King, Stephen - Battleground Read online

  edged towards the corner of the building.

  Fifteen feet . . . ten . There. He paused, he chest pressed against the wall,

  hands splayed out on the rough surface. He could feel the lighter fluid in his

  breast pocket and the reassuring weight of the Magnum jammed in his waistband.

  Now to get around the goddamn corner.

  Gently, he eased one foot around and slid his weight on to it. Now the right

  angle was pressed razorlike into his chest and gut. There was a smear of bird

  guano in front of his eyes on the rough stone. Christ, he thought crazily. I

  didn't know they could fly this high.

  His left foot slipped.

  For a weird, timeless moment he tottered over the brink, right arm back watering

  madly for balance, and then he was clutching the two sides of the building in a

  lover's embrace, face pressed against the hard corner, breath shuddering in and

  out of his lungs.

  A bit at a time, he slid the other foot around.

  Thirty feet away, his own living-room terrace jutted out.

  He made his way down to it, breath sliding in and out of his lungs with shallow

  force. Twice he was forced to stop as sharp gusts of wind tried to pick him off

  the ledge.

  Then he was there, gripping the ornamented iron railings.

  He hoisted himself over noiselessly. He had left the curtains half drawn across

  the sliding partition, and now he peered in cautiously. They were just the way

  he wanted them - ass to.

  Four soldiers and one copter had been left to guard the footlocker. The rest

  would be outside the bathroom door with the rocket launcher.

  Okay. In through the opening like gangbusters. Wipe out the ones by the

  footlocker, then out the door. Then a quick taxi to the airport. Off to Miami to

  find Morris's number-one idea girl. He thought he might just burn her face off

  with a flame thrower. That would be poetic justice.

  He took off his shirt and ripped a long strip from one sleeve. He dropped the

  rest to flutter limply by his feet, and bit off the plastic spout on the can of

  lighter fluid. He stuffed one end of the rag inside, withdrew it, and stuffed

  the other end in so only a six-inch strip of saturated cotton hung free.

  He got out his lighter, took a deep breath, and thumbed the wheel. He tipped it

  to the cloth and as it sprang alight he. rammed open the glass partition and

  plunged through.

  The copter reacted instantly, kamikaze-diving him as he charged across the rug,

  dripping tiny splatters of liquid fire. Renshaw straight-armed it, hardly

  noticing the jolt of pain that ran up his arm as the turning blades chopped his

  flesh open.

  The tiny foot soldiers scattered into the footlocker.

  After that, it all happened very rapidly.

  Renshaw threw the lighter fluid. The can caught, mushrooming into a licking

  fireball. The next instant he was reversing, running for the door.

  He never knew what hit him.

  It was like the thud that a steel safe would make when dropped from a

  respectable height. Only this thud ran through the entire high-rise apartment

  building, thrumming in its steel frame like a tuning fork.

  The penthouse door blew off its hinges and shattered against the far wall.

  A couple who had been walking hand in hand below looked up in time to see a very

  large white flash, as though a hundred flashguns had gone off at once.

  'Somebody blew a fuse,' the man said. 'I guess -'What's that?' his girl asked.

  Something was fluttering lazily down towards them; he caught it in one

  outstretched hand. 'Jesus, some guy's shirt. All full of little holes. Bloody,

  too.'

  'I don't like it,' she said nervously. 'Call a cab, huh, Ralph? We'll have to

  talk to the cops if something happened up there, and I ain't supposed to be out

  with you.'

  'Sure, yeah.'

  He looked around, saw a taxi, and whistled. It's brake lights flared and they

  ran across to get it.

  Behind them, unseen, a tiny scrap of paper floated down and landed near the

  remains of John Renshaw's shirt. Spiky backhand script read:

  Hey, kids! Special in this Vietnam Footlocker!

  (For a Limited Time Only)

  1 Rocket Launcher

  20 Surface-to-Air 'Twister' Missiles

  1 Scale-Model Thermonuclear Weapon