15

Working slowly because of their improvised tools, Charlie Green and two of his office staff, Jill and Diane, carefully removed the screws fastening the window's molding to the steel window frame. In the outer office and corridor, Sandy and Mrs. Forde stood guard. The Federal Agents in the building opposite the Tower had code-signaled Green and his staff to dismantle this particular window and remove the plate glass. The agents had emphasized in repeated Morse that the lives of everyone in the building depended on the window not falling to the sidewalk. If it did, the terrorists would be alerted.

"Done up here," Green told the others. He dropped the last screw, left the molding in place, let his arms fall to his side. Standing on a desk, he'd had his arms above his head for thirty minutes. His arms ached.

"I'm going as fast as I can," Diane told him.

"Me, too," Jill added.

"How many more?" Green asked. He saw blood dripping from Diane's hands. "Take a break, Diane."

"Damn it, my blister's popped."

"Go check on Mrs. Forde and Sandy, tell them we're almost ready to take out this window."

"Done down here," Jill told him. "Look! They're flashing the code again."

Across the street, the agents signaled again. Green interpreted the blinking light. "They want us to hurry."

"Are you going to answer them?"

"I'm going to pull out this window is what I'm going to do." Green dropped the last screw from the side molding, jammed the screwdriver between the aluminum molding and the steel frame, and levered carefully. Gooey plastic caulking stretched. Green got his fingers around the molding and pulled with all his strength. The molding slowly tore away from the plastic. He threw down that strip, went to the others. Finally, he ripped away the last molding strip. Only plastic caulking held the eight-by-six-foot sheet of plate glass in the frame. Green tried to lever out the plate glass with a screwdriver. The glass chipped. He tried to pull it out with his fingertips. Blood ran from his shaved fingers.

"What's wrong, Mr. Green?" Jill asked.

"The window's glued in there with plastic!" Across the gulf between the two buildings, Green saw the federal agents' code-light blinking incessantly.

Five minutes, the code repeated. Five minutes. Five minutes.

He scraped the plastic away from the glass, cleared a foot of plastic in thirty seconds. One foot in thirty seconds, he thought. He looked at the sheet of glass. And I've got twenty-eight feet of window edge to do.

Then he looked through the edge of the glass. Plastic caulking cemented the other side, too! Even if he scraped away all the interior plastic, the exterior caulking would still hold the window in place.

"Find a cigarette lighter, matches!" he shouted to Jill. "Right now! Hurry!"

They tore through the drawers of the office. Whoever used this particular office wasn't a smoker. They went into another office, finally found a book of matches.

When they returned to the window, the light across the street flashed four. Four.

Green put a flame to the plastic. It softened, then burned. A line of flame ran up the window's edge. He soon had all the caulking in flames. The plate glass made cracking sounds as the burning plastic heated it. He saw burning plastic flow down the outside of the window.

Jamming his screwdriver into the frame again, Green levered. Flames burned his hands. But the glass moved.

In the corridor, pistol shots!

Black-suited for battle, Lyons paced the office. He checked the straps of his nylon harness for the tenth time. The steel mountaineering hook clanged against the silenced CAR-16 slung over his shoulder. He smoothed the Velcro flaps of the pockets holding the spare magazine for the CAR. He touched the pouches of concussion grenades.

At the office window, Blancanales waited with a high-powered compound bow. He had an arrow ready in place. A fishing reel attached to the bow held three hundred feet of monofilament. At his side was a coil of nylon rope. One end of the rope was already knotted around a steel beam above the office's acoustic-tile ceiling.

Federal agents clustered near the window. One held a flashlight with a long tube extension pointed at the window across the street. He urgently repeated the Morse code message. Another agent watched the window through binoculars.

"What goes on with those people?" Lyons shouted.

The agent with the binoculars turned to him. "They've got some kind of problem with the window."

"Look!" Blancanales pointed. It was then that they saw the window framed in flame.

Taximan, still wearing his cab-driver's uniform, arrived in the crowded office. "The helicopters are circling at two miles out, waiting for your signal."

Then Gadgets came through the door. He pushed past Taximan. Like Lyons and Blancanales, he wore battle-black and had a silenced CAR-16 slung over his shoulder. In each hand he carried several small electronic devices. "Last-minute trick. Here, radio in the front pocket, here's the earphone."

"More walkie-talkies?" Lyons asked. "I've got two already."

"These pick up their frequency. See the knob?" Gadgets explained as he slipped the small radio into Lyons' pocket. "We can monitor them. But when things get moving, twist the knob. It'll jam their walkie-talkies."

"Any chance they'll be monitoring us?"

"I don't think so. The truck out in New Jersey had all their serious electronics in it." Gadgets looked over at the flaming window. "What's going on over there?" They saw the plate-glass window drop back into the office. A young woman waved her arms. Blancanales raised the bow, drew back, but didn't let the arrow fly.

"Go!" Lyons told him. "Make your shot!"

"Signal for her to get out of the way," Blancanales told the agent with the flashlight.

"We got three minutes! Make your shot!"

The arrow arced through the night, monofilament singing from the reel.

Shivering in the chill wind, Mrs. Forde explained what had happened. "Diane came out of the office and told me we were almost ready for the officers to come in. Sandy wasn't paying attention to the elevators, she wanted to hear what we were saying... Then the two creeps with guns came out of the elevator. She didn't see them until I shot at them. I think I hit one. But they grabbed Sandy, took her with them." She was almost hysterical.

"Did you watch what floor they went to?" Green asked her.

"The third floor. They went straight down to the third floor."

"Okay, calm down. Get out of the wind. The shakes will go away, don't worry." Green pried the pistol out of Mrs. Forde's hands, checked the cylinder. He pulled out two brass casings. "Reload your pistol. They could come back."

Jill was standing in broken plate glass, hauling in monofilament, hand over hand. In seconds, they had a heavy nylon rope in their hands. Green stood on the desk, ripped a hole in the false ceiling, looped the rope over a steel beam. He pulled the rope taut, knotted it. Then he hung by his hands from the rope to test the knot. The nylon was as tight as an iron rod.

The nylon line angled up to the building across the street, three floors higher. Green waved his arms. He saw the signal flash in response.

A shadow stepped from the far window, and started to hurtle towards Green. He stared for an instant at the man in black sliding through space. Then he remembered his own training and experience, years before. He quickly checked the office for obstacles. The desk!

Green shoved the desk aside, kicked away a chair. The blond, wide-shouldered man in a commando's black jumpsuit flew through the window, jerked to a halt, dropped to the floor in a crouch.