Prepared for death, Morgan watched as the top-slide came forward.
And jammed halfway.
Chapter 121
FLEX LOOKED DOWN at the weapon in his hand, seeing the top-slide stuck halfway forward, the weapon rendered useless.
“No!” he shouted. The reason for the malfunction was instantly clear: Morgan’s gunshot on the bridge. It had hit the ammunition pouch and caused enough of a bend in the magazine to pinch the top, which now stopped the spring from feeding up the bullet as the carrier came forward to collect and chamber the round. Even if he were to clear the obstruction, the same malfunction would occur over and over again. Without another magazine—which Flex did not have—the semi-automatic pistol was useless.
Looking across at the man he longed to kill, Flex realized that Jack Morgan had come to the same conclusion.
His eyes went to the floor, and Morgan’s dropped revolver.
Chapter 122
JACK MORGAN HAD been ready to receive death. Now, seeing that Flex’s weapon had been rendered useless, relief flooded into him like sunlight. Still, he knew his reprieve would be short unless he could put Flex down, so he lunged toward the revolver that the girl—now a memory rushing away into the stairwell—had knocked flying from his hands.
At least, that’s what Morgan convinced Flex he was doing.
The big man took the bait, and went diving for the weapon like a linebacker onto a quarterback. Morgan had pulled himself up short and stayed on his feet, and now he delivered a crushing kick into the side of Flex’s thick skull.
Flex roared in agony, but still he reached for the pistol. Morgan stamped quickly on his fingers, feeling something crack and give way. He was about to deliver another kick when Flex forgot about the pistol, and instead rolled toward Morgan’s leg like a hungry gator, enough of his fingers unbroken to grab a boot in a vise-like grip, and his free hand moving to a knife on his belt.
Morgan threw himself forward. Flex lost his grip as Morgan bounced off his broad back, his hands going for the knife that was now free in Flex’s left hand. Like a drunken rodeo rider, Morgan hooked his legs around Flex’s own, attempting to keep the man’s bucking body pressed down to the floor as he wrestled the blade from Flex’s meaty hand.
“I’ll kill you!” Flex screamed. “I’ll kill you!”
Morgan had no doubt of it, so he resorted to the most basic of human instincts when life is in danger. A tactic taught to him by Flex’s own comrade.
He bit, his teeth pressing down into the flesh of Flex’s knife hand. The pinned man roared, and Morgan felt the knife twitch. A moment later, Morgan’s vision began to blur from blood running into his eyes. Lots of blood.
He sank his teeth in deeper.
Flex howled and bucked, finally shaking Morgan loose. The American rolled clear with blood in his mouth and eyes.
And a knife in his hand.
Flex charged forward, taking Morgan in a bull-rush.
Morgan drove the knife forward at him, but the police stab vest absorbed the blow and the blade buckled from Morgan’s hand. He was slammed backward by Flex’s mad charge, and the lower guard rail hit across his kidneys, all air being driven from him.
Flex threw a headbutt into Morgan’s face, opening a deep cut above his eye and adding to the blood already covering his face. Morgan tried to look at the man, but all he could see was a red haze through the blood in his eyes. As he saw the bulk of Flex’s upper body pull back for another headbutt, Morgan realized this was the final chance for him to bring justice to Jane’s killer.
As Flex made to drive his head into Morgan’s face, Morgan gripped hold of his enemy, pushed up from his legs, and used the momentum of the muscleman’s headbutt to bend himself backward over the guard rail, and to the thousand-foot drop below.
Chapter 123
AS JACK MORGAN’S body hit the narrow ledge ten feet below the Shard’s upper deck, he was almost grateful that blood clouded his sight and saved him from seeing clearly the terrible truth that he was three hundred meters above London, with nothing between himself and the earth but the meter-wide shelf that he and Flex had crashed onto. Only a snagging of Flex’s equipment belt had stopped them from bouncing from the ledge and into oblivion, and now Morgan was quickest to get to his feet as the big man sought to free himself of the entanglement.
Morgan scrambled free of Flex’s hold, and now he used the bottom of his shirt to clear the blood from his eyes. As the red liquid was wiped away, Morgan’s heart raced into his mouth—London was laid out below him like a three-dimensional Monopoly board. As a gust of wind shook the tower’s top, Morgan wasn’t sure if he’d ever been more scared in his life.
But he was alive.
He was alive and in the sky, and that was a place where Morgan knew comfort, as well as fear. The same could not be said of Flex, who now gripped for finger holds with terror in his eyes.
“Long way down,” Morgan taunted, enjoying the man’s panic.
“Help me up!” Flex begged, all grudges forgotten as he found himself inches from death.