before he left, presumably so the police wouldn't think of him as the terrorist murderer he was. I was shocked to see the face of a boy, perhaps only nineteen or twenty. Tony's age. He had pale skin but dark, bushy eyebrows. It was now light enough out to see that his eyes were open.
'Oh shite! Ohhhhhh,' said Stephen O'Shaughnessey.
I realized that if help didn't come soon he'd probably die. Four-thirty. Was DeGroot awake? Had he seen the note? Couldn't count on it. I had to get out and make a phone call-flag down a car. Anything.
'Adams.'
I went over to him.
'How bad is it?'
'What's bad is you've been losing blood by the quart. You've also got a broken leg but I'm not worried about that.''
'Now listen,' he gasped, 'I bloody well can't move and you know it. If I take the gun and cover you, could you find yer way out?'
'Yes.'
'Well go. It's better than us sitting here and me bleeding to death, tourniquet or no our-ahhhhhh!'
He shivered with pain, but took the big. 44, then aimed it square at my heart.
'Go, Doctor. These are orders. Head straight back and make a wide circle around the both of them-'
I pressed my back up against the wall and sidestepped along it. Ten yards. Twenty yards. Forty yards. I was home free. I began a slow quiet walk. At the next corner I would turn right and head for the old sea wall, then drop to the beach. and wade the shallow water right up to the road. No problem with fighting even the outer fence this time. Then heard it. A boat was coughing to life out on the pier. It was a smallish gasoline engine. A cruiser engine. It went into high revs right away and groaned into the distance, toward the mouth of the huge harbor. My watch said quarter to five. It was past the time Number One said he'd put the rush on Schilling. Had he been waiting for my shots, or had he taken the boat? My guess was the latter; he'd sensed the situation had gotten far enough out of control so that his capture was imminent. And now I worried even more about O'Shaughnessey's safety.
A big boom sounded behind me. It could only be the heavy. 44 magnum. Almost immediately afterward I heard the hoofbeat sound of pounding slugs hitting brick. Then the deep boom of the pistol again. Then running feet and a scream. Unarmed, it would do me precious little good to hang around. I only hoped the scream was Schilling's, not O'Shaughnessey's. I ran fast now for the corner of the building. I heard a flight of bees off to the side of my head, and my legs almost turned to water from fear. Those were. 45 slugs sliding by me, hunting me.
I rounded the corner full tilt. Once I reached the sea wall and swung over it I was probably safe.
But as I ran the next twenty yards it got darker up ahead, not lighter. Another twenty yards confirmed it, and I could hear the hollow echo of my feet against the walls. And then I saw the windows, six rows of them, looming up ahead of me. I had turned one corner too soon. The way to the beach and the sea wall lay one more building past where I had turned. I was in the last courtyard. Oh God, I thought. Why now? Why this way, after all I'd been through? Why now, when I'd been a1most-.
There is no panic as great as that which follows a sense of relief, no despair so acute as that which comes back after renewed hope. I ran to the end of the enclosed courtyard. I yanked at two window. They were barred. I searched madly for a ramp, a door, a fire-escape…
'Adams!'
I turned and looked at the dim figure standing on the roadway at the open end of the courtyard. It was still quite dark. He was leaning a bit too much. He took two quick steps forward and bowed in my direction slightly, like a Japanese houseboy. He'd been nicked by O'Shaughnessey before he'd killed him. But even a nick from a. 44 was serious. So God bless Stephen O'Shaughnessey. The late Stephen O'Shaughnessey. But a lot of good it would do me.
The man made two fast twists of his body, back and forth. A swarm of locusts sang above my head, and then came the terrible pounding and popping sound above me as pieces of old brick and mortar exploded out from the wall. They fell to the ground in clacks and tinkles, like old flowerpots, and fine dust sat in the air. But the gun was quiet.
He started walking into the courtyard. I heard a distinct, clean clung of metal hitting the ground and then saw him reach back with one hand into a hip pocket. New clip. Thirty more rounds. And at least one of them would finish me. He walked again and I could almost hear the scraping feet, the throat snuffle and sniff of Mr. X. He had failed once but not this time. He had a machine pistol and I didn't have a goddamn thing.
Including, most especially, a way out or a place to hide.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I don't know what made me go looking in the far comer, except plain old bloody desperation. The same thing that makes a trapped rat hug the sides of buildings, or gutter pipes, or old cellarways…
In the very corner of the courtyard, behind a big dumpster bin and several discarded oil drums, was a fire ladder. Not a fire escape, an escape ladder. Vertical, with rungs and such. And it went all the way up the building: six stories high. It also had a barred metal casing around it-a cylindrical cage of steel strips to prevent people from falling off it backward. It was a way out, but not a good one. Inside the ladder cage I would be a sitting duck. A duck at a shooting gallery. And Jim Schilling, besides being a good shot, had a gun that couldn't miss. The rooftop was a long climb away, and time I was very scarce. But the ladder was truly invisible; it snaked up the side of the old building in the farthest, shadiest corner of the dank place, and the bottom rung didn't come closer than about nine feet from the ground. It was the ladder or nothing.
I grabbed an oil drum and placed it underneath the ladder and set it down quietly. Tired as I was I knew that a quick start spelled all the difference. In less than three seconds I was on the drum, then in contact with the rung, then climbing. I think that after about five seconds I was past the second row of windows, and heading for the third story. Please God… please give me one more minute-forty-five seconds-I almost stopped and fell back down the vertical cage when I heard the popping and grinding of the old wall coming apart. Silence. Then another short burst. Schilling was scouring out the far reaches of the old brick court, using the machine pistol as a water hose. He spat another burst, and I heard the deep timpani boom of metal. He'd hit the dumpster and some of the oil drums. With luck he'd also knocked over my stepping stone, the drum I'd placed underneath the ladder. But I climbed as fast as my cast let me. The ground, what was faintly visible of it, seemed a long way down.
'Adams!' '
Fourth floor. I thought. Please God please… just twenty more seconds.
I climbed by feel; it allowed me to go faster. I was panting hard now but keeping my mouth wide open. I looked down. Oh Christ. Christ Almighty: a light.
There it was, a pale yellow pencil beam snaking around on the asphalt far below. I heard the sound of an oil drum kicked over, and then a curse.
'Adams! Adams, you're dead!'
I could see the rooftop now against the pale gray sky. I could see the big tiles that lined the top of the brickwork. I looked down, the light was now snaking around the corner of the yard, right beneath me. Good God, don't point it up. Don't point it up-
Ten more feet. My body ached in every muscle. Eight feet. Seven. I think during the last three seconds of my climb my body slowed a wee bit, thinking the goal was reached.
And the next second I was flooded with light, just as I'd been in the old barn when climbing on another ladder. I didn't stop. I redoubled the effort and the pain. I thought I heard a grunt or bellow come from far, far below me. I had grabbed the smooth, slick tiling on top of the brickwork when the wall around me burst apart in a shattering roar. Bits of mortar and brick stung my face and eyes. I kicked my feet desperately, spastically, climbing up, like getting out of a swimming pool. As I fell over the tile I felt a monstrous kick on my heel, and then a deep burning.
I lay on the tar and gravel of the flat factory roof and breathed deeply for a few seconds, then crept to the edge. I could see without even leaning over that the light beam was shining up the ladderway. But at this height the beam was pretty faint. There wasn't much he could see from down there. I glanced around. If there was no way off
