Free Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski Page B

shining over the top of the white building—then turned to look at the apartment building on the other side. More than likely, the pane of glass had fallen from that side.
    Still, he had to check.
    Which meant a grueling floor-by-floor check on this side of the building.
    Thanks, Terrill Joe.
    “You want a smoke?” the crackhead asked.
    “Those things’ll kill you.”
    “Like I want to live forever?”
    His Saturday, ruined by a crackhead. Typical. But what really pissed him off was that it’d probably be at least an hour or so before he got back to
Center Strike,
and he wanted to know how the torture thing turned out.
    Thirty-six floors above, Ethan Goins was sprawled out on an uncomfortable slab of concrete with a pen tube sticking out of his throat.
    He was breathing out of it. And he was thankful for it. Don’t get him wrong.
    Pens were wonderful.
    He
loved
pens.
    But still:
He was breathing out of the plastic tube of a ballpoint pen.
Even an eternal optimist had to admit that life for Ethan Goins had taken a serious downturn in the past fifteen minutes.
    Once Ethan had heard Amy’s voice, and he’d confirmed that there was actually hope of rescue from this friggin’ fire tower, the decision had been clear. He needed to open his throat.
    There was pretty much only one way he knew how to do that.
    Granted, his imagination may have been limited by his time in Iraq. Maybe that experience prevented an easier solution from popping into his head. Some quick and simple way of opening up his throat, so that air could make its way into his lungs and bloodstream and muscles and brain.
    If there was an easier way, it wasn’t coming to him. Blame his oxygen-starved brain.
    Pen to the throat it was.
    Ethan worked quickly so he didn’t have too much time to dwell on it. Fished the pen out of his bag, pulled the tip and ink stem out of the pen, yanked the neck of his black T-shirt so it wouldn’t get in the way, and then started feeling for his Adam’s apple, and then the cricoid cartilage, and back up to the cricothyroid membrane. Bingo.
    Do it, Goins, do it fast.
    He wished he had any kind of blade to make an incision. He wished hard. But he knew the contents of his bag, and there was nothing even close. His car keys, maybe, but by the time he sawed open an incision, it might be too late.
    Ethan had dots appearing in front of his eyes as it was. So enough messing around. He knew his target: the valley of flesh on his neck.
    He knew there would be no do-overs, no second chances.
    He had to strike powerfully and cleanly.
    First, though, he had to shatter the tip of the pen on theconcrete landing. A flat tube would do nothing to his throat … except hurt.
    Ethan jammed it against the ground. The plastic chipped as he’d hoped.
    There.
    Nice and jagged.
    Ready to go.
    He imagined the air he’d be breathing through that pen tube. Sweet, cool nourishing air. His for the taking, all for one little stabbing motion—
    Now!
    That had been fifteen minutes ago.
    Ethan was still alive, and breathing sweet, nourishing air through the pen tube in his neck.
    At first, the pain had been fairly astounding. It was probably a good thing he’d been unable to scream. But the shock to Ethan’s nervous system was far worse. He’d quickly drifted into a semi-catatonic state, most likely his body’s way of defending itself. It wasn’t every day the body’s right arm decided to do something as foolish as take a ballpoint pen, pull the ink stem out of it, then jab the tube into the throat area. If Ethan’s body were the United Nations, then his right arm had become an unstable terrorist state, one that had lashed out—without warning—against a neighboring country. The right arm could say all it wanted about the stabbing being in the throat’s best interests
—It was sealed up, Secretary General; I had to destroy that throat in order to save it
—but to the remainder of the body, this was an incomprehensible act of aggression. The