There was a T intersection in the hall, and the other man led Gentry to the right. Just as they turned the corner, jagged holes tore into the wall in the main hall, and through his ringing ears Court barely heard a gun behind them firing suppressed rounds.
Court was getting the feeling back in his body now, and his eyesight returned slowly. He arrived behind his new partner as Russ stopped at the end of the hall, then leapt up and grabbed hold of a chain attached to a door in the ceiling to the attic. He pulled down a folding staircase, then turned around and knelt in the hall, training his weapon back up the hallway.
“My gun!” Gentry shouted, louder than he had to, and Russ pulled Court’s pistol from his pants and handed it over to him.
Russ fired a pair of shots up the corridor, then turned and moved up the attic stairs. Court covered him; he kept his blurred eyes locked on the corner and his shaky gun raised as Russ ascended the rickety and narrow wooden steps.
As Russ disappeared into the hole in the ceiling behind him, down at the end of the hall a man in a black helmet and goggles peered around the corner. Court aimed at the man’s forehead and fired once, grazing him in the left shoulder and sending him scrambling back around to cover.
Whitlock was in the attic now, but he positioned himself over the hole. Facedown he hung out from the waist, hanging upside down from the corridor ceiling, directly above Gentry. His body faced the threat at the end of the hall, and he pointed his gun toward the T.
“Move!” he shouted, and Court turned and climbed the attic staircase now, covered by the man hanging upside down behind him.
Two men in black tactical gear shot across the hallway ahead, trying to make it to the other side of the T. Dead Eye opened up on them, his Glock snapped three times, and a round struck one of the men in the side of his head.
Court climbed up to the attic, then turned and stomped down on the rickety folding stairs, breaking one of the hinges that held it to its frame. He then stomped on the other hinge, and the staircase fell to the hallway floor. It was now useless as a way to get up into the attic from the hallway, but he knew it would not slow the attacking force for long.
“Let’s go!” Russ said, and he grabbed Court by the collar again and pulled him along. While Russ reloaded his pistol they moved together through the long, narrow attic, holding their heads low as they ran to keep from bumping them on the bare support beams protruding from the sharply angled roof. Russ shouted into Gentry’s ear to be heard. “This attic connects with the building next door. We can get back down to the street from there.”
At this point Court realized he was just along for the ride. He stumbled across the low dark attic, following a stranger who seemed to know a surprising amount about not only the property, but the opposition, as well.
Trestle Actual had taken a round through the top of his left shoulder before he’d been able to focus on the threat at the end of the hall, and the impact had spun him around and knocked him to the floor. Two more of his men came up the hall from the stairs just after he assessed his wound. They’d been at the front of the building, outside in the snowstorm, and snow now fell from their black body armor as they ran past him to take up a position on the other side of the T. Nick climbed back to his knee pads and faced the opening to the T intersection just in time to see two of his men cross the space in a sprint.
Trestle Eight took a gunshot wound to the right side of the head as he ran. His helmet jolted and blood sprayed from the left side of his forehead and splattered on the wall and he tumbled down, his forward momentum pitching him into Trestle Seven, who fell to the ground just clear of the intersection.
Trestle Actual crawled to the corner, went flat on the floor, and rolled out with his HK in front of him. Ahead in the hall he saw a middle-aged couple in pajamas stumbling out of a room and toward his position.
He aimed at them, ready to shoot them dead to get to his target, but his target was no longer in the hallway behind them.
Just behind them he heard a gunshot and saw a set of attic stairs on the floor. Dead Eye had been wrong. There was attic access here on the third floor. Trestle Actual doubted Court would try for the roof. The roof of the building was pitched at sixty degrees and covered in several inches of ice and wet slippery snow. There would be no way he could maintain his footing well enough to escape by running across it, and if he had rope all he could do was rappel down the side, where other members of Nick’s team would be waiting for him.
Instead, Nick decided Gentry would try to make his way to an adjacent property by using the attic. There was a collection of private flats next door; Actual figured his target would try for those. Nick did not want to chase him through the attic; he knew that anyone climbing up through the hallway access would find themselves vulnerable and exposed to Gentry’s weapon.
Into his headset he shouted, “Two and Four, breach the building to the east of this location, Nine Kooli Street. He’ll be heading down the stairs from the attic.”
“On the move!”
Two and Four were on the other side of the building in the park; they would have to make their way through the back door of the apartments. Trestle Actual himself leapt up to his feet and began running back to the stairwell, followed by Seven and Five.
FIFTEEN
Court followed Russ from the attic down a staircase and into a private flat. The occupant, a middle-aged woman, had hidden herself in her bathtub when the shooting began next door, but she did not peek out into the living room when the two came bursting into her flat from the attic.
Russ ran toward the front door of the room, but Gentry caught up with him. Shouting over the ringing in his ears, he asked, “Where are we going?”
“Staircase to street level.”
“They’re going to be waiting for us!”
“Unavoidable. We’ll have to engage them.”
Court shouted, “Let’s take the roof!”
Russell shook his head. “Pitched slate, covered in snow and ice. We wouldn’t make it fifty feet before we fell off.”
Court looked around the apartment, still cocking his head to see past his scorched pupils. “We need twenty feet of cording. More if we can get it quick. Lamp cables, extensions, phone wire, whatever.” As he talked he yanked a banker’s lamp off a desk and ripped the wire from the wall and from the lamp itself.
Whitlock started to protest, but he saw that Court seemed certain of his plan, so he grabbed a telephone and pulled the cord out of the back, then traced it back to where it attached to the wall. He removed the cord from the wall and turned his attention to a thick extension cord on the floor.
Court said, “We each get on one side of the peak of the roof. We support each other and move laterally. You get it?”
Russ got it. He nodded approvingly. “We act as each other’s counterweight. Let’s do it!”
In seconds they had a bundle of wires, strong enough to hold them both, some twenty feet in length. Court then ran to the window, opened it, and climbed out into the snowstorm. He held the wiring at one end, and Russ took hold at the other end. They each wrapped it around one of their wrists, and Court climbed out onto the snow-covered roof carefully. Snow and ice slid down on him as he grabbed on to the outside of the window to pull himself up, his fingers and knees stinging in the cold. He took hold of a satellite dish to get him to the peak of the roof, and behind him Russ slipped out the window and followed him up. Court slid down on the other side of the peak a few feet, and stood tentatively, leaning out, using the tension in the cord for balance. He shouted to Russ. “East or west?”
“East!” Russ shouted over the whipping wind.