“What kind?” Dean asked.
“You’re gonna be mounting a raid on the convoy, right? Well, when you do, you make sure that me and the girls get away—the wag we’re being carried in gets left alone and we get the chance to make a run.”
“You’ve heard what Danny said about Correll,” Dean replied, shaking his head. “I can’t make guarantees about someone like that.”
“That’s okay.” She shrugged. “You do what you can. It’s a better chance than we’d have anyway.”
“Okay, so that’s what you get. What about us?” Danny questioned.
“You get to get away from here right now.” She smiled. “I can guarantee you safe passage to wherever the hell you want to go. And when the raid takes place, you don’t have to worry about the wag with the girls as I’ll take care of the sec.”
Dean eyed the Thompson and tried to figure the chances on the sec guard being back on duty at the place where they had made their entry. He looked at Danny. “I figure we could go for that, right?”
Danny assented. “Not that we get a lot of choice,” he added, giving Ayesha a look that suggested he was quite happy with that option.
She grinned. “That’s settled, then. So if you’ve finished frigging around with all those cables, I figure we’d better get our asses out of here triple sharp.”
“Any reason?” Dean queried as he shouldered his backpack.
“Way things are at the moment, my beloved father has been taking solace in this building, away from the troubles outside. He’s really gone into himself, and turns up here at all hours of the day and night. It’s okay for me, ’cause I can use all the hiding places, but three of us trying to hide in here may get a touch noticeable.”
“Fair point,” Dean agreed. “So how do we get out of here?”
“Not the same way you got in, if you’re still using that stupe method you used to,” Ayesha remarked to Danny.
“Sounds like it served you well enough,” he countered, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice.
“That was until I found this,” she returned with a grin. “Follow me.”
Leaving them almost in her wake, Ayesha turned, shouldering the Thompson as she did, and made her way toward the door they had used on the way in. She paused at the mezzanine, listening for any sec that may be outside, on the main factory floor. There was no sound.
Unwilling to speak in the quiet, in case it reverberated and in some way alerted anyone outside, Dean gave her a questioning expression. Ayesha returned it with a smile, and beckoned them on with a crooked index finger.
Opening the door, she went onto the fire escape, which led to the mezzanine from the floor of the old building, but instead of continuing down the staircase, she swung herself over it and hung underneath. Once there, holding herself by one hand, she opened a window that should have been barred and covered like the others.
And so it would appear from the outside, but the nails that had held the thin metal covering sheet in place had long since oxidized into rust, and it had been simple for Ayesha to prise the sheet loose. Dean wondered why and how she had discovered this, but decided that now wasn’t the time to ask such questions.
The sheet swung, pivoted on one nail, revealing an open frame to the outside that was high enough above eye level not to be noticeable unless you looked up, and faced onto the alleyway at the side of the building, where there was little chance of anyone passing by, and where the sec men, softened by years of inactivity, never thought to look.
Ayesha swung herself through, balancing on the frame as she reached out to pull at a silken thread that hung close to the wall. This was attached to an old fire-escape ladder of the retractable sort, which should in theory have been rusted up and noisy to extend.
The manner in which she turned and winked at them before pulling the thread suggested that she had returned several times under the cover of darkness to grease the metal. The ladder extended swiftly and silently to the ground. Ayesha swung herself out onto the ladder, and beckoned the two young men to follow with a gesture. Dean was first, negotiating the obstacle with ease and coming out onto the ladder. Danny was a little more hesitant, but gritted his teeth and followed. When both of them were on the ladder, Ayesha leaned across and pulled the metal sheet into place. She covered the alleyway as Dean and Danny dropped down to the ground, and then followed them, sending the ladder back up to its destination with a tug of the cord. When the ladder had settled, the cord hung limply against the wall, and if anyone had noticed it, they would have assumed nothing more than that it was just a piece of old twine hanging from part of a decaying and disused building.