet found its mark in his calf, firing at them as he moved, rose, from the unexpected new position. They stood, baffled, a small round hole marking each of their white business shirts, red seeping aross their pale silk ties, their faces blanching, eyes rolling up in their heads, bodies collapsing, limp and lifeless, at his feet, as he passed. Unheeding. Uncaring. He limped to the open door, glanced in. This was the armory...he had no time. No need. He kept on, half limping, half running. Opened the stairwell door, ducked back from the bullets splattering at him from above and below, tossed three of his gernades down it, slammed the door shut and heard the explosive echoing boom, saw the door bend with the pressure pushing on it. Bend, and crack, a small eddy of smoke, of dust, sifting out of the warped, twisted frame. Heard screams, faintly, from below. Felt a moment of pity, for these unseen, unknown men. Pushed it aside. Back to the elevator, then. He pried the shaft door open. Found himself face to face with another man, a gun pointing between his eyes. Jonathan blinked, kicked, fell back as the bullet whispered over his forehead, burning his skin with its passage, and the man fell away, out and down the empty, echoing shaft, his scream following him, outliving him, as he hit bottom, and was silent. Listening, Jonathan imagined the terror of the fall, the suddent impact, the blank void of death. The elevator shaft was alive with footsteps, shouting cursing voices....Jonathan rolled three more of his gernades into the slender opening between the automatic doors, watched them disappear, one by one, into the dark. Innocent little black eggs. Deadly eggs. He turned, twisted, threw himself back and away as the triple explosions rocked the doors, rocked the walls, plucked men off the inner metal ladder and hurled them howling to their deaths. Scattered deadly shards of shrapnel up and down the shaft, flaying at skin, at muscle. He flinched, in sudden sympathy, picturing it, imagining how it felt. Sobs and cries of agony replaced the sound of the hunt. The hunters were being hunted, being hurt. More cursing, but furthur away this time. Footsteps retreated, instead of advanced. Jonathan considered. Snarled, almost fighting himself this time. Took a fourth gernade, sent it after its fellow nestlings. Heard the hollow thunder, more screams, as it took its toll. Heard all sound in the elevator shaft cease. Mourned for his enemies. For himself. In the back of his mind, a calculator was tallying up the score, tabluating the dead, the maimed, the bloody ruins he was leaving behind. He could see the numbers, see the faces and bodies of the men, women, he'd killed, hovering at the periphery of his vision, of his consciousness, pale ghosts. He examined his leg. The wound was clean. In and out. It seeped but did not gush. No arteries, at least. He could ignore it. It would heal. He pulled a dab of the C-4 off the brick, worked it in his fingers, tamped down the detonator into the soft, yielding plastic, and wedged it into the corner of the corridor wall, where the floor met the side wall. Met a small square ventilation duct. Next to the lavatory. He reviewed the half remembered architectural plans he'd once studied, the diagrams of the structural stress points for this building. This was one of the weakest points in the corridor. No support columns, no steel reinforcement...this was where the plumbing stack cut through the building. He huddled on the floor, at the furthest end of the corridor from the C-4, and shot at the detonator. Ducked, tried to flatten himself into the linoleum, as the explosive went up, out and through the wall, chunks of plaster and metal mesh webbbing laying scattered across the floor, the smell of untreated sewage rising pungently from the pipes, where water gushed from the twisted, broken metal. He hurried back, his steps unsteady, his ears ringing, his hearing coming and going. He knelt at the narrow opening, put his shoulders in and glanced down. The stack was wide enough for him to shimmy along the pipes, and led where he wanted to go... down. He could hear, faintly, through the ringing in his ears, voices rising through the elevator shaft again. Questions, shouts.