Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job (The Kim Oh Thrillers) (20 page)

“Yeah?” Cole held the phone to his ear and listened for a few seconds. “No problem. Let ’em in.” He flipped the phone shut and tossed it back into the duffel bag.

Leaning out the door of the office, the guard waved his okay to us. I prodded Ibanez with the gun I’d taken back out of my jacket. She put the van in gear and drove down the parking garage’s ramp.

“Good job,” said Cole when she finally parked the van. At the bottom level, there was no one else around us. “You were a real help.” He held the gun up against the back of her head. “Sorry to have to do this –”

“No.” I reached over and grabbed his hand. “Don’t –”

“We have to. There isn’t a choice about it.”

“Not with me along.” I looked over at the reporter. “You said you wanted a story. About McIntyre. Well, here’s the deal. Is there any doubt in your mind about us being serious? That we’re here to take care of something important?”

She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the gun behind her, then at the one in my hand. “No –” She shook her head. “You’re for real. Both of you.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I know you don’t like McIntyre, either. You told me that much. You’d just never been able to do anything about him before. So all you have to do is sit here until we’re done with what we came here to do – and then McIntyre will be all taken care of. The way you’d like him to be. The way a lot of people would like it. But if you don’t sit tight – if you call the police – then he won’t be taken care of. He’ll still be alive. And you won’t have much of a story. Nothing like what you’ll have if you just wait here.” I lowered the gun in my hand. “Does that make sense?”

Ibanez looked me straight in the eye, then nodded. “Perfect,” she said.

I figured that was the great thing about professionals like her. Anything for a good story. With visuals.

“You’ll be the first on the scene.” I tucked the shiny .357 back into my jacket. “You’ll know when it’s gone down.”

I looked back at Cole, pushing himself up with one hand where he lay behind the driver’s seat. He didn’t look happy with the arrangement.

“This is the stupidest idea I ever heard.” He kept the muzzle of his gun against the back of Ibanez’s head. “You can’t trust people to do what you need them to do. That’s like Rule Number One.”

“Fine,” I said. “Then haul your own sorry ass up there and nail McIntyre. But you won’t be doing it with any help from me.”

He glared at me for a moment longer, then shook his head. And lowered his gun.

“All right,” I told Ibanez as I pushed open the door at my side. “See you in a bit. Or not.”

I went around to the rear of the van and opened it up.

“This is going to be a lot of work.” Cole pushed himself toward me. “Without the wheelchair. Hope you’re ready for it.”

“Wait a minute.” Another thought, a less professional one, had just entered my head. “I’ll be right back. I’ve got something to take care of.”

I left him there in the back of the television news van. I walked away, digging into my jacket pocket for my own cell phone.

It rang for a while after I punched the number I wanted. I could picture the other phone ringing on the little table in Donnie’s room, next to his bed. Sometimes he caught a couple hours of sleep during the day. I didn’t know if I wanted him to wake up and answer the phone or not.

He answered. “Hello?”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

“Kimmie – is that you?”

I’d just wanted to hear his voice again.

I closed up the phone and switched it off. I didn’t want him calling me back.

Not while I was busy.

“Okay –” I’d walked back to the rear of the news van. “Let’s get to work.”

NINETEEN

It was a long way, up to where we needed to get.

The elevator would’ve been faster – and a lot easier – but we couldn’t risk having it stop at one of the floors along the way. Even if the building’s offices had emptied out, there could still be a few stragglers around. The doors might’ve slid open and revealed to anyone outside the sight of me toting an ominously heavy duffel, its strap slung over my shoulder, and Cole slowly leaking blood from the arm he held clamped tight to his side.

That sort of thing tends to get people’s attention.

Which was exactly what we didn’t want right now. Once I had managed to get Cole into the emergency stairwell, I eased him down onto its concrete floor.

“Are you going to make it?” I regarded him with genuine concern. “You look like hell.”

“Don’t worry . . . about me.” He slowly regained his breath. “Just get up there. And get things ready.”

I hesitated for a moment, then turned and started carrying the duffel bag up to the landing above. Behind me, I could Cole laboriously crawling from one metal stair to the next.

By the time I got to the top, my heart was pounding in my chest. I dropped the duffel bag at the heavy steel barrier concealing the door to McIntyre’s company offices. I bent over, hands to my knees, and worked to catch my breath. I could just make out the slow, dragging sound way below, of Cole continuing his own long climb.

I didn’t wait for him – I knew he’d get up here eventually. I opened up the duffel bag and took out the heavy device that I’d helped Cole put together, days ago at his workbench in the warehouse.

The holes in the door-jammer’s side flanges lined up perfectly with the threaded studs I had driven into the wall when I had been here before. I pushed the device’s welded steel frame flat against the wall, then took a set of bolts and a battery-powered impact wrench from the duffel bag. A few quick pulls on the wrench’s trigger, going from one stud to the next, and the door-jammer was bolted tight to the wall.

I dropped the impact wrench back into the duffel bag, then grabbed a heavy-duty pair of pliers from it. One by one, I gripped the cotter pins with the pliers’ ridged teeth and pulled them free. When the last one came out, the compressed spring partially expanded, driving the thick blade-like piece through its slot in the device’s frame. With a sharp clang that reverberated through the stairwell space, the flat end of the blade struck the metal barrier.

Laying my ear against the barrier, I tried to detect if anyone on the other side had heard what I’d been doing. Nothing. As I pulled myself away from the cold metal, I could hear Cole on the landing below. I stepped over to the edge of the landing and looked down at him.

“What . . . are you waiting for . . .” The face looking back at me was grimly pale and haggard. “Go on . . . keep working . . .”

I picked up the duffel bag and carried it down to the landing where he was. He dragged himself into the landing’s corner and watched as I took out an industrial heat gun, switched it on, and aimed it at the edge of the doorway beside us. A few seconds passed before a hissing sound came from the door’s lock. The white, clay-like substance, the stuff that I had prodded in there while Cole had been talking to the building’s leasing agent, bubbled and expanded, forcing back the lock’s steel bolt. I pulled the door open, revealing the empty level beneath McIntyre’s offices. Cole crawled behind me as I stepped into the bare-walled, unfinished space.

There was more work needed, but nothing that I could do. Cole’s technical expertise was required. I stood beside him as he knelt next to the elevator doors. Using an electric screwdriver from the duffel bag, he dismantled the metal plate with the
UP
and
DOWN
buttons. I held a flashlight for him as he started sorting out the colored electrical wires inside.

“Hold on –” I glanced at the watch on my wrist. We were already running behind. It had taken a lot longer than we had planned, for Cole to drag himself up the stairwell to this floor. I set the flashlight on the floor and went over to the window. I could see down below, on the street, McIntyre’s limo approaching the front of the building. “Here they come –”

I looked back and saw Cole still working on the elevator wiring, now with the flashlight gripped between his teeth, shining its beam inside the wall.

I could imagine what was going on in the parking garage. McIntyre would be getting out of the limo with a couple of his security guys. He’d say, “Has anybody seen Michael around?”

The one named Louie would shake his head no.

“Have him come to my office as soon as you get hold of him.” Then McIntyre would head for the elevator.

Up where we were, Cole twisted together the two wires he’d stripped. We both looked up and saw the numbers light up above the elevator doors. The
3
, the
2
, then the letter
G
for the ground floor. And then
P1
for the first level of the underground parking garage.

McIntyre’s security guys would check out the inside of the elevator and make sure everything was all clear with it. Then their boss would get in.

Cole and I watched the little red numbers head the other way. The elevator was coming up again.

I knew what to do next. Cole had run me through the drill until I had it down cold.

From the duffel bag, I picked up the loaded AR-SF. With its butt, I smashed out the window I had just looked through, then scraped away the remaining shards. The sill dug into the base of my spine as I leaned out backward, aiming the assault rifle up toward the floor above.

Cole watched the little numbers, until the last one on the right lit up red. The elevator had gone past us and reached the top floor. “There you go,” he said. “Exactly where we want him.”

I took a single shot, shattering the window above me. I yanked my head in, diving for the floor as the jagged pieces rained down outside.

It didn’t require much imagination to picture the reaction on the floor above us. Just as the elevator doors were sliding open and McIntyre stepping out – the sound of a gunshot from somewhere outside the building and the window of the company’s reception area bursting into pieces –

The security guys swung into action, grabbing their boss and hauling him down to the floor for protection. Louie had his cell phone out and was shouting into it.

I knew that happened because Michael’s cell phone rang inside the duffel bag. Cole took the phone out and flipped it open.

We both heard Louie’s frantic voice. “Michael – where the hell are you! Something’s happening –”

Cole held the phone to the side of his face. “Michael’s dead.” He kept his voice level and emotionless. “And you got big problems, pal.” Then he slung the cell phone out the shattered window.

Stuff was happening fast now. Which was good, because it didn’t give me any time to think about them. I just switched over to autopilot, doing the things Cole had drilled into me.

He touched together two other wires from inside the wall. The elevator headed down from the floor above us. The doors slid open, and I darted inside. Holding the assault rifle by its butt, I reached straight up and moved aside the access panel in the elevator ceiling. I laid the rifle down, stepped out, and grabbed Cole around the chest, and dragged him into the elevator.

I squatted down and held him around the knees, keeping him upright, straining to lift him –

Nothing happened. He was too heavy for me.

“Crap –”

“Kim,” he said, looking down at me. “You really gotta do this.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, gritted my teeth, and pushed with my legs. I couldn’t tell if anything was happening at all, until I realized I was standing partway up, my knees trembling with the effort. I heard Cole scrabbling at the elevator ceiling. Opening my eyes, I saw him grab hold of either side of the open panel. The weight of his body lifted from my grasp as I watched him pull himself up into the dark space above the elevator.

After a moment, Cole’s face appeared in the opening, looking down at me.

“You know what to do,” he told me. “When they come out, nail a couple if you can, but make sure you drive them back inside.”

“Okay –” I handed up to him the package I had taken out of the duffel bag.

“And don’t go in after them. Wait until I get back here and hook up with you.”

As I backed out of the elevator, I could hear Cole shifting around, then cutting another pair of wires and touching their ends together. The doors slid together in front of me, and the elevator started upward. I saw the number light up for the floor above.

I had a good idea what was happening up there, on top of the elevator. Out of my sight, Cole probably let his tough facade crack. He’d be leaning against the machinery, head down, panting for breath as bright drops of his blood fell one by one to the elevator floor . . .

And on the floor above, the security guy Louie heard the elevator moving, and the little red number at the far right coming on.