But he didn’t know if Gentry himself had fallen down the sloped roof.
Zack sprang to his knees, keeping his pistol trained on the last place he’d seen his target, and he moved laterally a few yards, careful to not appear over the roof’s edge exactly where Gentry would expect him. Slowly he moved to the end of the flat standing seam and looked down at the angled tile roof. It was dark below; he could make out little other than the trees in the courtyard at the back of the building. Right in front of him, just as the roof began to increase in pitch, was a small platform for a satellite dish, an old VHF antenna, and, alongside the VHF, Zack saw a curious-looking metal bar that came up from the platform with wires attached to it. The bar went up about one foot, then bowed down and angled out of site, down the side of the roof.
Zack took one more step forward to look on the other side of the platform, his gun up and ready, in case Gentry was hiding there.
He wasn’t. Zack then looked farther down the steeply angled roof. There, ten feet below him, he saw a figure lying against the tile. He held something in both hands.
At the exact same instant Hightower realized Gentry was holding on to the long radio antenna, bending it down at an impossible angle, Gentry let go, and the bent metal aerial torqued upwards at high speed. After a brief whipping sound the antenna smacked Zack Hightower right between his eyes, sending him flying backwards, end over end, tumbling along the flat part of the roof. His HK sailed from his hand as he continued back, until he landed flat on his face on the eastern angled portion of the roof.
Here he slid down several feet, then stopped when his boots arrested his fall.
He tried to get his arms and knees underneath him to push himself back up, but his arms and legs gave out. His eyes and nose stung, his mouth bled, he was stunned and disoriented, but he knew Gentry was still somewhere up here with him.
He told himself he had to shake off the hurt and find his fucking handgun. He had to get back into the fight before the Gray Man closed on him and shot him dead with his own weapon.
—
Letting go of the antenna that was keeping him from falling off the roof solved one problem immediately; it knocked the shit out of Zack Hightower and removed Court’s imminent threat of being hosed with lead. But letting go of the one thing keeping him from falling off the roof did create an obvious inconvenience. Now Court found himself sliding slowly but surely down the steep and slick tile to the precipice. The roof ended twenty feet from the tips of his shoes and, after that, it was a five-story drop straight down to the tree-filled Dahlgren Courtyard behind Healy Hall.
He flattened himself as he slid down, tried to get as much contact surface against the tile as he could to increase the friction, and while doing so he looked around in all directions, hoping for something to grab on to or even leap for.
There. At the very edge and eight feet to the right of where he was sliding, Court saw a decorative peaked dormer protruding out of the roof. He pushed himself up while he slid down, then fired off his feet, launching into the air to grab hold of the protrusion.
Court landed flat on the top of the peak of the dormer, nearly knocking the wind from him, but halting his downward slide.
He didn’t hang around here for long because he knew Zack would be regrouping above. He immediately began climbing the roof again, careful to keep his body low and his weight and momentum both pushing forward.
On the flat center of the roof he looked for Zack, and he found him, thirty feet away. Hightower had just made it back onto the flat roof and into a standing position himself.
Hightower’s nine-millimeter Heckler & Koch handgun lay between them, ten feet from Zack and twenty feet from Court. Right in the center of the flat portion of the roof.
Hightower did not move. His body leaned towards the pistol, his hand reached out for it, but his eyes were on Court Gentry. Gentry stood still himself, knowing his only play here was to beat Hightower to the gun. He prepared himself to dive for it if Hightower should move a muscle.
Zack said, “I know what you are thinking, Six.”
Court was nearly out of breath from his ordeal on the steep roof. Through gasps he said, “Is that a fact?”
“Affirmative. Right now you are thinking about how you always were just a little faster than me.”
Court kept his eyes on the gun. “You’re right.”
“But don’t forget one thing, bro. I was always a little smarter than you.”
Court glanced away from the pistol and up to Zack now. “You’re going to think that gun into your hand?”
“There are a lot of variables in this equation in front of you. I’m closer, you’ve just climbed up here, then you tumbled back, then climbed back up. You might not have the speed and strength you think you do.”
It was quiet on the roof a moment. Then Court said, “Anything else? Or is that all you’ve got?”