The Crisis (49 page)

A black-uniformed guard leaned beside her door. He checked Dan's ID against an entry list, comparing him to the photo. Then nodded, and Dan knocked.

“That you, Dan?”

She stood before the window in a robe, holding back the curtain as she gazed down at the city center. She'd lost weight. Her collarbones were outlined. At the second look, nearer, he saw that the skin at the corners of her eyes had not escaped the passage of time. She'd cut her hair, too.

Then he was too close to see, and she'd never felt better in his arms.

She held on desperately, then seemed to come to and backed him away from the window, into the singing breeze of an electric fan. “Can you put the chain on? In case Margaret comes back? I was going to take a shower.”

“Don't let me interrupt.”

She tasted of sweat and dust and the familiar intensely exciting scent of aroused woman. His hands went under the robe, and she caught her breath. “Right . . . there. God, your hands are rough.”

“Like sandpaper?”

“More like cheese graters. But that doesn't mean I don't like it.”

“Do you like this too?”

Her closed eyes told him she did.

A minute later she struggled up from the bed, pulling her robe closed. “I know what you want, Dan. I do too. Problem is, in half an hour I meet with Dobleh and the ADA leadership to map election strategy. He'll stand for president—”

“You spend too much time with presidents. How about if he waits?”

“Hmm,” she said. “Maybe it wouldn't hurt him that much.”

“It would do him good.” Dan pulled her down again. “Teach him to be patient.”

“Maybe so.” She let the robe go and lay back naked, hair a mess and breasts sweaty in the close air. Her pale body gleamed like wet ivory in the dim curtained room. “If he's patient, maybe good things will happen.”

He ran his hand up her thighs and softly separated twin leaves that unkissed to a slick wetness. She put her hands on his shoulders. He buried his face in her belly, then ran his tongue down into the taste of the sea.

“Get that fucking uniform off, Commander,” she murmured. “Right now.”

With a sudden, violent heave the bed rose behind her and he was on the floor, the cheap carpet prickling his back, bewildered, ears ringing.

Before he could register what was happening the wall surrounding the entrance door blew in. The overhead light shattered into cloudy spray.

He rolled onto her just in time to take the toppling fan in his back. Simultaneously the windows blew out with a sound so loud it struck him in the breastbone, the lamps in the room burst as if packed with dynamite, and the walls shook apart into plaster dust and fragments. The mattress came down on top of them just as part of the ceiling fell with a resounding crash mixed with a jarring, reverberating bang from outside, echoing from the dust-brown rock of the old citadel.

He gripped her tight, his right leg thrown over her naked ass, one arm flung out to clutch an electrical conduit which had appeared in a gap in the wall. She lay with head turned away. A thread of blood wormed her scalp, turning blond hair dark. He blinked; her hair was
glittering
.

The floor heaved again and sagged toward where the door had been. Screams came from outside, up from the street, amid the staccato trumpeting of car alarms, as if the Judgment had touched down in Ashaara. He lay with every muscle rigid, outstretched arm shaking. He didn't like gripping an electrical conduit, but the way the floor was popping beneath them it might go any minute. Which would drop them five floors, and the reinforced concrete ceiling on top of them. He remembered again how much he disliked prefabricated concrete buildings.

“Honey?” he said into her ear. To his enormous relief, she stirred. Half turned her head. “A bomb went off, or a gas main. Anyway this floor's about to give way.” He coughed. “Can you move?”

Blair came back from the black to find herself pinned under something. She understood immediately what had happened. The embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Dan's voice in her ear. The necessity to escape. She flexed her toes in experiment and took a breath. Nothing seemed to be broken, though her scalp stung as if savaged by hornets. She cleared her throat. “Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Think so. Can you get off me?”

“That's the mattress and half the ceiling, not me. Crawl forward . . . that's right. I'll hold it up. There.”

“My robe. My clothes.”

“Forget about—”

“I'm not going out of here naked, Dan. And neither are you. God—”

“What?”

“Your back. It's bloody, all over.” She bent and saw shards of glass twinkling in the blood. “None of them look deep, but—”

The floor sagged again and half the wall facing the corridor slid away with a crackling roar, leaving them staring at a smoking chaos of rubble and, even worse, empty air. “We've got to get out of here,” he said.

She couldn't agree more. She found a corner of her robe and tugged it out from under the mattress. Found, thank God, her computer too. She shook plaster and glass out of the terry cloth and pulled it on. Handed him his pants, slipped her flats on, and handed him his boots. While he was lacing them she smelled something she'd hoped she wouldn't.

Dan lifted his chin, catching it too. “Smoke.”

“Yeah.” She stepped over him and swung the computer through the shattered window and followed it out onto the balcony. Caught her breath as it leaned under her weight, but it didn't go. Not yet. “Come on, come
on
.”

He bent and stepped through.

And halted. Looking down a hundred feet to a street paved with a crystalline sparkle. Over it people staggered or ran or crawled. Humvees and trucks crunched and swerved between them. Dark and white ovals of upturned faces stippled the crowd. As they looked down a wave of choking smoke burst up through the shattered floor and billowed out through their windows, through other windows to left and right and below too. Other guests were out on their balconies, waving and calling to those below.

She caught her breath, wondering how many hadn't made it. If the bomb had gone off in front of the building . . .

“Dobleh,” Dan said, looking down.

“Where? You see him?”

“That's who they were after. Or maybe both of you.”

She sucked her breath, realizing the whole ADA leadership had been scheduled to meet in the conference room. On the street side . . .

Dan's cell went off in his pants pocket. He flinched and snatched it out. “Lenson.”

“You all right, sir? We just got word of a bombing at the Cosmo.”

“We're trapped on the fifth floor, Kim. Me and the undersecretary. Where are you?”

McCall was back at the JOC. He told her tersely they needed either a hook and ladder or, if there wasn't one, a line-throwing gun. “We can get down if I can drop a line. But there's a lot of smoke. Probably fire behind it. I don't know who's on-scene commander, but get help headed our way. We need oxygen, litters, extraction crews from the helo squadron. All the medics and quick response you can scramble. EOD too—there might be
more than one bomb.” It was a common terrorist tactic, to detonate one bomb, then use a delayed-action device to mow down mourners, rescuers, and just plain gawkers. She said she'd pass the word, then come herself. Dan told her no, to stay there and coordinate the relief effort.

He flipped the phone closed as the balcony next to them squealed and collapsed, dumping the shirtsleeved man on it a hundred screaming feet down into the street. He pulled Blair against the outer wall. “We can't stay here,” he yelled.

“Don't go back in there.”

“You stay here. Less weight, maybe it'll hold. I'll see if there's another way out.”

She reached for his arm, but her hand slid off sweat and blood and grit. The next moment he was ducking again through the shattered doorway, then dropping to hands and knees. Keeping close to the wall, he crept toward the open sky at the far end. Came to the corner of a wall; hesitated; then curled around it like a cat, and out of her sight.

 

IF he kept low, the smoke wasn't as bad. He still wouldn't be good for more than a few minutes. Still, he'd groped his way through torpedoed and burning ships, and knew that what looked solid could be a trap and what looked impenetrable could sometimes be wriggled through. If you moved fast, before the wreckage settled.

Above all, if you were lucky.

He found himself in what had been the corridor. Most of the roof was gone and the sun streamed through the smoke, making it look more crimson than black. The carpet tilted at an absurd angle, as if to spill him off into the smoke-obscured, wire-hung, rebar-studded cavern of smashed masonry below. Maybe that's what had happened to the GrayWolf. There was no sign or remnant of him.

A cold numbness had taken his hands. There was glass all over, but he didn't feel it in his palms as he crawled. His knee slipped on the carpet and his boot shot off into space. He clung with his nails, belly to the floor, panting plaster dust and smoke and, yes, explosive fumes. When he didn't slide off he pulled his boot back and crawled on.

The floor widened. Then became almost whole, though littered with chunks of concrete, asphaltum roofing material, twisted tin from air ducts. Some yards on he made out the stairwell. There was nothing left of the elevator. It was down in the volcano with the rest of the facade and central core of the hotel.

Including anyone who'd been there. He pushed that out of his mind—he had to focus on getting Blair out—and rose to a combat crouch and ran
into the stairwell. Smoke was streaming just like up a chimney, so dense it would be impossible to breathe, but the concrete of the stairs was rock solid and there wasn't much debris on them. At least the two landings he could see. Someone was yelling below and the words, not in English, echoed as if from a cavern. He yelled down, “Up here,” and was seized with a choking fit so intense he couldn't get air to cough with. He backed out and caught his breath in the corridor, but the smoke was heavier and the air hotter there now too.

His cell phone again, just as he was about to cross the tilted bridge. He debated not answering, then realized he'd better. “Lenson.”

“Colonel Shingler here. Are you with the undersecretary?”

Her aide, the one who didn't like him. “We're in the hotel, Colonel, trying to get out.”

“I'd like to speak with her. Her cell doesn't seem to be—”

“She's busy,” Dan told her, and punched
END
. He almost pitched the cell into the smoking crater, but didn't. “Blair!” he yelled.
“Blair!”

No answer, and suddenly sweat broke over his back as he gagged. Either she couldn't hear or . . . an image of her tumbling as she fell, hitting pavement, bouncing . . .

He bent and ran on tiptoe across the narrow section, hugging the wall, realizing as he did he shouldn't, but made it to where their door had been. Started to slide around the broken wall, but stopped. Another ceiling-slab had come down, a solid expanse of stippled concrete. He couldn't see past it. “Blair!” he bawled, loud as he could over the clamor of sirens and the growing roar of fire.

“I'm here. Where are you?”

He breathed again, but the flame in his lungs was getting worse. He sprawled, but it was smoky near the floor too. It blew past him toward her, whirling to the right as it sucked through. A gap? . . . “Stairwell's clear. We can take the stairs down. If we hurry. Can you get to me?”

“You sure?”

“I got there and back. There's smoke but it's . . . navigable.” He saw a towel and shook glass from it and mopped his face. It came away looking like the Shroud of Turin. “We don't have much time. The fire's taking hold.”

“Coming.”

He saw her hand first, groping through the fallen roof. Then her arm. But that was all. “I can't get through.”

“Try to the right. No, to your left, your left.”

She was hacking hard. “There's a lot of glass.”

“See where the smoke's coming out? Is there a hole there?”

Her arm first again, then her head, hair blackened with flakes of dark matter. Her face was charcoaled except where tears had gouged streaks. She still wore the robe, but it wasn't white anymore. He worked his way in, got an arm and pulled. Something snagged and she cursed. Cloth ripped but her torso came free. Then her legs, kicking and dirty. She'd slung her cased laptop over her back like a rifle. Her eyes looked boiled as she stared around. “Okay, fuck this, which way?”

 

SHE was so angry she could barely keep a civil tone even to Dan. Once she was out of here, let everybody just fucking
beware.

Her husband's naked chest was streaked with blood and soot. So were his trousers. His face was black except for tear trails down his cheeks. His grip was very strong and she held it gratefully. She'd been terrified out on that balcony, waiting for it to give way. A chopper had circled but then flown away. Couldn't it lift them out? Maybe that one hadn't had the right equipment. She'd been tempted to stay, but if they could make it to the stairwell, it'd be a more dignified exit than dangling naked in some goggled aircrewman's embrace like Jane in Tarzan's arms.

Crawling was tough on the knees . . . but nothing hurt. Yet. They just had to get out. Nothing mattered but that. Her eyes burned, weeping so continually in the smoke she could barely see. A hand had the back of her robe. It tugged her along. The floor slanted and she started to slide. She twisted to look where she was going and caught her breath in a near scream. Yellow flames beckoned deep in a smoking pit of shattered rubble.

Far down in it, a human figure moved. Impossible, in that chaos, yet it moved. She blinked as it squirmed past a broken support column, across a cracked slab. It groped its way with dreadful slowness toward what once had been a lobby exit.