My phone rang a second later.
“I got him, Mike!” Leroux screamed. “He’s pinned on top of the building to the north! He’s cornered around the housing for the building’s elevator. Northwest corner. There are no more fire escapes, no more nothing. Call for backup, the cavalry, air strikes—everything you got! I’ll sit tight so he doesn’t go anywhere. Hurry! We finally got him!”
Chapter 72
No, no, bloody no!
The British assassin had come around the housing of the elevator equipment on the roof, hoping for a fire escape. But there was none. Over the edge of the north side of the building was a sheer four-story drop onto the roofs of the buildings on 161st that he’d run past. Worse, at the rear west side of the building, there was a five-story drop down into a concrete alley behind the building.
He crouched down in the corner, gripping the Glock as he stared at the brick edge of the elevator structure. He was going to die here. In one second, the professional who was chasing him was going to pop his gun around that corner and rake half a dozen 9mms into his chest and blow him away.
He just had to see the bloody game, didn’t he? Idiot. Now this was it. The place of his death, he thought, staring up at the gray sky. This rooftop on some crumbling wasteland of a filthy Bronx block that was the color of burned charcoal.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It really wasn’t. It just wasn’t…fair.
He peeked out over the rim of the roof to his right as a train went by on the rusted elevated track far below on River Avenue. Then he shot a quick glance farther right, up over the elevator housing, where some ugly cell site antennas were mounted. He peeked out again at the back of the building and saw that the thin fiber-optic cabling and electrical cords of the antennas dropped straight down, all the way to the concrete alley.
It was possible that if he hung down off the building’s rim with his hands, he could hang, swing, and jump and just be able to grab the cables. Possible. The question was, would they hold his weight? Would his one hundred and seventy pounds rip the cables free from wherever they were attached on the antennas? He pictured himself falling to his death, trailing the antennas.
Then he paused.
He closed his eyes, envisioning himself actually doing it.
Edging over. Jumping. Grabbing the cables.
There was no more time. He had no other choice.
He got up and tucked the Glock into his waistband.
Then he straddled the terra-cotta rim of the building and hung down off the back of it, with his belly against the brick.
The sensation of hanging out there in the breeze, being held by only his palms, was a very, very bad one. It didn’t improve an iota as he began to move. Right hand first, then left hand, then right.
When he ran out of room where the roof edge met the wall of the elevator house, he commenced swinging his legs to his left and back to build up some momentum. When he did it the third time, as he swung to the right, he pushed sideways with all his might off the rim.
And let go.
He’d never felt his adrenaline spike higher as he free-fell in midair, with dirty old bricks scraping at the tip of his nose. There was air and air and then his hands were in the vinelike cluster of black plastic cables. His fingers were squeezing and his palms were burning as the vinyl cables sizzled through them. He gasped as a cable tie took the skin clean off his entire right pinkie, but he didn’t let go.
He was able to hook his right boot down into the cable cluster, and he was suddenly slowing.
And then, a miraculous second later, he was no longer falling at all.
The now swinging cable made a creaking sound under his weight.
He began laughing uncontrollably as he descended hand over bloody hand down the length of the building like the world’s largest, happiest monkey.
He scrambled down toward the alleyway and whatever else was going to happen next.
Chapter 73
I heard Leroux moaning as I finally arrived on the roof of the north building with three uniforms.
“Where is he?” I said, hurrying around the corner of the elevator housing.
“He’s gone!” Leroux said, crazed, bent out over the edge, looking north and then west.
“Gone? How?” I said. “Where?”