The Tower

Chapter 48

A leg protruded from the glade of trees, a blue-and-brown hiking boot on the foot. A line of blood ran over the exposed calf, matting the thick black hair.

Allander stood with his back to the body, gazing through the last line of trees to the edge of the cliff. The sun was rising gloriously, its golden rays glittering off the ocean surface.

There was a drop of several hundred yards that ended in a small forest just outside the grounds of Maingate. The gates were laid open to the world as workers scuttled back and forth, towing out ruined materials and bringing in new equipment and tools.

What the prisoners would have done to see the gates spread like that for just a moment during their captivity, Allander thought. The entire facility was emptied of inmates for these weeks of repair. With the exception of Claude Rivers and the single guard watching him on the Tower, Allander had emptied it. He had emptied Maingate.

As he looked out over the main prison and saw the Tower in the distance, he slid his hand under his shirt to his nipples. They were hard in the crisp San Francisco air, and he ran his fingers over them, one at a time.

He had taken a new house for himself in the western hills of San Francisco. It was being entirely remodeled, so it had no decorations or heating, just bare walls and a few pieces of covered furniture. For some reason, construction had ceased, but Allander had still prepared a careful escape route in case workers showed up.

He was quite content with his new home. And how wonderful that he could keep the lovely red Jeep from his former house in Palo Alto.

He had found a small motorized saw in the front closet of his house, no doubt left there for use in the remodeling. He had used it last night, employing one of the extra-long, heavy-duty extension cords he had found, and wrapping a water-cooler insulator around the saw to try to dull the noise, since he was working out in the open, away from the protection of his home. But he needn't have worried; the traffic had drowned out everything anyway. And now it was ready-waiting, hidden. His entrance. That was for later, however. He had to focus on today, on completing the first part of his plan. There was so much to do, so many things he'd set in motion.

For the past week, he had been timing the workers at Maingate. They usually left the site at around four o'clock (bless those government workers). The guard on the Tower switched at 6:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M. There was never more than one guard, probably because the rest had been moved to San Quentin to deal with the Maingate overflow. They were accustomed to having two men guard eighteen Tower prisoners; they probably figured one-on-one was a breeze.

Someday soon, he'd have to go down and take care of things. He'd have to wait until after they left, of course, although he had no choice but to hide his supplies there during daylight. Aside from the Tower guard and Claude Rivers, Maingate was pretty much abandoned by four-thirty. He'd have to remember to wear the pair of dusty overalls from his house, though, just in case someone saw him-that way they would think him one of the workers.

He took pleasure in the solid, unwavering path of his plans.

Walking over to the green Blazer on the path, he opened the door using a key from the carabiner key ring he had lifted from the body. He drove the Blazer far enough into the woods so that it was no longer visible from the road. Leaving it behind a cluster of trees, he got out and headed back to the body, looping his arms under its shoulders so he could drag it to the Jeep. He grunted with effort as he lifted it in the back, pushing it facedown across the seats. He would dump it somewhere down at the base of the hill.

Throwing the car into drive, he glanced over at the second body he had propped up in the passenger seat. He leaned over and patted its knee.

He would keep this one.

Jade's eyes opened; the ringing was so loud that at first he thought it was inside his head. He rolled over and lifted the phone off the cradle.

"Marlow. Travers."

He groaned and rolled onto his side. "If you want to gloat, I'd prefer a singing telegram."

"No time, thanks. We got him located. Placed a call and stayed on the phone sixty-three seconds. Three seconds too long. Must've mistimed it." Travers's voice was charged with excitement.

Jade pulled on his sunglasses in an attempt to shield the onslaught of light from the crack beneath his curtain. No way, he thought. No way he fucks up like that, not by three seconds.

"Who'd he call?"

"His former defense attorney. Made a few threats, shook the guy up pretty bad."

Jade rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. It wasn't adding up. Allander would've known that line was hot. "Where's he fixed?"

"Mountain View. Cross section of Fisk and Glen Boulevard- 4512. We have it listed as unoccupied. Perfect hideout. We're set up and we're moving in twenty. Be there in fifteen."

"I'll be there in ten," Jade said, and was immediately out the door.

The complex was surrounded when Jade arrived. It was a two-story strip of small apartments, guarded by a thick brown railing. The apartments were arrayed in two wings that met in the middle, giving a sense of enclosure to the front parking lot. Heavy green curtains were visible through most of the windows on both floors. Probably low-income rental units, he decided.

The building sat back off a fairly busy four-lane street. Jade glanced up the street and saw road workers in orange vests diverting traffic. Jade stood tall next to the officers crouching behind their car doors. FBI all the way. Flashing lights on undercover cars. He walked through the vehicles lined in the front parking lot.

McGuire looked up at him. "Get behind a door, Marlow," he hissed.

"He's not gonna shoot from far away," Jade said, surveying the scene broadly. "Not intimate enough."

McGuire yanked him down by pulling beneath his knee. "You don't know that. He's never been cornered before," he said.

Jade glared at him for a long time, biting his cheek. "Be grateful you have your title between us," he finally said, looking away.

Travers appeared at their shoulders. "Nice you could show up, Marlow. We've been in position for fifteen minutes without response. We have snipers on neighboring buildings and men in position there, there, and there." She pointed to the black-vested men with Heckler and Koch MP5 9-millimeter full automatics scattered on the roof and under the windows. Agents were flattened against the wall near the corner apartment on the second floor.

Jade reached behind his jeans and fondled his Sig Sauer-P226, 9 millimeter. Stopping power. A lot of firepower here and probably nothing to use it on, he thought.

"We waited for you to give the final countdown, Marlow," Travers said, handing him the megaphone.

Jade waved it off. He looked at the corner apartment, shaking his head.

Travers glanced at McGuire.

"All right," he said. "You take care of it."

She moved out slightly from her crouched position behind the car door.

"Probably not a bright idea to use a megaphone," Jade said. "Just a guess, but I'm assuming you don't want to come off like an authoritative asshole during negotiations."

"It seems like you don't even think he's in there, Marlow," Travers replied coolly.

"Good point," Jade said. "What the fuck." He gestured her forward.

"ATLASIA," she bellowed through the megaphone. "WE'VE GIVEN YOU AMPLE TIME TO RESPOND. IF WE DO NOT RECEIVE A SIGNAL FROM YOU IN SOME FORM, WE WILL TAKE THE HOUSE."

"What if the signal's a dead hostage, Travers?" Jade muttered under his breath, but she didn't hear him.

"WE'RE GIVING YOU A FIVE COUNT." She paused and ran her fingers over the top of her left ear, pushing the hair back off her cheek. Jade thought he could make out the scent of her perfume.

"… FOUR… THREE…" Travers looked nervously to McGuire, who nodded her on. "TWO…"

Jade stared at the pavement. Nothing made sense-the sixty-three-second phone call, the look of the shabby complex, the fact that the apartment was on the second floor.

McGuire leaned against the car in a raised crouch, holding his gun up by his cheek. His left hand was shaking back and forth in a nervous tick. Something on one of his fingers was flashing in the sunlight. His wedding ring.

Jade's mouth went entirely dry. He heard an echo of a conversation in his head. Where's McGuire? Actually, he's at his kids' baseball game.

"ONE," Travers shouted into the megaphone. Everyone went into motion. Jade leaped to his feet and ran in the opposite direction of the other agents, heading for his car.

The house imploded with bodies as FBI agents crashed through the doors and windows, springing from the ground and swinging from the rooftop. They led with large black boots and pointed barrels. It seemed as if every point in the apartment was instantly covered by the agents' guns.

Travers was already up and running and she leaped through the smashed front door into the apartment. It was bare and unfurnished, with wooden floors and white walls. On the floor in the middle of the living room sat a single black phone. It was old-fashioned, its big receiver clunked down heavily on the metal jaws.

She moved slowly through the scattered agents.

"Where's Marlow?" one of them hissed nervously. She didn't know, so she said nothing.

The agents stood motionless, their guns trained on the zone of the apartment for which they were responsible. Travers felt as if she were walking through a sculpture garden. The sound of her footsteps knocked through the empty apartment like raps on a door.

There was nothing in the entire apartment except the phone. Travers circled back to the small living room and stopped. They all stood perfectly still, stunned by the silence.

The phone rang, a high, shrill jangle, startling everyone. It rang three times before Travers picked it up. Still the agents didn't move.

McGuire had stumbled into the house a few seconds after her, and he stood behind her panting as she raised the receiver to her ear.

"What?" she asked tightly.

"Ms. Travers, I presume. I've read so much about you. Could you be so kind as to place Agent McGuire on the line before you can get a tracer in place?" Allander asked. He knew they wouldn't have brought a tracer with them; they were expecting more than a phone. He just wanted to play with her a little.

"Yeah, but tell me-"

"Your time is up, Agent Travers. I need to speak to the important people now. Like I said, put your boss on." "Boss" would get to her, Allander thought. He was sure of it. "Get him. Now."

Travers realized she didn't have any options without losing the line. She bit her cheek and held the phone out silently to McGuire. His eyes lit up. "Giving his demands?" he asked, whispering anxiously.

Travers said nothing. He's playing with all the cards right now, she thought. I doubt this is about demands. He doesn't need to ask us for anything.

"McGuire here." He spoke in a gruff, efficient voice. Travers could tell he was intimidated as hell and trying to cover it with the briskness of his tone.

"Well, Agent McGuire. Let's play a little guessing game to find out where I am, shall we? I'm thinking of a lovely crocheted wall piece with dark brown beads hanging from its fringes. Looks like it belongs on the floor of a doghouse, but someone made the unfortunate decision to display it as a wall ornament. It's a virtual shrine to the seventies, as seems to be most of the house. And look, here's a beautiful blue marlin plastered above the fireplace, evincing the Hemingwayesque masculinity of the man of the house. How noble in reason. In action, how like a god."

"H N E." Three letters splashed in crimson, their boundaries marred by the drip of the dark blood. They looked ready to slide right off the window; they were drifting, living letters.

Allander's bloody fingers were wrapped around a cordless phone. He moved into the kitchen and plucked a photograph off the refrigerator, leaving a red smudge across the front.

"How cute," he said into the phone. "A photograph of Grandma on her eightieth birthday. However did you fit all those candles onto the cake… Agent McGuire?"

Allander smiled in awareness of the stunned silence on the other end of the phone. He walked into the living room and faced the two boys who were bound to chairs with tape.

They were about fifteen and sixteen years old, just starting to build muscles in their chests and shoulders. Tears ran over the tape that bound their heads firmly to the high backs of the chairs. Only a small strip of their faces was visible, their eyes and a thin band of their cheeks.

Behind them on the floor lay the body of their mother. Both of her ears had been cut off and her throat was slashed. Allander had used the spout of blood that welled from the wound as his paint bucket. The blood was still warm when he dipped his fingers into it.

Firecrackers were pushed into the boys' ears. Allander had wedged them tightly into the ear canals so they would be sure not to slip.

He walked over to the counter and calmly picked up a book of matches. The boys' panic found expression only in their eyes. They were taped to the heavy chairs so tightly that even their most frenzied wrenchings barely moved their heads or bodies.

Allander watched how their eyes flicked around the room with urgency and disbelief. They were terrified. He loved having their complete attention, loved them watching his every move, knowing that their lives depended on it.

As he bent to light the fuses of the firecrackers, he looked like a mother tucking in her children. His lips brushed against the sides of their cheeks as he leaned over them.

"Hear no evil," he whispered.

Travers watched McGuire's eyes widen as he held the phone to his ear. Everyone in the room jumped when they heard the loud bangs from the phone. They echoed off the stark walls of the apartment.

McGuire kept the phone to his ear for a few moments longer and then held it out to Travers with trembling fingers. Travers could hear the dial tone.

"Oh my God," McGuire said. "He's in my house. Oh God."

He had barely finished speaking before the agents in the living room sprang to life, clearing the house and jumping into vehicles.

McGuire remained frozen in precisely the same place, alone in the small apartment. He was still holding the telephone out with one shaking hand, and his right cheek began to quiver beneath his eye.