He could hear the men running behind him. One shouted out to the other, and a fainter response came back. D'Agosta immediately understood what had happened: they had divided and were still pursuing, one on either side of the narrow strip of park.
Shit.
Keeping low, he ran through the woods, gun in hand. No time to stop and strategize; no time to use his radio; no time for anything but a flat-out run. The faint lights of Riverside Drive flickered through the trees on his left; to his right lay the long, brush-filled slope running steeply down toward the West Side Highway. He could hear the droning rush of cars far below him. He briefly considered running down the embankment and trying to get out on the highway, but it would be easy to get hung up in the nasty bracken that clogged the slope.
If that happened, he'd be a sitting duck, fired on from above.
The stretch of woods ended abruptly, and he burst out into a moonlit scene of parallel walkways overlooking the river, gardens and trees between them. It was exposed, but he had no choice but to keep moving.
Who the fuck's chasing me? Muggers? Cop haters? It didn't make sense. He was no longer just a target of opportunity. These killers were determined. They had followed him uptown. They were after him for a reason.
He ran past the first formal garden, behind rows of iron benches, keeping low. Suddenly he saw something off to his left: a red spot of light chasing him, dancing around like an agitated firefly.
Laser sight.
He threw himself to the right as the shot came. It hit the metal bench with a sickening ricochet and hummed off into the darkness. D'Agosta fell into the flower bed, rolled clumsily, and rose on his knees in firing position. He saw a dark shape moving fast against the dimness of the open grass and fired-once, twice-rolled to the side, rose to his feet, and took off running again, cursing himself for not having kept up with his shooting practice. But even missed shots had a good effect-making them careful, slowing them down. At least that was the theory. He passed the far side of the garden and ducked in among the trees.
Another jiggling red dot. He threw himself to the asphalt as the shot came, rolled, tearing his knee open against the pavement, and was up again and running. The shooters were using some big-caliber sidearms and knew what they were doing. His own shots hadn't slowed them down at all.
These guys were professional assassins.
He ran through a playground, desperately leaping first the teeter-totter, then the sandbox, and across a small square with a fountain, gasping with the effort. Jeez, he was out of shape, gone to seed. Long gone were the days in the police gym, keeping trim and fit.
He cut across a small square with a fountain, jumped a stone parapet, and was back on the steep, woodsy embankment leading down to the highway. He crouched behind the stone wall, waiting. They would have to cross the open walkway. That's when he'd have a shot at them. He held the weapon tightly in a two-hand combat grip, steadied himself, tried to get control of his wild breathing. Don’t squeeze the trigger. When it goes off, it should almost be a surprise. Make every shot count.
Now! The dark shapes emerged from the trees, moving fast. He fired: once, twice, thrice.
The red lights were dancing around the branches over his head, and he screamed an obscenity as he forgot his own careful advice and fired again and again at the dim shapes. He could hear nothing over the bark of his firearm, but he could feel the slap of bullets hitting the stone right before his face. These bastards didn't miss a beat.
He, on the other hand, had missed by a mile, and no wonder. He hadn't taken a turn at the range in three damn years, and his shooting was as old and stale as all those shooting awards that hung on his wall.
He scrambled back from the stone wall, running along it in a low crouch, praying his back wasn't exposed. As he ran, he popped the clip from the gun, peering at it in the dim light. Empty. That left him only two shots in the chamber . thirteen rounds wasted.
Suddenly he saw something come into view through the trees up ahead: the bridge over the 110th Street off-ramp. The whole thing was chain-linked like a cage. If he got caught in there, he'd be the proverbial fish in a barrel.
But turning back-jumping back over the stone wall and crossing the open walkway-meant running right into the arms of his pursuers. And that would be suicide.
He glanced down to his right. There was only one other choice. It was the highway or nothing. Get out on the West Side Highway, stop traffic, create a snarl, radio for help. They wouldn't pursue him or shoot at him out there.
Without waiting to reconsider, he charged down the steep embankment, clawing through the brambles and sumac and poison ivy, half falling, half rolling. The branches tore cruelly through the fabric of his uniform, and the sharp rocks of the embankment bruised his shoulders and knees.
Whang! sounded the shot.
Ahead, the embankment dropped away steeply. He fell, rolled as far as he could, forced himself back onto his feet, and began running again, casting one brief look back. He could hear them crashing through the brush not thirty feet above him. In desperation, he wheeled, squeezed off a shot at the closest figure. It ducked to the side, then charged forward again. D'Agosta turned and ran with all his might. His heart was racing dangerously. The rush of cars was suddenly louder, the lights flashing through the trees, flashing on him for a moment.
Whang! Whang!
He ducked, zigzagged. The highway was just fifty feet ahead. The headlights were now flashing across him, making a clear target.
Thirty more feet. The trees were thinning, giving way to garbage and weeds.
Whang!
The embankment leveled out. Twenty more feet to the edge of the trees and the highway. He ran flat out, making a beeline-
Boom. And he was thrown back.
D'Agosta lay there for a moment, stunned, thinking he'd been hit, that it was over. Then he realized he'd run full tilt into the chain-link fence that ran just above the highway. His eyes took it in within the space of a heartbeat: the concertina wire at the top, the crappy fence all mangled and twisted by junkies, the skeletons of cars lying on the verge below the far side. Of course. In the old days, he had driven that highway a million times, seen that fence leaning dangerously above him, stuffed with trash and decaying leaves. One more thing he'd forgotten in those years in British Columbia. He was trapped.
This was it. He rose on one knee and turned to make his stand. One round, two men.
The math wasn't good.
{ 15 }
A low fire burned in the grate, casting a ruddy light on the walls of books and chasing the damp chill from the air. Two wing chairs occupied the space on either side of the fire. In one sat Special Agent Pendergast, and in the other Constance Greene, pale and slender in a beautifully pressed and pleated dress. To one side sat the remains of an evening tea service: cups and saucers, strainer, creamer, digestive biscuits. The still air smelled of wood polish and buckram, and on all sides the bookshelves climbed, row after row, toward the high ceiling, the old leather-bound books that lined them gleaming with gold stamping in the firelight.
Pendergast's silvery eyes glanced toward a clock above the mantelpiece, then flickered back to the old newspaper he was reading. His murmured voice picked up where it had left off.