Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [10]
* * *
The bean curd satay had smelled good. McIlveen had been worried that the waitress night have taken some kind of revenge on them, sabotage in the kitchen, but the food had been fine.
That was just like McIlveen, thought Mancuso. Always worrying.
She sat at the counter, still shaking a little. The waitress was clutching Mancuso’s hand in her own, gripping it fiercely. Mancuso let her. She figured it would make the waitress feel better.
There was blood on the girl’s tunic, a splash of it beside the little silver cross. The waitress had done surprisingly well. She hadn’t panicked. She’d been on the phone almost immediately, calling for medical assistance while Mancuso had been on the floor with McIlveen. The paramedics’ feet were crunching on broken glass now. They had arrived with unbelievable speed, considering the snow and the traffic.
‘Okay. Now,’ said one of the paramedics. They braced themselves and lifted the stretcher off the floor. It was a life‐support stretcher and McIlveen was already connected up to it. Mancuso got up to follow it out the door but one of the other cops stopped her, made her sit back down at the counter. The waitress took Mancuso’s hand again and Mancuso let her.
The plates of satay were turning to cold grease on the counter. Snow and cold air blew in through the shattered window of the diner. Mancuso could see the lights of the police copter as it hovered above the building across the street, sweeping the roof with a search beam. There was nothing there. The snipers would be miles away by now.
* * *
When the traffic had eased the first paramedic glanced into the back of the ambulance. The policeman was attached to the vehicle’s life support, the stretcher locked down on to the body table. The second paramedic was busy making adjustments to the drug supply.
‘How is he?’
‘All brain functions seem okay.’
‘Thank God for that.’
The second paramedic made a last check on the vital signs readout and came forward, climbing into the passenger seat. He clipped his seatbelt on and looked across at the driver.
‘That was a terrific shot,’ he said.
‘Well, I couldn’t let us freeze on that rooftop all night,’ said Mulwray.
* * *
3
Maria Chavez pulled over to let the ambulance pass her on the approach road to the King Building. There weren’t any lights flashing on the vehicle, or any sirens, but it was moving at what Maria regarded as a dangerous speed as it loomed up in her rear‐view mirror. She wondered what the vehicle would do when it encountered the armoured gates of the building, but as she watched the crash barriers rolled back, giving access to the parking lot. The ambulance flashed by and Maria recognized Christian and Mulwray behind the wide windscreen. She should have guessed; it was one of Biostock Acquisition’s collection of colourful vehicles. They had everything from city taxis to a hearse.
Maria followed the ambulance through the open gate and parked her Toyota in the company lot. Mulwray and Christian were wheeling a stretcher trolley into the service entrance of the building and they were gone by the time she locked her car and started walking through the freezing wind to the security booth. The wind was lashing snow between the towers of the remaining skyscrapers, the crystal flakes glittering in the security floodlights. As Maria stepped over half‐frozen puddles the wind changed direction and hit her from a new angle. It buffeted around the surrounding tall structures, finding a route then moving like a fast car, blowing in off the dead water of the river, chilled by its passage and funnelled by the ranks of office buildings. Gathering velocity as it swept through the gaps left by demolition and riot damage. Now it howled across the parking lot and over Maria.
The guard in his heated booth kept her waiting for five minutes while he pretended he was checking her card. In fact he was finishing off a session of MacPet on his computer screen.