Chapter 8 - Fire in the Executive Suite
Bullets chewed through the walnut paneling and shattered expensive glass display cases as we scrambled behind a heavy marble executive desk.
"How many?" Rosa shouted over the deafening clatter of gunfire, reloading her submachine gun with lightning speed.
"At least a dozen!" I yelled back, leaning out from behind the marble barrier and returning fire with precise, controlled double-taps. Two of Falcone's enforcers dropped instantly, but more poured out of the service corridors like ants from a kicked anthill.
"We're trapped!" Rosa called out, checking her ammunition clip. "The stairwell is compromised!"
"Not the stairwell," I said, grabbing her by the hand and pointing toward the private balcony overlooking Michigan Avenue forty floors below. "The window!"
Rosa didn't hesitate. "You're insane!"
"Trust me!"
I grabbed a heavy executive chair and hurled it straight through the reinforced double-paned glass balcony door. Shards of glass rained down into the snowy Chicago night like glittering diamonds.
Alarms wailed around us as we burst out onto the freezing, wind-swept balcony. Below us, the streetlights of Michigan Avenue looked like tiny fairy lights half a mile down.
"Give me your tactical harness!" I commanded, unlatching my rappel line and securing it quickly to a heavy steel support beam framing the balcony overhang.
Rosa clipped her harness into mine without a single word of complaint. She wrapped her arms tightly around my waist, burying her face against my chest as the first enforcers burst out onto the balcony behind us, their rifles raised.
"Hold on!" I shouted.
I kicked off the edge of the stone railing, plunging downward into the freezing night air just as a hail of bullets sparked against the concrete ledge we had abandoned a fraction of a second earlier.
The wind whipped past our ears like a freight train as we rappelled down the sheer glass facade of the skyscraper, dropping floor by floor in a heart-stopping descent while sparks flew from our friction brakes.
With a hard, jarring thud, we landed squarely on the flat roof of the parking garage annex three stories below.
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I unclipped the harness, pulled Rosa up to her feet, and sprinted toward the garage access hatch. We scrambled down the concrete stairs and vaulted into the armored SUV just as a convoy of police cruisers and mob enforcers swarmed the main entrance of the tower above.
I slammed the vehicle into gear, tore through the wooden parking gate, and vanished into the snowy Chicago night.
