Corsair - Cussler Clive (библиотека электронных книг txt) 📗

He could hear the rotor beat of the police helicopter and judged he had a few more seconds. The glazing holding the panes of glass to the metal frame had dried rock hard and came away with just a little pressure.

A shadow passed over the skylight. The chopper.

Eddie swallowed hard and popped one of the large panes free. The sound of the helicopter doubled, and even though he was exposed to the noonday sun it felt like he was moving into air-conditioning.

He rolled onto the flat, tarry roof and got to his feet. The chopper was a couple blocks away, hovering a few hundred feet above the rooftops. Eddie had to wait almost a minute before he was spotted. The big machine twisted in the air and thundered toward him. Its side door was open, and a police sniper stood braced with a scoped rifle cradled against his shoulder.

Eddie ran for the wall separating this building from the next, his feet sinking slightly into the warm tar. The wall was built to chest height and topped with jagged bits of embedded glass to prevent people from doing what Seng was attempting. But unlike barbed wire, which never loses its keen edge, the glass had been scoured by wind for decades and was almost smooth. Pieces snapped flat when he vaulted over the wall. He landed on the other side.

This building’s roof was virtually identical to the first, a wide area of a tar-gravel mix punctured by the elevator housing and dozens of satellite dishes and defunct antennae.

The chopper swooped low over the roof, and Eddie made certain the sniper saw his face and hoped it was a close enough match to Tariq Assad’s. He got his answer a second later when a three-round burst from an automatic weapon pounded the roof at his feet.

Now that the police believed their suspect was on the roof, Hali and Goldman should be able to slip away undetected.

Eddie raced for the back of the building, cutting a serpentine path to throw off the sharpshooter, and almost threw himself from the edge before realizing that, unlike the mistress’s apartment house, this one didn’t have a proper fire escape. There was just a simple metal ladder bolted to the side of the structure, a death trap if he committed himself to it with the sniper hovering so close overhead.

He glanced back the way he came. He’d be running right for the circling chopper if he retreated, so instead he ran for the next building, vaulting the wall and opening a gash in his palm for the effort. Not all the glass had weathered the same.

More bullets pounded into the roof, kicking up hot clots of tar that burned against his cheek. He pulled his pistol and returned fire. The wide misses were still enough to force the pilot to retreat for a moment.

Sprinting flat out, he raced for the next building, throwing himself over the wall and almost dropping down. The next building was a story lower than the previous ones, and beyond that was the open expanse of the construction site. Dangling from his fingertips, he looked quickly to see if there was any evidence of a fire escape and saw none, not even a cable house for an elevator.

He made the decision to pull himself back over the wall and find some other route when the sniper zeroed in on his hands. Bullets tore into the brick and mortar, forcing Eddie to drop free. He rolled when he landed to absorb the impact, but surviving the ten-foot drop didn’t mean he was any less trapped.

TWENTY-NINE

B Y THE TIME HALI KASIM REACHED THE BOTTTOM OF THE air shaft, he was covered in dust, and his shoulders and knees ached mercilessly. He promised himself that when he returned to the Oregon, he’d spend more time in the ship’s fitness center. He’d seen how effortlessly Eddie had climbed, and the former CIA agent was nearly a decade older.

The floor here was littered with fragments of plaster and dried layers of pigeon guano. Lev Goldman lowered himself the last few feet. Sweat had cut channels through the dirt caked on his face, and the dust coating his beard aged him twenty years.

“You okay?” Hali panted, resting his hands on his knees.

“Perhaps I should have thought up a better escape route,” the Israeli admitted, fighting not to cough in the mote-filled air. “Come. This way.”

He led Kasim toward the rear of the building and an area where the lath had been cut way low to the ground. Together they kicked at the two-foot-square spot. At first, the blows merely cracked the plaster. But then bits of it broke away. Goldman used his hands to tear out inch-thick chunks until the hole was big enough to crawl through.

They emerged into an underground garage. The lot was mostly vacant, with only a few cars, usually driven by the stay-at-home wives, sitting in their assigned spots. Had any of them been older models, Hali would have considered hot-wiring one of them, but they were all fairly new and would be equipped with alarms.

“Meet me at the exit and stay out of sight,” he said. “Our car is right around the corner.”

Hali dusted himself off as best he could as he jogged up the ramp and into the blazing sunshine. The street was a scene of pandemonium. The shots fired from the helicopter had forced everyone to find cover. Oranges from the grocer’s littered the sidewalk where someone had run into the display. The chairs where the old men had played backgammon were overturned. Police vans were just now arriving.

It didn’t take much acting for Hali to pretend to be just another frightened Libyan. He reached their rental car and opened the door. Sirens filled the air, drowning out even the heavy throb of the chopper’s blades.

The Fiat’s engine fired on the first try. Hali’s hands were so slick that the wheel got away from him, and he clipped the rear bumper of the car parked in front of him, its alarm adding to the keening police sirens.

The first of the officers, outfitted in black tactical gear, began to emerge from a van. They would have the block surrounded in seconds. Yet none of them seemed interested in anything except the building’s front door. Eddie’s distraction was working. They thought they had their man cornered and ignored proper procedure.

Hali drove around the corner, slowed, but didn’t stop for Lev Goldman, who threw himself into the passenger’s seat, and eased into traffic on the next side street.

Every block they drove exponentially increased the area the police had to cover in order to find them. After eight stoplights, Goldman felt safe enough to pop his head up above the dashboard.

“Pull over into that gas station,” he ordered.

“Can’t you hold it?”

“Not for that. We need to switch seats. It is obvious you don’t know the roads or how to drive like a local. No one here obeys the traffic rules.”

Hali cranked the wheel into the gas station’s lot and threw the car into park. Lev sat still for a moment, expecting Hali to jump out so he could slide over. Instead, he was forced out of the car, and Kasim took the passenger’s seat.

He chuckled humorlessly when he engaged the transmission. “In a situation like that, Mossad training says driver should exit the vehicle.”

Kasim looked at him skeptically. “Really? Doing it your way means there is no one at the wheel for several seconds longer. You should talk to your instructors.”

“No matter.” Lev grinned, this time with genuine amusement. “We made it.”

He asked as they made random turns away from his mistress’s neighborhood, “I am sorry, what is your name again?”

“Kasim. Hali Kasim.”

“That is an Arab name. Where are you from?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“No. I mean your family. Where were they from?”

They took what Hali assumed was a shortcut in an alley between two large, featureless buildings. “My grandfather emigrated from Lebanon when he was a boy.”

“So are you Muslim or Christian?”

“What difference does that make?”

“If you are Christian, I wouldn’t feel so bad about this.”