I couldn't be that lucky.
Kurtz knew that he could never make the extra hundred feet or so to the wall without being hit. Even if he could, he would be an easy target as he crawled down the ladder.
Kurtz had no intention of running all the way to the wall. Grabbing a suspension cable with his left hand, clinging tight to the.38 with his right, Kurtz swung up and over the handrail and dropped.
It was still a bone-smashing thirty feet to the mill floor, but Kurtz had jumped above the first pile of limerock he had reached, and the heap was at least fifteen feet high. Kurtz hit on the side away from the shootersmashing into the sharp rock and rolling in a cascade of cinders and stonesbut the slope helped break his fall without breaking his neck.
Kurtz rolled out in a landslide of black stone and was on his feet running again before the shooter came around the heap.
Two shots from behind, but Kurtz was already running full speed around the third pile. He slid to a stop and dropped prone, bracing the short-barreled revolver with his left hand clamping his right wrist.
The shooter wasn't coming.
Kurtz opened his mouth wide, trying to calm his panting, listening hard.
Limerock slid and scraped behind him and to the right. Either the shooter or an accomplice was flanking him, climbing over the limerock heap or climbing around it.
Kurtz shifted the.38 to his left hand and rolled right, sweeping black pebbles over him like a man attending to his own burial. He dug his feet into the heap, letting the small, smooth stones slide over him. He butted his head into a depression in the heap and let the black rock cover everything but his eyes. As the stones settled, Kurtz shifted the pistol to his shooting hand, but buried the hand in rock.
He knew that he was only partially covered, quite visible in all but the dimmest light. But the light here was very dim indeed. Kurtz aimed the.38 in the direction of the earlier sound and waited.
Another sliding sound. There was just enough light for Kurtz's eyes to see the silhouette of his attacker's gun arm as it came around the edge of the mound of limerock twenty feet or so away. Kurtz waited.
A man's head and shoulder appeared and then jerked back out of sight. Kurtz waited.
The light was stronger behind Kurtz. That meant that the shooter could
see silhouettes on the floor or rock pile better than Kurtz could. Kurtz could only wait and hope that he was not presenting a silhouette to view.
The man moved with real speed, coming around the side of the pile and sliding to floor level, weapon raised and braced in the approved style. There was a bulk to the upper body which suggested body armor.
Knowing that any movement would draw fire, but also knowing that he had to change his aim or miss, and thus die in a very few seconds, Kurtz shifted the snub-nosed.38 a bit to the left. Stones slid.
The man wheeled at the first sound and fired three times. One of the slugs hit a foot or so above Kurtz's right hand and threw stone chips into his face. The second bullet slammed into rock between Kurtz's buried right arm and his body. The third nicked Kurtz's left ear.
Kurtz fired twice, aiming for the man's groin and left leg.
The shooter went down.
Kurtz was up and running toward him, shaking off stones, sliding and almost falling in the resulting rock slide, reaching the shooter just as the groaning man started to raise his weapon again.
Kurtz kicked the 9mm Glock out of Detective Hathaway's right hand, and it went skittering away on cold stone. The cop was fumbling for something with his left hand, and Kurtz almost shot him in the head before he realized that Hathaway was holding up a leather wallet section with his badge catching the dim light A shield, the cops called it.
Hathaway moaned again and clutched at his left leg with his empty hand. Even in the darkness, Kurtz could see blood pumping from the wound. Must have nicked the femoral artery . If he'd hit it full on, Hathaway would be dead by now.
"A tourniquet my belt make a tourniquet," Hathaway was moaning.
Kurtz kept the.38 steady, set his foot on Hathaway's chestknocking the wind out of himand held the muzzle a foot from the cop's face. "Shut up!" Kurtz hissed. He was looking over his shoulder, listening.
No footsteps. No noise at all except for the two men's labored breathing.
"Tourniquet" moaned Detective Hathaway, his gold shield still raised like a talisman. He was wearing heavy Kevlar body armor with porcelain plates, military style. It would have stopped an M-16 round, much less Kurtz's.38 slug. But Kurtz's bullet had gone into the cop's leg about four inches below the hem of the vest. "You can't kill a cop, Kurtz," gasped the homicide detective. "Even you aren't that fucking stupid. Tie off my leg."
"All right," said Kurtz, putting more weight on his right foot on Hathaway's chest, but not enough to shut off all breathing. "Just tell me if you're alone."
"Tourniquet" gasped the cop and then gasped again as Kurtz dug his heel in. "Yeah, fuck fuckyeah alone. Let me tie this off. I'm fucking bleeding to death, you miserable fuck."