Wild Country

down that stairwell. No joy. He motioned the men nearer, into the safety of a false stone storefront, and they came willingly once they spotted that tin star.

Quietly: 'You're the special effects men?'

The uninjured one, a heavyset black, nodded and then jerked a thumb upward. 'There's one bad sonofabitch up there on level two. Threw down on us while—'

'I can guess. Wanted you for hostages.'

'You got it,' muttered the injured man. an Anglo of slight build. He peeled his bloody hand away, looked down, grimaced. 'Told me to come down alone to second level.'

'Sounds like he has more than one weapon.'

'Guess he does now,' said the black. 'You did right. Kenny,' he added, patting the little man's shoulder.

The injured man explained, 'I had my nailgun when he snuck up on us from below.' He saw Quantrill's frown.

'Like a big staple gun. It'll carry fifty feet. Guess he didn't know what it was.'

'Sure found out when you squeezed it off,' said his companion with fond pride in his gaze.

'And the fucker made me sorry. Shot me, damn true. I dropped the nailgun over the catwalk, so I guess he's got it.'

Quantrill: 'Hit him?'

'Shit, I wasn't really tryin' to.'

'How many rounds are left in that nailgun?'

'Eight or ten. Jeez, this hurts.'

Quantrill looked at the big man. 'Take him out of Soho the front way and keep going. Check in with security and give 'em the word. Do any of these other doors open?'

'They do with this,' said the big man, and handed Quantrill a master key. Supporting his friend, he started down Wardour and then stopped. 'Aren't you comin'?'

Quantrill shook his head and glanced upward. 'You're civilians, and your buddy's hit. Felix Sorel has just rewritten my contract,' he said.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Alone on the street, Quantrill felt his skin prickle. He knew nothing of the structures behind those fake storefronts. Sorel could be strolling around, gazing through those windows at his leisure in his search for a victim. But you wouldn't want me as a hostage, would you, pal? I might be too troublesome. You'd take me off the second you saw me, and go looking for somebody more tractable. Only there isn't gonna be anybody like that here. But you don't know that, so you'll be casting around to catch some other poor fish, moving along as quietly as you can, testing every footstep. You can't be far away. It took you a hell of a long time to flush those two special effects men. Drives a man nuts to proceed so slowly. I know, I know… Given one possible advantage in his freedom of movement, Quantrill took it.

Abruptly he began to sprint down the street, leaping the cable, turning the corner, then kneeling with that master key at the first door he came to. If he could get behind the facades of these buildings — really one single building a block wide, built to look like several crammed tightly together — he would at least know the terrain. The main thing was to get familiar with the territory; to take that advantage away from his opponent.

Even the false fronts of Soho, he found, were built with full walls and internal partitions. Perhaps WCS intended to bring the whole place to life one day. Meanwhile, West Texas dust storms had laid down a fine gray film in every empty room. You could move along the sturdy flooring without much noise, but you left tracks as obvious as if striding over fresh paint. Quantrill moved silently to the shadowed back wall; tried the old-fashioned doorknob very, very gently, remembering to do it right. That meant standing to one side of the door, reaching over with your free hand to grasp the knob, lining your vulnerable parts up with the two-by-fours in the doorframe, just in case. If you stood forthrightly in front of the door, you could get yourself forthrightly ventilated by a slug through that door face. Or several slugs. Hey, almost forgot; you only fired one round at that poor little guy. Low on ammo. Sorel? It should make you more cautious.

The door was not locked and opened a hand's width without a squeak. Quantrill squinted through the opening, shifting to improve his view. The door opened onto a broad hallway floored with linolamat, showing treadmarks of many small tires as well as a welter of footprints. A service hall, used often, with a nice quiet surface. Just the thing to gladden your heart, hm? He eased the door open more, cursed a complaining hinge, lifted up on the knob to silence the squeak as he persisted. Now he could slip through the doorway, but now, too, he saw that the hall had no true ceiling. Instead, a catwalk of expanded metal gratings let him see two more levels above, illuminated faintly from skylights. It was a nightmare of grid work and shadow, with tubular steel ladders spaced at intervals down the hallway, leading to higher levels through openings in the floor grate.

He was three rungs up the nearest ladder when he heard it, a single thin concussive report with a familiar ring. It seemed to have come from somewhere above. Testing our new nail gun, are we? Good careful move. But you wouldn't do it if you knew I was here. Quantrill gripped the receiver of the Chiller in his teeth, paused to gaze down the empty second-level corridor with its perforated metal floor, continued climbing to the third level. And saw a shadow obscure a skylight in someone's slow passage across the roof.

Quantrill moved as quickly as he dared, tempting faint creaks of the metal flooring as he hurried down the corridor. Three more skylights were spaced just above Quantrill, and that shadow had been moving in the same direction as he, but ahead of him. He paused, now realizing that some of those creaks were made by the man above him. You're not inside this big echo chamber, Sorel, so you can't be sure whether all these damned noises are your own.

Quantrill paused short of the next skylight, willing the heavy plastic to give him a clear view of Sorel. But dust and oxidation took their toll, and the shadow that passed above could have belonged to anybody. I'm sure it's you up there. Sorel; who else could it be? But bone deep in his training was that requirement to make utterly certain identification before he squeezed off a single round. It was faintly possible that some innocent dude was hiding out on the roof. Quantrill estimated his quarry's rate of advance and scurried forward again. He reached the turn of the upper-level corridor quickly, saw the ceiling trapdoor ahead in the dimness, and moved toward its interior ladder. If Sorel wanted to cross the street, he'd have to come down.

And Quantrill would be waiting. Unfortunately, not where he should be waiting.

He heard stealthy rustlings in the near distance, waiting for that trapdoor to open, and then felt something more than he heard it, as if a faint earth tremor had whispered through the building. He backtracked down the corridor, turned the corner, and saw Felix Sorel ten meters away, already descending a ladder to the level below. The sonofabitch had removed the skylight and dropped to the corridor floor. He'd stuffed a bulky tool, the nailgun no doubt, into his jacket front and carried his H&K sidearm in his teeth for the climb. Just like I do.

Quantrill made a lightning decision — the spaces of the perforations in that metal flooring might let a seven-millimeter slug pass, with luck — and fired a burst toward the head and shoulders of the man below. Though the Chiller's coughs were faint, the detonations of those tiny warheads were not. The series of blue-white flashes, spattering from the steel grate over Sorel's head, said that Quantrill's luck was poor. Sorel hit the second level, spun, and had the little sidearm aimed upward in less time than seemed possible. The muzzle of the H&K flashed and roared once; the heavy slug struck the grating near Quantrill's feet and shrilled away harmlessly, and then Sorel was sprinting away as Quantrill pounded after him on the level just above. It was maddening to pace a target in full view, from a commanding height, and not be able to fire. Correction: You could fire, but those slug fragments didn't care which target they found.

They had raced twenty meters when Quantrill realized that the next turn would lead them back to the vicinity of the 'falling building.' a big three-dimensional region that Sorel already knew. Holding his right hand splayed near his face for the pitifully small protection it afforded, Quantrill squeezed off another burst as he ran; saw several more flashes in the grate. But this time, one of those flashes erupted at the turn of the corridor just ahead of Sorel's