Toys

Chapter 26

No time for such sentimentality. The Agency commandos would be up here in seconds, heavily armed, ready to kill me if they had to. I was fairly certain the luxury building was already surrounded. So I ran to the back of the apartment and threw open the balcony door. Sure enough, police vehicles were already circling in the air and barricading escape routes on the ground. They wanted me-badly.

Spotlights flared suddenly. A voice boomed, “Stop where you are, Hays Baker! Down on your belly and spread your arms and legs!”

I’d spent time on the other side of those spotlights, and I knew the weapons that went with them-stun guns that would paralyze me if they were determined to keep me alive. Or lasers that would turn me into a six-foot-two cinder.

Question was-did they want to keep up this charade of pretending I was a skunk who needed to be brought in and interrogated?

I dove sideways to the neighboring balcony, twenty yards away, caught its lower rim, and swung myself down to the floor below.

The searchlights followed, and then bursts of laser fire hissed around me.

Well, that question was answered anyway. I was obviously wanted-dead or alive.

I went from balcony to balcony, flipping and twisting like a monkey dodging poison darts. Only the poison darts were traveling at the speed of light and punching three-inch-wide gashes in the concrete walls. Also, if I’d actually been a monkey, I’d have already lost my tail-one of the blasts came so close that it set the trailing edge of my hospital gown on fire.

I didn’t bother swatting it out. No time for that. Instead, I plunged headfirst toward the dark, roiling surface of the lake below. A blitz of searchlights and laser flashes followed me, but I somehow sliced into the cold water.

One good thing to be said for a 110-foot dive from a high-rise into a North American lake in the early summer: the freezing cold water quickly takes your attention away from the sting of slamming into the lake’s surface.

It was hard to hold my breath and think straight when all I wanted to do was scream. But I stayed underwater, knowing that cover meant survival.

My brain was racing faster than my body now. What next? Normally, I could hold my breath for several minutes, but how far would I be able to swim in that time? Well, let’s see!

I swam straight for the opposite shore-my strokes actually getting stronger-and finally ended up in a partially submerged culvert. The storm sewer it connected to ran up under the Esplanade, an eight-lane highway that bordered the lake.

I entered the first manhole shaft I came to, climbed furiously up, and came out in the middle of a landscaped median full of tulips, roses, exotic grasses, and hybrid cherry trees in full bloom.

The city’s ground traffic was heavy as usual, moving at a crawl-about thirty-five miles per hour.

It was just slow enough for me to sprint after the most anonymous-looking service vehicle I saw, grab hold of its rear bumper, then tuck myself down between the rear wheels, hopefully hidden from overhead police scanners.

In a matter of a few seconds, I had disappeared into the flood of vehicles flowing in and out of New Lake City.

As in the theme song from that old movie-one of the James Bond films, I believe-“nobody does it better.”