I wasn’t sure if it was my thighs or my lungs that were burning the most as I neared the top.

“We have a visual,” I heard over my radio as the man hit the top of the stairs next to a Harlem River Drive entrance ramp. We had an undercover Highway Patrol unit stationed a hundred yards north up the highway in case he attempted to move the money out that way.

He didn’t, though. He passed the entrance and was crossing over Edgecombe Avenue along the upper part of 155th Street when I got to the top. I thought he would head down into the subway on the corner of 155th and St. Nicholas, where yet another team was waiting, but he surprised us all by heading to the window of a place called Eagle Pizza on the corner and grabbing a slice.

A slice? I thought. Was this guy for real? Nobody could be this calm. I searched the crowd of pedestrians going up and down the subway stairs. There was definitely something off about this whole thing.

Emily pulled up beside me, and I joined her in the Fed car. We watched the black guy finish his slice and continue west with the money.

He’d just rolled the suitcase off the next corner when it happened. There was a high scream of a motor, and a figure wearing a black motorcycle helmet and matching racing leathers roared up on a BMX dirt bike.

Without stopping and without an opportunity to do anything except look on with our mouths open, we watched as the rider scooped up the bag the black guy had let go of. He gunned the cycle through the red light, almost hitting the hood of our car, and raced the opposite way down 155th.

WE WERE POINTED in the wrong direction as he lasered past us. Emily hopped the curb as she U-turned after him. I was on the radio, screaming the recent happenings, when the biker screeched to the left north onto Amsterdam. The biker swung off the street onto the sidewalk and into a city park. It felt like the axle broke as Emily hopped curb number two directly after him.

“I guess this means we’re not maintaining tailing distance anymore!” I yelled as we violently off-roaded on the uneven grass behind the dirt bike.

The rider skidded to a stop beside a city pool. He left the bike and began booking with the money into the trees. I didn’t have time to say, “You’ve got to be shitting me,” as I jumped out after him.

I made it through a break in the thick brush and gulped as I spotted where the guy was headed.

It was the High Bridge pedestrian bridge, which connected Manhattan to the Bronx. Built in the mid-1800s, the thirteen-story narrow stone walkway that spanned the Harlem River had originally been used as an aqueduct that carried the city’s water supply down from upstate. Now it was an abandoned structure just south of the Cross Bronx Expressway that city administrations debated whether they should renovate or tear down.

Motorcycle man swung the bag onto his back, hopped onto some ancient scaffolding, and started climbing. In a moment, he hopped over a break in the razor wire and was hightailing it toward the Bronx over the bridge’s weed-filled cobblestone pavers.

“Call the Bronx!” I radioed my backup. “The Forty-fourth Precinct. The crazy son of a bitch is headed over the High Bridge walkway toward the Bronx!”

“And so’s this one,” I mumbled to myself as I tucked the radio into my pocket and pulled myself onto the scaffolding.

I paused as I hopped down from the fence onto the bridge itself. It was maybe ten feet across, with only flimsy, waist-high cast-iron railings between me and a horrifying fall to my death. Talk about vertigo.

Motorcycle man was going flat out at the other end of the bridge when he shrugged the bag off his back and chucked it. I thought it would hit the river, but I saw it land with a puff of dust on the Bronx side between the Major Deegan Expressway and the Metro North train tracks.

“He tossed it!” I called. “Get somebody across the river and down by the train tracks. The money is next to the Bronx-side tracks!”

When I looked up, I saw the motorcycle man running in a new direction. Directly at me!

He had his jacket off and was grasping something in his hand now. It had wires coming out of it. They seemed to go over his shoulder toward his back.

Bomb!? I thought, drawing my Glock. What the-?

“DOWN! NOW!” I yelled. The guy was a bad listener.

“ON YOUR KNEES!” I yelled.

He kept coming. The sight of him, silently running at me for no conceivable reason, was beyond surreal. I was about to squeeze off a shot, when he did it. The craziest thing of all.

Without pausing, he veered to my left, bounded up onto the low iron railing, and dove without a sound off the bridge.

I think my heart actually stopped. I ran to my left and looked down. The guy was plummeting toward the water when there was a strange bloom of color that at first I thought was an explosion. I thought he’d blown himself up, but then I saw the orange canopy of a parachute.

Son of a bitch! I thought. He hadn’t committed suicide. He’d base-jumped off the bridge. I knew I should have shot him! I debated whether I still should as he sailed up the river.

“Get Harbor and Aviation up!” I screamed. “The son of a bitch just did a James Bond off the bridge. He parachuted off. I repeat. He just parachuted off the bridge!”

I THOUGHT WE were going to flip ten minutes later as Parker whipped us off the Bronx-side highway onto a Metro North utility road. We were still skidding to a stop when I hopped out of the car and over the third rail to the weeds where I thought the bag had landed.

I searched through the weeds like a man possessed. I kicked past a Prestone can, a Happy Meal box, several tires. Where the hell was it! That’s when I saw the black strap. I rushed over and pulled. Shit! It was weightless. The bag was empty.

I decided to take a seat in the dead grass beside it. There was a path behind me that led less than a hundred feet up to the highway. The kidnappers must have been waiting. They were long gone.

We’d blown it. We’d lost the money.

“Shit and double shit,” Emily said, when I showed her the empty bag. She offered her hand and pulled me up. “Harbor got the jumper at least. Let’s go.”

I was still firing full bore on adrenaline when I hopped out of the Fed car and crashed down a bank of the Harlem River to the north. Harbor had pulled the base jumper out of the drink and was holding him near the southbound entrance for the Cross Bronx Expressway.

With the help of one of the Harbor guys, I sat the parachutist up from where he was lying wet and handcuffed on his belly. He was a young, pimple-faced white kid with a frosted faux-hawk haircut.

“This is over. Where is Dan Hastings? Where is he?” I yelled.

“What? Danny who?” the kid said, his face scrunched in surprise. “Is he a new guy on the team? The Birdhouse Team?”

I squinted my eyes into slits.

“You have two seconds to tell me what you’re talking about before you go swimming in handcuffs.”

“Hey, man. I didn’t do anything. I was paid to jump the bridge by this guy Mark. He said he was from Birdhouse-you know, the Tony Hawk skateboard company? He said they needed some crazy-ass footage for one of their new movies. I know it wasn’t exactly legal, but he gave me ten grand cash. He said some black guy would drop a bag on the corner of Amsterdam, and I would bike it to the bridge and do my thing. He gave me half up front. I swear to God that’s the truth.”

I stared at the dopey kid, furious.

“What did you think when I was pointing my gun at you? I was method acting?”

“Yes,” the kid said emphatically. “I thought it was all part of the movie, man. So, you’re basically telling me the cameras weren’t rolling?”

Could anyone be this stupid? I decided this guy could.