beneath them. He moved chunks of brick and wood aside as he went. His fingers found a brick wall and, using both hands, he discovered the mouth of the garbage chute, now choked shut with rubble. With the wall as a guide, he could concentrate on making his way toward where he hoped the rescuers were working.
As he moved carefully, the noise indeed grew louder. He made slow progress, keeping his left shoulder next to the wall to maintain his equilibrium while feeling with his right hand for obstacles. He stopped when he found what felt like a four-inch cast-iron waste pipe before going on.
He had moved a few feet from the pipe, when the rumbling diminished in stages-telling him that more than one piece of heavy machinery was involved in clearing rubble. The machines stopped altogether, leaving only the sound of dripping water. The emergency workers have stopped! Are they giving up? They might hear him if he could make enough noise. He had no idea how long the lull would last. He had to make noise. With a sense of urgency growing inside him, he groped his way back to the vertical waste pipe. Now, before the machines started up again, he needed something to beat against the cast iron. Without an alternative, he pulled the antique Walther out of his coat pocket and began hammering the gun against the pipe. “S”
DOT-DOT-DOT / “O” DASH-DASH-DASH / “S” DOT-DOT-DOT… DOT-DOT-DOT / DASH-DASH-DASH / DOT-DOT-DOT. He yelled out when he heard answering metallic bangs.
The rumbling began anew and the scraping grew louder. Winter slipped the compact gun back into his jacket pocket. Without being able to see and no way to know what was above him, he sat with his back against the brick wall to wait in the darkness.
The noise of dozer blades clearing the street grew steadily louder until the door to the sidewalk-level service elevator was peeled back. When Winter saw a vertical sliver of light, vague as a neon tube through a thick fog, he wanted to cry out in relief but was afraid that even the slightest sound from his lips would cause the entire structure to cave in. He followed the light bar to its origin-a crack between a pair of steel doors. After locating the lever, he pulled the heavy doors open. Light blasted him and more dust billowed into his basement tomb. Winter stepped into the lift's rubble-coated floor to the shouts of men that were just silhouettes above him. He reached up, hands grabbed his, and he was jerked up out of the lift pit straight into a tortured landscape.
The sun's first rays were illuminating the fronts of the buildings across the street, which stood open and exposed like the backs of dollhouses. Herman's building looked like a candle that had burned down to the third floor. In the way of charges and sudden pressure change, the adjoining buildings had shaped the force upward or outward through the thinner walls at the front and rear.
Soot-faced firemen strapped Winter on a stretcher and, while he protested that he was perfectly all right, they muscled him over the piles of rubble. They handed the litter to a crowd of EMS technicians and cops. He knew by the insignia tags on the uniforms that he was in New York City.
After the cot was lifted into an ambulance, a man in a suit climbed in and cuffed Winter's right wrist to the stretcher's rail. “FBI. Just until we straighten out who you are and what you were doing in there.” The agent pulled the Walther out of Winter's jacket pocket, examined it, then dropped it into his own coat pocket.
“You have to call the United States Marshals office and get Chief Marshal Richard Shapiro. I have to talk to him now.”
“Before I call anybody, you've got some questions to answer.”
“It's a matter of life and death. I'm United States Deputy Marshal Winter Massey.”
“Where's your badge?”
“I don't know.” He assumed that it was inside the building, a bauble left by Fifteen to be found by the people clearing the wreckage of a building that had headquartered Russian mercenaries who had been careless with their explosives.
“I didn't realize the Marshals Service was issuing World War Two weapons to deputy marshals,” the FBI agent said.
“If you don't believe I'm who I say, call Supervising Agent, Fred Archer.”
Winter knew the agent would contact Fred Archer long before he did Richard Shapiro.
80
Charlotte, North Carolina
With steady determination, a young man in a wheelchair rolled himself up the sandstone ramp, turning the wheels of the chair with his hands, that rose to the front doors of the Federal Building in Charlotte, North Carolina. Lint spotted the young man's watch cap; the left collar of his windbreaker pointed up. Dark jeans stopped well short of his new tennis shoes on the footrests, their toes pointing toward each other. Barely any of the people coming or going from the building noticed the struggling young man, aside from quick sidelong glances.
Four court security guards wearing navy-blue blazers manned the metal detectors. The closest COURTSEC guard guided the wheelchair and its occupant around the side so it wouldn't set off the alarm. Kneeling, she inspected the chair and searched its occupant as he rocked in his seat, pressing his tongue against his jaw and craning his neck trying to watch her.
“Sir, you don't have any weapons on you, do you?” the guard asked, pronouncing each word slowly.
“Nooooo, ma'aaaam,” he said, with great effort. He blinked owlishly, the thick lenses enlarging his eyes grotesquely. He lifted his closed fist from the wheel, and it quivered as he wiped his nose.
“Okay,” the guard said patiently. “Where are you headed?”
“Oooo… essss… marshooos's… offeeese?”
“United States Marshals' office, hon?”
He nodded.
“That's a restricted floor. I'll have to call up and then someone will come down.”
The woman lifted a receiver. “Who do you want to see?” she asked.
“Winnnnnntah Maaaaas-sssey.”
“Winter Massey?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your name?”
“Waaaa… Warrrrrrd F… F… Feeeeel… da.” He shifted violently in the chair.
“A Mr. Ward Field is here to see Deputy Massey,” the guard said, keeping her eyes on the visitor as she spoke. “I'll tell him that someone will be down to see him in a minute.” She replaced the receiver, rolled the chair to the elevator door, and went back to the metal detectors.
When the door opened, a man in his fifties with a handlebar mustache stepped out from the cab and took the grips of the chair. “I'm Chief Deputy Hank Trammel, Mr. Field. I'll show you upstairs.”
As soon as the chair cleared the doors, Trammel pushed the button. As the door closed he pulled his pistol and held it against his leg, aimed down. Above the second floor, he pressed the button and stopped the cab. “Okay, pal. Who the hell are you?”
The young man in the wheelchair kept his wrists on the tires, but his twisted fists relaxed and the bent fingers straightened. “My name is Sean Devlin.”
“The hell it is. Sean Devlin is a woman.”
“I'm her.”
He reached over with his free hand and placed it on her right breast, hidden under the loose-fitting jacket. He pulled his hand away like he'd touched a hot stove.
She reached up and removed her thick glasses and the watch cap, altering her appearance dramatically. Her slicked-back hair was black.
“I'm a friend of Winter's. He'll tell you.”
“Put your hands behind your back,” he ordered. “I'm going to cuff you until I can find out if you are who you say you are. There are people looking high and low for Sean Devlin. If you're lying to me, you're going to stay in a holding cell for a very long time.”
Keeping the gun in his right hand, Trammel used the other to take out handcuffs and to cuff Sean's wrists behind her. He put his gun away, replaced the cap on her head, and released the cab, which rose to the third floor. When the elevator door opened, he spun the chair around, pushed it out, and rolled it down a wide hallway.
