I didn’t fire.
I couldn’t, not if I wasn’t able to tell for certain that he had a weapon. Instead of firing, I dropped to one knee so that if he did have a gun he wouldn’t have a clear shot, then hollered, “Hands up!” I sighted down the barrel of my SIG. “Now!”
But he did have a weapon and before I’d even finished shouting, he’d squeezed the trigger.
The bullet clanged off the side of the boxcar and I returned fire, but in the fraction of a second it’d taken me to respond, he’d dropped down into the gully.
Go, Pat!
Now!
I rolled to the edge of the boxcar, half slid, half leapt down the ladder, and found Ralph with his back to the car, gun out, aimed in the direction of the shooter. “Where?”
“The fence. Eleven o’clock. Forty meters.”
He signaled to me that he was going first, and before I could out-alpha-male him for the honor, he bolted toward the fence yelling, “Cover me.”
I rounded the corner of the train car and leveled my weapon at the place where I’d last seen the shooter, but only seconds after Ralph left for the opening in the fence, I realized that the suspect had already made it through the hole. He appeared only as a dark blur of movement in the forest.
“Ralph! The woods!”
I had no shot. Not from here. Not with these trees, not at this distance.
Sirens told me that backup was on its way, but they weren’t close enough to do any good right now.
The forest stretched about the length of a football field and ended at an empty parking lot in a low-income neighborhood full of crack houses, dark alleys, and abandoned buildings. If the shooter made it that far, there’d be a hundred places to hide. The guy was really moving and I could tell that if I took the time to run to the opening in the fence, he’d make it to the neighborhood and be gone for good.
Only one other option.
“West Reagan Street,” I yelled to Ralph as I sprinted toward the fence. “Call it in!”
I holstered my gun and tugged off my jacket.
Don’t do this, Pat. You’re going to regret it.
Yeah, maybe, but I was gonna do it anyway.
As soon as I reached the fence, I flipped the coat up across the razor wire above me and, without giving myself time for second guesses, I climbed. At the top, using the jacket to pad my hands from the curling, bladed wire, I pulled myself up, but even through the fabric, the metal barbs slivered into my hands. My palms screamed at me and, hastily, trying to keep from toppling backward, I scrunched up the leather beneath my hands and managed-barely-to hold on.
I scrambled my legs up, collected myself for what was to come, then brought them to the top, doing my best to keep my balance and not let the razor wire catch on my pants legs. But as I was bridging the fence, the fabric by my heel caught on the wire, and when I tugged to get it free, I lost my balance and the momentum pitched me forward, over to the other side. I hit the frozen ground hard and off balance, rolled, came up with my gun in my hand. The Maglite had dropped out of my belt, though, on the far side of the fence.
You really do need a smaller flash-
Go!
Leaving the jacket behind, I raced after the suspect through the shadow-riddled forest.