Page 109 of Under Cover
By the time Marcy Beauchamp made a leap of faith and hauled herself onto the flat of the warehouse roof, Crosby had taken the only cover available, one of three HVAC units clustered near the river end of the warehouse. Crosby had a momentary fantasy of running off the building into the river, but although the perspective said otherwise, reality was that the concrete apron extended twenty feet over the harbor, and he’d hit the ground with a painful splat.
Nothing to do but keep his tactical gear on, get out his 9mm, and make a stand.
Over his comms, he heard Garcia speaking out over the babble that had erupted when he’d told them he’d found Beauchamp.
“Don’t worry, Cowboy. Help is on its way.”
GARCIA STAREDat the ladder up the side of the warehouse in disgust. She’d sabotaged it with the simple expedient of lard—the first three feet or so—and his first attempt to jump up and grab a rung had landed him painfully on his ass.
“I will rip her spleen out through her nose,” he growled, and in his ear he heard Crosby chuckle.
“I’d pay to see that. You gonna have a show?”
“You just keep breathing, son,” he promised direly. “Give me a second here—” His voice cracked on the “here,” and he found himself ignominiously hefted up between Harding and Swan, both of them unfairly tall and unfairly broad as they put his feet on their shoulders and walked, in unison, toward the ladder.
“Feel the rungs around your head,” Harding told him. “Are they still slippery?”
He took off his gloves, fouled from their contact the first time, and reached above his head. The usual rough, untreated metal met his grip, and he said, “Hoist me a few inches higher so I can grab that far, Chief.”
“Roger… that….”
Garcia knew he weighed, at the outside, 160–180 with full tactical kit and weapons. It could not have been easy for either of them to grab his ankles and lift him, and he did his best to assist by locking his core, his thighs, and his knee muscles. His entire body was shaking as he latched on to the clean ladder rung and chinned himself up. Without even trying with his feet, he reached up to the next rung, and then the next, doing a painful walk-up with his hands that would have looked great if he was showing off in the gym, but right now, after watching Crosby pitch the sniper gun off the roof so Beauchamp couldn’t use it, the whole situation was both deadly and terrifying.
And the next rung. And the next. And the next. Figuring he’d gone up far enough to avoid the slippery ladder rungs, he began using his feet, grateful beyond words when they stayed stable. The harsh crack of an automatic weapon coming from the roof made his muscles clench, and he moved faster now that his feet were underneath him.
Until he heard a breathless little squeak below him.
“Fuck!” He looked down and saw Gail, blood dripping down her right arm, hanging on determinedly with her left. She must have come up after him, he thought numbly, still running on adrenaline, and what looked like a knife wound in her shoulder hadn’t meant a damned thing until she got halfway up.
“Dammit, Elsa,” Garcia muttered, torn between Crosby on the roof and Gail right here. There were two sharp reports, from a Beretta, not an Uzi, and Beauchamp’s round swearing from above, while Crosby remained silent.
Garcia’s cowboy was holding his own, and Crosby would never forgive Garcia if he let their little sister down.
Muttering to himself, Garcia put his feet on the outside of the ladder. “Hang on, Elsa,” he told her, before allowing himself to slide, feet straddling, hands lowering him down. He got even with Gail and grabbed her weak hand, putting it on the next rung, where she slid it through the rungs to her elbow and locked herself in.
“You good?” he asked as she clung to the ladder, scowling in disgust.
“I’m fine. Go help him!”
Garcia grinned and saw that Swan and Davies were directing a newly arrived firefighting team to inflate a bag against the side of the warehouse. Good idea, but it wasn’t time for him to use it just yet.
With a burst of resolve, he hauled himself up above Gail again, and when his feet hit the rungs, he scampered as fast as he possibly could.
As he cleared the top, pulling himself onto the edge of the roof, he heard Crosby’s grunt of surprise and pain, both through his comms and in real time.
“Cowboy!” he called out, and Crosby shouted, “Hit but mobile!”
“Who else is here!” Beauchamp called out, the first time Garcia remembered her talking after Crosby had put her flat on her ass.
“None of your business,” Crosby called back, giving Garcia the distraction he needed to scope out what was going on. Beauchamp had her back to the roof access, probably because she figured nobody would make it up past her child’s trick of the lard on the rungs. “I’m the only one you really want, right, Marcy?”
“I don’t even know who you are!” she shouted.
“Well for starters, I’m the guy who knocked you on your ass,” Crosby said with a bit of mean humor, and Garcia was there for it. Scrambling, he scuttled sideways in the opposite direction Beauchamp was facing, hoping to make it to the other side of a ventilation fan, which was the only other cover besides the HVAC units.
“Yeah, I owe you for that, motherfucker,” she snarled. Aiming her weapon, she fired toward the sound of Crosby’s voice, and Garcia’s heart jumped into his mouth until he heard the return fire. With a scramble, he slid behind the fan unit, pulling out his weapon and situating the shot.
“I’ve got her,” he said into the comms.