Upside Down

91

As soon as Arturo ran up the stairs, Nicky put Faith Ann back inside the Stratus. He told the wide-eyed girl to stay there and she'd be fine. As Winter was cuffing the woman, he ran after Adams, cane in hand.

“Stay behind me,” the federal agent ordered.

Limping, Nicky trailed behind Adams, arriving up on the upper deck to find half a dozen passengers lying facedown on the floor near the bow windows.

“FBI!” Adams yelled.

“Freeze! Police officer!” a voice yelled out. Nicky saw the gun first, a Smith amp; Wesson Sigma aimed at Adams and him. The man who gripped it was dark-skinned. He wore a watch cap, baggy jeans, and a coat. A badge dangled from his neck on a chain, and his eyes were wild with excitement. Since he had a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe, Nicky knew where the dark-skinned man had been when the shooting started. The policeman came slowly toward him.

“Where's the shooter?” Adams snapped.

The young cop kept his gun on Adams, more or less. The copilot was cowering against the wall near the door. “Show me some I.D.”

“Where's the damn shooter?” Adams repeated. But he dipped his gun so the barrel was pointed away from the cop, while reaching his left hand carefully into his pocket to bring out his credentials.

The ferry began swinging around, heading downriver.

The cop said, “I'm Davis, Transit Authority. I already called this in. The bastard has the wheelhouse.”

“Obviously,” Adams said. “We can probably flank him-”

“I gotta stop him,” Davis interrupted. “God knows what he'll do, and there are civilians on board that I'm responsible for. I'm in charge here. No offense, but this ain't no white-collar FBI crime. People could get killed.”

Adams said urgently, “What's the wheelhouse layout? How many doors? Access to them?”

“No time to waste making a plan. This is too fluid for that-too immediate. Look, I know this vessel, I'm trained to handle this-you two just make sure my flanks are covered. One of you keep guard on either side. He gets away from me, he'll come down one of the staircases on either side and nail you,” Officer Davis said.

Nicky figured the cop was barely out of the academy. The rookie was determined to be a hero, and arguing with him was a waste of energy.

“We have the flanks,” Adams told him.

Davis opened the door to the stairwell, looked up the steps. He started slowly up, holding his gun before him precisely as he had been instructed at the academy.

“He's a dead duck,” Nicky quipped, taking a toothpick from his shirt pocket and putting one end of it into his mouth.

“We'll flank Estrada,” Adams said. “You best be ready to take over the wheel, son,” he told the copilot, who was crouching against the wall a few feet away.

The copilot nodded, smiled weakly.

“What's the layout?” Adams asked him.

“The stairs on either side go up to the roof, then after the smokestack there's another set up to the pilothouse. We-”

“How are they locked?”

“They don't lock, because the pilot might have to get out fast, or someone get in. We've never had anything like this…”

“How many people in the wheelhouse?”

“Two of us when we're docking. One at the controls for the crossing. I was headed down for coffee. The pilot is up there alone.”

“You best be ready to take over in case-”

A loud burst of nine-millimeter rounds fired into the stairwell sounded like hammer blows. Nicky peered in through the small window set in the door and saw the transit officer lying on the floor. His unfired weapon lay on the floor beside him, spattered with blood and brain matter. Nicky inched the door open, leaned inside the space, and looked up to see a dozen holes punched through the closed door.

“Dead?” Adams asked.

“Lying there dead with T.P. stuck to his danged foot-how embarrassing. Got it through the door.”

“He wasn't trained all that well,” Adams said. “If the shooter didn't see who was at the door, he's bound to be sure he got one of us. He'll think nobody in their right mind is coming up these same stairs.”

“I'll go up these stairs on a double-stealth setting. He'll be watching the outside staircases, so when he sees you he'll open an outside door to shoot at you. When he does that, you dodge the bullets and I'll bust on in and smoke his ass,” Nicky said.

“You're sharper than you look, Green,” Adams said, raising a brow. “But let's do this my way. I'll go up the inside stairs and you circle around. Soon as he sees you, I'll kill the little freak, hopefully without hitting the pilot.” He looked at the copilot, still cowering on the floor. “If we do, at least we have a spare.”

Nicky spat out his toothpick, leaned his cane against the wall beside the door. He limped to the starboard wire door and, slipping the mechanism, slid it open. Reaching the top of the staircase, he saw Estrada looking out at him through a Plexiglas window. Nicky dived toward the smokestack located directly behind the wheelhouse. Arturo slammed open the door, pointed the Uzi out, and wasted most of what was in the magazine-precisely as Nicky had expected.

Nicky heard reports, saw muzzle flashes illuminate the wheelhouse like an electrical storm. A split second after the exchange ended, he put a toothpick into his mouth and climbed up the short rise of stairs to the pilot house.

The little room was filled with a fog of cordite. All three men inside were lying on the floor. Nicky aimed the. 45 down at the prostrate killer as he moved to check Adams. “Adams, you still alive?”

Adams didn't move.

“Johnny boy,” Nicky said, “you okay?”

Adams, who was beneath a narrow steel shelf under the window, sat up slowly and, according to his facial expression, painfully. “Lucky shots,” he said hoarsely. “Couple in the vest. Think he got my right shoulder, though.” Reaching his left hand across his lap to get the Glock from the floor beside him, he lifted it and set it down beside his left leg and covered his right shoulder with his hand to staunch the blood leak.

“That's a nasty cut on the side of your head,” Nicky said.

“I hit that shelf on the way down. After I got him.”

“Oh, I'm not so sure who got who.” Nicky kept the Colt aimed at Arturo Estrada, facedown on the floor between him and the pilot's chair. “You can get up now,” he told the pilot.

The pilot stumbled uncertainly to his feet. He stared down at the killer, whose blood was pooling around his head.

“Shouldn't you be driving this thing?” Nicky asked the captain. The pilot tore his eyes from the dead killer, then turned his attention back to the river.

Nicky picked up Arturo's Uzi, moved to the door, and tossed it out onto the roof.

“Nicky!” Adams yelled.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nicky saw Arturo rolling up, bringing a pistol out from under him, and getting to his feet.

Nicky dove out through the door. Arturo fired and missed. Knowing Arturo would immediately turn the gun on Adams, Nicky sprang back into the pilothouse behind Arturo, reached around him, and twisted the Beretta away.

“I give up,” Arturo cried, putting his gun hand slowly to his neck wound. “I need a doctor.” He took his other hand from his coat pocket and dropped it to his side. His face was ashen from blood loss, the floor beneath him slick with his blood. “Don't hurt me-”

By the time Nicky heard the switchblade snick open, Arturo had dipped his shoulder and was arcing the blade for Nicky's throat. Nicky caught Arturo's hand; using Arturo's inertia, he swept the blade slicing up and through the killer's throat. Arturo fell to the floor, convulsing.

The pilot made whimpering sounds as he began turning the boat back upriver.

“You all right?” Nicky asked Adams.

“Where'd you learn those moves?”

“In the Army.” Nicky limped over and picked up Adams's Glock and, after turning to look out the windshield for a few seconds, came back and handed it to him. “Looks like a patrol boat's coming out. I reckon I'd best go see how Massey's doing.”

Nicky took off down the stairs, stepping around the fallen transit cop. When he walked out of the door he leaned over for his cane. Reflected in the closest window he saw Adams come out of the stairwell, aiming his Glock at the back of Nicky's head.

“Ich denke Sie werde getan,” Adams said as he squeezed the trigger.

There was no shot.

Nicky whirled, grabbing Adams's Glock with his right hand. Adams's eyes were bright with surprise.

“Like I didn't know what you were going to do, you dry-gulching son of a bitch,” Nicky snarled as he slammed his cane's handle over Adams's damaged shoulder, knowing that the wound would keep him from blocking the blow. Then he drove the brass handle into Adams's temple.

As Adams toppled, Nicky was aware that Winter was coming toward him from the stairwell, gun in hand, unsure of what he had just witnessed.