Peter May - Snakehead

‘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.