Tobie sprinted up the stairs, her breath sawing in and out with terror and a surging rush of adrenaline. She hit the first floor balcony, nearly stumbling as her knee buckled for a moment, then held.
She was dodging the elevator shaft, headed for the second flight of stairs, when she spotted a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall near a restroom and some drinking fountains. A half-formed idea in her head, she swerved to yank open the small door and wrench out the canister. She was expecting it to set off an alarm. It didn’t.
She turned back toward the second flight of stairs just as a man burst out the exit door ahead of her, a slim Latino with a pencil mustache. He came at her with his teeth barred. Clutching the fire extinguisher with both hands, she swung it at him. The end of the canister whacked against the side of his head. He stumbled back and landed on his rump. She dashed past him, up the second flight of stairs.
Careening around the elevator shaft, she darted out onto the viewing platform, then stopped, her chest jerking wildly with her breathing. She’d thought she would be able to spray fire retardant foam onto the face of the light canister, but she saw now that it was mounted too high. She’d never hit it.
She was aware of the sound of running feet, pounding up the stairs, slapping across the gallery. She spun around, her body pressing up against the railing as she frantically scrabbled with the extinguisher’s safety pin. Pointing the hose, she squeezed the handle, a sulfurous powder shooting out the nozzle in an arc that filled the air with an acrid smell as it slapped against the cockpit window.
Rough hands grabbed her from behind, snatched her back from the railing, yanked the fire extinguisher from her hands. “Get down! Now!” someone screamed in her ear. They shoved her to her knees, the concrete scraping her bare skin.
And then, in the sudden, breathless silence, she heard it: an audible click. A small red beam of light appeared on the yellow powder obscuring the window of the C47’s cockpit.
“What the hell is that?” said the big black agent with his Sig shoved against the base of her skull.
“It’s an infrared signal,” she said, sucking in a breath that shook her entire frame. “There’s a bomb in the Skytrooper.”