The Vanished Man (Lincoln Rhyme 5)

Outside, sirens grew louder and then began to go silent as the emergency vehicles parked near the tent. Firemen and police officers began to enter. She flashed her shield to the one nearest her. "Bomb Squad here yet?"

"Should be five, six minutes."

She nodded and told them to carefully check the trash drums then she started toward the tarp-covered box.

And then it happened.

Not the bomb itself. But the panic, which seemed to erupt as fast as a detonation.

Sachs wasn't sure what prompted it--the sight of the emergency vehicles outside and the firemen pushing their way inside probably made some patrons uneasy. Then Sachs heard a series of pops at the main doorway. She recognized the sound from yesterday: the snapping of the huge commedia dell'arte Harlequin banner in the wind. But the audience at that exit must've thought they were gunshots and turned back, panicked, looking for other exits. Suddenly the tent filled with a huge collective voice, like the inhalation of a breath in fear. A deep rustling, a roar.

Then the wa

ve broke.

Screaming and crying out, people stampeded for the doors. Sachs was slammed from behind by the terrified mass. Her cheekbone struck the shoulder of a man in front of her, leaving her stunned. Screams rose, snatches of howls and shouts about fire, about bombs, about terrorists.

"Don't push!" she cried. But no one heard her words. It would be impossible to stop the tide anyway. A thousand individuals had become a single entity. Some people tried to fend off its crushing body but in the surge from behind they were pressed into it and became part of the beast, which lurched desperately toward the glare of the opening.

Sachs wrenched her arm free from between two teenage boys, their ruddy faces long with fear. Her head was slammed forward and she glimpsed some tattered flesh on the tent floor. She gasped, thinking a child was being trampled. But no, it was a shredded balloon. A baby's bottle, a scrap of green cloth, popcorn, a souvenir Harlequin mask, a Discman were being ground apart under the massive weight of the feet. If anyone was to fall they'd die in seconds. Sachs herself felt no balance or control; it seemed she could tumble helplessly to the floor at any moment.

Then her feet were actually lifted off the floor, sandwiched between two sweating bodies--a big man in a bloody Izod shirt, holding a sobbing young boy above his head, and a woman who seemed to have passed out. The screams grew louder, children's and adults' mixed, and fueled the panic. Heat enveloped her and soon it was nearly impossible to breathe. The pressure on her chest threatened to crush her heart to silence. Claustrophobia--Amelia Sachs's one big fear--now wrapped its tight arms around her and she felt herself swallowed up by an unbearable sensation of confinement.

When you move they can't getcha . . .

But she wasn't moving anywhere. She was held tight by a suffocating mass of powerful, damp bodies, not even human now, a collection of muscles and sweat and fists and spit and feet pressing harder and harder into itself.

Please, no! Please, let me move! Let me get one hand free. Let me take one breath of air.

She thought she saw blood. She thought she saw torn flesh.

Maybe they were hers.

From terror as much as from the pain and the suffocation, Amelia Sachs felt herself start to black out.

No! Don't fall under their feet. Don't fall!

Please!

She couldn't breathe. Not a cubic inch of air entered her lungs. Then she saw a knee inches from her face. It slammed into her cheek and stayed rooted there. She could smell dirty jeans, saw a scuffed boot in front of her eyes, inches away.

Please don't let me fall!

Then she realized that maybe she already had.

Chapter Thirty-one

Wearing a bellhop's uniform that closely matched those worn by the staff at the Lanham Arms Hotel, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Malerick walked along the fifteenth-floor hallway of the hotel. He carried a heavy room service tray on which was a domed plate cover and a vase containing a huge red tulip.

Everything about him was in harmony with his surroundings so as not to arouse suspicion. Malerick himself was the model of a deferential, pleasant bellhop. The averted eyes, the half smile, the unobtrusive walk, the spotless tray.

Only one thing set him apart from the other bellhops here at the Lanham: under the metal warming dome on the tray was not a plate of eggs Benedict or a club sandwich but a loaded Beretta automatic pistol, equipped with a sausage-thick sound suppressor, and a leather pouch of lockpicking and other tools.

"Enjoying your stay?" he asked one couple.

Yes, they were, and they wished him a good afternoon.

He continued to nod and smile at the guests returning to their rooms after Sunday brunch or on their way to sightsee on this fine spring afternoon.