I rolled to my right as he scrambled toward the doorway. I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back. He kicked me in the groin with the end of his steel-toed boot. I curled up on my side, both legs jerking from the explosive pain of the blow and watched helplessly as he lunged through the open doorway into the reception area outside.
I crawled toward Samuel.
“Alfred,” he gasped. “Don’t let him escape ...”
“No,” I said. “I’ve got to get you an ambulance—”
He shook his head. “No! Must ... who sent him ...”
He pulled out his 9mm semiautomatic and slid it across the floor. I picked it up.
Our eyes met.
“Go.”
I went.
The door to the stairs was clicking shut when I came into the hallway. I kicked it open. I had taken two steps toward the railing when something hard smashed into my lower back—I guess the heel of his boot—and that flung me toward the steps that led down to the next floor. The classic hide-behind-the-stairway-door trick. I should have seen it coming.
My gun skittered and flipped and bounced down the stairs until it reached the little landing and came to a rest.
Then Delivery Dude was on me.
I saw a flash of metal. The blade in his hand was at least a foot long, tapered, thin. It sliced along my forearm as he swung it toward my gut. I smacked his wrist with the back of my left hand while I brought my right fist down on the side of his head. He stumbled back a couple of steps.
First I had to neutralize the knife: one of my long-term goals was never to be stabbed to death again. So I grabbed his wrist and slammed his forearm down as hard as I could against the metal railing. The knife flew from his fingers and dropped down the shaft of the stairwell.
The next step was to neutralize him. Unfortunately, he had the same idea, only he executed it just a split second sooner. He threw his shoulder into my chest and drove me backward. My foot slipped off the top step and I dropped about a foot ... a good thing, too, because he chose your classic head-butt-to-the-face move and my face wasn’t there to butt.
As his head snapped forward, I wrapped my arm around his neck, sidestepped to the right, and flung him down the stairs to the first landing. It was a pretty good maneuver, since it gave me a few extra seconds to recover. It was also a pretty bad maneuver, because I had hurled him to the exact spot as Samuel’s gun.
Fight or flight? If the other guy has a gun and you don’t, nine times out of ten, I’d suggest flight.
This must have been the tenth, because I didn’t fly.
I jumped.
He broke my fall, but it was too late. He already had scooped up the 9mm. When I landed on top of him, his chest slammed into the concrete, and the breath went out of him with a loud whumph! I lay on his back and wrapped both arms around his sides. He came back at me with a reverse head butt, this one landing true, against my nose. I heard a popping sound and blood began to pour.
It achieved the desired effect: my grip on him loosened and he tore free, bringing up the gun as he slid on his back down the stairs toward the next landing.
The muzzle flashed and my left shoulder jerked backward with the punch of the bullet.
I stumbled upward to the top landing, bleeding from my shoulder, my nose and cheek, my forearm; I was throwing off blood everywhere. The steps were slick with my blood. I slipped and tumbled to the same landing I had just vacated.
When I raised my head, he was standing over me, the end of the gun about two inches from my face. He was bleeding pretty badly too, but he seemed pleased with himself.
He sneered one word before he pulled the trigger. “Pitiful!”
“No,” I said. “Empty.”
I hoped I had counted right. I was pretty sure I had, but even simple things like counting can get complicated when someone is firing bullets at your head.
Snap. Then rapidly as he yanked the trigger over and over: Snap, snap, snap . . . snap snap snap snap!
I jumped up and landed a haymaker to the side of his head. Then another to the other side of his head. Then a gut punch, as hard as I could throw it. He doubled over and my fists kept flying wherever I could land them: head, shoulders, arms, chest. He dropped the gun. It hit the edge of the landing and spun into the open space of the stairwell, disappearing from view.
He fell into me and we grappled like two exhausted prize fighters in the tenth round. He slowly drove me backward until I felt the metal bar of the handrail pressing against my lower back. I didn’t need to look to know I was a foot away from taking a thirty-story tumble down the center stairwell.
He freed his right hand, which he used to force my head back, his fingers slick with somebody’s blood, mine or his, or maybe both. I grabbed his wrist, yanked his arm down, and pivoted to my left, spinning him around as I went. The momentum carried him over the handrail—and pulled me with him.
Then everything froze. He dangled there with me holding his wrist as I leaned over the railing, my face about a foot from his. There was no fear in his eyes. There was no emotion at all, not even disappointment.
My grip slipped: too much blood.
“I don’t want to drop you,” I gasped.
“You should,” he gasped back.
He kicked hard with his legs and yanked free.
I watched him fall. About a couple stories down, the brown jacket tore away and the top of a parachute appeared, one of those small chutes you see stunt skydivers wear.
That was enough for me. I raced back up to the hallway and hit the button on the express elevator. There was no time to check on Samuel, not if I had any chance of catching this guy.
The elevator door slid open. “Sorry, Sam,” I muttered, and stepped inside.
I dialed 911 on my cell phone.
“Nine one one, what is your emergency?”
“There’s been a shooting at Samson Towers. Penthouse suite,” I said. “You gotta send an ambulance down here right away.”
“Someone’s been shot?”
“You bet someone’s been shot, otherwise why would I be calling you guys?” I shouted. I watched the floor numbers ticking down: 25, 24, 23 . . . They seemed to be moving in slow-motion.
I heard the dispatcher say something to someone else like, “Another one from Samson Towers! Yeah, that’s what he says.”
“Hello?” I shouted into the phone, watching the floors slide by: 15, 14, 13 . . . “You gotta send an ambulance! Samson Towers!”
“Sir, someone’s already called for an ambulance at that location.”
“That’s probably for the dude in the explosion. This is someone else.”