Peter May - Snakehead

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 sides. 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.