Land of the Gods

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ryan jumped away from the knife, lost his balance and fell on his back while the others spun around to see Makiko Jojima standing in the bedroom, flanked on either side by a bodyguard. Scarlet immediately saw the ring they were searching for, tightly wedged onto her left ring finger.

Jojima ordered the men forward to attack the thieves. “Hashimoto! Mori!”

The two men drew their weapons and fired on the team, blasting the closet door to shreds and forcing them to take cover either side of the marble mull posts. Bullets traced everywhere, smashing the stained glass panel out of the transom and spraying splinters and shards all over the interior of the closet.

“Holy crap!” Zeke yelled, covering his head from the flying glass. “This shit is real.”

“We’re sitting ducks!” Ryan called back.

Scarlet and Lexi returned fire, raking the bedroom with defensive fire and forcing the Yakuza to flee back into the central hallway.

“They’re retreating!” Ryan said.

“Great work!” said Zeke.

“Not great at all,” Scarlet said. “The buggering ring’s on Jojima’s left hand! We have to get after them!”

They got to their feet and exited the trashed closet, giving chase down the central corridor with their guns raised and their hearts beating at a million miles per hour.

“They’re not in the apartment!” Lexi called out.

Scarlet knew where they were going. “We need to get to the elevator. They’re trying to get Jojima to safety before they regroup and hit us back.”

They sprinted from the penthouse and back out into the peach marble lobby area where they saw the fleeing party of Yakuza standing outside one of the external elevators. Running up and down on the outside of the skyscraper, the famous elevators offered a breathtaking view of the city, but tonight no one cared about the vista.

The ECHO teammates fired on them and the bodyguards reacted in a heartbeat. Hashimoto pushed Jojima into the elevator while Mori blocked their bodies with his own and raised his gun into the aim, squeezing off half a dozen rounds to provide cover fire as Hashimoto reloaded and pushed the button for the basement parking lot.

Scarlet and Ryan were sitting ducks, exposed in the marble lobby area to the front of the elevator doors. The only cover was two substantial potted palms placed either side of the penthouse suite entrance. They each took one and dived to the floor behind the heavy sleek black porcelain pots as Hashimoto and Mori retreated in a backwards crouch walk, firing off defensive shots until safely inside the elevator.

“Damn it, Ryan! They’re getting away.”

Lexi and Zeke had reached the fight and were taking cover behind the doorposts on either side of the penthouse suite.

“What’s happening?” the Chinese assassin said.

“They’re in the sodding elevator already,” Scarlet said, ducking as one of Hashimoto’s last rounds struck the thick rim of the pot and blasted a chunk of porcelain into a dozen razor sharp slivers.

Up ahead, the elevator doors were closing fast.

“We need some cover fire!” she shouted.

“Leave that to me,” Lexi said.

Zeke gave a firm nod of approval as he slid a round into the chamber of his gun. “Hell, I don’t need to be asked twice.”

“We go in three, got it boy?”

Ryan gave her a double take. “You can’t be serious?”

She sighed. “When am I not serious?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Point taken, but I still think we don’t have a chance of making that lift.”

“We’re not going to get in that lift.”

“Eh?”

“Three, two, one!”

Without further warning, Scarlet scrambled out from behind the cover of the potted palm and sprinted to the elevator shaft. Watching through the smoke glass doors, she saw the Yakuza’s elevator slowly slip out of sight as it made its way down to the basement. Turning to the right she hit the button on the other elevator and the doors slid open.

“Get in!”

Ryan darted into the second elevator as Scarlet hit the basement button, and the doors slid shut as they too started descending to the ground.

“We’ll never catch them!” Ryan said. “They’re ten seconds ahead of us.”

Scarlet wasn’t listening, but had craned her neck up to the ceiling of the elevator. “Give me a leg up.”

“Eh?”

“A leg up, boy!”

Ryan’s face was a picture of mock horror. “This is hardly the place, Cairo… besides I never knew you felt that way about me.”

“That’s a leg over, you silly sod, not a leg up.”

Ryan grinned. He had already linked his hands to form a cradle for her to use for her leg up. “I know what you meant, Cairo, and I’m not going to argue with anyone who can consider doing what you’re about to do.”

Using his hands, she reached the elevator ceiling panel and swung open the maintenance hatch. Grasping either side of the hatch’s rim, she pulled herself out of the elevator car and climbed up onto the roof.

The warmth and stillness of the car was instantly replaced with the rushing air and lashing rain of the outside world. As the elevator screeched at high speed down the outside of the building’s western aspect, Scarlet clung to a support post to stop the wind from blowing her off the roof. At around thirty floors up, she didn’t much like the idea of tumbling down to earth and hitting the plaza below at terminal velocity.

Think of the mess, you silly cow.

She moved to the northern end of the car’s roof and peered down at the other elevator as it raced ahead of her on its journey to the basement level. The few seconds’ head start had created a distance of about twenty feet. Not too bad but not easy either. She could make the jump but one error in judgement and she could break an ankle or miss it altogether and fall right off the edge.

“You don’t have to do this!”

Rain in her eyes, she swept her hair back and peered down through the hatch into the cosy, warm little world Ryan was inhabiting. What he didn’t know was that she did have to do it. She’d had to do things like this since she was a little kid. She had always taken the risky road, reached for the highest apple on the tree. A shrink would tell her it had something to do with her parents’ murder, but true or not, it didn’t change the fact that taking risks like this was a deep part of her personality, what made her the woman she truly was.

“I’m doing it, Ryan,” she called back, and flipped the hatch shut with the toe of her boot.

The ground rushed up toward her. The plaza below was sliding into rainy focus, as were the headlights of the cars driving in and out of the parking lot in front of Izumi Garden Tower still impossibly far below. One of those cars was a chunky black SUV heading toward the parking bay out the front of the elevators. “That’s their ride,” she said.

They’re not going to the basement lot, she thought. Jojima must have called for a car to pick them up in front of the building. Getting panicky. Worried about a shootout in the basement. Either way she still had a chance. She watched the SUV’s headlights sweep up the side of the green glass wall of the elevator shaft. Behind it a stretch limo honked its horn to get the SUV to move forward. A man leaned out of the SUV and waved a gun at the limo driver who instantly backed down and wound his window up.

“That’s definitely their ride.”

She took a step closer to the edge of the elevator car, still clinging to the steel support post for balance as it raced toward the ground. Halfway down now, but still over twenty storeys to go. She blew out a breath, aimed for the Yakuza elevator and leaped into the darkness of the night.