Bray walked rapidly toward the heavy door to the staircase, stopping briefly at the cleaning woman's cart. He removed four glass ashtrays, stuffing them into his pockets, and wedged the attach6 case between his arm and chest.
As quietly as he could, he pressed on the crash bar; the heavy steel door opened. He started down the steps, staying close to the wall, listening for the sound of his enemy.
It was there. Several stories below he could hear rapid footsteps slapping against the concrete stairs. They stopped and Scofield stood motionless. What followed confused him. There was a slicing sound, a series of quick movements -abrasive, metallic. What was it?
He looked back up the steps at the metal door he had just walked through, and he knew. The staircase was essentially a fire exit; the crash-bar doors opened from the inside, not from the staircase, thus inhibiting thieves. The person below was using a thin sheet of metal, or plastic, stabbing the crack around the lock, pulling up and down to catch the rounded latch and open the door. The method was universal; most fire exits could be manipulated this way, if they were functional. They would be functional in this hotel.
The abrasive slicing stopped; the door had been opened.
Silence.
The door slammed shut. Scofield moved to the edge of the steps and looked below; he saw nothing but angled railings, squared at the comers, descending into darkness. Silently, he lowered one foot at a time and reached the next landing. He was on the fifth floor.
Five-zero-five. A meaningless number, a meaningless verbal complication.
Taleniekov's strategy was clear now. And logical. Bray would have used it himself. Once the chaos had begun, the Russian waited in the lobby, watching the elevators for a sign of his enemy, and when be did not appear, the assumption had to be that Beowulf was cut off, roving, prob- ing for a way out. Only after Taleniekov was certain that his enemy had not run into the streets, could he begin the final hunt from the staircase, lurching into the hallways, his weapon leveled for his moving target.
But the Russian could not start the kill from the top, be had to begin from the staircase in the lobby. He was forced to give up the high-ground, as deadly a disadvantage on the staircase as it was in the hill country. Scofield put down his attach6 case and took out two of the glass ashtrays from his pocket. The waiting was about over; it would happen any second now.
The door below crashed open. Bray hurled the first ashtray down between the railing; the smashing of glass echoed throughout the descending walls of concrete and steel.
Footsteps lurching. The thud of a heavy body making contact with a wall.
Scofield sprang toward the open space; he threw down the second ashtray.
The glass shattered directly beneath; the figure below darted past the edge of the railing. Bray fired his gun; his enemy screamed, twisting in the air, hurling himself out of the sightline.
Scofield took three steps down, pressing himself against the wall. He saw a thrashing leg and fired again. There was the singing sound of a bullet ricocheting off steel, embedding itself in cement. He had missed; he had wounded the Russian, but not lamed him.
There was suddenly another sound. Sirens. Distant. Outside. Drawing closer.
And shouting, muted by the heavy exit doors; orders screamed in corridors and hallways.
Options were being cut off, the chance of escape diminishing with each new sound. It had to end now. There was nothing left but a final exchange. A hundred lessons from the past were summarized in one: Draw fire first, make the gun expose itself-which means exposing part of you. A superficial wound means nothing if it saves your life.
The seconds ticked off; there was no alternative.
Bray took out the two remaining ashtrays from his pocket and hurled them over the open space above the railing. He stepped down, and at the first sound of shattering glass, swung out his left arm and shoulder, jabbing the air, arcing in a half-circle, part of him in the Russian's direct line of fire. But not his weapon; it was ready for his own attack.
Two deafening explosions filled the vertical tunnel..
The gun was blown out of his handl Out of his right hand! He watched helplessly as the weapon sprang out of his fingers, specks of blood spreading over his palm, the high-pitched ring of a still-ricocheting bullet bouncing from steel to steel.