to the back of the house—empty storerooms, butler's pantry, stairs leading to the cellars. He hesitated, but there was another ground-floor room. He jammed a metal table against the cellar door, then approached the last ground- floor room, kicked its door open, and swung back against the wall. Cooking knives thrashed like hail through the air. The room was the main kitchen and in it were two very angry chefs. From the window behind them Craig had caught a glimpse of another fire engine, its vast, scarlet bulk sealing off the mews. He lobbed another smoke bomb into the kitchen, locked it, and raced back to the stairs. The cellar would have to wait. Fhp would almost certainly be in the cell-like room Sehna had described to him. As he reached the foot of the stairs he heard the sound of water under pressure smashing into the conference room. The fire would be well under control by now, but the bombs he had thrown created more smoke than ever.
The stairway was empty of hfe. Craig moved more slowly now, conscious of the taste of rubber from the mask, the wet taste of the air he breathed. He reached the dead Arab, and took the machine pistol from his hands. The magazine was empty. He let it fall, and moved on upwards.
At the top of the stairs a door swung open slowly, and Craig dropped. What felt like a blow from a sledgehammer smashed at the side of his helmet, and he fired the last four shots from the Smith and Wesson on reflex alone. There was one answering shot from inside, but Craig heard nothing, not even the crack of his own gun. His four shots had hit the door in a diamond shape, its lowest point the height of a man's chest, its highest that of his head, and all had gone through. Craig waited till the booming noise in his head modulated to a steady hum, then reloaded the Smith and Wesson and summoned up the energy to dart for the door, push it open. Something inside jammed it. Craig shoved the thing aside with his foot, let the door swing open again. The temptation to pass on was almost overwhelming, but he had to be sure.
He burst into the room and a blast of gunfire again made his head boom, and once more it was instinct that made him drop below the angle of the shot, swerve, drop his gun and grab. His hand held a wrist and twisted upwards as the next shot blasted like thunder in the confined space of the room, then Craig twisted further, the gun dropped, and he levered and threw, heard the slam of a body hitting the wall. He stooped, picked up the Magnum and aimed in one fluid movement, but the one he'd thrown lay still. It was a woman.
Craig picked up the little Bernadelli pistol she had used, and dropped it in his pocket, then went over to her. The room was a bedroom. He picked her up and laid her on the bed. She was young, slender, hght-boned, a bruise darkening her pale gold skin from forehead to cheekbone. He had thrown her with appalling force, but the part of his mind in control noted only that she'd be unconscious until the job was done. He went to the body by the door then. It had been a man, and two of the high-velocity bullets he had fired had pierced an inch-thick oak door then slammed straight through his head and chest. He was messy and horrible, and in times to come Craig would remember it, but now all he did was pick up the man's automatic and remove the magazine. He had been in the house for seven minutes. It was time to move on. The next floor was the crucial one. The prison room was there, and inside it, Philippa. And Schiebel. Craig took off the helmet and removed his mask for a moment. He was above the smoke, and the pure air was good. He looked at the helmet then. A line was incised into one side so deeply he could lay his little finger in it, and that side of his head was a throbbing, painful lump. Cautiously he put the mask and helmet back on, then moved again toward the door.
At once an automatic rifle rattled and chattered from above him. Craig leaped back into the room, grateful that Schiebel had at least one overanxious novice on his staff. He began to work at frantic speed, lifting the woman from the bed, dragging the mattress off, placing it to cushion the hail of bullets that must come through the door. He carried the unconscious woman with him and knelt in the corner opposite the door. The man he left where he was. He took out the last of his smoke bombs then, laid the spare revolver beside it, and waited. The next move was Schiebel's.
From the floor below him he heard the crack of a shot, and a great, jagged hole appeared in the floor a foot from where he crouched. Another shot, and then another, and another, tracing an exploring pattern towards the angle of cover. Craig thought the man below must be using a high-velocity rifle, a weapon with a stopping power far more terrible than his pistol. The shots pierced the ceiling of the floor below, then the joists and floorboards, and still came through with enough force to slam into the walls and ceiling. A bullet that weighed less than an ounce, a muzzle energy of
Incredibly, the telephone rang. Craig saw it was an internal phone, with a row of numbered buttons and Arabic lettering beside them. The man by the door must be pretty important, he thought. The phone rang again and he pulled back his mask and wriggled on his stomach toward it, cautious not to place too much weight on the floor. It
was on a low table by the bed, and Craig lifted it off slowly, slowly, holding the receiver down on the cradle as he wriggled back to the corner and picked up the receiver. At once three shots crashed into the table and smashed it. Craig yelled, and threw the receiver on to the floor. Schiebel's voice said: 'You had better come out, Craig.' Craig lay still, and another shot slammed up past the table, ricocheted from the wall and whined across the room. Craig lay down on his stomach and waited. It was up to Grierson now.
Grierson watched the ladder extend toward him. There was another turntable near by, waiting his orders. When he gave the word into the walkie-talkie, it would move fast up to the AZ building, its steel-shod ladder aimed like a battering-ram at the shutters that guarded the window of the prison room. And when the shutters gave, the ladder waiting for Grierson would swing him over the road, and he would dive inside, as Craig had done. Grierson picked up the walkie-talkie. His hand was shaking again, but it was time to go. Then he looked again at the steel shutters, and knew that he couldn't do it. Knew it utterly and completely. Schiebel would be in there, waiting for him, and Schiebel would kill him as he had killed Swyven, and his mother and father. He could not face the thought of death.
He remembered Craig's doubts and hesitations, his flat demand for some advantage; remembered also how cheerful and confident he himself had been. It was different now. Craig had gained the concessions he had asked for, and gone at once. Now he was inside the building, waiting for him, depending on him. He had to do something. His hand still shaking, he picked up the walkie-talkie, and spoke into it quickly. 'The shutters business is off,' he said. 'I'm going onto the roof instead.'
That was the alternative plan, if anything hindered the attack on the shutters, and all the dregs of his courage would allow him to do.
He stepped on to the window ledge before he could change his mind, the ladder came up to meet him, and he found himself whirled in the air, twenty feet above the roof of the AZ offices. Below him he could see hoses playing on one window after another, shutting off the view in a curtain of water. There was no sign of the rockers. They had suddenly and completely disappeared. Their work was finished. ('We'll give you all the cover we can,' Loomis had said, 'but you'll have to go in and do the job on your own.') The ladder contracted, and he stepped on to the roof and moved, stiff-legged and clumsy because of the riot gun, toward the skylight. When he reached it, he signaled to the men below, then ducked behind a chimney as a concentrated jet of water searched and probed and found its target. Even behind shelter, Grierson was soaked. The skylight was a jagged, gaping hole. He signaled again, and the great arc of water, solid as a steel bar, disappeared. Grierson counted to three, then leaped for the center of the hole, landed in six inches of water beside two men who choked and sputtered and wept at the force of the water that had struck them. One of them bled from a flesh wound of flying glass. He didn't even notice. The brutal force of the water filled his mind. Grierson hit him with the Magnum's barrel as he landed, and turned to the other, who was groping for a pistol. Grierson struck again, and dropped him, then turned to put the wireless room out of action. There was no need. The water had done it for him. He opened the door, letting loose a miniature waterfall, then slammed it shut behind him and locked it from outside, leaving the key in the lock, then put on his smoke mask, and pulled out the riot gun from his boot. At the foot of the first flight of stairs he found a heavy wooden door. It was locked from the other side. Grierson went back to the wireless room, and searched the two unconscious men. Neither of them had a key. He locked them in again, and went back to the door. There was only one possible way in. He had no picklock, no lever, and no time, and his nerve was running out. He aimed the gun at the lock, and fired three shots in such rapid succession they sounded like one sustained crack of sound, then drew back his leg, slipping on the film of water that spread about him, and brought his foot against the lock. Wood
