Tim strained his eye back to where Robert had been, found him missing, and jerked away just as another bullet split the wood where his head had been, enlarging the hole he’d been looking through. A remarkable shot, particularly given the angle.
Tim froze.
The silence was nearly unbearable.
Another bullet broke through the wood; another beam of light sprang up like a fast-growing vine between his neck and shoulder.
The stray two-by-four, about five feet long, was just within reach of his right hand. With a grunt he shoved it a few inches forward. The far end of the board crossed a hole in the platform, quashing the thin beam of light, and quickly two bullets hammered through the wood on either side of the existing hole. Tim covered his head, waiting for the ricochets to stop.
What Tim had gleaned at Rhythm’s indicated that Robert preferred a sitting shooting posture, an elevated tactical advantage, and a position offset right from a frontal view. Right now he was shooting from a standing position at a target directly overhead, and-despite those hindrances-firing with astounding accuracy. If Tim didn’t get off this platform, he was going to get picked apart piece by piece.
The mouth of a tube, about three feet in diameter, faced him across the length of the platform. Designed as a flexible safety trash chute for workers to clear scraps of material, the tube wormed over the edge of the scaffolding and dropped to the ground. The sturdy canvas would never hold Tim’s weight, and even if it could, the nearly free-fall seventy-foot drop would spit him out almost directly at Robert’s and Mitchell’s feet.
Blood soaked his jeans around the bullet wound; it was only a matter of time before a few crimson drops made their way down one of the holes near his right leg and gave away his position.
Even if his leg wasn’t injured, the tree trunk’s diameter was too wide for him to James Bond down the interior, spread-eagling to slow the fall. He couldn’t count on a rapid police response to such a remote site; even if the gunshots were audible over the rush of the freeway, at that distance they’d probably sound like little more than firecrackers. The only way off the monument was a tedious climb.
Tim shoved the two-by-four again to disrupt the light flow farther down the platform and risked a look through the hole near his head. Robert was repositioning himself. Mitchell had finished laying C4 around the tree trunk’s base and was storming back to his det bag.
To buy a few seconds, Tim pressed his gun barrel to a hole near his hand and fired four times, blindly. Then he rolled to his back and shot once at the rope tying Robert’s dangling Nextel to the scaffolding above. He hit the rope near the wood, pinching it off and causing the phone to drop straight down rather than swing off the platform’s edge.
He timed a lunge, grabbing the phone and landing flat, arms and legs spread, barely missing the bullet holes in the platform, the loose two-by-four pressing hard into his shin. Two more shots hammered through the wood precisely where he’d been. Robert had now all but ventilated the platform; there was very little unpenetrated wood left on which Tim could lie without giving away his position. He removed the coarse rope from the phone and used it as a tourniquet for his leg. Another shot broke the wood beside him, forcing him to flatten against the platform again.
Breathing hard, his elbow bent to dodge the new beam of light, Tim lowered his hand and worked the Stork’s phone from his pocket. With excruciating slowness he brought the two phones up to his chest, holding them side by side. Bullets continued to punch through the floor at intervals, pinging around the small cross-section of scaffolding.
He worked his foot over the two-by-four, pressing his toe against its end, then snapped his foot out. Right when the board slid off the platform’s edge, drawing Robert’s attention-Tim hoped-at least for a moment, he glanced through the hole to his right.
As he’d anticipated, Mitchell was still coming strong, the det bag looped over his shoulder and bouncing musically against his hip. He was heading for the C4 he’d left at the tree trunk’s base, a coil of wire in one hand, a razor knife in the other, an electric blasting cap in his mouth.
Tim hit “redial” on the Stork’s phone and tossed Robert’s Nextel into the canvas tube. He heard it ring once on its way down. It whistled along the canvas as it fell, guided in toward the trash heap at the base of the monument.
A sharp crack as the electric blasting cap detonated, triggered by the ringing phone’s RF pulse. A moment of perfect stillness, nothing but the wind whipping through the scaffolding, then a gut-wrenching wail.
Robert.
Tim rolled twice, sticking his head over the platform’s edge. Directly below, Robert was genuflecting beside his brother’s body. A spray of matter above the shoulders confirmed that Mitchell’s head had been blown apart by the electric blasting cap.
Tim swung over the platform, gripping the edge to aid his swing, and dropped ten feet to the one below. His right leg, weak and slick with blood, gave out, and he collapsed.
Robert roared down below, then bullets started hammering through the platform, sending chunks of wood flying. The gap between the metal plates in the trunk made the lower platform blindingly bright. Tim dragged himself to the visible section of trunk, lead flying up all around him, plunged his arm into the gap, and fired once, directly down the core of the tree.
A blast rocked the monument as the spotlight lamp exploded. The sharp flare of light disappeared at once, plunging everything into darkness.
Tim worked his way swiftly around to the far side of the tree. Smoke was seeping from the holes in the metal, the sluggish discharge recalling blood from wounds.
Robert continued to bellow down in the dark, firing randomly up at the branches and sky.
Tim hooked a toe on an opposing branch and pulled himself onto the far wall of scaffolding, then half fell, half slid down, catching splinters, moving quickly while the rifle reports covered the sound of his plunge and marked Robert’s place across the monument.
The shooting stopped, either because the ammo had run out or because Robert was circling to Tim; either way the silence sat thick in the air like an unvented smell. Tim slid from the lowest metal branch, dropping six feet to the ground and bearing his weight on his left leg.
Fumbling out a speedloader, he refilled the wheel of his gun. Despite the makeshift tourniquet, blood had twisted down his jeans, engulfing his knee. His head swam for a moment, static obscuring his vision; he’d lost a lot of blood. He tried to run, but his right leg had gone numb, and he fell over, catching a mouthful of dirt. With the help of a sawhorse, he pulled himself back to his feet.
Robert broke into view, one-handing the. 45 as it kicked and bucked, cording his forearm with muscle, muzzle flare lighting his face. His eyes showed too much white. Sheets of flesh pulled down from his jaw on either side, tight against twine-split muscle. He was roaring something, his lips loose and wet, his mustache a red slash above his stretching mouth.
Tim ran as best he could, threading through the scaffolding around the trunk’s base, putting metal and wood between him and Robert. Robert was firing wildly; he was less skilled with a handgun. Tim could barely run with his bad leg; boards were flying past him on either side and overhead. He ducked and jumped and dodged. Lead sparked off metal, always just behind him, always just around the turn. He’d sprinted nearly 180 degrees around the trunk when he swung wide and turned, lining the sights. Robert appeared, gun leading around the curved turn and, still in dead sprint, Tim squeezed off a round.
Robert’s. 45, raised in front of his upper chest, caught the bullet with a clang of lead meeting steel. The barrel sparked, and Robert cried out as the gun tore from his hand.
Tim swung back just in time to see the thigh-high mound of refuse before him, and he ran into it full bore, nails and dust exploding. Shaving through the left side of the heap, he hit ground hard and slid a few feet, landing on his back with a brick pinching into his left hip. He looked up through the thickening cloud of stirred debris and saw, ten feet above him, the open bottom of the canvas tube staring down at him like a curious eye.