Russ Whitlock didn’t have a clue what was going on on the other side of the building, but he had heard gunfire and Court’s call for slack. He’d run up toward the crown of the roof, giving Court the freedom he’d asked for, and then he’d dropped to his knees to support him when Court called for the belay. Now Russ was back down where he’d started, racing along again as fast as possible on the slick roof. He and Gentry had to climb up to the next building, but within moments they were hustling again, still heading east, getting closer and closer to the end of the block.
While he struggled along the pitched rooftop Russ tapped his earpiece and placed a call to a number he had programmed into it.
“Yes?”
He spoke loud enough to sound agitated, but softly enough so that Gentry would not hear him through the storm. “This is Dead Eye. It’s turning to shit over here!”
“Say iden, Dead Eye.”
“Metronome, it’s me. Trestle is getting slaughtered! You’ve got to pull them out of—”
“Say iden key.”
“They are outside! There is a running gun battle in the streets! Pull them back!”
“If you can’t establish your identity—”
“Fuck you, Parks! I’m going in!” Whitlock shouted this, and then disconnected the call.
“What?” yelled Gentry.
Russ shouted over the roof. He’d expected Gentry to hear something and was ready. “I said, the roof ends up ahead. We can jump it again!”
“Roger that!”
Another narrow small street marked the end of the block. On the far side was a lower brick storage building behind an art studio. It had a lean-to roof, a single slope that started high on Dead Eye’s side of the building and ran to only ten feet above ground on Gentry’s side.
Both men launched out over the cobblestones, as they had done at the last alleyway.
Russ kicked through the air, his eyes locked to a landing zone near the top of the lean-to roof, barely visible in the storm. But when he was only halfway over the alley he heard gunfire behind him. He knew there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He crashed onto the snow-covered roof next to Gentry, hitting awkwardly on his left side, and he grunted with the impact. Both he and Gentry skidded and rolled off the roof, creating an avalanche that cascaded to the ground with them.
Both men and hundreds of pounds of fresh snow crashed in a heap in the forecourt of the art studio building along the little street. They fought to uncoil themselves from all the cabling, dig out of the mini avalanche, and get themselves back in the fight.
“Two targets! Repeat, two targets!” Trestle Actual heard the call from Trestle Two, but he had no idea what the man on the other side of the row of buildings was talking about. Nick was behind the action, still moving up Kooli Street by himself, having left Seven under the avalanche of snow from the roof.
He stopped in the street and struggled with the boom arm of his mic, which had gotten turned around when he fell in the snow. He twisted it back around to his mouth so he could transmit. “Repeat last? Who is the second target?”
“Two men… uh, two people jumped to the roof on the other side of the alley. I think I hit one of them.”
Actual started to move again, but headlights washed over his body from behind. He stopped, looked back over his shoulder, and saw a small police car racing up Aida Street. Its siren squawked out an angry wail and it slid to a stop just thirty feet from him.
“Fuck!” Nick dropped his HK into the snow and stood there in the middle of the street, clutching his bloody shoulder wound with his hand.
As soon as Russ and Court crawled out of the snow pile, Russ shouted, “Contact rear!” Both men scrambled to their knees and trained their pistols on the alleyway. Two men in black tactical gear appeared from around the corner. Both of their weapons were trained on the roof above; they clearly did not realize their targets had fallen off the building into the forecourt.
Gentry and Whitlock opened fire together, dumping over a dozen rounds into their targets at a range of twenty feet.
The two Townsend operators fell into the snow.
“This way,” Russ said, and he turned away from the dead men in the street and began moving toward a low stone passageway between the art studio and the city wall.
As Court climbed out of the snowdrift he noticed blood in the snow around him; he’d smeared it with his hand as he stood up, so the streak moved in an arc in the impression left by his glove. Quickly he turned behind him and saw more blood, drips and smears all over the snow pile.
Russ saw it, too. “You’re hit,” he said.
Court entered the passageway, feeling himself for holes as he went. He felt the smeared blood on his left hand, but as he ran his hands over his body he could find no other injuries.
He turned to Russ as they arrived under a streetlamp on the southern exit of the passageway. “I’m good. It must be you.”
Russ slowed and performed the same blood sweep; he ran his hands over his torso, then down the front of his midsection and his upper legs, and finally back up his hips. He winced in pain. He pulled his hand off his left hip and saw his fingers red with blood, watery from the dampness in his clothing. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “I’m shot.” He held his hand to his hip to stanch the blood flow and called out to Gentry. “Head south. Away from the port. Find a place to go to ground and watch for me. I’ll catch up in ten mikes. Stay to the east. Their police HQ is on Kolde, to the west; they will—”
Court said, “I know where the police HQ is. Where are you going?”
“Have to take care of something first.” He handed Gentry a fresh magazine for his Glock, and then reloaded his own weapon.
Court reloaded his own pistol, and then said, “More important than that gunshot wound and getting away from the cops?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Wait for me.”
“Sure.”
Whitlock turned and started running in the other direction, one hand holding his pistol and the other holding his hip. He had no idea if Gentry was going to do as he said, but he had no alternative.
There were still Trestle men out there, and he had to kill them all.
Trestle Actual stood in the middle of the cobblestoned alley with his hands in the air. The two cops stared at him through their windshield; one spoke into the radio, and the other just pointed his pistol at him through the glass.
The cops had started to exit their car as soon as they arrived, but a long salvo of gunfire a block to the east sent them back into their vehicle, content to wait on the dozens of police cars that were on the way from the station.
While Actual stood there, listening to gunfire and an increasing chorus of approaching sirens, waiting to be arrested and already imagining the uncomfortable international incident that would begin just as soon as these two bozos grew a pair of balls and climbed out of their cruiser to handcuff him, he spoke into his mic. “Two and Four, this is Actual. Tell me you got him.”
No response.
“Two and Four, are you receiving?”
Nothing.
“Dammit! Kip? Dave? Talk to me, guys.”
The gunfire he’d heard seconds before sounded like multiple handguns firing simultaneously. What the hell? Two Targets? His men were down?
“Fuck this shit,” he said aloud, and then his arms shot down to his sides in a blur; he drew the SIG Sauer P226 pistol from the retention holster on his right hip and dropped to one knee as he raised the gun at the cops.