*
Dryden had never felt this immobilized. For ten seconds, a stack of eternities under these conditions, he simply held on to Rachel and had no idea what to do. He kept the gun leveled on the door, and his eyes on the incoming helicopters—executioners to the scaffold.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel whispered again.
Dryden regained his composure and turned the girl’s face up toward his.
“You can’t do this,” he said. “You can’t give up. You’d be giving up for both of us, do you understand that?”
“If we get away,” Rachel said, “and if I turn into the other me … you might wish you had this moment back. That you hadn’t saved me.”
“Not a chance.”
He held her gaze a moment longer, hoping to see a glimmer of resolve there. She took a deep breath and nodded, looking stronger, if only by degrees.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Dryden said.
The lead chopper was twenty seconds out.
In the hall, one of the two women was still standing guard—Dryden had heard the other run past to verify the helicopters for herself. Whoever was in the hall would make a move on this room in the final seconds before the Little Birds reached sniper range. She would have no choice, by then, if she intended to keep Rachel alive.
That move would come any moment now.
Dryden’s eyes took in a long vertical split in the bedroom door, from the impact of the dresser. It followed the wood grain from the bottom of the door all the way to the top.
Don’t think. Do it. Now.
He turned his eyes on the south windows. He visualized himself shooting out the glass and plunging into open space.
Rachel jerked as if stung, reacting to the thought. By reflex she reached to stop him from doing it.
Dryden pushed her away and, keeping his mind focused on the plan to exit through the window, turned and sprinted for the cracked door instead. There was just enough room to get up to speed. He vaulted the dresser, brought his leg up, and pistoned it forward to exploit his body’s momentum. His foot connected with the door and broke it like a sheet of ice as he went through. The movement was awkward as hell. He ignored his balance—ignored everything but the SIG and the direction it had to be pointed.
The corridor was pitch black. He fired, even as he fell, and in the instant of the muzzle flash he saw Sandra ten feet away holding the rifle—a G-36. She wasn’t aiming it. She looked deeply confused. The distraction, rough as it had been, must’ve worked—she’d gotten the image of him diving out the window, the same as Rachel had.
Dryden landed in a crouch, retargeted on the darkness where Sandra’s face had been, and squeezed off three shots as fast as he could.
It was death by strobe light. Three snapshots within the deep black, Sandra taking the bullets to the neck, cheekbone, forehead. Crumpling like a dropped marionette.
Dryden heard screaming, somewhere. Not Rachel. Audrey. Along the south side of the apartment. Dryden scrambled for the heavy machine gun, groped for it in the darkness, and took it from Sandra’s hands. He raised it to a firing position facing the south end of the hall, where enough city light bled past the corner to show that there was no one there.
Rachel appeared at her doorway. Dryden took a step toward her and stopped—something metal had rattled at his feet. He realized he’d heard the same sound when Sandra had fallen, but had missed it for more pressing details. He felt a barrel-mounted flashlight on the G-36 and switched it on.
Sandra was wearing a parachute.
He killed the light beam and checked the south corner again. Still clear. Audrey apparently knew better than to approach from that way; she didn’t have to read his mind to know he had the machine gun now. With vague amusement, Dryden realized Audrey’s mind reading gave him a small tactical advantage: For the moment he felt only Rachel prodding his thoughts, and he would sense the change as soon as Audrey got close enough to round the corner.
He turned the other way, toward the north end of the hall. Skyline glow shone there as well, from the library’s windows. It was likely Audrey would circle the apartment to attack from that direction, but that would take her a minute or more. Her scream had placed her at the south side only seconds ago.
Rachel’s bedroom windows began to hum as the nearer of the two choppers closed in. Dryden glanced through the doorway and saw the lead aircraft pass over the roof of the white marble building one block to the south.
“Take this,” Dryden said, handing Rachel the SIG. It had two shots left in it. He nodded over his shoulder at the north end of the hall. “You see anything move up there, shoot at it.”
She nodded and raised the weapon. Dryden crouched over Sandra, keeping both the G-36 and his eyes on the south corner. By touch, he set to work removing the parachute harness from Sandra’s body.