Off to the left, hobbling for the roof’s nearest edge. Eddie raced after him. There was an electrical substation below, the dull hum of transformers growing louder. He had to be heading for a fire escape…
Shock as Eddie realised that he wasn’t. There was nothing but a sheer fifty-foot drop. Irton wasn’t just willing to suffer to protect his boss; he would make the ultimate sacrifice.
‘No you bloody don’t!’ gasped Eddie, fighting through his own pain to run faster. Irton was twenty feet from the edge, ten…
He reached it just as Eddie dived at him.
The Englishman landed hard at the very lip of the roof, grabbing at Irton, but only managing to catch his left arm as he fell towards the substation. The torturer’s sleeve slithered through his fingers—
One hand locked around Irton’s wrist.
The American shrieked as smashed bones ground together, crushing nerves. Eddie tried to get a hold with his other hand, but Irton’s weight was dragging him over the edge. He had no choice but to use it instead to brace himself… and the thrashing man started to slip through his grip.
‘Where is she?’ he yelled. Irton looked back at him, fear in his eyes behind the pain. Another nauseating crunch, and Eddie felt his opponent’s mutilated hand slipping further through his own. He squeezed harder, but knew it was a losing battle. ‘Tell me where Nina is, and I’ll help you—’
Snap!
Bone broke, skin tearing with a hot gush of blood — and Eddie found himself holding nothing but a severed finger.
Irton plunged, screaming, to be impaled on the prongs of a transformer below. Sparks exploded from it, searing electrical discharges lancing out as the high-voltage current set his body aflame. Eddie jerked back as something overloaded and blew apart with a detonation that shook the building. The substation’s lights flickered, then died, along with those of all the other nearby buildings.
‘He went out with a bang,’ Eddie muttered, furious as much with himself for not maintaining his hold as with Irton for taking Nina’s whereabouts to the grave. Still clutching the finger, he stood and turned back towards the door… and for the first time saw where he was.
The skyscrapers of Manhattan glittered like cubic galaxies across the dark waters of the East River. His guess that he was in Brooklyn had been right. A bridge loomed to his left behind buildings; he had lived in New York City long enough to recognise it immediately as the Manhattan Bridge. That put him somewhere in Brooklyn’s Vinegar Hill district.
He looked to the right along the river. The lights of the Williamsburg Bridge spanned the waters about a mile away. A moment of surprise at an unexpected yet impressive sight closer by: the massive airship that he had seen from Harvey Zampelli’s helicopter was coming in to land for the night. Its temporary home was the nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard, the decommissioned military facility that was now an industrial park and movie studio. Advertising slogans flashed across its bulbous side, their very mundanity giving him a bizarre sense of relief. Whatever was going on, he had survived it, and returned to the real world.
The feeling lasted barely a moment. He was free, but the mysterious Prophet still had Nina — and he had absolutely no idea where. Somewhere in the tropics was all she had been able to tell him. That didn’t really narrow it down.
Another retort from the substation. He had to get away from what would very soon become a crime scene; the explosion would bring first the fire department, then the cops. Whatever Irton and the others were doing, they had given the definite impression that it was on the clock. He couldn’t afford to waste time being arrested and interrogated by the NYPD.
Fortunately, he had friends in the police.
‘Eddie?’
‘Down here,’ he said, cautiously stepping out from behind a dumpster to greet the woman. ‘Hi, Amy.’
Detective Amy Martin of the New York Police Department brought up her flashlight to regard him with shock. ‘Jesus, Eddie! What the hell happened to you?’
He had retrieved his leather jacket and other belongings including his phone from the abandoned warehouse, but the garment couldn’t disguise that he was covered in blood. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not mine. Most of it.’
‘That’s what I’m scared of!’ The dark-haired young cop came down the alley for a better look at him. ‘Are you okay? What’s going on?’
‘I’m not sure myself. But you know there was an explosion a couple of blocks from here?’
‘Yeah, I heard about it over the radio just after you phoned—’ She broke off in dismay. ‘Oh man. Don’t tell me that was you.’
‘Not… directly.’
‘’Cause they found a body.’
‘Yeah, and they’ll find another two in the factory next to it.’
Amy shook her head and sighed. ‘God. What is it with you? What happened?’
‘Short version: I was kidnapped, but got away. But Nina was kidnapped too, and they’ve still got her.’
Her eyes went wide. ‘Kidnapped?’
‘Off the street outside our apartment. I was tied up in a warehouse being tortured until about half an hour ago.’ He pulled up his shirt to reveal lurid bruises. ‘I need your help, Amy. I’ve got to find Nina, but I can’t do that if the cops take me in for questioning. I need you to cover for me.’
‘Cover for you! People have died, Eddie — it’s kinda hard to sweep that under the rug.’ She eyed him. ‘Did you kill them?’
‘Yeah, but in self-defence. And the third one, I was trying to save him — he jumped off the roof rather than give up where they’d taken Nina.’ He saw that she was still struggling to process his first admission. ‘Come on, Amy! You know me. And you know the kind of stuff I keep getting dragged into.’
‘But you don’t even work for the IHA any more!’
‘I bloody know! But whoever these arseholes were, it won’t be long before their boss realises his torture team isn’t answering his calls any more. Soon as he knows I’ve escaped…’
‘They might hurt Nina,’ she finished for him.
‘Yeah. She’s pregnant, Amy — I’m not going to let them do anything to her or our baby.’
Her eyes widened. ‘She’s pregnant?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Congratulations! And thanks for telling me when I saw you last,’ she added with considerable sarcasm.
‘I was busy chasing a Nazi!’ he protested. ‘Anyway, look — I promise you that as soon as Nina’s safe, I’ll tell the NYPD everything that happened.’ He glanced down the alley as an emergency vehicle swept past, lights strobing. ‘But right now, I need you to run interference.’
‘Interference!’ she hooted. ‘This is going to turn into a murder investigation. If I interfere, I could do more than lose my job — I could go to jail!’
‘Amy, please!’ He fixed his eyes on hers. ‘You trust me, don’t you?’
‘Oh, please, don’t pull that card, Eddie,’ she cried. ‘You know I do! You saved the whole damn city.’ It had taken his drastic physical intervention to prevent a nuclear device from being detonated at the end of Wall Street, his arm still scarred as a result. ‘Everyone in New York owes you, and… and I just talked myself into helping you, didn’t I?’ She tipped her head back and let out a groan to the sky.
He grinned. ‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t thank me yet. There’s only so much I can do, even as a detective — and,’ she warned, ‘only so much I’m willing to do. I’m not going to lie for you.’
‘I’m not asking you to.’ They started back down the alley towards her car. ‘For now, just get me to the UN — no, wait, take me home first. I want to check the apartment. And see if there’s been anything reported about Nina or me being kidnapped. If someone saw me get Tasered and dragged into a van, that should be enough to tell the cops I was the victim. And if there isn’t a report on Nina’s kidnapping, start one!’