Snakehead tct-4 Page 27

  ‘I’m okay, I’m okay,’ she heard herself saying, and she looked around the room, which was burning out in her head in the sudden light. Soong was lying bleeding profusely on to his carpet from a wound high up in his thigh. He was clutching his leg and whimpering in fear and pain. Hrycyk was on his feet again, leaning against the door by the light switches, blood oozing through the fingers of a hand clutching his upper right arm.

  ‘Sonofabitch, sonofabitch!’ he kept saying.

  There was no sign of Fuller. Fear stabbed jaggedly into Margaret’s consciousness. She struggled to her knees. ‘Where is he? Where’s Fuller?’

  Li jerked his head toward the sliding glass door. ‘Out there somewhere.’ And even as he said it, they heard him clattering across plastic seats in the dark.

  Hrycyk held out his gun toward Li. ‘Go get him.’

  Li hesitated. He glanced at Margaret. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

  ‘Jesus Christ, go!’ Hrycyk screamed.

  Li stood up, took the gun from his outstretched hand, and then slipped out into the darkness of the stadium.

  Margaret sat gasping on the floor. She had a hammering headache now. Hrycyk stood in the doorway, breathing stertorously. Soong was still whimpering and bleeding on the carpet. Margaret struggled to her feet and crossed to Hrycyk. Without a word she took his hand away from his arm and peeled off his jacket. He let her tear away the sleeve of his shirt without protest, keeping his eyes averted. He didn’t even want to look at the wound. He heard Margaret gasp derisively.

  ‘What a baby,’ she said. ‘It’s just a scratch.’ She pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘Is this clean?’ He nodded, and she used it to make a pad to place over the gouge that Fuller’s bullet had taken out of the flesh of his upper arm. She tied it on with shreds of his shirt sleeve, ignoring his grunts of pain as she pulled the knots tight. ‘That’ll do until we can get you some proper treatment.’

  The sound of a shot ringing around the stadium startled them. Hrycyk said, ‘Li’s going to need some light out there.’ He switched off the lights in the suite and took her out on to the terrace. Silhouetted against the Houston skyline beyond, they could just see the outline of the replica locomotive sitting halfway along the tracks. ‘Far end of those tracks,’ Hrycyk said, ‘there’s a small control room where they turn on the floodlights. Guy did it when we were here yesterday and they was closing the roof.’

  Margaret looked at him. ‘Why are you telling me?’

  ‘Because you’re going to have to turn them on.’

  Margaret shook her head, panic setting in. ‘I don’t know how to get down there.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Hrycyk said. ‘But you’re in better shape to do it than me.’

  Margaret glanced back at the shadow of Soong on the floor, a dark pool spreading in the carpet around him. ‘What about him? He could bleed to death.’

  ‘Like I give a damn,’ Hrycyk said. ‘Anyway, I know how to tie a tourniquet. So tight he’ll squeal like a stuck fucking pig.’

  * * *

  She retraced Li’s footsteps of less than thirty minutes before, running along the carpeted concourse on suite level, past the Whistle Stop bar and the food hall. She stopped briefly to press her face against the glass and peer out through the darkness of the stadium to try to get her bearings. The locomotive track ran off at right angles from the left, at least one level down. A smeared impression of her features remained on the glass as she ran on to the end of the hall and out on to the landing. Another window, twice her height, looked directly onto the track below. She found herself looking along its length, beyond the locomotive huddled darkly halfway down, to the tiny control booth at the foot of glazed scaffolding that rose two hundred feet up into the roof at the far side of the ground. She wondered why she could see it so clearly and for a moment thought that someone somewhere must have turned on a light. Then she saw that the moon had risen over the east side of the stadium, full and clear, casting its silvered glow brightly across the field of play. By contrast, the seats along the east wing were thrown into deep, dark shadow.

  As she ran down the concrete steps to the level below, she heard another gunshot. It cracked in the stillness like a dry twig underfoot. Margaret stopped and listened. But there was nothing else to hear.

  Facing her, on the next level, was a door with a narrow glass panel. On the wall next to it was a sign which read: ROOF ACCESS. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Margaret ran to the door and peered through its tiny window. It opened onto the top of the colonnaded corridor that supported the superstructure upon which both the locomotive and the stadium roof supports ran on different lengths of rail. She pulled the handle, and to her surprise the door opened. The cold night air exploded in her lungs and made her head ache even more. The pain came in pulses, with the pounding of her heart. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears.

  To her left, several storeys of red brick administration building rose above her. Straight ahead, the green-painted steel superstructure that bore the weight of the locomotive. She ran along the concrete beneath it, her head level with the rail line, and found herself suddenly bathed in moonlight, the stadium laid out below her on one side, the street thirty feet down on the other. The locomotive, which had appeared almost like a toy from a distance, loomed directly overhead, huge and forbidding. She ducked under the rail line and scanned the seats around the ground. At first she saw nothing at all in the shadow. And then a movement caught her eye away to her right, high up near the far roof. She saw a figure running between rows of seats but couldn’t tell who it was. And then, perhaps forty feet below, on another level, another figure climbing up over the tiers, trying to reach the staircase that would lead him higher and on to the same level as the other man. He was clearly in pursuit. It had to be Li. In a moment, they would both come out of the shadow and into the full glare of the moon.

  Margaret didn’t wait to watch. She slipped back under the rail line and sprinted for the control capsule at the far end. It was shaped like a lozenge standing on end, with windows curving round on each side. A short metal staircase on the right led up to a tiny railed landing. The door gave way at the push of her hand, folding in the centre and opening in. Inside, lit by the moon, was a bewildering array of levers and switches on a console built into the forward curve. Margaret stared at it, panic rising in her throat, half choking her. She gasped for breath, caught it, and then began throwing every lever and switch she could reach. She felt the deep vibration and growl of a motor springing to life somewhere beneath her, and the control capsule suddenly jerked forward. Margaret lost her balance and fell backwards, clutching at air. The back of her head hit something solid and very hard and was filled with a blinding light. And then blackness.

  * * *

  Li was still in the shadow of the east stand when he saw Fuller emerge into the moonlight. Somehow he had managed to get himself on to the top level, above the suites, where the seating rose up in breathtakingly steep tiers to the roof. Li would have to get back inside and up the internal staircase.

  At first, Fuller had headed north, toward the huge electronic scoreboard, scrambling loudly across the seats. Li had been able to follow the noise. And then almost on a level with the Miller Lite billboard, he had caught sight of him for the first time. Fuller had seen him, too, and fired on him, wildly wide of the mark. But it had forced Li to go more carefully. And then he lost sight of him again, and for several minutes heard nothing, fearing that somehow Fuller had found a way out of the stadium. That was when a single shot shattered the plastic seat to his right, and he had looked straight up to see the grim determination on Fuller’s face as he leaned over the rail above him, gun poised for a second shot. Li threw himself into the shadow of the overhang, landing awkwardly and winding himself in the process. He lay curled up for a good thirty seconds, gasping for breath and thinking he was going to vomit. And in those stricken moments, he heard Fuller moving away on the upper level, crashing over seating and heading back
for the south end of the stadium. Even in his distress Li figured that Fuller had probably parked out on Texas, and that that’s where he would want to exit the stadium.

  Now he ran up stairs to a door that took him inside to club level. He shook his head and wiped away the sweat that was running into his eyes. He paused for a moment to recapture the breath that rasped in his chest, and he cursed the day he had been tempted to take up smoking again. Hrycyk’s gun was slippery in his hands as he reached the internal staircase. He stopped to wipe his palms on the seat of his pants, and then forced himself to climb the two flights two steps at a time. When he reached the top landing, his whole body was shaking. However much oxygen he sucked in it wasn’t enough. His legs were about ready to buckle under him. He pushed open double doors and emerged into brilliant moonlight, teetering momentarily on the edge of a staircase that dropped away in front of him at an impossibly acute angle. The field was a long way below, and he wondered, incongruously, what kind of view you would get of the game from here. The players, surely, would be absurdly small, the ball impossible to follow. And yet there were at least another twenty rows of seats piled up behind him.

  He scanned the rows of empty seats above, stretching away in a wide sweep to his left and into shadow. There was no sign of Fuller anywhere. And suddenly everything was plunged back into darkness. A large cloud, sailing on the back of the chill night breeze, had blotted out the moon. Li was aware of a strange, distant humming, but had no time to figure out what it was before he saw the dark shape of a man rising up on the edge of the roof forty feet above. He felt the bullet whistle past his ear, before he heard the crack of the gun. And then he saw Fuller fall, hitting the corrugated roof with a smack. The FBI agent grunted as the air was knocked from him, and then cried out in helpless fury as his gun went skidding from his hand and clattering off into oblivion. Li heard the scrape of metal on metal as it went sliding away across the roof and knew it was safe, for the first time, to move freely in the open.

  He dragged weary legs up the final flight of steps to the point where mesh fencing stretched across tubular steel sealed off the top of the stand from the roof. He could see from the distortion of the mesh that this was where Fuller had climbed up before him. Tucking his gun in his belt, he pulled himself up, hand over hand, fingers slotting through mesh, until he was able to grasp the lip of the roof and swing himself on to the corrugated outer shell of it.

  Slowly, he straightened up, careful to maintain his balance. It was breezy up here, and he felt the wind whipping around his legs. The roof rose in front of him at a steep angle and fell away to his left. The field was more than two hundred feet below him now, the diamond tiny and insignificant. The towering skyline of downtown seemed just a touch away, and he was scared to look down toward the freeway in case he canted toward it and fell to his death.

  At the apex of the roof, another fifteen feet above him, Fuller crouched on all fours, too terrified apparently to move.

  ‘Give it up, Fuller,’ Li shouted. ‘Come down.’

  Fuller shook his head mutely.

  Li cursed inwardly and dropped on to all fours himself. He had never been good with heights. He crawled up the lip of the roof toward the FBI agent, not quite sure what he was going to do when he got there. He stopped about five feet short of him and could hear his breathing, see the panic in his eyes. They were both drenched in sweat. For an eternity they stared at each other; hostility, fear, all wrapped up together along with a heightened sense of vulnerability. Li felt like he was clinging to the edge of the world.

  Fuller sprang at him like a cat, with an almost animal growl. There was madness in his eyes. Li was completely unprepared, and felt himself slipping over the edge as he tried desperately to get out of the way. Fuller’s elbow caught him in the face and he felt blood in his mouth. His fingers slid across the corrugated metal like fish on ice. He felt his nails tearing as he tried to dig in. But it was hopeless. There was no way he could stop himself. And then he felt himself tipping backwards into space and knew that his body would be shattered by the rows of seating that waited for him like so many teeth a hundred and fifty feet below.

  But he fell no more than a handful of feet before hitting hard, riveted metal. Something unrelenting and sharp cut his cheek. He barely had time to realise that he had fallen into the cradle that held the floodlights when he became aware of Fuller jumping in beside him, stooping quickly to pull the gun out of his belt. Li made a feeble attempt to stop him, a hand clutching at nothing. Fuller climbed on top of the gantry, straddling the struts immediately above Li’s prone form and pointed the gun down at him. There was a strange, manic smile on his face. A man who had pushed himself so close to death, felt its breath in his face, that he knew now he was invincible.

  Li accepted death then. Accepted its inevitability. And with that acceptance came the startling revelation that nothing in life really mattered much after all. All the pain and fear, the blood, sweat and tears, hopes and ambitions. They all came to this. Death. An end. How pointless it all had been. Margaret, Xiao Ling, Xinxin. And fleetingly he wondered if there really was life after death. If, perhaps, he would meet his uncle again, have one more chance to beat him at chess. Or, maybe, as many chances as exist in eternity. He almost laughed. Laughter close to tears.

  A blinding light filled his world. An excruciating pain in his head. He had often wondered what it would feel like to die. But he had not expected the pain. He blinked fiercely and saw Fuller still standing over him, an arm shielding his eyes. He felt the heat of the lamps next to his head, and realised that someone had turned on the floodlights. But still he did not seem able to move. Fuller drew his arm away from his eyes and looked down at Li again, startled, discomposed. And beyond him, Li saw a shadow passing over, huge and dark. Fuller sensed it, too, and looked round as nine thousand tons of retractable steel roof swept him off the gantry and locked into place, crushing him against the fixed girders of the south stand. Li felt warm blood wash across his face, and for a moment the floodlights turned crimson.

  * * *

  Margaret stood on the steps of the control cabin looking up through bullet-proof glass, green-painted beams and struts soaring into the sky above her, and understood that somehow she had managed to close the roof.

  When pain and consciousness had seeped slowly back into her head, she had realised that the control capsule, at the base of the outer roof struts, had travelled along a hundred metres of track, back toward the south stand, and come to a standstill against a concrete buffer. The huge, supporting wall of steel and glass that held up the inner section of roof on her left was still gliding past. Disoriented, and fighting an urge simply to close her eyes and drift away again, she had dragged herself to her feet, without any real idea of how long she had been out. It was then she had seen, clearly marked, the panel of switches for operating the floodlights. She cursed herself for having allowed panic to blind her earlier. She threw the switches and saw the stadium snap into sharp relief, the green of the field, the red of the blaize, vivid and unreal. For a moment she had been dazzled, and then the deep vibration that came up through the floor beneath her had stopped as the glass wall on her left shuddered to a halt.

  She left the capsule and hurried down the steps, running along the concrete to the door that would lead her back into the stairwell. Below her she saw uniformed and plainclothes officers fanning out across the field, and became aware for the first time of the wailing sirens that filled the night. Each jarring step filled her mind with pain, and somewhere at the back of it, struggling for conscious space, was a large, prickly ball of fear. What had happened to Li?

  On the stairs she heard the boots of police officers hammering up from the level below. She turned and ran up the next flight, past the suite level to the upper concourse, and out onto the terraces of seating where she had last seen Fuller heading. The whole stadium was laid out beneath her, brightly lit under the dazzle of floodlights, empty rows of dark green seats stretching away on all s
ides. A noise behind her made her turn, and she saw the bloody spectre of a man staggering down the steps toward her. It took a moment for her to realise that it was Li, and she let out a tiny gasp of horror. He reached the step above her and stopped, dark eyes staring out from his crimson mask. She could see no visible wound, and the blood was drying rust red on him already. His legs folded beneath him, and he sat down hard on the concrete steps, fumbling for his cigarettes. He pulled a crushed one from the pack and lit it.

  ‘Where’s Fuller?’ she asked in a small voice.

  He took several pulls on his cigarette before blowing the smoke from his lungs. He looked up at her and said grimly, ‘He’s dead.’

  III

  It was a perfect morning. The sky was a clear, pale blue. Dew lay white on the grass of Sam Houston Park. The long shadows of downtown skyscrapers reached across the tiny patch of parkland like dark protective fingers. The sun peeped between the glass and concrete structures, flashing off windows, lying in long yellow strips. A mist rose off the pond like smoke, sunlight playing in the water of the fountain. A chatter of early morning birds flew screeching playfully between the spars of the old red-roofed bandstand that stood dwarfed and incongruous in the centre of the meadow.