Black Sun

Before they could rejoice, a third guard opened fire.

Bullets ricocheted around the brig and Hawker pulled a grenade from inside his pack. While Danielle fired back, he tossed the grenade.

The concussion knocked the remaining attacker down and Hawker ran to the man’s position, ripping the Taser-like weapon from his belt and using it on him. The five-second ride left the man writhing on the floor and Hawker guessed he would no longer be a problem.

He looked toward the elevator. A racket of the competing alarms poured down through the elevator shaft and in through the hole he’d blown in the wall. Out on the rocks, beams of light were playing through the smoke. Shouting could be heard.

It would take a minute or so for any guards to scale down from above, but exiting that way now would be suicide.

He shouted to Danielle. “Come on!”

Through the smoke he saw Danielle and the child trying to help another prisoner stand.

“Leave him,” Hawker shouted.

“I can’t,” Danielle said.

“We don’t have room. If this guy wants out he has to run for it …”

Hawker’s voice trailed off as realized the man had only bloodstained rags where his feet should have been.

“I’m not leaving him,” Danielle said. But the man pushed her away and then fell back onto his stone ledge of a bunk.

“Go,” he said in Russian. “Take him with you.” He pointed to Yuri.

Hawker looked at Danielle. “We only have room for three.”

Angry, she grabbed Yuri and tore him away from Petrov. The child began to scream.

“Give me a weapon,” the man said.

Hawker handed him a fragmentation grenade, in case he didn’t want to be a prisoner any longer. And then he turned and led Danielle and the child toward the open elevator doors.

“We’re taking the elevator?” she asked.

“Right now they’re cutting off the exits, surrounding the perimeter to try to keep us from escaping,” he said. “We’re going to head deeper inside.”

They piled inside.

Danielle pointed to the guard’s key still in the slot. “I’m guessing if we turn that, we go up.”

“Gimme a second,” Hawker said. He dropped down and pried open the control panel.

“What are you doing?”

“Overriding their computer,” he said, pulling out an electronic interface that looked like a comb co

He pulled the elevator’s own mess of wires from the unit interface and jammed the comb side of his contraption into the same spot. He typed in 102 on the keypad and hit LOCK. The doors closed and the elevator began its express ride.

As it rose up, Yuri continued to cry. Danielle attempted to comfort him, holding him with one arm while gripping the assault rifle with the other. A modern woman.

Hawker checked his readout. They’d passed the twentieth floor and were accelerating. The device he’d plugged in had come direct from the manufacturer, via the NRI lab and Arnold Moore. Not only did it override the security protocols of the elevator’s main computer but with NRI’s reworking, it sent a signal to the tracking system, fooling it into thinking that the elevator was still in the subbasement of the brig.

While Kang’s security forces were surrounding the fort, scaling down the walls outside, and frantically pressing the elevator call button in the lobby, Hawker, Danielle, and the kid were passing right by them, headed for the roof.

He only hoped that Saravich and his helicopter would be there.

He pulled out three harnesses, each co

“Put these on,” he said, stepping into his own.

Danielle slipped hers on, legs first and then arms. She helped Yuri into his. The crying had ceased, but his eyes remained red and swollen.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“Moore sent me.”

“How did he know?”

“McCarter called in, after you were taken.”

“McCarter?” Her voice was suddenly filled with surprise and hope. “I thought he was …,” she stammered. “I thought I’d gotten him killed.”

Hawker smiled at her. He liked being the bearer of good news for once. “Apparently he’s tougher than you thought.”

For the first time since he’d known her, she seemed to be overcome with emotion. He looked up at the rapidly increasing number on the elevator readout. “Ninety. We’ll be at the top in fifteen seconds.”

“And then?” Danielle asked.

“There should be a helicopter waiting.”

“Why the harnesses?”

“There’s nowhere for it to land.”

The doors opened to a black night and an empty, wet roof.

“Where’s the helicopter?” Danielle asked.

Hawker stepped out. It wasn’t there.

The rain was still coming down at the same steady pace. Heavy gray clouds loomed close above them, lit by the city lights just as they had been on the night Hawker arrived. Perhaps it was the quarter-mile ascent to the roof, but the clouds seemed much lower to Hawker than they had when he’d stood on the tug in the harbor.

Ordinarily no one in their right mind would risk flying around skyscrapers under such conditions, but if Hawker was right, Ivan’s pilot would do whatever Ivan ordered him to do. And if Ivan wanted this kid back as badly as Hawker thought he did, the helicopter pilot would make the attempt even if the visibility dropped to zero.

He walked to the edge.

God, it was a long way down, and with not even a fence or a wall on this roof, just a sharp, flat edge, like some infinity pool. He pulled back feeling dizzy from the false sense of movement created by the uplighting and the sheets of falling rain.

“Where is our ride?” Danielle asked impatiently.

Hawker listened through the rain. He heard nothing, until the muted sound of a distant explosion echoed through the night. A slight vibration was felt even on the roof.

She looked at him and then turned away. They both knew what that meant. Petrov had used the grenade, either on himself or the guards or both.

“At some point they’re going to realize our elevator is not stuck at the bottom floor,” she said.

“You think they’re smart enough to pop open a door and look up?” Hawker asked.

“Sooner or later.”

As if to affirm her thought they heard the sound of heavy machinery whirring, slow at first, then louder and faster. The second elevator car was moving.

“Looks like they chose sooner,” he said.

“I hope you have a backup plan.”

He looked at her blankly.

“Great.”

Hawker pulled a pistol from the satchel, took cover behind a huge air-conditioning unit, and waited. Danielle crouched down beside him, pulling Yuri close and pressing the carbine into her shoulder.

The elevator pinged.

He could see the light beneath the doors. He raised the pistol, aiming. The doors opened … to nothing. The car was empty.

“Put down your guns!” a booming voice shouted from behind them.

Hawker cringed. The stairs.

He dropped his weapon and heard Danielle’s rifle clatter to the rooftop.

“Turn around.”

Hawker turned slowly to see three guards flanking a heavyset Chinese man. He didn’t know him by sight, but Kang’s head thug was a man named Choi. Hawker guessed that’s who he was looking at.

“Get on the ground!” Choi shouted.

As Hawker put his hands on the rooftop, he caught the sound of a reverberation. As he lay flat, the sound grew rapidly until a sleek, European-built helicopter came roaring up over the side of the building.

He looked up just as shots began to rain down from the open door of the helicopter.

Two of the guards went down. Choi and the other scrambled for cover.

The helicopter swept past and turned around.

Hawker grabbed his weapon and began firing, pi

The helicopter had turned and was coming back. It trailed a steel cable. As Danielle took over the firing, Hawker dove for the wire and grabbed it.