Under the street two blocks away, Taps Turner was moving cautiously along one of the utility access tunnels by the light of a tiny powerful halogen-bulb flashlight. He set down his electrician’s kit in front of a switch box bolted to one wall and used his prybar to break the padlock hasp. Inside the hinged cover were rows of engaged knife switches. He began to compare the interior layout of the box with a wiring diagram, humming a Lionel Ritchie love ballad softly under his breath.
Louise drove the Cougar while Grace wiped the makeup off her face with a wad of kleenex. They both were laughing at her tale of Emery’s wandering eyes and bulging pants.
In the elevator shaft, Runyan grunted his way upward. The air was close and smelled of hot metal and lubricating oil. The day on Royal Arches had taken a lot out of him, but it had insured his physical confidence, made it possible for him to be here now. His movements were crisp, without hesitation, exact. He had no “protection” in place — he was working without a safety line — so the strength of his grip on the Jumars and the sureness of his feet in the slings were his only insurance against falling as he practiced this mild form of... what? Masochism? Maybe self-abuse. His body was sure feeling abused as he climbed the cable.
Endlessly.
He rested a moment, panting, tipped his head back to look up into the dimness of the shaft. The big cable wheels still seemed a long way up.
He went into the fugue state he had perfected while practicing gymnastics at Q, trying to pass the endless hours of confinement. One of the prison survival skills you never heard about was infinite patience. He had learned it.
What was Louise doing right now? He checked his watch. Still driving around; she wouldn’t park the car near the other condo’s underground garage entrance until about five minutes before he was scheduled to be coming out.
He shoved up a Jumar, and it rapped against the rim of the grooved wheel over which the cable passed.
He’d made it!
Runyan grabbed the nearest spoke of the wheel, made sure of his grip, then carefully disengaged his feet from the Jumar slings to swing his legs up and hook them around the wheel rim.
Hanging backward under it like a sloth under a branch, he removed the Jumars from the cable with his free hand and clipped them to carabiners threaded on his belt. From there it was a cinch to climb the spokes of the massive wheel and step onto the metal gridwork service platform.
The housing door, as on the diagram he had studied, opened out onto the blacktopped roof of the building. He stopped for a few moments, massaging the tautness from his arms while gulping fresh night air. Still on time. He negotiated the mini obstacle course of capped chimneys and vents to the edge of the building that faced the twin high-rise a hundred feet away. On the inside of the four-foot-high concrete parapet a sign held to the wall with cement screws read: DANGER-HIGH TENSION.
He bent across the top of the low wall to look down. Bingo. A very thick black power cable ran along the outside of the building five feet below, did a right angle through a terminal box, and stretched away into the darkness toward Brother Blood’s building. Right where it was supposed to be.
Runyan checked his watch again, unclipped the stuff bag from his belt, set it on the roof, and took out a break-’em-shake-’em, cracked and twisted and shook the short rod until it glowed with a soft cool green light like Darth Vader’s sword. He bent it into a horseshoe around his neck. Break-’em-shake-’ems left the hands free, a vital factor in rock climbing.
He zipped the bag, clipped it back on the belt, unclipped his Jumars, and put them on the top of the parapet. Then he jumped up so he was sitting between them, facing in. One minute before two a.m. He edged himself back across the top of the wall until his butt was hanging off into space. This was the tricky part. He now was supported only by his hands gripping the outside angle of the top and the outer wall and by his heels hooked over the inside edge of the wall.
Runyan hyperventilated, focusing his energies to that white-hot physical point that perhaps only athletes know, then let his knees slowly bend, arching his body slowly back and down. Now only his heels hooked over that inner edge, and his calves along the top of the wall, supported his body; he was hanging face-out, upside down above the high tension cable terminal.
He groped above him on top of the parapet for one of the Jumars, found it, brought it slowly down in front of his face. If he should drop it now, everything was over.
In the tunnel, Tap’s glowing watch digits read 1:59:58 and:59 and 2:00:00 and his hands, in place on two of the knife switches, pulled them down to disengage them.
In the Cougar, Louise was just turning into the block where the high-rises were when all the lights went out except the street lights. She grabbed Grace’s arm in her excitement.
“It’s happenin’, baby, it’s happenin’!” responded Grace in a voice almost guttural with tension.
Hanging upside down by the green glow of his break-’em-shake-’em, supported by his calves and heels on the parapet, Runyan jammed the first Jumar into place, squeezing it down so the brake bit into the high-tension core of the cable with its relentless grip. If the power had not been cut, he would just be smoking meat.
He found the second Jumar, fixed it into place. The seconds ticked away in his head. Only 90 of them before Taps reengaged the knife switches.
Gripping the Jumars with iron hands, he kicked off the building. His body swung out and down and around, his arms and hands taking the full shocking jolt of his weight as he jerked up under the cable. He was now hanging from the Jumars only by his grip, which already had loosened the brakes so he was sliding down the cable toward Brother Blood’s building.
Emery skittered his flashlight beam around a lobby lit only by the streetlights outside. Over by the elevators a second guard’s flash danced and probed.
“It isn’t just us, Emery,” he called.
Emery felt a great weight lift off him. He had been afraid it might somehow have something to do with that black hooker who had showed up. “Okay, then, I’ll call Water and Power,” he said.
Runyan, still lit only by his break-’em-shake-’em, walked the Jumars quickly up the cable toward the junction box on Brother Blood’s building, panting with nonstop effort as the seconds exploded in his brain. At the box he reached over, a hand at a time, to grab the bare power cable. Then he kipped himself up into a full pressout. He got a foot up onto the cable, a knee, was balancing on the wire, grabbed the edge of the parapet and jerked his feet up off the cable.
There were crackling bursts of white light as the Jumars, scorched and smoking, fell away. The lights flickered on in the buildings as he muscled himself up onto the wall and dropped over onto the roof.
He ran lightly across a patio landscaped with expensive potted greenery and shrubs to the sliding glass doors of the penthouse. It looked like a lock that might be reasonable about raking. Since the penthouse was supposedly the only way to the roof, he didn’t have to worry about alarms.
Louise had pulled over to the curb and stopped when the lights had gone out. Now, 90 seconds later, they were back on again. She whirled on Grace.
“Did he make it? Did he?”
“I didn’t see no falling bodies,” smiled Grace. “Relax, shugah. That man of yours, he’s a survivor.” She dug an elbow into Louise’s ribs. “Let’s get moving again, baby. Don’t wanta draw no po-leece before Taps can get out of that manhole.”
With a thrust of his powerful shoulders, Taps heaved the manhole cover aside. He grabbed the tool kit from where it was wedged between him and the ladder, set it on the street, then leaped nimbly up on the pavement himself. He kicked the manhole cover, clanging, back into place before running to the sidewalk.