The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(18)

A voice called from the hallway outside, “Hey, hold the door!” Nueve stopped the doors from closing with the end of his cane. Two orderlies stepped inside, both a bit out of breath.

“Thanks, man,” one of them said.

They stood on either side of us. Nueve was standing directly behind my chair. The elevator began to descend. The four of us stared straight ahead, like everybody does in elevators.

Then Nueve leaned forward and whispered calmly in my ear, “I shall take the one on the left.”

“Take what?” I asked, because I had no idea what he meant.

His black cane whistled over my head and slammed with a sickening crunch against the orderly’s Adam’s apple. The blow dropped him.

The one to my right was already on me. I saw a flash of fluorescent light play across the blade in his hand as he brought a black dagger toward my stomach.

Nueve was too quick for him. He caught his wrist and twisted it upward while the cane swooshed again over my head, landing against the side of my attacker’s jaw.

As he went down, a gun went off; the report was very loud in the small space. The bullet caught Nueve in the left shoulder. He barely winced. A six-inch tapered blade sprang from the end of his cane.

“Duck,” he hissed.

I ducked, covering my head with my hands, like a passenger going down in an airplane. I heard the cane whistle through the air and then a wet, gurgling noise and the sound of the gun clattering to the floor. An instant later the man to my right went “Huh!” as if somebody had just told him a shocking piece of news. His body thudded to the floor as the elevator jerked to a stop: Nueve must have hit the emergency button.

I sat up. The guy on my left was lying in a pool of blood, clutching his gashed throat. The one on the other side wasn’t moving either, so I guessed Nueve had done the Company’s standard extreme extraction number on him too.

I looked at Nueve. Besides the saucer-sized bloodstain on the shoulder of his lab coat, you couldn’t tell he’d just been in a close-quarters fight to the death. He wasn’t even breathing hard. In fact, he was smiling.

“Uninjured, yes? Good! Up, now, Kropp. I need the chair.”

I stood up. My legs didn’t feel too steady, even with the help of the orthopedic shoes. Nueve locked the wheels on the chair and climbed onto the seat. I looked down at the dead men.

“How did you know?” I gasped.

“The shoes,” he said.

I looked at their shoes. They were the same white soft-sole numbers all orderlies wore.

“What about them?” I asked.

“They’re brand-new. Both pairs. One is understandable, but both?”

“Still, it could have been a coincidence.”

He shook his head. “No such thing in my experience. Yours?”

He popped open the access door in the ceiling with the butt end of his cane.

“I guess we’re not riding this to the bottom,” I said.

“Catch,” he said. He dropped the cane and I caught it before it hit the floor. There was a recessed slot in one end where the bayonet nested.

“I wouldn’t hold that too close to your face, Alfred,” he said. He heaved himself through the hole and disappeared into the darkness of the shaft. Then I heard him say, “Cane.” I handed it up to him.

“They must have been watching the room,” I called up to him. “I told you this was a lame idea. What are you doing up there?”

“Waiting for you.”

I took a deep breath before stepping onto the wheelchair seat. I hated heights, hated the dark, hated close spaces. On the other hand, I liked staying alive. Nueve reached down, slid his hands under my arms, and pulled me the rest of the way.

The elevator had come to a stop just past the second floor. Nueve hit some hidden button in the handle of his cane and the blade sprang out. He slipped the blade between the doors and then twisted it, forcing the doors open a couple of inches.

He put a hand on either door and slowly forced them open. He laid the cane lengthwise in the track between the doors to keep them open.

At that moment, the elevator motor revved, the big cable behind me began to move, and the whole thing started down.

“We’re moving!” I shouted unnecessarily.

He pushed himself through the opening, yanked the cane from the track, and held one end toward me as I began to accelerate away from him.

“Jump!” he called down.

I jumped, my right hand closing around the end of the cane with half an inch to spare. I looked down between my dangling feet at the roof of the elevator as it shot downward.

“Pull me up!” I yelled over the noise.

“Can’t! Climb,” he grunted back.

After a couple of hard pulls and kicks against the wall, I managed to grab the cane with my left hand and began to pull myself up. Nueve was having trouble keeping the cane still as my weight shifted back and forth.

“Faster please,” he said.

“I’m going as fast as I can!”

“Not fast enough, I think.”

I was about to ask why not when I heard the elevator motor revving below me. I didn’t have to look to know it was coming back up.

“Hand!” he yelled, letting go with his right and stretching it toward me. I let go of the cane with my left and reached toward his wriggling fingers. Not close enough. My fingertips brushed against his.