The Last Second (A Brit in the FBI #6)(66)
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The planets were stout and steady, happy to hold his weight. Nicholas crawled through the outer planets first, Pluto, Jupiter. Good to know Broussard wanted Pluto to stay a planet. He shook his head, realized when the power was on in the building, the planets must move. Cool touch. He saw the counterweight bar on the far side—not only did the planets move, they moved in their designated orbits.
As he drew closer to the counterweight, he heard a grinding noise, a soft, mechanical sound, and Nicholas realized no, they weren’t dependent on the electricity, but were moving, gently, slowly, but moving. Had he accidently hit a switch, or were they in perpetual slow motion and he just hadn’t noticed it before?
Bloody great. Obviously his weight had altered the movement, and the whole mechanism was in motion around him now, faster now, the planets starting to whir as they gently twirled and spun.
He heard a gasp, realized it came from Broussard, but ignored it. Al-Asaad’s men hadn’t realized he was up there yet. All their firepower focused on the gallery. It wasn’t going to take them long to realize the mechanism was in motion, and if they looked up—he was a sitting duck.
Nicholas edged closer to the center. Hand, foot, step. Hand, foot, step. The steel-frame trusses were strong, he just had to make sure he placed his feet in the right spots, grabbed hold of the truss above him. If he hadn’t been as tall as he was, this would have been more of a tightrope walk. At least he could grip above as he walked along the trusses. As he crossed onto the other side, his weight made the planets around him move a bit faster than he liked. A planet was swinging toward him, he needed to get out of its way.
Three fast steps and he was across. He blew out a breath, vaulted over the railing and ran down the hallway to duck into Broussard’s office. He saw the keys on the desk, pocketed them, and started back.
The gunfire was fast and furious. He saw Mike and Grant taking turns shooting down to the foyer. They had Al-Asaad’s men pinned, it seemed—they couldn’t move. They couldn’t get to the ramps that wound to upper levels of the building, they’d be shot from above by Mike and Grant. Some good luck for the good guys.
When he stepped onto Pluto, he heard a metallic groan. Not good. The trusses had held his weight across, but now they were protesting? Not fair. He needed to hurry.
Mike heard the change in the metal and her heart froze. Nicholas was two hundred feet in the air, suspended over a shooting gallery. If he fell, he was dead.
She wanted to scream, Go back, go back. No, this was Nicholas, and he had to do this, he could do this, if only he could get back across without the mechanism breaking apart.
A bullet zinged an inch from Nicholas’s hand, and then there were more, and shouts. He’d been spotted.
He cursed. If he could just get back across—but the gunfire was heavy now, sustained, both from Mike and Grant and from Al-Asaad’s men. He was sheltered behind Earth, but it was going to move through the elliptical and expose him within a minute.
Grant yelled something at him, pointing at his chest. Nicholas grinned like a maniac, pulled the pin, and dropped the grenade. The explosion was deafening. He heard screams. But the blast also shot a wave of power upward, and the concussion knocked Nicholas off the truss.
He was falling, falling.
He landed, hard, on the top of Jupiter, swinging wildly, loose now from the rest. Thank heavens, Jupiter was the largest of the bunch. He was sprawled over it and rode it around in a circle, trying to gauge how to get off the sphere and onto the ramp. The planet would swing close, then swing away.
He saw a loose cable above him, one meant to hold the planet in the proper place, but it had snapped, torn free by either the blast or gunfire, and as he swung below it again, he took a deep breath and jumped toward it, grabbed it and hung there for a minute.
Mike was shouting at him, but he couldn’t make out her words. He clung on for dear life. When Jupiter passed beneath him again, he used it for momentum. He kicked off and swung across the twelve-foot expanse like Tarzan.
Too soon, he realized the cable wasn’t long enough. He wasn’t going to make it, his hands were already slipping. When he came close to the glass banister, he leaped toward it, catching one hand on the edge. His other arm dangled, and he dropped his M4.
He couldn’t pull himself up, his hand was slipping. Then Mike was there, hauling him over the knee wall. Glass cut his chest and legs, but he ignored it. She dragged him onto the ramp.
He rolled and came up to see a bearded man running toward them, his gun raised. He dove for Mike as a gun went off.
Another shot and the man fell on his face. Grant had killed one of Al-Asaad’s men who’d somehow managed to sneak up the ramp.
Mike’s heart kettledrummed in her chest, she couldn’t breathe. Get it together, get it together. Nicholas is safe. When she realized what had happened, she yelled to Grant, “Thanks. Too close.”
Grant laid down fire as Nicholas and Mike ran to the roof door, where Broussard was waiting. Mike took the key from Nicholas’s bloody hand, managed to unlock the door.
Nicholas and Mike took turns shooting down the stairwell while Grant got the chopper going and Broussard got himself strapped in. The rotors began to whip, and they slammed the door closed and ran full speed across the roof, leaping into the helicopter as Grant lifted off. They landed in a heap.
She stared at him and started to laugh. “You’re a bloody mess.”