He doubled back at the next street, turning corners to keep from giving his pursuer a clear field of fire. He had no gun, no way of defending himself. He should have taken Mindy’s .45, but it was either that or the wire — there hadn’t been time for both.
Nodding Crane was gaining steadily. And Gideon was gasping so hard it felt as if his broken ribs would puncture his lungs. What now?
The last street ended. Ahead lay the open field adjacent to the Dynamo Room. He’d been here before. This was the area the guard had carefully detoured around. That field’s off-limits,he’d said. There’s a lot of places on the island that are dangerous.
What was the danger here? Maybe this was an opportunity. It sure as hell was his last chance.
He sprinted across the field, zigzagging as he went. He could hear Nodding Crane still closing the gap, not bothering to stop and fire but instead using the opportunity to get close enough so that he couldn’t miss. Gideon glanced back: sure enough, there was the running figure, only fifty yards away now.
Halfway across the field Gideon realized he had made a serious mistake. He would never make it to the other side and there was nothing here that offered any chance of escape, no unexpected danger, no evidence of pits or old structures. Just a big damn open field without cover. The ground was solid and level. It was a race — and Nodding Crane was the faster runner.
He glanced back, his legs churning. Nodding Crane was now only thirty yards behind.
As Gideon turned his head toward the unattainable far end of the field, his eye caught the monstrous, crumbling smokestack rising from the Dynamo Room. Abruptly, he understood. The danger wasn’t in the field itself — it was that smokestack. It was old and unstable. That was the reason the guard had detoured: the damn stack looked like it might fall at any moment.
An old iron stairway spiraled up to the top.
He veered off, running toward the smokestack. Clawing his way through the undergrowth, he reached its base. He hesitated just a moment: this was a one-way trip to nowhere.
Fuck it.
He leapt onto the rusting stairs and began climbing. A trio of shots sounded from behind, smacking the bricks around him, spraying him with chips and dust. But the stairs spiraled around the curve of the stack, providing cover.
The stairway was old and rusted, and as Gideon climbed it rumbled and screeched, sagging and swaying with his every step, the rust raining down on him from the sudden strain. A step broke and he seized the railing, swinging briefly out into space before recovering, grasping the next step and hauling himself back up.
As he continued, climbing recklessly higher and higher, he heard a groan of metal below and felt a new vibration. Nodding Crane was coming up after him.
Naturally. This was a stupid move. Nodding Crane would chase him to the top and then shoot him from below.
As Gideon mounted higher, he could feel the stack vibrating in the buffeting winds, with an accompanying grinding and crackling sound of crumbling mortar.
Now the true insanity of what he had done began to hit home. The storm was shaking the entire stack, which felt like it was going to collapse at any moment. There was no outcome he could imagine in which he survived this chase to the top.
A single shot rang out, the bullet snipping the railing by his hand. He scrambled upward faster, keeping the turning of the staircase as cover. A flash of lightning illuminated the ghastly scene: the island, the ruins, the crumbling stack, the rotten stair, the storm-tossed sea beyond.
“Crew!” came a call from below. “Crew!” Nodding Crane’s peculiar, flat voice pierced the howling wind.
He paused, listening. The stack groaned, crackled, swayed in the wind.
“You’re trapped, you fool! Bring me down the wire and I’ll let you live!”
Gideon resumed his climb. Another shot rang out, but it went wild and he knew Nodding Crane must be having a hell of a time firing accurately, given the swaying of the stack, the howling wind and rain. And there was something else: he thought he detected a note of fear in Nodding Crane’s voice. And no wonder. That was progress of a kind. Strangely, Gideon felt no fear himself. This was the end — there was no way he was coming down off this smokestack alive. What did it matter? He was already a dead man.
The thought gave him a strange feeling of relief. That had been his secret weapon, the one Nodding Crane was unaware of: he was a man living on borrowed time.
As he climbed higher, heavier wind gusts boomed around him, so strong at times that they almost tore him from the stairway. Another lightning bolt split the sky, the crash of thunder following instantaneously. He heard a screech of metal as a section of the stairway detached from the stack, the bolts popping loose like gunfire, and the detached section swung out over the void, with Gideon clinging to the railing. He gripped the metal with all his might as the wind swung him back, slamming him against the bricks. The iron held until the wild oscillations of the stair finally calmed down. He found purchase, his feet back on the shaking iron steps, and resumed climbing.
He looked up as lightning flashed. He was about halfway to the top.
He had to go on, to prevent his weight from remaining too long on any one rotten step, while simultaneously keeping to the far side of the stack from Nodding Crane.
“Crew!” came the shout from below. “This is suicide!”
“For both of us!” Gideon screamed back. And it wassuicide. Whether the smokestack fell or not, he couldn’t go back down that stair; it was too damaged now, and besides, he was trapped by Nodding Crane. He had no weapon. Once he reached the top Nodding Crane would close in on him and that would be it.
“Crew! You’re crazy!”
“You can count on it!”
The stack shuddered under a particularly fierce gust, and a fresh shower of bricks rained down. He pressed himself against the side of the stack as they clattered and bounced off the stairs. He looked down but Nodding Crane was out of sight around the curve of the stack. The lightning was now almost continuous, providing a glimpse every few seconds.
He looked up. He was almost at the top now. A narrow iron catwalk circled the rim of the great chimney, half of its braces gone. It slanted perilously to one side. He pressed on, one foot after the other, clinging to the railing with all his might.
Quite suddenly he was at the top, in the howling storm. He crawled through a hole onto the platform grate, clinging hard because of the slant. Bricks had broken away from the lip, giving it the look of ragged black teeth. The top of the stack was covered by a heavy grate to trap fly ash, and two brass dampers stood open, like giant bat wings. A strange hollow moaning rose up from inside the stack, as if out of the throat of some primitive, antediluvian monster.
There was nowhere to go.
One of us will die on Hart Island. That is the way you planned it and that is the way it must be.
70
Laughter echoed up. “End of the line!” came the voice from below, suddenly sarcastic.
What now? Gideon had gone up the stack blindly, with no plan.
A gust struck, and the top of the smokestack swayed, more bricks crumbling and popping off the edge. At this rate, the whole damn stack could collapse at any minute.
Suddenly he had an idea. Working a brick loose, he peered down, waiting for the next bolt of lightning.
It arrived with a boom of thunder, illuminating Nodding Crane, clinging to the ladder about fifty feet below. Gideon hustled around and threw the brick into the void.
A fusillade of shots followed, punching holes through the metal platform, and Gideon almost fell off in his effort to get back. More laughter echoed up.
Dropping bricks on Nodding Crane was a waste — he was easily able to dodge them with his night-vision goggles, while Gideon had to wait for a flash of lightning. He would only get himself shot.