Hair of the Dog, Gordon Carroll [top 100 novels of all time TXT] 📗

hold tight and pushed off all three hundred pounds of him into space. The rope took his mass, barely sagging. He flew down that zip line fast as a bullet. Too fast. He’d forgotten everything I told him about braking.

39

I couldn’t afford to yell at him and chance letting the guards below know what we were up to, so all I could do was watch and hope the crash didn’t break anything major in his body…or the wall itself.

About ten feet out, he must have remembered, because I saw his right hand shoot back and start the breaking procedure. The move came late, but just soon enough to save him. He hit hard, his feet smacking the wall and slipping to the side, making room for his body to slam into the side of the building. The impact stunned him and he stayed there, swaying back and forth, holding onto the rope for dear life.

With no time to waste, I picked Max up and hooked his harness to mine. I threaded my own line and off we went. This wasn’t my first rodeo, of course, and I stopped with my feet barely tapping the wall. Max never moved or made a sound. I used the rope to straighten my legs and climbed up to the little window at the bottom of the retaining wall and wedged my feet inside. I took my weight off the rope, popped the carabiner, and hoisted Max and myself up and over the top. We landed almost soundlessly on the roof. I disengaged Max and ran over to Jerome’s window. I looked over the top of the wall and saw him dangling there.

“You okay?”

He looked up at me, sweat pouring down his face. He jerked his head at me.

“Grab this,” I said, as I dropped my zip saddle rope down to him. “Hold tight to the rope.”

He did as I asked and looked up at me.

“I’m going to pull you up.”

Jerome looked down. “I’m heavy.”

“Yeah,” I said.

I held the back end of the rope out to Max and said, “Packen”. Instantly, Max lunged forward and clamped down on the rope. Instinctively, he started to pull back with all fours. I held the rope tight and yelled over to Jerome, “Put your feet against the wall, disengage your harness and walk up the wall to us.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Do it,” I said, “or I’ll cut your line and let you fall.”

“No you won’t,” he said.

“Maybe not,” I said, “but I can’t hold this for long, so either you do what I tell you or I’ll let you hang there while I go and try the mission… just Max and me.”

He steeled himself, not an easy thing, dangling in the dark ten stories up, and got his feet under him and against the wall. “Okay, I’m gonna do it.” And he did, just like that. Suddenly, my shoulders felt the massive increase in weight and all the time off from serious workouts and all, the injuries came back to haunt me. I grunted audibly and pulled hard. Max pulled hard too. He was no Husky, bred to haul huge loads piled high on sleds across miles and miles of frozen landscape, but he was one tough conglomeration of muscle and bone and drive, and he pulled back like a machine, almost pulling me off my feet. Jerome came up that wall like he was running and gripped my outstretched hand like it was a life preserver. I dragged him over the wall and we fell together onto the graveled tar, both of us breathing hard and sweating like we’d just left a sauna.

Max walked over to us, his mouth closed, breathing normally through his nose as if he’d just woken from a sound sleep. He cocked his head once, then went over to the wall and lifted a leg.

Jerome and I looked at each other. I grinned, and for just a second, I thought he was going to bust out laughing, but then it passed and we both got to our feet.

We stashed the harnesses by the elevator shaft and took our guns out of our backpacks. I handed Jerome one of the night vision goggles and got it up and running for him. I handed him one of the commandos, the one with the Aim-Point instead of the scope. Both were hooked up with suppressors, just like our pistols. I gave Jerome the Glock 21, while I sported my usual S&W 4506. It was a lot of metal to lug around on a mission like this, where speed was going to count, but metal’s a weapon too, you know.

We went to the roof shed and found the door hanging open, the handle twisted and rusted. Our first stroke of luck.

Max watched the men from the wall, his incredible senses taking in massive amounts of data and processing it instantly, keeping what might be important for survival and letting go of everything useless to that task.

The Alpha, once again, was allowing their prey to live, and he even seemed to be helping him. This made no sense to Max, and worse, it heightened the internal drive to protect the Pack by taking over the leadership role in order to do so.

The sounds they made, the visual cues, their scents. He took them all in, noting the strange mixture of fear and stress and excitement that ran through both men. Everything about them spoke of danger coming, and so Max decided this would not be the right time or place to take over the Pack. To do so might mean its destruction and that was not something he could allow. But the conflicting emotions and drives; to rise, to subordinate, to rule, to feel the caress and comradeship of the Alpha, to challenge and combat or to submit and experience this new strange bond that he had begun to feel. His animal mind pushed the conflicting thoughts from him and he fell in with the