was suspended from the jiggling carabiner.
The wind struck the side of the building, rose along the stone, buffeted
his face.
He was breathing through his mouth. The air was so cold that it made
his throat ache.
Completely unaware of Bollinger, Harris pushed away from the building
once more. Swung out, swung back, descended six or eight feet in the
process. Pushed out again.
The carabiner was moving on the piton, making it difficult for Bollinger
to keep the blade at precisely the same cutting point on the rope.
Harris was rappelling fast, rapidly approaching the ledge where Connie
waited for him. In a few seconds he would be safely off the rope.
Finally, after Harris had taken several more steps along the face of the
highrise, Bollinger’s knife severed the nylon rope; and the line snapped
free of the carabiner.
As Graham swooped toward the building, his feet in front of him,
intending to take brief possession of a narrow window ledge, he felt the
rope go slack.
He knew what had happened.
His thoughts accelerated. Long before the rope had fallen around his
shoulders, before his forward momentum was depleted, even as his feet
touched the stone, he had considered his situation and decided on a
course of action.
The ledge was two inches deep. Just the tips of his boots fit on it. It
wasn’t large enough to support him.
Taking advantage of his momentum, he flung himself toward the window and
pushed in that direction with his toes-up and in, with all of his
strength-the instant he made contact with the window ledge. His
shoulder hit one of the tall panes. Glass shattered.
He had hoped to thrust an arm through the glass, then throw it around
the center post. If he could do that, he might hold on long enough to
open the window and drag himself inside.
However, even as the glass broke, he lost his toehold on the icy
two-inch-wide sill. His boots skidded backward, sank through empty air.
He slid down the stonework. He pawed desperately at the window as he
went.
His knees struck the sill. The granite tore his trousers, gouging his
skin. His knees slipped off the impossibly shallow indention just as
his feet had done.
He grabbed the sill with both hands as gravity drew him over it.
He held on as best he could. By his fingers. Dangling over the street.
Kicking at the wall with his feet. Trying to find a toehold where there
was none. Gasping.
The setback where Connie waited was only fifteen feet from the sill to
which he clung, just seven or eight feet from the bottoms of his boots.
Eight feet. It looked like a mile to him.
As he contemplated the long fall to Lexington Avenue, he hoped to God
that his vision of a bullet in the back had been correct.
His gloves were too thick to serve him well in a precarious position
like this. He lost his grip on the icesheathed stone.
He dropped onto the yard-wide setback. Landed on his feet. Cried out
in pain. Tottered backward.
Connie shouted.
With one foot he stepped into space. Felt death pulling at him.
Screamed. Windmilled his arms.
Connie was tethered to the wall and willing to test the piton that she
had hammered between the granite blocks. She jumped at Graham, clutched
the front of his parka, jerked at him, tried to stagger to safety with
him.
For what must have been only a second or two but seemed like an hour,
they swayed on the brink.
The wind shoved them toward the street.
But at last she proved sufficiently strong to arrest his backward fall.
He brought his foot in from the gulf. They stabilized on the last few
inches of stone. Then he threw his arms around her, and they moved back
to the face of the building, to safety, away from the concrete canyon.
ML 37 “He may have cut the rope,” Connie said, “but he isn’t up there
now.”
“He’s coming for us.”
“Then he’ll cut the rope again.”
“I guess he will. So we’ll just have to be too damned fast for him.”