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I had just enough time to drop my jaw when he swung the rifle right at us.
“Sniper!” I yelled at the moment the muzzle flashed.
A second later, the entire helicopter’s glass canopy shattered and cold air was rushing in my face, and we were spinning crazily. You could tell right away that there was something very wrong with the chopper. It felt incredibly top-heavy, hanging down and over to the right side as we wheeled and wobbled. An alarm was sounding in the console over the suddenly much louder whumps of the overhead rotor. All I could do was sit there and panic as, outside the shattered windshield, the sky and the buildings whipped past in a chaotic blur.
I looked up and saw the hole in the cabin ceiling spilling oil. Then I turned to my left toward the pilot to see him fighting with the joystick.
“My eyes! I have glass and blood in my eyes! I can’t see!” he said, and then there was a horrendous metal groaning, and I rocked hard in my seat and blasted the side of my h
ead against the cabin’s bulkhead as we suddenly smashed into something and rolled over to the left.
“What happened? What happened?” yelled Greg in my ear as a horrible metal snapping sound came.
I learned later that it was the rotor and tail blades snapping off as they hit the concrete deck of the MetLife Building’s roof, where we’d just crash-landed. Somehow, I quickly unstrapped and got my door open and dropped over and out between the toppled helicopter’s skids. Greg, the sniper, was right on my heels, and a moment later, we pulled the bleeding pilot out and ran away from the still-whining, smoking chopper as fast as we could.
Not yet truly believing we were still alive, we found a stairwell door and opened it and set the injured pilot on the landing as we watched the chopper, spinning and smoking at the edge of the MetLife Building’s roof. I looked out at the incredible skyline of Manhattan behind it as I shook my head. If I hadn’t already believed in miracles, I would have been converted right then and there.
“There is no way in hell we should still be alive,” Greg said as we heard a click. It was a door, a door opening in the stairwell one floor below us.
Greg and I turned from the chopper and looked in over the stairwell’s railing.
And saw the guy.
The guy in the balaclava—the assassin—standing there one floor below us, staring up.
Chapter 8
When I saw that the shooter had something down behind his leg, three things happened at the same time.
I grabbed Greg by the back of his vest, I started to backpedal, and there was a shot.
We tripped over the still-sitting pilot’s legs and landed back out on the roof. I pulled myself up and drew my Glock. I was about to help Greg up when I saw the hole between his nose and cheek and the blood spray on the concrete beneath his head.
He was dead.
My heart jackhammering in my chest as I wondered what in the name of God Almighty was going to happen next, I pointed my Glock straight at the stairwell doorway. I walked around the pilot as he crawled back out onto the roof, and I quietly stepped into the stairwell and took a deep breath and peeked back over the railing, Glock first.
I let out the breath. No one. Just a bare concrete floor. The shooter was gone.
I listened. There was no sound of running farther down the concrete stairwell. The shooter must have entered the floor just beneath, I thought with a nod.
I took out my phone with my free hand and thumbed Return Call.
“Mike, what happened?” Fabretti said.
“Shooter in the MetLife Building on the second to top floor,” I said as I began to take the stairs down two at a time. “He’s six feet tall. Black coveralls. Wearing a ski mask. He’s armed and highly dangerous. He just killed a cop. I repeat: just killed a cop. I’m on the roof coming down after him. Seal off the MetLife Building lobby and send EMTs up to the roof for the pilot.”
“The pilot? What? Aren’t you in a helicopter?” Fabretti said.
“MetLife Building!” I hollered, and dropped the phone back into my jacket pocket as I pulled open the door at the bottom of the stairwell, carefully staying well to the left side of it. I waited and waited, then glanced in through the doorway behind my gun.
Over the Glock’s sights, I scanned a long, empty, fluorescent-lit industrial corridor with some unmarked doors on each side. Behind the doors on the right, there was the sound of machinery clacking and humming. There was a strong smell in the warm air. It smelled like a garage, like motor oil.
It’s where the elevators are, I thought. The motors for the massive building’s elevators.
I stood there, staring down the bright, empty industrial hall as my heart continued doing roadwork in my chest. I thought about Greg, dead on the roof, and about the Dallas cop Oswald killed after shooting Kennedy.
I was still thinking about all that and just about to take my first step into the hall anyway when a gun and arm appeared like a magic trick around the right corner of the corridor’s far end.
