Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [119]
The Cobra had arrived on the rooftop. Exactly as they’d planned it. Everything was perfect, right to the final escape.
Colonel Hudson finally allowed himself a trace of a smile.
Just a trace.
Chapter 91
“GET THE FUCK out of my way! Move it! Move it! Move, move, move!
A roaring, unbelievable firelight had erupted. Carroll saw rows of fiat rooftops shooting flames as he pushed and elbowed his way through the crowd already gathered on Brooklyn’s Halsey Street to watch the action. Ghouls, he thought. The worst kind of ambulance chasers.
He winced in pain. His left arm was numb and something was wrong with his spine: when he ran like this the contact of his heels with the pavement sent jarring shudders climbing up his backbone.
None of the neighborhood people—leather-jacketed teen-agers, sullen young women, small, grinning children—seemed to realize that this violent spectacle was for real. They were shrieking with what almost sounded like joy.
“Get back! Dammit, get back!” Carroll yelled as he ran forward. “Get inside with those kids! Get back inside your houses!”
Expectant, wide-eyed faces were crowded into every apartment window. Further down Halsey Street, hundreds of neighborhood people filed outside into the cold, rainy afternoon. They were peering toward the explosions, enthralled by the blazing fire, the sudden jolting volleys of M-16 rifle and pistol shots.
Carroll continued to run in his clumsy battle crouch, moving closer to the exploding, gunshot riddled building.
A police bullhorn boomed out to his left. It thundered over the cacophony of gunblasts and human shouts.
“You there! You, running! Stop right there!”
Carroll ignored the voices. He kept charging forward.
His steps weaved as he struggled with pains that attacked his body from every direction.
As he reached the fiery building, an even more familiar and terrifying sound seized his mind.
The same Army Cobra was hovering over the factory roof. The same helicopter that had shot him down was back Green Band was here.
His body low to the ground, Carroll vaulted up the building’s stone steps. He took the stairs three at a time and with each leap thought he could hear the rattle of his own skeleton, loose bones flying under his flesh.
A heavyset man suddenly burst out of the open doorway in front of Carroll. He was holding an 870 riot gun across his chest.
Carroll’s gun was set on rapid-repeat A round of .30-caliber bullets disintegrated the terrorist’s face. He reeled back inside the doorway.
The smoke, forcing itself out of the broken first-floor windows, took root in Carroll’s lungs. He kept running.
Then Carroll was climbing over the body of the dying gunman sprawled inside the doorway.
Instinctively, Carroll hugged the hallway wall Cheek tight against cold, peeling plaster, he gasped.
His head seemed to be spinning at an unbelievable speed.
An Army Cobra helicopter? How did they manage a Cobra? Getting an Army Cobra wasn’t possible…. Green Band was waiting upstairs, and that didn’t seem possible, either.
Chapter 92
A GRATED IRON DOOR opened slowly onto the tenement rooftop.
Columns of smoke, scattered by the wind, temporarily blurred Hudson’s vision. The doorway was less than forty yards from the waiting Cobra helicopter.
Colonel Hudson walked cautiously at first, then he began to trot like a victorious athlete toward the waiting Cobra. He’d done it. They had all done their jobs almost perfectly. The Green Band mission was finally over.
The sudden exhilaration of victory was unbelievable to savor.
Hudson never saw the second figure on the roof until the assailant was on top of him. His heart squeezed into his throat. He’d been careless.
For once, just once, he’d forgotten to check, to double-check every possibility.
“You can stop right there, Colonel.”
Face and shoulders still obscured in shadow, a figure appeared from behind the water tower. One hand, which held a revolver, preceded the rest of the body. Then a face came into the light.
A face came into the light.
Francois