Tate was a good sergeant and he showed it now as he and Jacobs shrugged into their heavy armored vests and followed the gurney as the orderlies carried it down the stairs to the ambulance. A second crew followed with Boyle. The men on the landings were angry, seeing the gurneys pass, and Tate had a word of wisdom for them: "Don't let your temper get your ass shot off."

As the sirens wailed outside, Tate, backed by the veteran Jacobs, carefully cleared the offices and sealed off the tower.

A cool draft blew down the hall on four. Beyond the door, in the vast dark spaces of the main building, the telephones were ringing. In dark offices all over the building, buttons on telephones were winking like fireflies, the bells sounding over and over.

The word was out that Dr. Lecter was "barricaded" in the building, and radio and television reporters were calling, dialing fast with their modems, trying to get live interviews with the monster. To avoid this, SWAT usually has the telephones shut off, except for one that the negotiator uses. This building was too big, the offices too many.

Tate closed and locked the door on the rooms of blinking telephones. His chest and back were wet and itching under the hardshell vest.

He took his radio off his belt. "CP, this is Tate, the towers clear, over."

"Roger, Tate. Captain wants you at the CP."

"Ten-four. Tower lobby, you there?"

"Here, Sarge."

"It's me on the elevator, I'm bringing it down."

"Gotcha, Sarge."

Jacobs and Tate were in the elevator riding down to the lobby when a drop of blood fell on Tate's shoulder. Another hit his shoe.

He looked at the ceiling of the car, touched Jacobs, motioning for silence.

Blood was dripping from the crack around the service hatch in the top of the car. It seemed a long ride down to the lobby. Tate and Jacobs stepped off backwards, guns pointed at the ceiling of the elevator. Tate reached back in and locked the car.

"Shhhh, " Tate said in the lobby. Quietly, " Berry, Howard, he's on the roof of the elevator. Keep it covered."

Tate went outside. The black SWAT van was on the lot. SWAT always had a variety of elevator keys.

They were set up in moments, two SWAT officers in black body armor and headsets climbing the stairs to the third-floor landing. With Tate in the lobby were two more, their assault rifles pointed at the elevator ceiling.

Like the big ants that fight, Tate thought.

The SWAT commander was talking into his headset. "Okay, Johnny."

On the third floor, high above the elevator, Officer Johnny Peterson turned his key in the lock and the elevator door slid open. The shaft was dark. Lying on his back in the corridor, he took a stun grenade from his tactical vest and put it on the floor beside him. "Okay, I'll take a look now."

He took out his mirror with its long handle and stuck it over the edge while his partner shined a powerful flashlight down the shaft.

"I see him. He's on top of the elevator. I see a weapon beside him. He's not moving."

The question in Peterson's earphone, "Can you see his hands?"

"I see one hand, the other one's under him. He's got the sheets around him."

"Tell him."

"PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD AND FREEZE," Peterson yelled down the shaft. "He didn't move, Lieutenant… Right."

"IF YOU DON'T PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD I'LL DROP A STUN GRENADE ON YOU. I'LL GIVE YOU THREE SECONDS," Peterson called. He took from his vest one of the doorstops every SWAT officer carries. "OKAY, GUYS, WATCH OUT DOWN THERE-- HERE COMES THE GRENADE." He dropped the doorstop over the edge, saw it bounce on the figure. "He didn't move, Lieutenant."

"Okay, Johnny, we're gonna push the hatch up with a pole from outside the car. Can you get the drop?"

Peterson rolled over. His.45 automatic, cocked and locked, pointed straight down at the figure. "Got the drop," he said.

Looking down the elevator shaft, Peterson could see the crack of light appear below as the officers in the foyer pushed up on the hatch with a SWAT boathook. The still figure was partly over the hatch and one of the arms moved as the officers pushed from below.

Peterson's thumb pressed a shade harder on the safety of the Colt. "His arm moved, Lieutenant, but I think it's just the hatch moving it."

"Roger. Heave."

The hatch banged backward and lay against the wall of the elevator shaft. It was hard for Peterson to look down into the light. "He hasn't moved. His hand's not on the weapon."

The calm voice in his ear, "Okay, Johnny, hold up. We're coming into the car, so watch. with the mirror for movement. Any fire will come from us. Affirm?"

"Got it."

In the lobby, Tate watched them go into the car. A rifleman loaded with armor-piercing aimed his weapon at the ceiling of the elevator. A second officer climbed on a ladder. He was armed with a large automatic pistol with a flashlight clamped beneath it. A mirror and the pistol-light went up through the hatch. Then the officer's head and shoulders. He handed down a.38 revolver. "He's dead," the officer called down.

Tate wondered if the death of Dr. Lecter meant Catherine Martin would die too, all the information lost when the lights went out in that monster mind.

The officers were pulling him down now, the body coming upside down through the elevator hatch, eased down into many arms, an odd deposition in a lighted box. The lobby was filling up, policemen crowding up to see.

A corrections officer pushed forward, looked at the body's outflung tattooed arms.

"That's Pembry," he said.

CHAPTER 38

In the back of the howling ambulance, the young attendant braced himself against the sway and turned to his radio to report to his emergency room supervisor, talking loud above the siren.

"He's comatose but the vital signs are good. He's got good pressure. One-thirty over ninety. Yeah, ninety. Pulse eighty-five. He's got severe facial cuts with elevated flaps, one eye enucleated. I've got pressure on the face and an airway in place. Possible gunshot in the head, I can't tell."

Behind him on the stretcher, the balled and bloody fists relax inside the waistband. The right hand slides out, finds the buckle on the strap across the chest.

"I'm scared to put much pressure on the head-- he showed some convulsive movement before we put him on the gurney. Yeah, got him in the Fowler position."

Behind the young man, the hand gripped the surgical bandage and wiped out the eyes.

The attendant heard the airway hiss close behind him, turned and saw the bloody face in his, did not see the pistol descending and it caught him hard over the ear.

The ambulance slowing to a stop in traffic on the six-lane freeway, drivers behind it confused and honking, hesitant to pull around an emergency vehicle. Two small pops like backfires in the traffic and the ambulance started up again, weaving, straightening out, moving to the right lane.

The airport exit coming up. The ambulance piddled along in the right lane, various emergency lights going on and off on the outside of it, wipers on and off, then the siren wailing down, starting up, wailing down to silence and the flashing lights going off. The ambulance proceeding quietly, taking the exit to Memphis International Airport, the beautiful building floodlit in the winter evening. It took the curving drive as far as the automated gates to the vast underground parking field. A bloody hand came out to take a ticket. And the ambulance disappeared down the tunnel to the parking field beneath the ground.