Court did not respond; he only began moving eastward along the south side of the peaked roof. Russ felt the tugging, and he, on the north side of the roof, began moving along as well.
After a couple of tentative steps the two men began moving faster along opposite sides of the roof, their boots slipping on the snow and slick tile, but the cords between them gave them something to hold on to so they could remain upright while their bodies hung out away from the roof. The wires themselves dragged in the center along the peak as they moved, giving them stability. A chimney jutted from the peak, but Court and Russ closed the distance between each other by moving up, creating slack in the cords, and then together they flipped the wires up high and over the chimney. The wires dropped down on the other side and they returned the tension to the cabling to help them balance as they ran on.
Court slipped and fell to his knees suddenly and violently; he still had not completely regained his equilibrium after suffering the effects of the nine-banger. The cables lashed to his left arm kept him from sliding off the building. He quickly pushed himself back to his feet and continued on, squinting in the blowing snow.
Trestle Actual had just made it into the apartment building entrance at Nine Kooli Street; Seven and Five remained directly behind him and Six was still staggering out of the hotel, wounded but alive, and heading for their van.
A door opened near the stairwell, just a few feet in front of the two Townsend operators. Trestle Actual flashed his weapon’s tactical light on the movement, illuminating a man leaning out the doorway.
The man raised his hand to shield his eyes from the bright light. Nick fired at the quick movement, shooting the Estonian civilian through the chest with a three-round burst. The Estonian fell backward into his apartment, and even before he hit the floor all three Townsend men knew the victim was not their target. They heard noise inside the apartment, a woman’s scream, and Five fired a burst at the noise, shutting up the wailing woman.
A voice came through their headsets. “Someone’s on the roof!” It was Trestle Six, the injured man he’d sent to the van. “Moving east. I can’t see shit in the storm, but he’s knocking snow off the building.”
“Use your damn light!” Nick shouted.
“The taclight is just reflecting off the snowfall!”
“Then fucking shoot! ID the body when he falls off the building!” Nick was already on his way back out through the lobby of the apartment building; Trestle Seven remained on his heels.
“Engaging!” Six shouted, and Actual heard the cyclic metallic thumping of a suppressed weapon outside.
Sparks exploded below and in front of Court on the slate tiles of the roof; he was under fire from a man at ground level.
Gentry looked back over his right shoulder; through the snow and ink-dark night he saw only muzzle flashes, back down in the parking lot in front of the hotel. He drew his pistol, reached, and, while running, fired twice at the flashes.
Another flicker of light from the same location told Court he’d missed. He stopped now, and with his left hand cinched to the wiring he reached back again with his right hand and fired three more carefully aimed shots.
As soon as he finished firing he felt an intense tug at his left shoulder. At first he thought he’d been hit, but as he tumbled forward onto the snow-covered roof he realized his abrupt stop had surprised Russ on the other side, and he’d obviously yanked the wires and fallen back ass first, his own shoulder no doubt wrenched by Gentry’s sudden stop.
Court used the barrel of his Glock to help him back up to his feet, pushing off with it in the snow and struggling with the acute angle of the rooftop.
The flashes of gunfire from the parking lot stopped, and he felt confident he’d hit the man targeting him.
Court started to run forward again, glad to feel the tension leave his shoulder as Russ did the same on the far side of the rooftop.
This roof ended just feet from where they ran; they could barely see through the darkness and heavy snowfall, otherwise they would have had time to decide what to do. Instead the four-story drop just appeared and there was no time to stop on the icy surface; there was only time to rush forward, pick up speed, and then launch off the roof into the air.
Both men, lashed together at the wrists, kicked out over open ground; fifty feet below them was a cobblestone alley bathed in gaslights. Across the alley was a three-story wooden building; the pitched roof above it was as steep as the one they’d just leapt from.
They crashed onto the sheer three-story roof as one, Gentry on the right of the peak, Whitlock on the left. Both men splayed out flat, landing on the steeply angled surface, but again, the fact they were connected saved them and they did not slide off to the ground below.
The men were up again and moving in seconds.
Trestle Actual ran along narrow Kooli Street, trying to get line of sight on the roof high above. Just behind him was Trestle Seven.
Five had headed back to the parking lot in front of the hotel to bring the van to pick up the team up the street. They all stayed in contact with Trestles Two and Four, who were now racing through the park on the opposite side of the buildings that ran along the old town wall. It was difficult for the Townsend operators to see anything high on the rooftop in the whipping blizzard, and the tactical lights hanging from the rails of their HK rifles were less than useless, as they only illuminated the whiteout conditions between themselves and any potential target.
As they neared the end of the block Trestle Seven shouted, “Got him!” and Nick looked back over his shoulder to see what his colleague was focusing on. Seven’s eyes and the barrel of his MP7 pointed across the alleyway that separated the row of buildings next to them with another block of lower structures. Nick could not believe Gentry had managed to move that quickly along a sixty-degree roofline that must have been as slick as glass, but he, too, saw a figure ahead.
He and Seven both fired at the same time.
Court and Russ had just dropped down off the peaked town wall and onto a roof that was not as steeply angled as the others; it had more packed snowfall frozen to it, several inches high and hanging over the street below, terminating in long icicles. When another burst of fire from the street blew out a window just below where he ran along the roof, Court looked down again and saw that two men had gained on him, and they were running in the narrow cobblestoned alleyway just below his position.
Court looked ahead through the blizzard at the next connected roof. It was less steeply angled than the others, and the snowfall here was a foot deep. He shouted over the storm, “Give me ten feet of slack!” Within a second he felt the wiring wrapped around his left hand lose tension, and he shouted, “Belay!”
Court leapt high in the air and came crashing down on the next roof on his back, and a massive block of white broke off and cascaded down the side like an avalanche. Court was held up by the cables connecting him to Russ on the other side of the apex, so he did not slide off the roof with the snow.
Trestles Actual and Seven had been running below their target, and both men had just reloaded their MP7s and trained them back up above them when they heard Gentry yell something. They looked for their target in the heavy snowstorm, but instead they saw a huge foot-thick sheet of white falling from the roof, some twenty-five feet above their heads. The avalanche of packed precipitation was the size of an automobile, weighing several hundred pounds, and it dropped through the air, picking up velocity and power. Trestle Seven took the brunt of the avalanche, and Nick only caught a glimpse of the man before he was buried alive. Trestle Actual himself dove out of the way of the brunt of the mass of frozen precipitation, but his legs were momentarily buried under the pile.