Endgame

23

Hansen barked his orders, but Valentina barely listened and deliberately partnered up with Noboru, the one man on the team who regarded her as an equal. She led him toward a vertical slit where it seemed the sheet-metal wall had been pried back enough to permit a person to enter.

She slipped inside and flicked on her light to reveal a cavernous warehouse of sweeping concrete ceilings with shattered skylights, as though bombs had been dropped through them to explode inside and tear apart the brick walls and rusting ladders and catwalks. A latticework of iron girders and concrete lintels was spanned by thick cobwebs, and dust motes trickled through her flashlight’s beam.

Valentina wondered if the dust in her light had been created by their entrance or by someone else’s movements. She worked the light a moment more and could almost hear the ghosts of steel workers bustling about while fires spat, water hissed, and more men shouted to get the next load ready. It was the early 1900s, and the place thrived.

Noboru suddenly cursed in Japanese behind her, and Valentina heard a splintering of wood.

She whirled and saw that one of his legs had dropped through the floor up to his knee. “Hold on, hold on… ”

He began falling onto his side and caught himself, groaning as his leg twisted. She wrenched her arms under his, swore, then hauled him up…

Only to have both her legs plunge through the same rotting floorboards. She released him and broke her fall at midknee with a hard slap of the palms and a gasp. She hung there for a moment, legs kicking in midair, coughing as the dust billowed into her face. Yes, they’d just learned the hard way that the foundry had a basement. Noboru managed to pull his leg free, then crawled around and got behind her.

“Don’t put too much weight,” she whispered as he lifted, and within a few seconds, she was sitting back on the wood and inspecting her legs for cuts.

They took a quick breather, and she directed her light back toward the floor, as did Noboru. More ash, dust, and something else, silt or loam, maybe, lay across a dark avenue of broad wooden planks, and within that dust were footprints, dozens of them, some larger than others. Kids, adults, all sorts of people had ventured into the foundry to play or explore over the years. She tried to find any that looked fresher than the others. It took a moment before she finally noticed a fresh break in the floor, a place where wood and soil had given way. She crossed to it, directed her light into the hole to reveal intersecting pipes and the reflective sheen of water far below. She shifted the light to pick out a canal far below. And now, from this new angle, she looked up again.

And there they were: a fresher set of footprints leading off to a staircase. She tipped her head to Noboru, and they rose.

Valentina’s foot clanged loudly on the steps, and she grimaced. Her light showed footprints clearly evident on the third step but no others. Odd.

Noboru shone his light above the staircase.

“What?” she asked; then she understood.

Fisher had gone vertical.

And now they were easy prey. She imagined him descending, inverted, like a spider, only to sink the fangs of a tranquilizer or something worse into her neck. She held her breath, and for a few seconds thought she would be sick.

Gillespie found herself paired up with the little runt Ames, and as she followed him along the foundry’s east-side exterior wall, she twice plotted his murder.

The first scenario involved a knife. The second had her putting a bullet in the back of his head. But then she realized those methods were too merciful and too quick. She considered slower ways that had her getting creative with water and insects and, lest we forget… fire.

She wondered if the others knew about his past. They were all spies, and you had to assume they had thoroughly investigated one another, both professionally and personally. Gillespie had many friends in military intelligence who could get her whatever she wanted. She’d read the news stories about Ames’s family dying in the fire. The world was unfair, and Ames railed against it with much more than words. His entire personality had been shaped by two facts: the loss of his family and his height. He probably asked himself: Why did my family have to die? Why can’t I be taller? Gillespie thought she had him all figured out, and there were times when she saw through his remarks and found the frightened little boy behind them. She wanted to sympathize with him, feel his pain, tell him he’d be all right, and say that if he’d just drop all the defenses, there were people who could help.

But he was such an ass that he made helping impossible.

“Slow down,” she told him. “You’re not going in there alone.”

“You worried about me, sweetie?”

“Well, if something happens to you, I want to make sure it’s permanent.”

“Great. I got your back, too.”

“And remember, we’re taking him alive.”

“So you can have your little reunion?”

“Sure. You want to watch?”

He snorted. “Look, there’s the door.” He yanked open the bent metal, and they entered a stairwell. Her flashlight’s beam raced up toward the distant ceiling.

Hansen had opted for a classic Sam Fisher entrance by coming in from the roof. He felt a bit wistful about that. Here he was emulating a man who should have been his mentor but was his target. The assumption was that you had to think like Fisher to capture him, but, then again, he knew you’d be doing that, so perhaps he’d be engaged in some very un-Fisher-like maneuvers…

Maybe that was thinking too hard and second-guessing himself, Hansen thought — which was, of course, thinking. Again. Mr. MIT Education needed to turn off the big brain.

Hansen startled a group of sleeping pigeons, which nearly knocked him off his feet as he reached the top of an exterior staircase running along the foundry’s west side. He waved them off, then slipped quietly toward a rooftop doorway. The door itself was long since gone, lying near the opposite wall, and Hansen eased himself down the metal stairs, one hand clutching the rail. He reached the top floor, the floorboards of which had been torn up here and there, perhaps by looters, and carefully worked his way toward the center of the vast room.

“We think he’s gone up to the second floor,” said Valentina.

“Roger that,” said Hansen. “I’m above.” Hansen glanced down through a rectangular opening in the floor, lost his balance, and reached toward the wall, but his hand came up empty. He slipped down onto the floor, landing across a piece of broken pipe and breaking off several chunks of concrete that went tumbling down through the hole. He bit back a curse, stood, and then carefully chose his next path, across sturdier-looking boards, and searched for a way down to the second level.

He spotted a wrought-iron spiral staircase off to his left and stepped toward it.

Even as his foot came down, he realized the floor plank would not hold him. Yes, he was a fine judge of sturdy-looking wood, all right. The plank suddenly split…

And down he went, keeping silent in an act of utter self-discipline. His fall already betrayed his location. No need to betray anything else.

Finally, he allowed himself a breath and strained to push himself up, feeling the burn in his shoulders and triceps. His one leg had folded, so he was propped on the knee, while the other foot and leg had crashed through the floor, wedging his upper thigh deeply between two more planks. He rolled his left foot so he could sit on it and ease the pain now shooting through his thigh. He tugged. Nothing.

Some team leader. The man who’d been to Russia and back. The hero, right? He balled his hands into fists and thought of a string of epithets that would’ve had nuns fainting where they stood. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Admit the mistake and move on. There wasn’t time for self-loathing.

Resignedly, he whispered into his SVT: “I’m snagged up here.”

Hansen jerked his leg again, but now it felt as though he’d caught his leg on something, a power cord perhaps. “Shit!”

Oh, man… He’d said that much too loudly.

“Hang on. We’re almost to you,” said Ames in the subdermal.

Within a few seconds they were there, and Ames offered his hand. “No,” Hansen told him. “I’m snagged on something from below.” He looked to Gillespie. “Go down there.”

She took off toward the staircase while Ames came over to him and whispered, “What’re you doing, Benjamin? Taking the path of least resistance?”

“Oh, you’re a funny bastard.”

“Hilarious. I’m laughing so hard I’m crying as Fisher gets away.”

Hansen told him where to go, and Ames rose and took a few steps back. “No respect.”

“Okay, I see what’s happened,” said Gillespie via the subdermal. “You’re ankle is… What the hell? There’s some kind of cord tied around your foot.”

“What? What kind of cord?” he asked.

“Looks like paracord.”

Hansen shuddered. Oh, my God! Fisher had tied him to the pole. Fisher was that close!

Ames opened his mouth as the arm came around his throat, but before he could react he was being lifted from the floor and dragged backward into the darkness. He gasped, reached up to seize the arm, which was like a piece of steel pressing even harder against his throat.

He tried to breathe. Tried.

And then a moment of panic before… darkness.

“Ames? Ames?” Hansen whirled his head around as the paracord suddenly slipped off his foot.

“All right, you’re free,” said Gillespie from below.

Hansen wriggled a moment more, then finally turned his hip and his leg broke free of the wood. He rolled to his left and disengaged himself from the floor.

Gillespie rushed up the stairs, looked around, then said, “Where’s Ames?”

“I don’t know. Ames?”

They waited. He did not respond through his SVT. “See if he went up top.”

She nodded, ran off.

“Oh, man…” Hansen checked his OPSAT.

A message had come in, and the OPSAT’s ID number told Hansen the note was from Ames: SVT MALFUNCTION. INOPERABLE. MOVEMENT ON LOWER FLOORS, NORTH SIDE. INVESTIGATING.

Ames had switched the team’s comms from VOICE to VOICE AND TEXT TRANSCRIPTION in view of the SVT problem, which in and of itself was suspicious. Why he’d suddenly slipped off alone would be a discussion they’d have later — of that Hansen was certain.

“We’re already in the subbasement,” reported Valentina. “Nothing yet.”

The OPSAT transcribed her report, and Gillespie chipped in her own regarding the third floor north being clear.

“Ames, report,” Hansen ordered. “Say position. Ames, respond… ”

Nothing.

In the distance came the bend and creak of the floorboards, both from above and below, and then the pattering of boots and a slight groan from a pipe somewhere behind him.

Hansen took a step forward, directing his light toward a hatch he hadn’t seen before and a pile of fallen bricks. And just behind the pile a boot was visible. He started over there, holding his breath, and then he turned, looked down, and there he was: Ames, lying on his back, dead or unconscious. His rifle was lying beside him, but the magazine had been ejected, and the holster for his SC pistol was empty. Fisher had taken his weapon.

With a start, Hansen dropped to his knees and checked Ames’s neck for a carotid pulse. Strong and steady. Damn! Fisher was a goddamned ghost — perfectly silent.

“This is Hansen. I—”

He cut himself off as a loud crash — the crunching of rock and snapping of more floorboards under heavy weight — echoed through the foundry.

“Who was that?” cried Hansen. “Report!”