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below. Ant-sized people swarmed around the brightly lit, multicolored fountain in front of the neighboring shopping plaza. It might have been a beautiful view, if he weren’t about to fall into it.
    His body told him in no uncertain terms that he shouldn’t move an inch, under any circumstances. His arms and legs had the fence post in a boa constrictor’s death grip, but dangling there—with his heart pounding and his eyes squeezed shut—wasn’t going to accomplish anything.
    Then he heard a rasping sound. The last bolt—the one thing standing between him and certain death—was starting to inch slowly and inexorably out of its hole.
    He peered at the edge of the roof.
    Just reach up with first one hand, then the other , he told himself. Grip the edge, and then pull the top half of your body up. Raise one leg up, then the other and voila ! You’re home free. Hauling himself up wouldn’t take much effort. It’d be a piece of cake.
    There was just one problem.
    In order to reach up and grip the edge of the roof, he’d need to let go of the post. Which didn’t seem like much at all, really. Just a slight shift of one hand, a movement of about ten inches from the post to the edge. He’d still have his other hand and both legs holding on to the post.
    No big deal.
    So why couldn’t he do it?
    C’mon, just reach over…
    Or he might just stay there, frozen and clinging to that post for the rest of his life.
    The last bolt made the choice for him. It emitted a creaking, stressed-metal sound, and finally slid loose from its hole.
    In that moment, all the air was suddenly gone from his lungs. He hoped whatever panicked, involuntary noise he made didn’t sound too girly, but he couldn’t hear it himself over the sound of the wind—and of his pounding heart.
    He shot forward as if someone had jammed a branding iron into his ass. He caught hold with both hands and pulled himself up so that the sharp edge of the roof dug into his roiling belly. The post hung loosely between his legs, held up now by the wires that connected it to its neighbors.
    If Peter’s full weight had still been on it, the wires would have broken.

The shoot-out on the roof continued with undiminished vigor. When he managed to swing up and onto the roof, he lay there gasping for a handful of seconds, bullets flying all around him.
    When he got his shaking legs under him and retrieved the shreds of a plan from the terrified Jell-O of his brain, he realized how little time had passed since he slipped off. It felt like a lifetime, but in reality it had been less than a minute.
    None of the Chechens were dead yet, although one of the wounded was starting to look a little bit rough—icy-pale and breathing heavily through his open mouth. But he was still in the fight. Another was bleeding, but didn’t seem to notice.
    Umarov was intact, and looked almost happy, like a corpse-sniffing dog thrilled to be playing the fun game his trainer taught him. When the Chechen leader ducked back behind the stairwell to reload, Peter gripped his arm and spoke close to his ear.
    “They’ve still got your money,” he said. “You can’t let them get away. Don’t just hold your position—go on the offensive, before they duck out and take your cash with them.”
    Umarov’s eyes widened as the words sank in. Suddenly the firefight was more than an enjoyable diversion. He started barking orders to his underlings, and they split into two groups of two, moving to the left and right of the staircase, while the badly wounded guy hung back and covered their attack.
    Peter followed Umarov around the right side of the stairwell. The Chechen gave a passionate shout that didn’t need translation, and charged toward the Koreans with his boys covering him on the right and left. Peter crouched low and duck-walked around to the stairway door.
    He flinched as a bullet slammed into the wooden frame just above his head, spraying his face with paint chips and splinters. But he still