“They might’ve,” said the other man. “Text the New York COS and get some more warm bodies up here.”
Although the dumpster was almost as big as a boxcar, the height made it look like a shoebox to Thornton. Not the time to become acrophobic, he thought.
Or to think.
He leaped, arcing outward so as not to strike the building on the way down. Freezing air rushed around him like jets. His stomach rose into his throat.
Feet first, he told himself.
Too late. His already sore rib cage and his left cheek smacked into swollen bags, which gave, swallowing him into blackness. From his vantage point at the bottom of the dumpster, the garbage blocked out the light altogether. Blocked out fresh air, too. Wedging himself between two bags, he groped and kicked his way upward, holding his breath lest the stench overwhelm him. He toed something big that squirmed.
Surfacing, he was ecstatic. A flash blinded him. Using a hand as a visor, he focused on the source. The laboratory window rising. He pointed for Mallery’s benefit. She looked to the window, then gazed to the overcast sky as if seeking divine intervention.
“Now,” Thornton mouthed.
She gazed in his general direction, but nothing more.
As he wondered how he might coax her without giving her presence away, she stepped off the ledge, plummeting feet first, arms gracefully tucked to her sides, yet, from his perspective, like an incoming missile.
He flung trash bags aside to get out of her trajectory. She landed feet first, disappearing into the sea of bags. He threw himself into a prone position, spreading his legs to maintain stability — this was straight out of his old Red Cross lifeguard manual. He stabbed an arm into the darkness.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
No response.
He hoped she could still hear him.
“Up here,” he tried.
Was she unconscious? Or worse, was she—?
Her hand clasped his wrist, electrifying him. Grabbing her elbow with his free hand, he hauled her to the surface. Her face glistened with what he took for blood, until catching a whiff. Marinara sauce.
A man appeared at the window, the dwindling sunlight relegating him to a silhouette. Pointing a gun.
Thornton instinctively froze. Mallery too.
With a shrug, the man retreated into the lab.
Mallery used a sleeve to wipe the sauce from her face, then started out of the dumpster. The squeaking of her limbs against the damp rubber bags was heard four stories up: the gunman reappeared at the window, silenced gun flashing.
A bullet dinged the far lip of the dumpster, inches from Thornton’s head, pelting his face with bits of paint and stinging his eardrums. Mallery ducked beneath the surface of the bags.
“Lucky shot.” Thornton spat out a rusty flake. “Still, this isn’t such a good place to be.”
Counting on the combination of distance, poor lighting, and movement to hinder the next shot, he grabbed the dumpster’s lip and swung himself over it, landing on all fours on the street. The giant metal container was now between him and the gunman.
Another flash and a round stung the street, sending asphalt into his shin. Mallery jumped to the street, touching down beside him, and slipping on something wet. He lunged, catching her by the waist. A bullet cleaved the air where his head had been, pinging a parking meter across 120th Street.
With Mallery in tow, Thornton launched himself toward the corner of 120th and Broadway so that the entire science building shielded them from the gunman. A bullet clanked the building’s façade, creating a splash of shrapnel, a shard of which sliced the rubber sole of Thornton’s shoe, slitting his heel. He knocked the shard loose as he jogged down the sidewalk, at the same time releasing his grip on Mallery. She ran with him and soon, with long, catlike strides, outpaced him. Category of desirable problems, he figured.
23
The bitter evening limited upper Broadway to a smattering of students and a vendor trying to sell roasted chestnuts. Most everyone else huddled in a bus shelter on the far sidewalk. Thornton and Mallery sprinted down the sidewalk on the other side of Broadway. Suddenly she stopped.
He pulled up beside her. “What is it?” he asked.
“Them.” She indicated the pair of campus guards, on the sidewalk four blocks down, charging toward them on Segways.
“Top speed of eighteen miles per hour. Might be comical if they weren’t after us.”
“You think Officer Logan duped them, too?”
“I don’t want to find out.” Looking across Broadway to his car, Thornton took into account the time required to unlock both doors — BMW manufactured the model back when power locks were only the stuff of car shows — and start the engine. Or to sit and wait while it failed to crank. “Let’s get a taxi.” He scanned the sparse traffic. Just three cabs, the medallion numbers on the rooftop signs all dark, indicating they already had fares. “Next time,” he added.
With Mallery following, he ran across Broadway as far as the grassy median. He unpocketed his key and scurried the rest of the way to the ’02, whose driver’s side faced him. He unlocked and dove into the car, reaching across and swatting the passenger door open. Mallery dropped into the seat.
“The good news is the guys in the lab weren’t FBI, so we can safely go to the Bureau now,” he said, spinning the key in the ignition, spurring a croak from the engine. “In light traffic like this, we’ll be there in less time than it would take to get a human on the phone.” He tried the ignition again. The engine shook into a splutter that sharpened to a roar. He thrust the gearshift from neutral into first. The ’02 leaped down Broadway, throwing his stomach backward. He liked the feeling. The car blew past the guards on Segways. In the rearview mirror, Thornton saw the men’s faces twist with rage.
“How do you know the guys in the lab weren’t FBI?” Mallery asked.
“The thing one of them said about texting the New York COS for some more warm bodies.” Thornton plunged the shifter from second to third. “COS is spook for ‘chief of station.’ The FBI doesn’t have stations.”
Streetlamps sputtering to life showed Broadway to be empty but for a few cabs. Home free now, Thornton thought, and he would have said so except for the UPS truck now in the rearview. Like the one that had been parked by the science building. Or maybe the same one. It sped around the corner of 114th and Broadway. The driver was hidden from sight by the windshield, red and orange and blue in the wash of neon bar and restaurant signs flying past. The passenger was visible in part: his right hand out his window, bracing a silenced pistol against his side mirror.
Mallery’s eyes gleamed along with the muzzle flash shown in her side mirror. She threw herself forward, landing in a ball in the passenger foot well. The bullet sparked a street sign a lane over.
“Despite what you may have seen on TV, it’s hard to fire a gun with accuracy,” Thornton said. Every couple of months, he practiced with a Glock 19 or a Sig Sauer P226 at the police firing range in Queens, an effort both to better know his subject matter and to develop NYPD sources — usually over beers afterward at the Parkside Pub or McFadden’s. In the range’s entryway, the department posted the number of bullets expended each year by its 34,500 officers in the line of duty, an average of just 600 bullets, along with the number of misses. “Police officers are accurate with only thirty percent of their shots. And a ton less accurate from a moving vehicle, especially when the target’s also moving.” The front tire on his side dropped into a pothole, rattling every part of the car. “Especially in Manhattan.”
One of the two taxis ahead of him swung left to pass the other so that both lanes were blocked, with the cab on the right a length in front of the one on the left. Thornton downshifted to second, allowing his car to draw an S around the cabs. They now shielded the ’02 from the gunman. That wouldn’t last long, though.