“Him.” Kenzie shook Kovalenko. “He’s the cause of it all. The Russians. The nuke. The reason we’re standing 200 feet in the air, shivering and soaked instead of planning out our futures.”
“We have to keep moving.” Hayden turned away from the edge and looked to the north with a speculative stare.
Dahl noticed and grinned. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“You know,” Hayden said. “For once, and for my sins, I think I am.”
She started across the roof, using the comms to pass her thoughts along. Kinimaka crowded in on Kovalenko once more and shoved him forward. From these heights, Drake thought New York resembled a grim, concrete-and-glass, adult version of a kids’ playground. Some played nicely, others played hard. Some got hurt and jumped right back on the rides, others limped off to lick their wounds. It was a soaked and shadowy landscape where anything might happen.
“We’re gonna fool our enemies and run as far as we can across the tops of these buildings. We have ropes too. Let’s see if we can make something happen.”
They reached the northern end of their building in seconds. A four-foot gap lay between them and the next roof.
“Good start,” Dahl said and made the leap with a small run up.
Everyone followed. Kovalenko was forced to join in. The concrete roof came up hard on the other side but only Alicia and Luther stumbled, both rolling quickly to their feet.
“Careful,” Mai addressed Alicia. “Don’t want to ruin that perfect nose of yours.”
Alicia cursed as Drake turned away to hide a grin. Alicia had broken her nose on their last mission and, despite several attempts, it remained broken. Bad luck really. During her last adventure finding Saint Peter’s sword and the Manila galleon’s gold she’d had it set and later rebroken by a man called Marco. Drake had forgotten about it but now, glancing at her, he could make out the unusual curve.
“If anyone else looks at my fucking nose I’m gonna stuff theirs in a very uncomfortable place,” Alicia growled. “Now move on.”
Hayden was already running. The top of this building was flat around the edges with a tiled apex in the center. Gravel crunched beneath their boots. Drake could barely see 100 feet in front of them now for the worsening drizzle, which formed a haze in every direction. The clouds above were elongated wisps, drifting and turning, their tops as black as New York’s deepest burrow.
Hayden pulled up at the other side of the building, assessing the gap. Drake arrived to find a six-foot space and a drop of maybe two feet to the other roof. Dahl nodded happily and started backing up.
“Wait,” Kinimaka said. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah, easy as distracting a Yorkshireman with cod and chips.”
Drake looked over. “Where?”
Dahl smirked. “See?”
The Swede ran and jumped, landing on his feet and then folding, rolling into a ball. He rotated twice and rose, gravel clinging to him but otherwise unscathed. One at a time, the others followed.
When they were across, Drake checked the time. “I’m guessing we’ve covered five blocks in total,” he said. “With one hour, fifty minutes to go. If we keep this up, we’ll defuse that nuke with an hour to spare.”
Alicia slapped the side of his head. “Don’t jinx it, fool.”
They ran the length of the new roof and paused. The next jump was easier than the last. Drake saw a narrow, debris-strewn alley below, the impenetrable shadowy world of back-street New York. The next roof might be easily accessible, but it had a large, central glass apex, around which an eighteen-inch paved path ran.
“There’s nothing safe to land on,” Mai said.
“And if you overshoot, you’re going through the glass,” Molokai said.
“Maybe it’s time to head down,” Alicia said, looking behind them at an access door to the side.
“But look ahead,” Dahl said. “After this one there at least four more easy roofs. We can lose our enemies up here.”
Drake took it all in. The Swede made a good point. Maybe the Russians were guarding every exit at ground level, but they couldn’t possibly know which way the Strike Force team had gone once they were up top.
“Is carrying on up here worth the risk?” he asked.
Predictably, Dahl nodded and said, “Do you see anyone shooting at us?”
“I get it,” Hayden said. “But . . .”
As they hesitated there came the sound of thunder, but Drake didn’t look up at the skies. He knew the source of that approaching storm all too well.
The helicopter descended from the right, through gray sheets of drizzle, temporarily hidden by the glass apex jutting from the center of their roof as it searched. It must have approached through the clouds until it found their general position and then dipped. Drake dropped to his knees along with his entire team.
“Now what?” Molokai asked.
“We could shoot it down,” Cam suggested.
Alicia nodded. “I like that.”
“Too risky,” Hayden said, meaning the potential for civilian casualties was high. “There’s only one course of action here.”
“Yeah,” Dahl said. “Mine.”
The big Swede rose and leapt just over five feet to the next building, landing solidly on the paving that made up the narrow ledge opposite. Quickly, he moved to the left, making space for the next jumper.
Dahl spun. “Come on!”
The chopper hovered on the other side of their building, searching rooftops for runners. Drake was up next, running and jumping with precision, never taking his eyes off his target. He was in the air for just seconds, the rain slashing against his face, the black alleyway far below, but it felt like half an hour. He landed perfectly on the paving and steadied himself before following Dahl.
Drake waited for the next person, just in case they needed a hand.
Luther jumped and made it. Drake made way. Luther turned to help the next person—Kovalenko. The Blood King made it and then came Kinimaka, landing heavily. Drake saw the paving crack under the big Hawaiian’s boots.
“Steady,” he called out. “That doesn’t look safe.”
Alicia didn’t hear him. She ran and leapt, hitting the same paving flag as Kinimaka. It held and she steadied herself. They circuited the narrow ledge, moving away from the lurking chopper. The visibility up here was worsening by the minute. The clouds were lowering even further. Mai made the leap across. Next up was Molokai.
The big man leapt, robes flowing in the murky, afternoon light, giving him the appearance of a winged ghost. He landed perfectly on the narrow ledge.
The paving flag snapped beneath his weight.
The front edge sheared off, slipping away from the roof and tumbling to the ground below. Molokai sprawled forward, left leg slipping out over the drop, right leg grinding down the concrete edge. He reached out with gloved hands as he fell.
Mai leapt for him, not just reaching out with her hands, but physically throwing her body at his and grabbing hold. If he fell, she would fall. She grabbed him around the middle and used her momentum to pull him back from the ledge.
It was touch and go, the pair swaying in a tremendous struggle. Alicia came up behind Mai, grabbed her around the waist and exerted her strength to pull them all away from the vertical drop and into the glass apex, until they were leaning against it.
For a moment nobody moved.
The chopper chose that moment to rise twenty feet and swing around. It must have completed its reconnoiter of the eastern roofs. It drifted over the apex, right above them, its engine sending sound waves crashing over them.
“Go!” Hayden cried.
At the front, Dahl and Drake ran for the next roof. Alicia dragged herself off Mai who let Molokai pull his bulk away from the glass and return to the ledge. The big man rose and pointed at the broken paving flag.
“Watch out for that,” he yelled with unaccustomed humor.
Only Cam, Hayden and Kenzie had yet to make the jump. The
y did it now under the black belly of the hovering helicopter. It took only a few seconds for someone aboard the beast to notice them. The chopper came around in the air, right side first.
Drake leapt out into thin air, following Dahl. They landed and rolled on the next roof, coming up and reaching for guns. Luther landed beside them. The rest of the team were spread out around the narrow, square ledge, rapidly following them.
As if the bellowing sound of the engines just above their heads wasn’t enough, the gunfire then began. Bullets scythed through the air, striking concrete and then glass, shattering the apex in the roof’s center. Large chunks of glass and black steel framework fell away inside the building. It suddenly became harder to run on the roof, not only due to the bullets but because there was nothing at all now to their right-hand side but a two-hundred-foot drop.
The glass apex had been part of a spacious atrium, extending all the way from the roof to the floor.
Drake, Dahl and Luther fired back at the chopper, forcing it to veer to the side as their bullets found its cockpit and cracked glass. One of the men hanging out with his semi-auto on full wasn’t ready for the sudden movement and fell, tumbling to the city street below. Another grabbed a leather strap, barely holding on as his own weapon tumbled into the void at his feet.
Kovalenko was practically thrown over the next gap by Kinimaka. Alicia was a shadow at his back, almost colliding with him. They joined their firepower with the others and made the chopper back away.
But it didn’t run scared. It held steady in the air, coming around once more as bullets deflected off its hull. There were even more guns pointing out of it this time, all poised to open fire.
Drake and his teammates engaged first, aware of how exposed Cam and Kenzie were still on the open ledge. They peppered the chopper’s door with lead, striking bodies, guns and framework. The fire was returned, but to a lesser degree and not with any accuracy.
The helicopter juddered under the onslaught, the pilot starting to panic. Men fell dead inside the cabin. As the aircraft spun around again and bullets struck the windshield once more, the glass finally cracked.
The pilot slumped.
The ungainly looking bird fell, veering to the right, smashing into the top of the building they’d just vacated. It crashed into the sides of the hole its men had created in the roof and then fell down the atrium, exploding as it went, fire licking up and down and shooting out into the night. Rain fizzled. The terrible noise fell away.
Dahl was already running toward the next roof.
“Come on!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Luck was not with them.
When they came to the farthest roof they could access just minutes later, the gaps on all four sides were three times further than they could leap. There was also no roof access, no means of getting down. When Drake looked back, he saw that the last two roofs were the same. He swore in frustration.
“We’re gonna have to go back.”
“Nah,” Dahl said. “We can climb down the side.”
Drake stared at the mad Swede. “I know we’re in the right city but I’m Superman, not fucking Spiderman.”
“Look.” Dahl pointed down the side of the building.
Drake went over to check. A long, rusted metal ladder clung to the wall, stretching to the ground.
“Are you kidding?” Drake said. “That ladder looks like its clinging on in desperation, mate.”
“It’s perfect,” Dahl said, swinging a leg over. “Straight access to the ground. No building to worry about. No floors or landings or lobby. Come on, guys.”
“I like floors,” Alicia said, looking miserable in the rain. “And stairs too.”
Dahl stepped onto the ladder, grabbed hold of the sides with two gloved hands and shook it vigorously with 200 feet of thin air beneath his boots.
“See. It holds.”
Drake was visibly cringing. Alicia was on one foot, eyes closed.
“Jesus,” Drake breathed. “You’re not dealing with a full set of spanners, mate.”
Even Kovalenko was white. “You expect me to climb down that with my hands tied?”
“No,” Kinimaka grunted. “It’s easier to just throw your ass off the edge.”
Dahl descended fast. Luther took the leap of faith and climbed on after him. Drake eyed the bolts attaching the uprights to the wall, noticing one shift with the weight of the two men. The rungs were dripping wet.
“I’d rather face 200 armed soldiers than 200 feet on this bastard,” Drake said, swinging his right leg over the side of the building.
Alicia waited her turn. She helped Kinimaka untie Kovalenko for the journey down. The trouble was, Dahl was right. The Russians and Kovalenko’s men would expect them to exit via a building, not come down right into the street. The bottom of the ladder finished above the ground, along an unlit alley, and she could just see the bright edges of a doorway opposite it. Dahl was already halfway down.
Kovalenko and then Kinimaka climbed on. Soon, it was Alicia’s turn. Mai was watching her. “Hey,” the Japanese woman said. “If you fall and splatter, can I have Drake?”
Alicia paused. She heard the dark humor in Mai’s comment but also sensed something that ran far deeper.
“Are you and Luther okay?”
Mai didn’t answer at first, pursing her lips. She looked sorry to have spoken. “I doubt he’ll be around forever, that’s all.”
It was a short sentence, and basic, but Alicia intuited the fear in it. She recognized it herself. This job rarely gave them time to build a normal life, to develop relationships. Mostly, they developed on the job, with colleagues. Mostly, they fell apart.
And nobody wanted to end up alone.
Alicia suddenly found herself descending the ladder without realizing she’d even begun. Nice distraction on Mai’s part, despite the words she’d chosen. By the time Cam and then finally, Kenzie, climbed on the ladder, Dahl was approaching the bottom.
His voice came clearly through the comms.
“Ahh. This could be a problem. Hang on, people.”
Asses hanging in the wind and rain, spaced out down 200 feet of ladder barely clinging to the side of the building with all their combined weight testing it, ten people came to an abrupt stop.
Luther spoke for all of them. “What do you mean: Hang on?”
“The ladder ends about forty feet from the bloody ground. The lower part is retractable, to stop miscreants climbing up to apartments, I guess.”
“Well, unretract it,” Hayden breathed.
“Yeah, I tried that. It’s stuck. I’m gonna have to wrench it free while we wait.”
“No!” Drake cried out, heart pounding. “Stop.”
But Dahl was already jerking at the trapped metal, pulling rungs apart where they’d rusted together, heaving the rungs to and fro. Drake and the others clung on for their lives, some of them shaken and swayed over 150 feet in the air.
“Jesus, man, hurry up,” Molokai said.
“It’s not easy you know.” Dahl yanked the metal back and forth, making the whole ladder shake and shift.
“It’s much harder up here!” Alicia shouted down. “I guarantee you that.”
“He’s not the man he used to be,” Drake shouted down.
“Oh wait,” Dahl said. “There’s a latch here. Sorry, guys.”
Drake breathed deeply as Dahl unlatched the bottom part of the ladder and let it fall to the ground. It landed with a loud clang and everyone started down again, relieved when their boots finally came back into contact with the hard, solid floor.
Alicia leaned against Drake. “Never in my life will I ever do anything like that again.”
“Agreed, love. My bollocks shrank to the size of raisins.”
“Ah, shit, don’t depress me even more.”
Hayden was surveying both ends of the tight, unlit alley. Both ends led out onto a busy street. As they hesitated, a door in front of them opened, emitting a shaft of light.
A man wearing a suit staggered out, weaved past them and vanished into the dark. A large bald head gazed out of the door at them.
“You coming in?”
Hayden made an instant decision. “Yeah, of course.”
They filed past the man who couldn’t see them properly in the dark. In fact, he didn’t notice their flak jackets and guns until they had started to walk down a long well-lit, warm and dry hallway.
“Hey,” he began.
Alicia, at the back, flashed her ID at the man. “Just passing through.”
“Strike Force? I don’t even know what that is.”
Alicia nodded morosely. “We get that a lot.”
“You can’t go in there.”
“The ID says that we can,” Alicia answered.
Drake hoped that he didn’t call the cops. For now, they were hidden away from the many eyes that sought them. They needed to stay that way as long as possible. Of course, he knew full well that as soon as they were out of sight, the doorman would call someone.
They came out of the hallway into a lobby area. A curved corner desk stood to the right, behind which hats, coats and umbrellas were stored for clients. A blonde stood behind the desk, gawping at them.
“It’s a twenty-dollar entry,” she said. “Each.”
Drake frowned, unsure what kind of establishment charged a twenty-dollar entry fee. Hayden flashed the necessary ID, which didn’t seem to wash too well with the blonde.
“I’m calling the manager,” she said.
Drake leaned over the desk and ripped the phone out. “Sorry, love. We can’t risk you calling anyone.”
Conscious of wasted time, the team pushed through a set of double doors to find themselves inside a dim club. A large bar stood at the far end, liquor bottles glimmering. Dozens of tables stood around the floor, bordering a wide stage hugging the right wall.
“Typical,” Alicia said. “The guys brought us to a bloody strip club.”
Drake saw she was right. The stage’s main feature was three floor-to-ceiling silver poles around which three curvaceous, half-clad females writhed. Several more were among the tables, carrying drinks and taking money.
“We could wait here a while,” Drake suggested. “It’d get the bad guys properly off our trail.”
The Blood King Takedown Page 10
