The twenty-eight-pound valve wrench swung through the boiling fog with the whistling driving force of a cannon ball.
Tomas Reed didn’t try to block the massive iron bar with his crowbar. A back-door porter understood the mechanics of driving force. You never met a falling load head-on. You ducked the vector and deflected the mass.
Tomas dropped flat onto the punched holes in iron grating. The heavy jaw of the wrench whistled two inches above his wool cap. It struck the four-inch angle-iron railing of the narrow high walkway with a terrifying CLANG that snapped three load-bearing rivets and bent the safety bar into a jagged loop.
The moving shock traveled through Kegg’s arms. It knocked the brute momentarily off-balance on the slippery, oil-slicked grating.
Tomas swept his right boot across the floorplates, catching Kegg behind his left heel. The guard roared in fury as his leg was swept out from under him, his heavy body crashing down onto the iron deck with a heavy, shaking thud that rattled the narrow high walkway roof beams.
Before Kegg could recover, Tomas rolled to his feet, lunging toward the central balance weight assembly five paces away.
The sight of the gearwork made his blood run cold through the blistering heat.
