Strip Read Free

Maybe they’d declare victory and go away. He stayed low but moved his head close to the window and looked down. He could see the five men were moving again. This time they were walking toward the steel frame of the building, preparing to climb the temporary staircase that had been erected along the near side. If they got up to the top floor, they’d be almost beside him and could fire at him through the cab windows.
    He was trapped. He had no more than a minute or two to do something to preserve his life. He stared straight ahead, through the windshield of the cab. From where he sat, his eyes were aimed out along the seventy-five-yard horizontal arm of the crane. Along its underside, he could see the trolley on rails that held the cable and the hook, a piece of steel the size of a man.
    He glanced out the side window at the five men moving toward the stairway that led up onto the skeletal building, and then he looked straight ahead again at the arm of the crane. Right before him was the control console of the crane, a black, sloping surface full of switches and dials and levers and knobs. His hours reading the manual and comparing the pictures with the controls had made them familiar. His hand reached out for the toggle switch that said “master power,” and he flipped it.
    Lights glowed on the console. He tentatively moved the control stick to swing the crane’s long, horizontal arm—called the “jib” in the manual, as though this huge machine were a sailing ship—slowly to the left, then stopped. The cab moved with the arm, so the movement made him dizzy. He reached out for the winch control and lowered the cable with the hook on the end. As he lowered it, he pushed forward on the control to send the trolley out on the horizontal arm.
    The hook descended to the heavily trodden lot and landed in a small explosion of dust. He pulled back on the control and raised it a bit, so it dangled from its cable about a foot off the ground. He reached for the lateral control, and the long, horizontal arm of the crane began to move again. He pushed it farther, his cab turning faster with the arm.
    The heavy steel hook on the end of the long cable stayed a bit behind the moving arm. When he stopped the dizzying lateral movement, the cable swung toward the men and the heavy hook swept into their midst. The five scattered, and the hook swung past them and clanged against a horizontal steel girder of the building a story above their heads. As the hook swung back, Carver turned the arm back a little to guide the hook into the gang of men a second time. It narrowly missed Voinovich, who flung himself to the side on the dirt and gravel.
    Carver felt the vibrations as bullets banged on the bottom of the steel cab. He could see the five men dancing from one side to another, trying to get a better shot at the glass windows.
    Carver glanced beyond them at the streets. By now, cops should be surrounding this area. He could see for many blocks, but there was not a single flashing light coming from any direction. Was everybody around here deaf? The past few minutes had sounded like a war. But this was a commercial neighborhood, and everyone nearby had probably gone home hours ago. Whatever Carver was going to do, he would have to do it alone.
    He looked below for the men, but they had scattered. His gaze settled on the two Hummers. He moved the trolley that held the hoist farther out on the crane’s arm, almost the full seventy-five yards, and turned the crane at the same time, so the hook on the end of the cable was in motion again. The men below seemed to understand the meaning of his movement immediately. They abandoned their hiding places, desperate to kill him before he could carry out his intention. They fired rapidly, and he could feel the vibration each time a bullet hit the cab’s steel shell. One shot hit a side window, and glass exploded into the cab.
    Carver brushed the glass off his lap, and then swung the big hook again. To