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Cars continued to stream past.
His decision was logical, but nonetheless stabbed his heart.
People were about to die because of him. Maybe fewer than if he didn’t move the jib, but still …
The numbers rolled through his frantic mind.
Distance to the gap: twenty feet.
LMI: –8.2
“Come on,” he whispered.
“Garry …”
“Clear the goddamn park! The street!” He tore the headset off as if the distraction of transmissions was gumming the mechanism further.
Twelve feet from the gap, nine degrees down.
The joystick was all the way to the right and the jib should have been swinging madly. But the binding metal of the slewing plate had slowed it to a crawl.
Slowed, but not stopped.
A sudden squeal. Nails on a chalkboard …
He jammed his teeth together at the sound.
Ten feet, ten degrees down.
Eight feet from the gap.
Please … A little farther …
Close. But if Big Blue failed now, the jib would slice through four or five floors of offices, all open design, hundreds of workers at desks and in cubicles, at coffee stations, in conference rooms. He could see them. A few were on their feet, staring at the tilting mast. No one was running. They were taking videos. Jesus …
Seven feet.
The motion stalled momentarily, then resumed, with the squeal and grinding even louder.
He nudged the stick to the left and it responded, swinging back a foot or two, then he shoved it to the right. The plate resumed its rotation in that direction, past the sticking point.
Six feet from the gap, down twelve degrees …
Crack …
The loud sound from behind made him jump.
What was it?
Ah, of course.
The exit door in the floor that led down to the mast, to the ladder, to safety, had buckled. He climbed from his seat briefly and tugged. Useless.
There was only one other exit—above him. But that gave no access to the mast.
Forget it now. Just get another five feet and she’ll be clear.
The jib was still tilting down, but the LMI indicator had stopped at –13. The engineers, of course, had known that there was no point in going farther. A jib would never tilt that far forward.
