Tower of Terror

back the cocking lever on her M-16, and punched an elevator's 'up' button. She waited.

'Back to your duty!' Zuniga ordered.

'I'll kill him! I'm going up to find the...'

'No! You had your chance to kill him, and he took your weapon. Now return to your duties. Nothing else is important.'

Her face remained hard, livid with anger. Zuniga coaxed her. 'We'll hit the alarms soon. That'll bring them all out.'

'And if he hides up there?'

'Then he's blown to bits.'

Ana smiled, flipped back the safety on her M-16. She returned to her task of distributing one-kilogram blocks of C-4 around the two columns of elevators.

The detonators were Zuniga's responsibility. He returned to the unit he had been assembling. It was then that he saw the torn nylon bag.

He ripped open the velcro flap. The radio-trigger fell to pieces in his hands.

The loss of this one single component threatened their entire mission. Zuniga forced himself to remain calm. It would be impossible for their leader to smuggle another detonator past the police lines which surely surrounded the Tower already. He thought of executing Ana, or forcing her to remain behind and trigger the blast. But no, she had not been careless. The man had surprised her while she worked.

He considered alternatives to radio detonation. He had been well-trained. He knew of a hundred ways to trigger the C-4. But it must be a technique or device which would both insure the success of the mission andhis own survival.

Zuniga's laughter rang in the silent corridor. He threw down the shattered component. He intended to execute all the hostages anyway. He would use their fearas the detonator.

* * *

'We have terrorists downstairs!' Quickly Green related to his overtime office staff what had happened on the fifth floor. 'I saw two. There could be any number of them in the Tower — five, ten, twenty crazies. And they have automatic rifles.'

'There's no money in the building!' Sandy interrupted. She was a tall, slender blonde, one of the temporary workers who rotated through the various offices of the Tower. There was panic in her voice.

'There's nothing here they could want...what could they possibly want?'

'We'll hear all about it on television tonight,' Green told her. 'WorldFiCor is an international corporation. What they want could have nothing to do with us. All that we have to do right now is live through it.'

'But they know we're here,' Jill said. 'They know what floor we're on! From the elevator numbers!'

'I hit all the numbers when we got out,' Green told her. 'The elevator stopped on every floor above us.'

'If we hide,' Sandy interrupted again, 'the police will be here soon. They've got to be!'

'Sandy, let me finish. We don't have to be brave, but we have to keep cool. We have to think out what we'll do. We can stay up here, or we can try to get out. If we stay up here,' Green detailed his thinking, 'we might be here for days. They might have time to search all the offices. But if we try to get out, we're betting our lives that the crazies won't be waiting for us. We'd have to shoot our way past them, and I've only got six rounds in this pistol.'

'Seventeen bullets,' Mrs. Forde corrected. She took a snub-nosed .38 revolver from her purse. 'Five in the cylinder, and six extras. And I know how to use it.'

'Mrs. Forde!' Green said in mock horror. 'Pistols are illegal in New York City.'

'Yeah. Murder and rape, too. And what about terrorism?'

'We still don't have fire superiority,' Green continued. 'But if they find us, or we have to break out, we could surprise one or two of them. Surprise them to death. So what's it going to be? It's time for a vote.'

'No voting!' Mrs. Forde told him. 'You're the Department Director. None of the girls has got your experience. We'll do what you say.'

'This is not an accounting project. And it's their lives we're talking about, Mrs. Forde.'

The woman turned to the others. 'Mr. Green was a company commander in the Army. Two tours of duty in Vietnam. If you don't want to do what he says, take the elevator downstairs. Maybe you'll make it to the street, maybe you won't.'

Diane, the third temporary worker, smiled, gave Green a quick salute.

'You got my vote.'

Sandy and Jill raised their hands.

Green nodded. 'Command accepted, with reluctance. And now, troops, get comfortable. Your fearless leader has to think of what to...'

Screaming drowned out his voice. It was an electronic wail. In every office and corridor of the hundred floors, sirens sounded the alert to evacuate the Tower.

'Fire! They've set fire to the...' Jill shrieked, running to the door.

'Shut up!' Green shouted. He grabbed her, pushed her back into a chair. 'Really, Jill, keep cool! It's just noise, a fire alarm. It could be a trick. When we smell smoke, then we'll panic.'

Green knew that the building was considered fireproof. Something else must be up.

* * *

One by one, in twos, sometimes in joking and laughing groups WorldFiCor employees and executives left the elevators. Every one of them assumed the evacuation of the Tower was a weekend drill. Within seconds of stepping into the lobby, each employee became a prisoner. The soldiers of Zuniga's squad seized and immobilized the employees with freighting tape. They did not resist. It happened too quickly.

Zuniga waited for a proper subject for his upcoming demonstration. His improvised plan required horror. It was not enough that the prisoners saw the corpse of the fat executive sprawled on the lobby's polished marble floor. They might think the fat man provoked his captors. The prisoners might hope for mercy. Without blind, unthinking terror twisting their emotions, torturing their intelligence and logic, the prisoners might not take the desperate chances his plan demanded.

A woman screamed. Zuniga watched his soldiers throw a young black woman against the wall. She was very young, perhaps still in her teens. They silenced her screaming with a rifle butt to the stomach, then a loop of tape around her head to cover her mouth. Loops of tape immobilized her hands.

Cocking his .45 automatic, Zuniga started toward her. But to his side, elevator doors slid open. An elderly woman stepped out. She walked slowly, her back stooped from decades of bending over a desk. Under one arm, she carried an account folder, sheets of paper and adding machine tape hanging from the folder. Two of his soldiers, Carlos and Rico, grabbed her, wrenching her arms behind her.

She cried out in pain, and Carlos released his grip. The old book-keeper fell to her hands and knees. Rico jerked her to her feet. Screaming, anger and horror on her face, she tried to twist away.

Zuniga glanced at the prisoners. All of them watched Rico struggling with the old woman.

Crossing to her in three strides, Zuniga jammed the barrel of the .45 automatic into the old woman's mouth and blew her head away.

6

Returning to downtown Manhattan, Lyons called Gadgets on his limo's secure phone.

'Hardman One for Hardman Three, connect please!'

'This is Mr. Three's liaison, will you hold for a moment?'

'Get me the man, right now!' Lyons glanced at his watch. Thirty-nine hours, two minutes. He looked outside. Double-parked trucks and jaywalkers jammed the traffic. Whenever Smith saw an opening, he accelerated, whipping the limousine through the traffic like a sports car. But then a traffic signal or a shopper's open car door or kids on bicycles slowed them again.

Gadgets finally came on the phone. 'This is Hardman Three. How's it going?'