Unnoticed by Monticelli or his busy employees, foot traffic around their building quickly dropped to nothing. Fewer and fewer vehicles glided past the main entrance. Admonished by plainclothes officers going from floor to floor, tenants of surrounding buildings found reason to lockseal their doors or close early for lunch, siesta, or meditation.
When the jaguar stalks the rain forest, the accompanying silence or racket that marks his progress depends on the inclination of the monkeys in his immediate vicinity. In this instance, an unusual and unprecedented silence enveloped the entire edifice.
Accompanied by half a dozen select officers, Hafas, Vyra, Manz, and Moses approached the main entrance. All except the mechanical were conventionally armed with both crowd-control devices and less genteel equipment. Vyra clung to her antique quasi-blowgun.
The inspector finished whispering into his com and turned to his companions. “The building is surrounded, and all entrances and exits, including the underground and the roof, are covered. Everyone inside except the Borgia people has been warned.”
“You think Monticelli will give up quietly?” Manz asked him.
“Do you?”
“Hard to say. Depends whether he thinks he can be charged with the deaths of those colonists who died for lack of the medicines his organization jacked. A big fine and confinement time might not bother him, but a couple dozen murder or accessory-to-murder charges might make him decide to take his chances with a gun instead of a lawyer. If the courts can make anything like that stick, he could find himself sentenced to a full mindwipe. I don’t think someone like him could handle that. He might prefer to be dead.”
“We’ll know in about thirty seconds.” Hafas gave the go-ahead, and his armed cohorts rushed the doorway.
There was an extended pause. “He must have been informed of the debacle at the Port by now,” the inspector mumbled. “We don’t know what kind of security he has at the entrance or how it’s been instructed to rea …”
Something went off thunderously just beyond their line of vision. Dust and smoke billowed from the entrance alcove, and the six officers came racing back, hunched low and helping along two of their number who’d been wounded by flying debris.
“Now he’s done it,” Manz declared. “That’s liable to bring the police.” The Minder hovered at his shoulder, reluctant to rise too high.
“Good thing you don’t get paid by the joke.” Hafas leaned cautiously around the artificial stone facing. “Doesn’t look like he plans to give up quietly.”
“Careful. Excessive understatement is Moses’ department. What now?”
The inspector sighed. “I was hoping this wouldn’t get messy.” He pulled his com and began giving orders.
Monticelli peered through his office window and flinched when an enterprising police sharpshooter stationed on the rooftop opposite just missed with a shot that spiderwebbed the thick glass. Made to frustrate just such an attempt by a ruthless competitor, disgruntled employee, or other would-be assassin, the windowpane’s built-in refraction index was designed to make it look to someone on the outside as if anyone standing inside was in reality a full meter further to his left than he actually was. If the marksman was clever enough to figure that out, he’d try to compensate for the distortion with his next shot.
Monticelli had no intention of giving him another clean try. A switch on his desk shuttered the opening with smooth gray composite, impenetrable to anything less than armor-piercing weaponry. Lights came on in the office as he urged his people to redouble their efforts. His security staff was already responding with appropriate measures.
Hafas chatted briefly into his com while his companions waited impatiently. Across the street two officers placed what looked like an ordinary plastic mailing tube on the sidewalk. They did something to its top, then moved off in opposite directions. The tube went phut! and quivered slightly. A tiny puff of white smoke emerged from its base. Hafas, Manz, Vyra, and the rest of the officers turned away and covered their faces.
The sealed entrance to the Borgia building vanished in a satisfyingly spectacular shower of shattered glass, frayed composite, shredded metal, and fractured arcrete. A cloud of white dust ballooned outward. Before it even began to settle, armed officers were rushing the gap from both sides. Manz and his companions accompanied them.
Cracked marble slabs and chunks of composite tried to trip them up as they raced through the lobby. Water rained from activated sprinklers and broken pipes. Except for several bodies, the entryway was deserted.
“JePPD is very proud of its tactical wing,” Hafas was yelling to the adjuster.
“They have reason to be!” Manz slowed as they neared a stairway. Everyone planned to avoid the lifts, he knew. Too easy to booby-trap.
Sensor-equipped officers led the way up multiple stairwells simultaneously. As soon as the lobby was again deserted, Moses, who couldn’t manage the stairs on his trackball anyway, thumbed the call button on the nearest lift and stepped into the waiting cab. A fall of several stories might dent his armored frame, but at the moment he felt the potential drop worth the risk.
In the penthouse suite Monticelli was relaying last-minute instructions to his anxious soldiers while techs and clerks huddled fearfully behind their desks and other office equipment. Some among them were starting to wonder at the precise nature of the emergency their chief executive officer had declared. Intimations of illegal involvement began to occur to more than a few as they identified the JePPD insignia on the jackets of the figures assembling out in the hall.
Monticelli was not concerned with what his soon-to-be former administrative employees might be thinking. It was the reaction of his private security force that occupied him now. “You four watch the main door. Do what you can. The rest of you come with me.”
A quartet of solemn-visaged men and women hurried to the floor’s defense, while the giant Knick-knack easily hefted the composite case Monticelli had stuffed with items taken from his desk and the outwall safe. Together they entered the suite of rooms that abutted the rear wall of the building.
The fireplace was dark now, the entertainment center silent. Hurrying to the back, Monticelli fingered a wall-mounted sculpture fashioned of tiny, irregularly shaped, rainbow-colored composite panels. While the giant waited patiently, his employer methodically twisted several portions of the sculpture, repeating a carefully memorized sequence.
Two sections of wall slid silently apart while the sculpture rose ceilingward to reveal a tightly wound spiral staircase leading downward. Letting his servant precede him, Monticelli closed the safety door behind them.
Monticelli’s rear guard was in the process of erecting an improvised barricade of office furniture when the first JeP officers pushed through into the outer offices. Manz and Vyra followed close behind.
Both sides opened fire simultaneously, but the police were better trained and motivated, if not better armed. Desks, cabinets, monitors, and other hastily stacked equipment disintegrated under the combined fire. The battle was intense but brief. With two of their companions down, the remaining pair of security soldiers retreated to Monticelli’s inner office.
Tac officers assumed the point and concentrated on shuttling the terrified office staff to safety. Everyone’s ears were ringing, and smoke and haze obscured vision. Occasional shots came from holes in the door leading to Monticelli’s inner sanctum.
Unnoticed by Hafas, who was busy directing his people, Vyra slipped something into the slot at the base of her elongated antique and took careful aim between two cabinets. Manz saw what she was up to and said nothing. The inspector might try to restrain her, but Manz knew better than to try. Nothing could restrain Vyra Kullervo when she was on the move, with the exception of certain indomitable forces of nature.
He saw her blow into the tube, heard the accompanying soft whoosh. With appalling violence, the security door that barred the way exploded, taking a substantial section of wall with it.
Hafas and his people dove for cover, rising only when someone identified the source of the explosion. He yelled across the now silent room. “What the hell do you put in that thing?”
“Just a small shape-charged missile. The tube concentrates the heat from my mouth wonderfully and ignites it. It’s an art form.” She smiled pleasantly.
“Save something for Monticelli.” Manz was already rushing past her, heading for the smoking cavity where the door had been. His approach, needless to say, went unchallenged from within.
Monticelli halted, peering downward. Like a camouflage-clad worm, a line of determined men and women was ascending the stairwell toward him.
“Up, up!” He snarled at his hulking companion. “Get up to the roof!” The giant made a strangled noise and reversed direction.
Manz dove for cover the instant he passed the ruined portal, but there was no one left inside to contest his presence … or to surrender. Hafas and several officers piled in behind him and began searching. They quickly found the remains of the two dead bodyguards, but of Monticelli there was no sign.
“He’s still somewhere in the building,” the inspector muttered. “Has to be.” He joined his officers in commencing a check of the walls, ceiling, and floor.
Moments later twin panels parted, and for the second time in minutes a colorful wall sculpture swung upward. The officers took aim with their weapons at the gap beyond, only to find themselves confronted by colleagues who’d come up the no longer secret stairwell from the basement.
