“Time to go,” he said.

The line of his British security commando men waved Reyland west over the construction site roof like coaches at an obstacle course. He passed some aluminum framing beams, a pile of steel rods, a rolled-up hose. There was a stepladder that went up over the roof wall to the scaffolding on the Upper Belgrave side of the building, and Reyland went over it and started down the nine-story scaffold’s steps.

They were coming down the seventh-story flight of stairs when Reyland heard it. There was the high scream of a car engine on Upper Belgrave, and all five of them stopped on the stairs and went over to the street-side railing.

At first Reyland couldn’t see because of the plastic sheeting, but then he pulled at the plastic until he got it to part like a curtain.

Then he turned to the right.

Down Upper Belgrave came a huge white work truck flying like a runaway train.

It was a phone truck, Reyland could see, as it jumped the curb onto their block and came roaring up the sidewalk directly at them.

“Back! Back! Back!” Reyland cried.

Then the truck smashed somewhere down below into the scaffolding they were standing on, and Reyland yelled as he felt the stairs jolt and heave beneath his backpedaling feet.

97

The fifteen-thousand-pound truck’s speedometer was hovering around the eighty mark when Gannon plowed it into the base of the scaffolding.

The rapid-fire bongs of the ripped-free galvanized steel pipes blasting off the speeding hood and grille sounded almost festive, like wedding bells.

He ducked down as one of the pipes jumped up sideways and shattered the windshield. Another pole came into the cab itself a split second later like a spear where his head had just been.

Gannon kept his foot pressed down on the accelerator in the fantastic gonging as support pipe after support pipe after support pipe popped free.

The runaway truck had just torn loose the last of the supports at the end of the block when one of its front tires exploded like a bomb blast. Gannon closed his eyes as he felt the truck wobble crazily toward the right. It was actually on two wheels when it came off the sidewalk into the street again. Gannon hugged the steering wheel to brace himself as it toppled over completely on its right side and went skidding through the intersection in an incredible screech of metal and clanging support pipes and spitting sparks.

Reyland and the rest of his team were still scrambling up the stairs between the sixth and seventh floors of the scaffold when the heavy ninth-story transom of the compromised structure suddenly ruptured.

They were still running as the ninth floor pancaked into the eighth floor and the eighth floor into the seventh, and then the heavy wooden seventh floor slammed down onto them like a giant textbook onto the heads of a half-dozen scurrying ants.

The entire superstructure of the scaffolding ripped completely free from the building a split second later and tipped over into the street.