Chapter 7 - Smoke and Steel
I vaulted over the counter, firing two rapid shots into the chest plate of the nearest operative. The kinetic force knocked him off balance, sending him crashing backward into a floor-to-ceiling glass panel that cracked under his weight.
The second operative pivoted instantly, his carbine swinging toward my chest with terrifying speed. I threw myself to the floor, sliding across the slick, scotch-soaked hardwood as a burst of automatic fire ripped through the space where my head had been a fraction of a second earlier.
Before he could correct his aim, I kicked out with the heel of my boot, catching the back of his knee and snapping his stance. He stumbled forward, and I brought the heavy steel butt of my Glock down hard across the base of his helmet. He collapsed silently onto the rug, unconscious.
“Now, Julian! Move!” I roared, grabbing my terrified brother by the collar of his ruined suit and hauling him to his feet.
“My leg—I think I twisted my ankle—” Julian whined, but I didn't care. I shoved him hard toward the reinforced fire-escape stairwell door located behind the kitchen alcove.
“If you stop moving, I’ll leave you here for the next team,” I snapped, my chest heaving as I reloaded a fresh magazine into my pistol with a sharp click.
We burst through the heavy fire door just as the automated security system emitted a high-pitched warning tone throughout the building. The stairwell was dim, lit only by flickering amber emergency strips running along the base of the concrete steps. Down below us, the faint sound of heavy combat boots echoing up the hollow concrete shaft told us we had maybe thirty seconds before another enforcement team cut off our descent.
“We can’t go down!” Julian gasped, clutching his side as we flew down the steps from the sixty-fourth floor. “If they’re clearing the lobby and the garage, every exit is a trap!”
“We aren't going to the lobby,” I said, my mind racing through the building’s architectural blueprints I had memorized years ago when I acquired the property. “We’re heading to the sub-basement freight tunnel beneath the East River intake lines. It connects to the old pneumatic mail transit grid.”
Julian stared at me in horror as we took the corner of the fifty-ninth floor at a dead sprint. “The old transit grid? That’s sealed off! It’s been condemned for twenty years!”
“It’s the only place their thermal scopes and satellite trackers can’t read us,” I retorted, shoving him down the next flight of stairs as a suppressed round sparked off the concrete wall right beside my ear.
Someone was already above us in the stairwell, pushing the pursuit hard.
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We didn't stop to look back. We plunged deeper into the concrete bowels of the skyscraper, the air growing colder, damp, and smelling heavily of stagnant river water and rust.
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