"Thanks a lot," McLeod told him, and hurled the instrument at his face.
He heard a thud and a startled oath and didn't wait to see the results. He whirled and struck out with the edge of his hand, slicing it expertly at the police captain's Adam's Apple. McLeod vaulted over the gagging man as he went down and plunged, head tucked against his chest and knees kicking high, into the first rank of the crowd. He fought elbows, fists, shoulders, legs, warm human breaths, reaching the front of the room and sprinting past the weaponcheck arsenal and out into the green, summery glade that surrounded the anachronism of stone and glass that was the Fourth Estate.
Protected by a force field, the grounds around the Estate knew nothing but summer. But elsewhere, McLeod thought as he plunged on toward the copter field, man's control over the elements vied for headlines.
McLeod saw the figure of a man up ahead as he rounded the final turn in the path, still sprinting. The man stood squarely in front of him, blocking his way with a drawn parabeam.
"Did he come this way?" McLeod cried. "Talk, man! Did McLeod come this way?"
"No, sir. He, wait a minute...."
But McLeod was upon him, using the same judo-cut that had floored the captain of police. McLeod wrenched the parabeam from the man's fingers as he fell, then found his copter and was airborne by the time the vanguard of his pursuers appeared as tiny dots on the field below.
Less than an hour later, McLeod landed on the roof of the Star-Times building, where a slowly circling plow was scooping up the snow, digesting it and spitting out great jets of steam. McLeod doubled the speed of the escalator with his own flying feet and was soon striding across the City Room, nodding briefly to the sychophantic waves and smiles which greeted him as the Star-Times' ace reporter.
"Chief," he said, entering Overman's glass-walled office without bothering to knock, "the wolves are after your fair-haired boy—but good!"