“Simply put, shots fired. That brought out the incident squad from the Ninetieth, which interviewed the responding officers, who ID’d Earl Sliney as one of the perps based on our APB. His companion fits the general description of his known associate, Mayshon Franklin.” The state detective fired up his iPad and they gathered around while he stylus-walked them through the street map to indicate street closures and exit chokes. “We’ve got them boxed on the ground. Unfortunately in this wind we can’t bring air support.”
“How do you know they’re still in there?”
“More shots fired. They’re somewhere on an upper level from the round I heard.” Arthur laid out his plan, which was to employ a dual SWAT team pincer incursion, starting at ground level and clearing each floor to the roof. The construction company had e-mailed him PDFs of the architectural plans and he indicated each phase, and the timing, of each team’s movement so they didn’t cross fire each other. When he’d finished, the BCI man asked, “Any questions?”
“Just one,” asked Heat. “Can you take them alive?”
“Guess that’s up to them.”
If it hadn’t been for his customized vest, which proclaimed JOURNALIST instead of NYPD, Rook might have made the cut. But the New York State Police senior investigator was “not playing games,” as he put it, and the writer got ordered to wait at the staging area. “It’s my own fault. The bling did me in,” he said to Heat, indicating the two Pulitzer medals embroidered onto his body armor.
“Plus no badge, no gun, no training.”
“That’s right, rub my nose in your so-called superior qualifications.”
Heat and Feller joined the first SWAT team; Raley and Ochoa fell in with Team-Two. Dellroy Arthur had done his homework, radio communication was ongoing, and the incursion teams were first order. None of that minimized the danger of entering a dark construction high-rise at night with a howling wind obscuring sound and blowing objects at you out of nowhere while armed suspects — one, a killer who shoots old ladies — waited God knows where.
Methodically, over the space of thirty minutes, stairwells, elevators, air shafts, and port-a-potties were cleared on ten of the ten floors. That left only the roof. Air support would have made the job so much easier. Or a taller building in the vicinity that could put observers on its top floor. The teams waited at their entrance points on opposite corner stairwells for the go, when they would storm the rooftop simultaneously. After confirming readiness, the green light came.
They burst onto the surface and quickly found cover behind the bulky AC units on one side of the roof, and stacked metal crossbeams on the other. What they hadn’t planned was for Sliney and Franklin to be astride their bikes, pedaling like mad for the edge of the building instead of laying down fire. While Heat and each team ran at them shouting to freeze, she tried to picture the iPad map to recall how close the nearest building was. And how far down.
Whether they had some Thelma and Louise death pact, or had seen Matt Damon leap from too many heights into windows and make it, Sliney and Franklin sped forward without hesitation. The men made no sound. No whoop, no rebel yell, no scream. They simply pedaled their fiercest until they ran out of roof.
Neither one hit the ground.
Coming off the ledge, it was clear they would not make the other side. Sliney must have realized that quickly because he made an X Games midair dismount and desperately wrapped both hands around the cable of the construction crane next to the building. In a wild junction of flashlight beams, they saw him grip it, but he wore no gloves. His momentum, gravity, and friction combined to skin the meat off his palms as he cried out in his horrific slide down the braided steel. The giant lift hook at the bottom of the cable stopped him. The point snagged under his jaw and tore his neck open wide, leaving him to swing lifeless, head thrust back, in the fifty-plus gusts.
An interrupted scream and metal-on-metal impact brought all the lights to whip below to the seventh floor. Mayshon Franklin had stayed with his BMX, but a burst of wind had thrown him back into the side of the building where he crash-landed atop the construction-site elevator. From what Nikki could make out in that light, it appeared the bike had bent around the hoist and its gear works with the rider blanketing it, spiked there by the handlebar poking up out of his lower back.
When Mayshon Franklin moaned, Heat called out, “He’s still alive,” and bolted for the stairs.