He was not going to jail because of some corporate thief's six million. Under the circumstances, what had been good for Little Tony and nine others of his gang — and Stephanie — was going to be good for Klaxon. As much as he could, he was going to inflict pain on these people.

He swung the Browning around into the staircase. "Freeze!"

"Kamarad!"

"Speak English! Hands over your head!"

She was a little girl, plump, with rosy cheeks and green eyes. She looked hardly older than Judy. Judy was even taller. At the top of the stairs with her were more rockets in launching tubes and enough other ordnance to hold the building for a week. If they had had the personnel earlier this morning, the gang could have come out of the building to drive the police back, inflicting heavy casualties and damage along the way.

"Do you have an assault rifle or machine gun up there?"

She looked confused for a moment, then she nodded yes. She looked like somebody's baby-sitter. How old could she be, twenty? Twenty-two?

"I can see you very well," Leland said. "Do you understand me?" His nerves were crawling with self-disgust. "I want you to pick up a weapon by the barrel, and two clips of ammunition with the other. Don't move too quickly."

She did it, looking relieved, he thought. He saw her less well than he had said: the daylight filled the open door behind her. She had that dark red hair, a full, to-the-shoulders head of it, beautiful.

"Come down, one step at a time."

He was trembling. He wanted her to get close enough for him to kill her with a single shot before she realized what he was going to do. He wanted to stop sentimentalizing her; he didn't know who she was, what she had done, or the people she had killed. If she had been up here at dawn, she had killed the men in the helicopters.

And trying to kill him. Another mistake. This was the price of failure. She was at the foot of the stairs, holding a Kalashnikov, looking into his eyes, frightened, trying to smile. She had perfect teeth. He had the pistol low, so she would not believe he was aiming it at her. He shook — quaked: his bladder opened. As he raised the pistol she realized that he had allowed her to live these extra seconds only to carry the gun to him. She started to scream. Leland could see that she had never lived, that she knew she was dying without ever having experienced most of the natural course of life. Leland thought of his dead daughter Steffie and shot this bitch in the forehead above the bridge of her nose.

Nothing on the radio. No shooting down below. There was more than just the six million on the table: documents, correspondence, internal memoranda, some of it bearing Steffie's initials, an "S.G." that looked like a flower. He wasn't going to worry about police problems. He wasn't going to worry about anything. It would be interesting to see if somebody tried to shoot him when the money started flying out over the city. Would the cops automatically assume that he was one of the gang? Or would that just be the story they gave out? The question of who was right and who was wrong was more a matter of point of view than anything else. If you were in a helicopter, you just might pull the trigger because the money was out of reach. You wouldn't even know why you had done it.

He had to get a chair on casters, and even then he would have to make two trips to the open window — past the mutilated Rivers and the kid with the broken neck. Up here, Leland was the only one left alive. Tens, twenties, and fifties as well as hundreds, all banded and initialed by unknown Santiago tellers. After a job like this, if you had any brains, you shot them, too.

Leland was going to have to tear the bands off scores of packets of bills. Rivers and the kid were in rigor mortis now, complete with bright postmortem lividity, like a couple of starched shirts. Smart guys. Stiffs.

Leland's leg was beginning to hurt again. He didn't know if that was a good sign or bad. The first packets seemed to disappear into the haze, so Leland opened five at once before releasing them. From the street came a shout, then cheers and screams. Leland could hear a helicopter approaching. He pulled the chair back out of sight while he opened all of the remaining packets of bills. At the window, the air caught them, carried them upward in a spangled cloud. More screams from below, and horns blowing, as he scurried after the second chairload. Six million — six million more,figuring the building.

The helicopter swinging back and forth outside held a guy with a television camera. Leland made sure to stay back out of view. Maybe they would figure out who had thrown the money from the window, but they weren't going to be able to prove it. He opened all of the packets before he wheeled the chair past the bodies, and the money lifted up like the last fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Leland could hear automobile horns from all over the city. He gathered his equipment for the trek downstairs.

On the thirty-ninth floor he loaded the Kalashnikov and stepped out among the computers. He stopped, seeing what he had planned wasn't going to work. He had been about to empty both clips into the equipment. It wouldn't matter. That was part of the new magic that the young understood so well — it wouldn't make any difference. Whatever he destroyed here could be replaced quickly, or the workload distributed elsewhere. The people in the field probably would welcome the challenge.

He threw the gun down. Let the police find his fingerprints. In fact, he'd see if they were good enough to find them. One thing that was notgoing to happen: the police and Klaxon were not going to make him the fall guy. Not even for his goddamned trick badge. Six million and the building, that was enough damage. Maybe as much as twenty-five million, enough to trigger panic selling on Wall Street. The president of Klaxon Oil, whoever he was, could not yet imagine the trouble Leland was going to bring down upon him. Somehow. None of it was going to bring Stephanie back. He wanted to know when — how long ago — her life had slipped beyond his reach.

He turned the radio volume up. "This is Leland. I'm coming down."

"Hi, Joe." It was Al Powell. "Where are you?"

He did not want to be caught in a lie. "The thirty-ninth floor, on my way down from the fortieth. I just got the last of them up here. Did you get the one down there?"

"We haven't seen anybody. Now what do you mean, you got the last of them up there?"

"I told you I heard them say there were twelve. I kept very careful count. Since I went off the air after nine o'clock, I killed four more, including Little Tony..."

Taco Bill let out a rebel yell.

"We saw two," Al said. "They landed on a black-and-white."

"No. One of those was Little Tony. The other, whom he killed, is my daughter, Stephanie Leland Gennaro."

"Take it easy, Joe."

"No, I want to get this straight. I killed three others besides him, two men and a woman. The woman is the last — she's on the fortieth. I told you I kept count. I killed eleven..."

"Come on, Joe..."

He was on the thirty-eighth floor. "No, listen to me, damn it! There was one downstairs. If you're not sure you have him, make sure. His name is Karl. I killed his brother and he knows it. He's a tough bastard, covered with dirt and blood. Like me. Find my granddaughter. She'll tell you that one of them was covered with soot and maybe blood. That's the one I didn't kill. Do you understand? I didn't get anyone like that."

"Joe, why don't you sit down and wait until we get to you? If the roof is clear as you say, then we'll be able to put men on it..."

"I have one shot left. The guy has been listening to us right along. How far up into the building are you?"

"There are people coming out of all four staircases. We have only your word that you have as many as you say — or that there were twelve to start. I'm not asking, Joe, I'm telling you: appreciate our position. Let us do our job."