He dragged her out of the office and down the stairs. So far, no sign of alarm.
But almost immediately after they reached the ground floor someone above them screamed bloody murder.
“Damn!” Scotty could hear the feet, didn’t need to look, or ask Mason. “I can’t get you out of here yet,” he said.
Now her stunned expression flattened with fear. “What are you going to do?”
“Find a place to sit tight, call in the marines. Mason?”
A voice in his ear. “Here, kid.”
“I’ve got her. Get help now.”
Adriana tugged at his arm. “What do I do until then?”
Scotty scanned the floor, looking for an exit. There was nothing save boxes, and those endless rows of red and green barrels.
And he got an idea. “Listen,” he said. “Those red barrels are garbage… these green ones are recycling bins. I’m betting the green ones are processed during the day.”
She looked so wan and desperate that the sudden flash of hope in her blue eyes almost made him laugh. She understood, thank God.
“So… this is the idea. You’re climbing in. If anything goes wrong, get out, you wait until you hear the police arrive, understand?”
Before she had the chance to protest, he had Adriana stuffed halfway into a green barrel. In her current, vulnerable state, she finally looked her seventeen years. For a moment, that moment, he felt so protective of the girl that he hugged her.
She melted against him. There was nothing sexual about it. It felt as if he were sheltering a little sister from the rain. “What are you going to do?” she whispered.
“Draw fire.” He cupped her cheek in his palm, then slid the top into place.
Scotty crouched down in a corner against the south wall, avoiding the pattering feet and increasing sounds of worry and anger, some of them still in that odd language. “Mason,” he whispered. “Warm bodies?”
“Two, headed right for you.”
“And the other side of the wall?”
“Nobody.”
“Finally, a piece of good news.”
He put his back to the wall and set his feet against a two-tiered row of red barrels. Pushed until he felt it give a bit. At the last moment, he realized that kicking out a lower barrel just might collapse the second row right on top of him. Whoops! Back wedged against the wall, feet braced against the barrels, he crab-walked up, wiggling along with his shoulders and butt providing most of the locomotion. Still concealed by the line of barrels, Scotty inhaled, tensed his leg muscles and pushed just as the angry voices approached his hiding place.
For a moment the barrels felt as solid as steel, then he found his leverage. They trembled, tilted and fell. He lost his place and tumbled to the ground, but landed on hands and feet as crashes and screams rang out from the floor.
Before his pursuers could organize, he had found a door and disappeared into an office cubbyhole. Would they follow? A bullet spanged into the wall over his head, answering his silent question.
“How long ’til the cavalry?”
“Ten minutes? Less?”
Scotty ran, leading his pursuers farther away from Adriana, through a warren of supply boxes. At first the pursuing footsteps were frighteningly close behind him… but then someone took a wrong turn, and they fell back.
He heard more shouting, another shot. A curse.
He couldn’t be certain, but guessed that the kidnappers had just collided with the noncriminal element working the night shift. Scotty hoped no innocents would be killed or injured, but something was certainly happening out there. Feet running. A grinding sound from the conveyer belt, followed by an odd whine from the overhead tentacles. They paused, and then lashed wildly, like a nest of angry boas.
Scotty moved through the office’s side door, exiting into an observation room of some kind. A glass wall separated him from the loading area.
All he had to do was wait for the cavalry, and that he could do. The deep shadows swallowed him. Scotty laid low and kept his eye on the door while the plant’s employees, fair and foul, duked it out. If Adriana just stayed put, they were halfway home.
Running feet. More shots, although he saw no police yet. A muffled explosion, followed by some kind of detonation down the hall. He tried the office door: locked. He pressed his face against the glass. A tendril of smoke drifted from the direction of the T’s crossbar. What exactly had he started?
Then, through the growing haze, a glimpse of something that almost stopped his heart. The overhead steel tentacles seemed to be thrashing about randomly, plucking up red and green barrels without distinction. A red barrel, a green barrel, another two reds, a green. And then… Adriana’s barrel.
There was no mistake about it. It was her barrel, the one resting under the red cautela sign, that had just been plucked up. And now, it was trundling toward the conveyer belt.
“What the hell? They aren’t supposed to burn those barrels!”
“What are you talking about?” Mason’s voice.
“They’re going to burn the recycling barrels.”
“Must be old barrels.”
“Idiot! Adriana is in one of them!”
“Who’s the idiot? Get her the hell out!”
Scotty tried the door again. Locked. He smashed his shoulder against it twice, to no effect. The mechanism probably needed a magnetic key, but he had the next best thing. He shot the mechanism with his stunner, heard a sizzling zap-click as the circuits fried. He slammed the door with his shoulder again. One hell of a racket, but it flew open, and he rushed out.
Directly into an ambush. Scotty shot the man in front with a shock dart as a second jumped him from behind. He collapsed to one knee beneath the momentum, but had the presence of mind to reach back and grab a handful of hair as he did, pulling his attacker forward, face-first onto the concrete floor with a bone-splintering crack.
But then at least two others piled on. Scotty tried to tell them to stop, that Adriana was in danger. Stop those barrels! But he couldn’t inhale deeply enough to speak as he was kicked and clubbed until the room spun.
His cheek was pressed against the floor, eyes turned to face the door leading to the loading area. He watched through blurry eyes as the barrel disappeared toward the conveyer belt… and then was gone.
Suddenly, there were no more blows. Distantly, and then more closely, he heard the whoop-whoop-whoop of Swiss Air Police. His attackers fled.
Scotty forced himself up, and staggered toward the unmanned conveyer belt. He watched the incinerator door slide shut. The barrels were gone.
Flashes of light. A few curls of stinking smoke.
Then nothing.
“God… Adriana…”
“Yes,” she said, a soft, pensive voice suddenly beside him. “It smells terrible, doesn’t it?”
He couldn’t breathe. Slowly, Scotty turned around. She stood beside him, apparently unaware of his panicked thoughts.
“Wha… what are you… why aren’t you in the barrel?”
She shrugged. “I cannot abide tiny spaces. I got out and hid in a storeroom. I suppose that once again I have angered you.”
He stared at her in disbelief. Then relief washed through him like a cool tide. He picked her up and swung her in a circle as the Swiss police closed in, weapons at the ready, their faces relieved but professionally quizzical.
