11
The saboteur raced up a flight of stairs hanging on the outside flank of the lock and then leapt off the platform to a towering assembly of wooden scaffolding that rose to the top of the chamber wall.
Bell paused to see if he had a shot with his .45, realized he didn’t, and kept after the man. He was breathing heavily in the humid air, and he had to flick sweat from his eyes every few seconds. The driver climbed with the agility of a monkey, while Bell struggled. The top of the lock was some eighty-five feet above the ground, and Bell and the driver climbed all the way up, hand over hand, with feet scrabbling for purchase.
By the time Bell reached the top, his target was running along the lock’s great length. Even before Bell was fully to his feet, he pulled the black Colt from its shoulder holster and braced himself in a two-handed shooting stance that gave him far more stability than the one-handed style still popular with law enforcement and the military.
He cycled through the seven rounds in the magazine in three seconds, but the range had grown extreme, and he had zero control over his breathing or the pounding of his heart. It would have been just as effective to throw the bullets at the bomber.
He started running again, changing out the magazine as he went. The top of the lock was wide enough yet littered with construction materials, forcing Bell to weave precariously close to the dizzying edges at times. The lock chamber below him was like the longest, widest, deepest swimming pool in the world, only it hadn’t yet been filled. Work was still being done on its concrete floor. For safety’s sake, the big holes in the floor that allowed water into the chamber had been fitted with temporary covers.
The bomber ran with the understanding his life was on the line. There would be no slowing, no stopping, no attention paid to sore legs or burning lungs. He had to escape if he wanted to live. Behind him, Bell ran with enough confidence in himself that he wouldn’t give up until he had his man in irons or dead. He could block out any amount of discomfort by keeping that singular goal his entire focus.
They ran almost the complete length of the Pedro Miguel Lock. It looked like the bomber was going to run to the end of the tailing that stretched from the lock out some distance from the chamber. It dipped down in a gentle drop, and at the very end of the structure was more scaffolding that he could climb down.
At the last second, the man veered sharply right and took the chase out onto one of the massive steel doors, a towering slab of metal that weighed over seven hundred tons. The doors usually met at an angle to each other to help them stave off the tremendous weight of water they were designed to withstand.
They were currently ajar. That was a relative term, given that each leaf of the mitered gate was sixty-five feet wide.
The bomber didn’t hesitate. In fact, he lengthened his stride, hit his mark, and sailed eighty feet above the lock’s floor below. He landed on the far gate awkwardly enough that he fell and almost rolled off the edge before catching himself and jumping back onto his feet and continuing. He didn’t waste the effort to look back.
Bell raced on, and as he drew closer to the end of the gate, he saw the gap between it and its mate seeming to grow wider and wider. He was at that crucial split second when his mind had to derail his instinctual need for self-preservation and forced himself to jump over the yawning abyss.
He didn’t make it.
At least, not all the way. The space between the doors was far wider than Bell had ever jumped. Instead of clearing the far edge, he slammed into it just below his ribs, exploding every molecule of air from his lungs. His pistol crushed against his chest like a full-body punch. He struggled for grip, his hands spread flat against the hot metal, while the toes of his boot found a row of rivets no thicker than suit buttons.
He could feel the void sucking at his heels.
His hands began to slide down, leaving trails of sweat on the black steel. A little moan of effort escaped his lips as he curled his toes in hopes of gaining a better hold on the nubbin-like rivets. Still sliding, if only by millimeters, Bell was certain his last mistake had been a fatal one. He thought of Marion’s beautiful face and how he would never see her again.
One boot slipped from its rivet at the same time the heel of his hand touched a rough seam in the metal door, a bump no thicker than twenty sheets of paper. He dug his fingers into the seam, curling them so tight that the tendons in his arms raised the skin like the cable stays of a suspension bridge. He didn’t panic. He moved his second hand forward and dug in with his fingers and slowly found his foothold once again.
By inches, he pulled himself up until he could shift his body weight enough to roll onto the mitered gate. As much as his body needed to rest, to reinflate his lungs properly and to discharge the adrenaline overload that had shocked his nervous system, he ignored it all and got to his feet. He’d lost precious seconds.
The bomber was already running farther back on the center pier of the lock that separated the two great chambers and had a seventy-yard advantage. He was almost at another set of scaffolding that would take him down
