by L. T. Ryan
The muzzle of the pistol came through first. Followed by the hand and vascular forearm of the man who wielded it. The pistol swayed back and forth.
The gap between the door and the frame was only about two feet. Enough for the man to get a decent picture of most of the room. She was glad he hadn’t pushed the door with any force. It would have pinned her behind it.
More of the arm appeared. Haeli leveled her pistol at his head and waited.
The man’s head and shoulders came into view for only a split second before Haeli pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the man’s neck, in one side and out the other. He dropped his gun and clutched at his neck with both hands.
Haeli stepped back, then exploded into the door, knocking him to the floor and slamming the door shut.
The man laid face down. The arterial blood spurted several feet at first, with less and less pressure on every pulse. Haeli felt a fleeting twinge of disappointment that he hadn’t even seen her face before he died.
She leapt over the heap of a man and bolted to the bedroom. There were more of them. There always were.
Haeli held the pistol low and cracked the door that led to the hallway. She heard the thud of the boot slamming against the door and the splintering of the wood. She stuck her head out in the hallway, just in time to see two men rushing in the living room entrance. She seized the moment.
She launched herself into the hallway, half sprinting before her feet touched the ground. It was another half second before she registered a man standing at the end of the hallway, fifty feet in front of her. She shifted her weight as if carving snow with the edge of a snowboard. The carpet burned her bare feet as she slid to a stop. She looked over her shoulder and confirmed her assumption. Another man at the other end. Neither had their guns drawn.
Haeli counted it as a minor victory. There were cameras in the hallway and there would be no way to clean up the aftermath if they took her down there. If discretion still mattered.
There was one option left. She sprinted toward the closer man, eyes as focused as lasers and with an equal amount of intensity.
She closed the gap.
Forty feet.
Thirty feet.
The man planted his feet, bent his knees, and balled his fists. His body language conveyed that he was preparing for the fight. His eyes held the fear of a matador caught by the charging bull.
Twenty feet.
The man hadn’t moved. He was gauging his plan of assault from her reckless abandon. It would give him the advantage if he timed it right. But there was a method to her madness. She’d guessed what he’d do. She bet everything on it.
Ten feet.
Haeli veered left and smashed through the stairwell door. She bound up the stairs three at a time.
Deep, emphatic voices and heavy footfalls echoed through the shaft of the stairwell. There were more men, at least two of them. She hoped they were below her.
Haeli reached the first landing and pulled the door. Locked. Easy to get in, not so easy to get out.
The door flew open on the landing below and the man hit the stairs, coming after the fight she had promised him.
A shot rang out, the crack amplified to a deafening explosion by the cinderblock shaft. The pinging of the bullet ricocheting off metal handrails followed.
Haeli hit the next landing. Locked. She continued pumping her legs, controlling her breath, until she reached the last landing. A dead end.
She pulled the door, which swung open freely. The flood of blinding warm light and heat washed over her. It had been a day since she’d seen daylight or been out of the climate-controlled environment of the hotel. She had almost forgotten about the heat wave. The frying pan of a roof was a sufficient reminder.
Haeli bolted across the rooftop. The white gravel laid atop the sticky tar and asphalt scraped and embedded itself in the soles of her feet.
She scanned the roof as she ran. A grid of bulky air-conditioning compressors filled the open expanse. Beyond them, at the corner of the building, was a construction area, cordoned off by orange plastic netting. The bright red truss of a construction crane sprouted from the corner like a mighty redwood. The crane’s jib jutting out over the abyss. Looking at it made her queasy.
Haeli dove behind one of the air-conditioning units and landed on the blades of her forearms as the first of the men erupted from the relative darkness of the stairwell. The sting of the scrapes on her elbows surged for a moment. Haeli lifted her bent arm, pistol still clutched in her right hand, and used her left hand to wipe away the remaining pieces of gravel from her right elbow. A trickle of blood streamed to the edge of the knobby bone and a single drop fell to the ground, splashing on the gravel. The glare of the sun off the white gravel set the crimson stone apart like a ruby.
Oh shit.
Haeli glanced down at her feet. Bright red splotches led from her bloody feet around the side of the metal box. A bedazzled trail leading the men directly to her.
She could hear the slow, methodical crunching under foot. While she couldn’t risk peeking her head out, she didn’t have to. She could envision the scene unfolding on the other side of the scorching hot sheet metal. The men had grouped up and were converging on her position, tentatively and cautiously.
Now or never.
Haeli crouched like a sprinter on the starting blocks and set her sights on a unit one row back and diagonal to her position in the orderly grid. A clear path, but she’d be in the open for several feet. It was worth the risk.
She pushed off, taking three long strides before diving, arms outstretched.
Shots rang out. Too many and too close together to count. The bullets twanged as they pierced the sheet metal and embedded in the guts of the compressor. Steam hissed through the bullet holes.
Haeli sprung up to one knee and launched herself toward another unit, further back. The shots came again. The twangs came again. The hissing started again.
She didn’t have time to inspect herself for any damage. She didn’t feel the searing pain of a bullet wound, but her adrenaline level was so high that she might not have.
She sprinted again, this time blindly firing three shots in their direction. The men took cover of their own, buying her a few seconds. She hoped.
Haeli reached the last row of units. She slipped over the flimsy construction netting and surveyed the area for an adequate fighting position. There was little cover and only a handful of mediocre options for concealment. She turned her attention to the base of the crane. The truss, made of tubular steel, was mostly open except for a four-foot-wide steel plate that ran up one side. The steel plate, about a half inch thick, was what she needed. Climbing up the thing for even a few feet was not.
Haeli moved to the truss and climbed through the diagonal supports. She looked upward. The vertical lines of the four main tubes converged in the distance. A ladder, welded to the steel plating, ran all the way up toward the horizontal jib and what she assumed was the control room.
She psyched herself up.
It’s only a few feet.
The massive crane had been built to carry large or heavy payloads to the top of the roof. Tens of thousands of pounds. Heavier than Haeli’s one-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame. Still, she measured every step, as if her weight would tip it over.
The blood dripping from her feet made the thin rungs of the ladder slippery. Her left arm did most of the work, pulling her body upward. She used the last three fingers of her right hand to steady herself while keeping full control of the pistol.
Haeli climbed about fifteen feet until the thick metal sheet shielded her entire body. She wrapped her left arm through the rungs and then passed the pistol to her left hand. She kept the business end of the suppressor pointed down the shaft and pulled her phone from her jeans. She powered it on.
Come on, come on.
When the screen came to life, she brought up the dial pad and punched in Blake’s number. Blake hadn’t sent his contact to her—hell, she wasn�
��t even supposed to be using the phone—but he had written it down in case she needed it, and she had memorized it.
“Who’s this?” Haeli struggled to make out the words over the background noise.
“It’s Haeli. I need your help.”
“Hello?” Blake said.
Haeli raised her voice. It would have been audible across the roof and would give away her position if they hadn’t already seen her climbing. But she had no other choice. “It’s Haeli.”
“Haeli? Is everything alright? We just took off.”
Haeli tipped the phone so that the microphone pointed directly at her mouth. She belted the words as loud as she could. “I need you. Please. Get to the roof. The roof!”
Haeli shoved the phone back in her pocket without bothering to hang it up. She transferred the 9mm to her right hand and held her aim.
The crunching of the footsteps grew closer. She closed one eye and looked down the sights, waiting for a target to appear. And appear it did.
The man ducked under the cross supports. The left side of his body came into view first. He looked up the hollow shaft. Haeli didn’t get a glimpse of the gun in his right hand before double tapping the trigger.
One round buried in the top of his shoulder. The other in his left eye. He crumpled to the ground.
Haeli climbed another fifteen feet to put distance between her and the next wave. Like lemmings, they came.
The second man got a couple shots off. Haeli fired three. All three found their mark. She could see the blood running from three distinct holes in the man’s cheek as he fell on the other dead man.
The third smartened up. He came around to the open sides of the truss and, instead of climbing in, fired at an angle. Haeli could see the sparks fly off the cross supports before she took aim through the triangular gap and squeezed off three more rounds, putting an end to the threat.
A secondary boost of adrenaline hit Haeli as her brain processed how close the incoming rounds were to striking her in the chest. She figured that, outside of the steel plates, the truss was twenty percent metal and eighty percent air. Surviving any battle was about luck, and she was worried she had used all hers up.
Haeli climbed further. The cover of metal plates was no longer enough. She needed distance. She needed to be a smaller target.
She continued climbing until she reached the horizontal truss. She stopped. The height was dizzying, but the angles were better. When viewed from below, a steeper angle meant more metal would conceal her position. It was the best she could do under the circumstances.
She scanned the corner of the rooftop. No one was visible. The view of the other side with the array of air-conditioning units was still obstructed. She had no way of knowing how many reinforcements had arrived. The entire team, she figured.
She heard the whizz and crack of the supersonic round fly by before she heard the rifle. She caught a quick visual of the two men climbing the ladder far beneath her. The nearest one with his arm wrapped around the rungs and a rifle pressed against his shoulder. She pushed with her legs and threw her body up and onto the horizontal jib. Her dangling right arm squeezed off five rounds. She had pulled the trigger six times, but the last pull answered with only a click.
A metal grate lined the underside of the horizontal truss. More luck. Without it, Haeli would have fallen straight through the wide gaps, hundreds of feet to her death. She’d rather have taken the bullet.
Still lying on her stomach, the grate did little to obscure the view of the ground. It was as if she floated in mid-air. She couldn’t let it cloud her mind. She was now unarmed. The men were approaching fast. The only direction she could go was further out. She was being made to walk the plank and there was no option to swim.
The gravity of the circumstances had gotten the best of her. Could she disarm the first man, take his weapon and kill the second before they shot her? Maybe. Could she do it while suspended hundreds of feet in the air? Maybe not. A smile washed over her face. The irony, or rather the beauty of it all, was that she would never need to find out. At least, that’s what she heard in the sound of the thumping rotor.
22
Blake parted the side doors of the EC130 as the marque atop the fifty-three story Palazzo tower came into view. He sat on the floor and kicked his legs out onto the step mounted high on the legs of the skid. He brought the holographic sights of the M4 up to eyeline and, using both eyes, ran the red dot along the roofline of the building.
Griff flew in close, staying well above the protruding arm of the tower crane.
Blake counted five men, spread out around the base of the enormous truss. But no sign of Haeli.
Griff got closer still. Blake could see the men were armed. A few with pistols, others with rifles. He clicked the button on the noise cancelling headset so he could communicate with Griff over the incessant whapping of the rotor.
“I don’t see her,” Blake said.
Blake’s earphones crackled. Griff’s voice followed. “If those guys are still there, then they’re looking for her. She’s hunkered down somewhere.”
Then Blake saw her.
The delicate, bare arms waving over a head of blowing black hair.
“Griff, on the crane!” Blake yelled in an unintentional attempt at piercing Griff’s eardrums.
Blake felt the helicopter jerk. Griff had gotten the message loud and clear. Mostly loud. Griff tilted the craft forward and to the left, pulling back once they hovered directly over Haeli.
Blake keyed up his mic. “Get closer.”
Griff eased the altitude lower.
The crack of the rifle was barely audible over the roar of the helicopter, but Blake had already caught the muzzle flash out of the corner of his eye. He raised his rifle, trained the red dot on the man, and fired. He went down. The rest scattered. Blake kept his sights trained on the bank of metal air conditioning units.
The head, hands, and pistol of one man peeked over the top of a unit. Blake picked him off with a single shot. The impact of the bullet with the man’s head carried so much energy that the cloud of atomized blood and brain matter was visible, even from Blake’s altitude.
Blake waited a moment. Seeing no one else wanting to play whack-a-mole, Blake dropped his rifle to the deck and reached down to grab Haeli’s outstretched hands. Haeli stood on her toes but couldn’t reach.
Blake clicked his mic on and locked it in place so he could communicate without having to use the button each time.
“A little further Griff, I’ve almost got her.”
The helicopter lurched lower.
Blake wrapped his right hand around Haeli’s left wrist. She did the same. He crossed his left hand over and grabbed her right wrist and pulled.
The first few inches were easy, but Blake felt a resistance. Haeli’s head dropped. He glimpsed the man that had latched his meaty claw onto Haeli’s ankle.
The right arm of the man was a mangled, bloody mess. It hung limp by his side. But his left arm, muscles nearly bursting through his skin, was working fine.
“Higher, Griff,” Blake said.
The helicopter jerked. The weight increased. Blake hung on tight.
The one-armed man now dangled by Haeli’s ankle, his own feet swinging beneath him. Blake could see him when he swung out.
“He’s going to pull you down,” Blake yelled.
“No, he won’t,” Haeli yelled back. “Let go of my right hand and give me your gun. Don’t worry, I won’t let you go.”
It wasn’t her words that convinced him. It was her smile. Blake let go, reached into the back of his waistband, and pulled out the Kimber .45. He flipped it around and pressed the handle into Haeli’s palm.
Haeli kept her eyes on Blake. Her dark, knowing, smokey eyes pierced through him and his pulse quickened. It wasn’t until this moment, with her life in the balance, that he truly came to terms with why that was. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want her to die. Of course, he didn’t. But he didn’t want to lose her at a
ll.
Haeli dropped her right hand to her side and fired off three rounds, never breaking her gaze or her mischievous grin. Blake felt the pressure on his grip lighten as the man’s body fell and crashed onto the crane jib. Blake was thankful that Griff hadn’t veered too far in any direction. A group of tourists had gathered below, their heads turned up toward the hovering helicopter. A body falling from that height was liable to take out a few of them.
Griff lifted the helicopter a few more yards, and Blake grabbed Haeli’s left wrist with both hands. Haeli twisted around and fired two more shots before Blake saw the second man popping out through the truss. The man’s gun went careening toward the ground, but his body remained slumped over the edge.
“I’d like to get on the helicopter now,” Haeli yelled.
Blake cracked a smile as he pulled, using his feet to slide himself further in the helicopter, dragging her with him. She got to a knee and then flopped herself to a seat.
Blake picked up the rifle and scanned the roof through the sights. No one. Either the remaining three had fled or they remained hunkered down.
The roof access door, embedded in the protruding cinder block cube, swung open. A man stepped out on the roof as though he were showing up for a dinner reservation.
Levi Farr.
Farr lifted his empty hands in front of him and glared. Blake could see the recognition on his face. The contempt. All wrapped up in an obnoxious smirk.
Blake dropped the rifle. He raised his hand and gave a lazy, single-finger salute.
Farr closed three fingers of his right hand, leaving only his index finger and thumb extended. He closed one eye and jerked his hand as if firing a gun. The obnoxious smirk grew larger.
You’ll get your chance, Levi. You’ll get your chance.
Griff yanked the collective, leaned into the cyclic, and the three shot off toward the desert, bellies full of sweet, if not temporary, victory.
23
