“Jesus!”
He quickly rolled across the floor as a webwork of fine beams came stabbing down at him. Andre was trying to crawl out through the burning doorframe. People outside were screaming. Steiger kept rolling, following Andre out the door as the Lilliputians came swooping down after him.
Delaney reached the top of the stairs just as Steiger came rolling through the burning doorway with Lilliputians swarming after him. Delaney opened the leather sachel.
“Go! Go! Go!” he shouted.
The ragtag lilliputians came rising up out the bag like fighters off a carrier deck, darting up at the lilliputians swooping down on Steiger. Drakov came through the burning doorway and Delaney fired at him with his laser. The beam struck Drakov’s shoulder. He cried out and returned the fire. Delaney leaped to one side, hit the floor and rolled. Lilliputians were swooping through the air like miniature airplanes dogfighting. Some of the lilliputians who had been marooned back on the island spotted Drakov and swarmed after him. Drakov sprinted for the balcony. As Delaney aimed, Drakov dove over the railing headfirst, activating his warp disc. As the astonished band members watched, a dozen laser beams pierced him as he fell, and then he suddenly vanished in midair.
Lucas dragged Andre underneath a table, pressed the barrel of the Beretta up against the chain linking her handcuffs and shot it off. Steiger stopped rolling and got to his knees in time to see a figure standing in the burning doorway of Manetti’s office, leveling a gun at him. In an instant of shocked recognition, he hesitated, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“Savino!” he said.
Three shots cracked out, one after the other, and Savino jerked, then toppled backward into Manelli’s burning office. Gulliver stood at the bead of the stairs, his semiautomatic gripped tightly before him in both hands.
“Nice shootin’, pilgrim,” Hunter said, clapping him on the shoulder, “but I’d keep my head down if I were you.”
Pandemonium reigned inside the club. Fine beams of deadly coherent light crisscrossed in midair, creating a lethal latticework of laser fire that filled the balcony floor and lanced down at the stage below. The musicians fled the stage as their amps were struck by laser beams and starting arcing, sparks shooting out from them. Smoke filled the club and the fire alarm went off. The young people who had pushed into the club were milling about below in panic, trying to fight their way back to the door while those behind them continued trying to push their way in until shouts of “Fire! Fire!” turned them around as well and sent them streaming back out into the street.
Lucas crawled over to were Manelli fell, took his gun and handed it to Andre.
“Where’s Drakov?” he shouted.
“I don’t know! He must’ve clocked out!”
“Damn it!”
“Gulliver!” shouted Andre, pointing to where he was huddling underneath a table, clutching his gun and looking up uncertainly, not knowing who to shoot at as the lilliputians fought and died above him. “We’ve got to get him out of here!”
“Him?” said Lucas. “Hell, we’ve got to get out of here!”
As they scrambled over to where Gulliver was taking shelter, Hunter crouched down over Savino’s body amidst the flames in Manelli’s office.
“All right, you son of a bitch, where is it?” he said through gritted teeth as he pulled back Savino’s right sleeve. Was he left handed?
He pulled the warp disc off Savino’s left wrist. Now all he had to do was figure out if it was failsafed. The flames were getting very close. He could feel his hair crackling.
“Hunter!” shouted Delaney, from the doorway. He squinted from the smoke. The office was a conflagration. He could not get through the door. Flames licked at Hunter’s clothes. “Hunter, are you crazy? Get the hell out of there!”
“I’m workin’ on it, pilgrim.” He defeated the failsafe function and quickly punched out a transition code and activated the warp disc.
“Hunter!”
The ceiling fell in.
Hunter materialized in the middle of the living room floor of his elegant Upper West Side townhouse. He immediately started rolling around to put out his flaming clothes. Gasping, he tore off his jacket and then rushed, still smoldering, into the bathroom. He turned on the shower and jumped in. His clothes hissed and steamed as the cold water soaked them down. He stayed there for a long time, breathing heavily as the cold water beat down on him, then he stepped, dripping, out of the shower and stripped off his soaked and ruined clothes.
He’d just barely made it. He expelled his breath and inhaled deeply, trying to calm down. That had been close. As close as he’d ever come. He’d have to move now. He could no longer remain in this time period. Even if the Time Commandos didn’t find him once again, there were still people in Manelli’s organization he’d have to be on the lookout for. He’d made too many contacts. Too many enemies. He had been in a rush to establish himself and had become too visible. That was a mistake he would not repeat again. .
As he changed into a fresh suit of clothes, he quickly ran over in his mind what his next few steps would have to be. How many of his assets could he liquidate quickly? If he converted some of his wealth into precious stones, he could take them back into the past with him, but if he was able to make a few astute investments, they could mature while he clocked ahead into the future and pretended to be his own descendent. No, he thought, far too complicated and too risky and not enough time to set i
t up, in any case. That was another mistake. He’d not prepared an escape plan in advance. Foolish, very foolish. He’d become overconfident and it had almost gotten him killed.
The hell with it, he thought. Be smart. Take what you can get your hands on now, cut your losses and get out while you still can. But first, there was one last thing he had to do.
He knotted his silk necktie and slipped into a brand new jacket. He quickly opened his safe and took out his important papers, domestic and Swiss accounts, stock portfolios, emergency cash, standby forged documents and several different passports. Then he picked up the Browning Hi-Power he had dropped on the carpet when he’d clocked in from the club. He jacked out the magazine and checked it, then he slapped it back in and racked the slide.
Krista was surprised to see him when she opened her door. “You! But I thought... How did you get up here?”