“And you’ll just let us go?”

“If you don’t screw up.”

“What about the money he’s supposed to pay us?” asked Mikie.

“Mikie. Come here. I want to show you something.”

“What?”

“Put your hands behind you. Come closer. Look at this.” Kincaid rapped her hard on the temple with the Tomcat, and Mikie collapsed in a silent heap.

“What did you do that for?” Mary cried.

“So she can’t try to screw it up to get me killed.”

“Good move,” said Doris.

“Here he comes.”

Kincaid watched from inside the van, through the open window on the driver’s side, as the two cops executed a thoroughly professional takedown. They waited until Van Pelt stepped out of the camper’s cab. Then flashed their badges and drew their weapons.

Caught flat-footed in what Kincaid assumed Van Pelt must be guessing was some sort of police sting, the big South African did not resist. He turned around as the cops ordered with the resigned expression of a man who knew that expensive attorneys would shortly rally to his defense and placed his big hands on the hood of the Toyota. Doris kicked his feet apart, without getting too close, and covered him with her empty pistol. Mary patted him down. She removed a gun from a belly holster and another from the small of his back. More evidence, Kincaid thought, of SR’s long reach. Moments after passing through airport security, the operative had gotten fully equipped.

Kincaid raised her own weapon now that Mary had a loaded gun in her hand. But the Australian detective continued the procedure as if this were an ordinary arrest. She clamped a cuff on Van Pelt’s left wrist and told him to bring his hands together. Van Pelt obeyed, sliding his bandaged right arm across the hood. But just when the cops felt safe was the most dangerous moment.

Kincaid yelled, “Heads-up!”

The South African mercenary exploded into motion, straightening up and swinging both arms wide, knocking both women to the ground and lunging for his guns, which had fallen to the pavement.

Kincaid fired through the open window. But Van Pelt was still in motion and the Tomcat lay too small in her hand to shoot accurately at any distance. The slug fanned Van Pelt’s face. Startled by lead flying from an unexpected direction, he jumped back from reaching for his own guns, grabbed one of the Glocks that the cops had dropped, and dove behind the camper. In the seconds it took Kincaid to get out of the van, the Securité Referral operative leaped the sawhorses and bounded up the stairs to the Harbour Bridge.

TWENTY-FIVE

Kincaid vaulted the barricade and chased after Van Pelt, two steps at a time.

When Cons Ops used to bring her in to master-class the pick of the new agents, she always warned the women that they faced one real disadvantage: “We may be faster than men,” she told them, “and more observant, but we’re shorter.” Here it was with a vengeance.

The SR agent was a foot taller than she and in just as good condition. Kincaid climbed two steps at a time. Van Pelt pulled ahead in bounds of three and four as if she were standing still. She couldn’t see him when she got to the top of the stairs and found herself on a lit pedestrian walkway enclosed by a high mesh fence topped by three strands of barbed wire to stop suicide jumpers.

Kincaid climbed onto the handrail to see farther. It was nearly bright as day. The bridge deck and the stone pylons that bracketed the arch were floodlit. Architecture lights rimmed the enormous steel truss as it curved into the night sky, powerful lamps illuminated huge flags at the top of the arch, and low-hanging clouds reflected the glow of the city’s buildings on both sides of the harbor. She clung to the mesh fence and searched the 150-foot-wide deck. Traffic was scant. A smattering of cars and trucks sped by on six lanes of highway. A train rumbled along one of two railroad lines. Cyclists flickered on the bike path, and she saw a second enclosed pedestrian path on the far side, which, unlike the one she was on, was open to walkers. The fence was high. Van Pelt was probably still on this footpath. But in which direction was he running? Across the water to the Central Business District or—

There!

In a splash of lamplight in front of the pylon where the arch started to span the harbor, he was running toward the water. She jumped down and ran after him.

Her view along the normally straight footpath was blocked by the construction work and he repeatedly disappeared behind sheds, work platforms, and stacks of material. There! She saw him again. But it was hopeless; he was still drawing ahead. The Central Business District was only a mile across the water. Once he reached the stairs on the other side, he would vanish into the city while she was still pounding across the bridge.

All of a sudden, he stopped. Kincaid put on a burst of speed, swiftly halving the distance between them. She saw ahead of him a blue flasher. It was right on the pedestrian path. Police? Van Pelt seemed to think so. He jumped onto the fence and started climbing the wire mesh.

At the top, where the mesh started to curve inward under two rows of barbed wire, he gripped the wire between the barbs. Then he swung his feet high in the air like a trapeze artist, flipped himself upright, and landed on the wire. Pinwheeling his arms to catch his balance two hundred feet above the black water, the South African pulled himself onto the girder above him and disappeared inside the massive steel web of ties, struts, plates, and flanges riveted into countless triangles that joined to form the trusses that shaped the arch.

Kincaid saw that the flashing light drawing nearer was a two-man police bicycle patrol. She had an instant to act before they saw her. She climbed up the fence as Van Pelt had, jumped for the top strand of wire, gripped between the barbs and flipped herself skyward as he had, got her feet under her, and used the wire’s springiness to bounce in a long jump to the girder.

She caught the edge with her fingers. The steel was freshly painted, slippery as a stack of plastic bags, and she lost her grip and started to fall backward. A sheet metal sign warned people not to climb on the bridge. She grabbed it. It sliced into her fingers. She gripped hard and pulled herself onto the girder.

It was oddly quiet inside the maze of steel, and much darker. What faint light there was came from beams and shafts that penetrated the openings between struts and plates and cast huge shadows.

Suddenly she heard Van Pelt high above her, pounding on metal steps. He had found an interior staircase that zigzagged up into the web. Kincaid located it and went up after him. The flights of steps were narrow. Here and there they ended at the foot of a steel ladder, which in turn joined at the next level another flight of steps.

Kincaid was guessing that Van Pelt thought she was another cop, the Aussies’ backup. And if he believed he had been caught in a sting he had to assume that there were cops everywhere. At least it looked that way. He wasn’t even wasting time looking back. The longer he thought that way, the better. He was in for a surprise when he saw who she was. His second surprise would be discovering that he was carrying an empty gun.

She heard his feet pounding the metal.

The stairs were so narrow that her smaller size was now an advantage. She could climb faster than he could. She heard him cry out in pain. He must have banged his head on a projecting step or one of the many knobs of steel projecting from the girder. She grazed one herself as she ran from one flight to the next, but she couldn’t slow down or he would escape.

Her eyes were adjusting to the light. Or perhaps more light penetrated as she climbed and the structure grew more airy. The top of a flight revealed another ladder. She climbed it, raced up another flight of stairs, and rounded a tight corner bounded by massive plates of riveted steel. Van Pelt was standing in it, facing the top of the stairs. He had his left arm pressed against his torso, in the classic shooter stance protecting vital organs. In his right hand he was aiming the Glock at Kincaid’s face.