Deadly Heat (22 page)

“Heat in position one,” she whispered into her shoulder microphone.

“Copy, position one, Heat.” Bart Callan’s voice came back in her
earpiece, from inside the RV. “We have visual of you. Hercules is also confirmed position one.”

“We go in one minute, mark.”

“Copy the mark,” came the voice of the Herc team leader.

Nikki held up a forefinger to the unit and then waited the long minute, trying not to think of this culmination and all it meant to her life. This was the wrong time for emotion. It was time to be thinking of only two things. She summoned them, as she always did, from the Academy. To the little sign posted in every hall, in every classroom, even in the basement shooting range. The sign that saw her through every situation: “Good Cops Are Always Thinking Tactics and Cover.”

Above her, behind her, and on the next block stood the best cover available anywhere. In her logistical planning with ESU and the One-Seven’s site super, the blueprint review of the building had not only marked tactical access and contingency passages, but had delineated cover within. Each cop had an assignment on entry and had memorized the route to get there—from the elevators to the front desk, the mail room, the private gym, the stairwells, even the trash chute, should Mr. Wynn decide on such an undignified escape. And who knew, from the fourth floor, he might survive the drop. If so, Sharon Hinesburg would be waiting.

Twelve seconds to go. Detective Heat breathed some night air, keyed her mic, and as her last detail before going in, repeated the same thing she had told them back at the staging area. “Watch yourselves, but try to take him alive. I want to know what he is working on.”

When her watch zeroed-out the minute, she calmly said, “Green to go.”

And they went.

If it weren’t for the body armor and 9mm machine guns, it could have been a ballet. Detective Rhymer slid ahead of Heat, as planned, badged the doorman, and stayed under shelter of the canopy with him to make sure no calls got made to the upstairs. The double glass doors auto-opened, and an ESU officer sandbagged them to stay that way. Nikki streamed into the lobby calling out, “NYPD, everyone stop what you’re doing. Come out from behind the counter and the
office with your hands in plain view, and stand here with Detective Feller.” The suited concierge and the day manager did just that, finding spots on the polished marble and wearing expressions of awe and nervousness. “Don’t be alarmed,” Heat assured them. The dark-suited Hercules Squad pouring in the back entrance and into the stairwells did little to mollify the pair.

The day manager—“Carlotta,” according to her brass name tag—asked, “Do you need a key to one of the apartments?”

A voice beside the manager’s desk said, “Already got one,” and Carlotta’s eyes widened when she turned and saw the ESU cop holding the battering ram. But she relaxed when she saw that it hadn’t been he who spoke, but Detective Ochoa, coming around the counter holding up a passkey to 4-A that he had pulled from the cubby. Nonetheless, the ESU man and his battering ram got on the elevator with Heat and Roach, as well, just to be sure.

As the doors started to close, Rook skidded into the car, wearing his “Journalist” vest. “Four, please.” On the ride up, he ignored Nikki’s annoyed glance and said, “I’m selling subscriptions to
Douchebag Monthly
. Have a feeling I’ve got a live one in 4-A.”

“OK, last time, Rook. You have a job. Stay in here and hold the door open.”

“Don’t you have a sandbag for that?”

“You’ll do.” Then she brought her Sig Sauer up in a combat stance. The doors parted onto four, and she led her team out into the hall. According to plan, a team from the Hercules Squad had already taken positions at the open door to the stairwell and behind the love seat off the elevator, with assault rifles and machine guns aimed, ready to give cover.

Using only hand signals, they padded lightly up the carpeted hallway to the end unit with “4-A” etched in a pale blue frosted glass square anchored to its outer wall. The muted sounds of music from a radio or MP3 bled from inside. To Heat, it sounded a lot like Billie Holiday singing “Trav’lin’ Light.” A reminder of listening to American jazz with Rook in Paris wafted over her like a happy scent from another time. She knelt near the doorjamb while the others took their high and low positions; Ochoa, closest to the knob, held the key.
Straining to listen through the music, Nikki heard a man singing along.

She knew the voice well. She had heard it, disembodied, on a grainy VHS video shot when she was five years old and played Mozart for him by her mother’s side. She had heard it in her waking hours almost every night of the past month instructing her ex-boyfriend to push her in front of the next subway train. Even now, over the thud of her quickened pulse, she could hear it casually tossing off the last words she heard it say as he left her there to die in that subway Ghost Station. That voice on the other side of the door had said, “Shoot her, if you have to.”

Heat turned to the group around her. She touched her ear and nodded to indicate she heard Tyler Wynn in there. Nikki then held up three fingers to indicate the coming countdown. Still in a crouch, she rotated up the hall to make sure the Hercules men and women saw it.

That’s when the explosion blasted inside 4-A. The floor shook, pictures fell off the wall, and the concussion knocked Heat on her ass.

Black-gloved hands grabbed Nikki by the back of her vest and jerked her to her feet. A giant of an ESU cop extracted her, yanking her in reverse up the hall, away from the door. He deposited her with Rook outside the elevator and raced back to 4-A, shouldering past Raley and Ochoa, who were clearing the area. In the pandemonium, car alarms sounded and a few frightened tenants opened doors to hollers from Nikki and the others to evacuate immediately, using the stairs. They didn’t need a second warning. Heat noticed the elevator doors were closed. She also realized her headpiece had flown out of her ear. She popped it back in to hear frenzied chatter. “Bomb squad on the way up.”… “Paramedics standing by for all clear from the Code Ten.”… “Ladder and pumpers rolling up, awaiting clear from the Ten.”

Heat keyed her mic to report, “Negative injuries in hallway on four.”

“Copy no injuries” came back from Agent Callan.

“ESU evacuating collateral fourth-floor tenants via stairwell; intercept in lobby and remove via rear.”

“Lobby has them now,” replied Callan. “Assets now clearing floors above and below.”

“Reporting positive audio fix on target inside 4-A, no visual yet.” Nikki looked up the hall and continued, “Door still intact.”

“Instruct you to hold for bomb clearance.”

“Copy. Holding.”

Nikki made eye contact with Rook for the first time. “You OK?” he asked.

She nodded. “You?”

The elevator doors parted, and an ESU sergeant in a hooded blast suit clomped out flanked by two Hercules cops. As they passed, Rook said to Heat, “I officially feel like I’m in
Star Wars
.”

Everyone waited in the stairwell while the bomb squad hero opened the door, just in case of a booby trap. “What do you think that was about?” asked Rook. “Did Wynn know we were here? Was he making bombs and screwed up?” When Rook realized he was the only one talking, he stopped. “Shutting up now.” He waited.

They all waited. Finally, Heat heard the all clear in her headpiece… followed by the call for paramedics to aid a victim.

“He’s alive,” she said hurling herself back to the hall. On the way to Wynn’s door, she keyed her mic. “Let’s move on those paramedics—
now
.”

The apartment had two floors. The blueprint she’d committed to memory back at the staging area showed a living room, hall, powder room, kitchen, and dining area downstairs, and two bedrooms and two baths upstairs. Heat hustled in the front door and broke left—the bomb sarge had radioed that the victim was down in the kitchen. Her face plowed through the thin layer of blue smoke suspended in the hall. Nikki hand signaled Raley and Ochoa, who had her back, to clear the closet and powder room as she passed each. Five paces ahead, a stream of bright crimson leaked across the hardwood from a source unseen around the corner in the kitchen.

A surreal view greeted her as she made the turn. The bomb sergeant, still cloaked in his bulky armor suit, knelt on the floor, applying direct pressure to the wound gushing red from Tyler Wynn’s neck.
Heat made a flash assessment of the damage. All of the old man’s wounds were from the torso up on one side of his body, the side that had been exposed to the blast, which she could see—quite graphically—had come from the dining table on the other side of the counter. The eating area had been ripped by the explosion: leather dining chairs shredded; glass from the solarium-style windows gone; vertical blinds—those that remained—wagging back and forth in the breeze, mangled, sawed-off, and powder-charred; the thick glass table shattered into bits. Some of the glass was spread across the floor like fractured bits of ice. The rest of the jagged shards had been broadcast around the place, blending with the shrapnel packed inside the bomb: a mix of screws, nails, and ball bearings that peppered the ceilings and walls.

Wynn had taken the blast while in the kitchen. The granite counter had blocked his lower half from injury; meanwhile, his upper body resembled tartare. Heat knelt beside the man from the bomb squad and reached out to plug another ugly pumper on Wynn’s chest. But she had to pull her hand back. Something sharp etched her palm. She lifted the sopping tatter of his shirt and saw the broken blade of a bread knife the concussion had shot out of the wood block on the countertop and into his ribs.

“Heat,” he coughed out, making it almost sound like “hee.”

“Help’s coming. Hang on. Just hang on.” She found a dish towel on the floor and made a wad to press around a gash on his forehead. The skin had been so flayed, she could see skull. The chest wound still flowed prolifically, so she carefully fit the bread knife blade between two fingers and applied what pressure she dared around the metal.

“Was it…?” He coughed again.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said.

“Was it… Salena?… Did Kaye… find me?”

“Breathe. Don’t talk. Just breathe and stay with me. Look, here come the paramedics.”

In truth, Nikki wanted him to talk. But she wanted him to live first, so he could talk a whole lot. When the EMS crew took over, she stood by, bloody to her elbows and knees, not wanting to leave his side, in case he said anything more. It didn’t seem likely. Even without
medical training, Heat had been around enough trauma scenes to know from a paramedic’s tone of voice, when the medic verbalized vital signs, when things were dire. They were having trouble stabilizing him. The paramedic said, “We gotta transport, and now.”

Heat rode down with the gurney and got in the back of the ambulance for the ride. If Tyler Wynn were going to die, she wanted to be there when he did. And, yes, she also wanted to make sure he didn’t get away again.

No sooner had the double doors closed than he rolled his head to her. He raised the hand on his good arm, the one without exposed tendons and bone showing, and beckoned her close. She held the rail of the gurney to steady herself and leaned forward inches from his shredded, monster face. “I’m sorry,” he said. She could see him whimpering a cry and put a hand on his good wrist. “I loved your mom. I…” He choked a sob back and closed his eyes, which made her think he’d died, but then he flashed them open, and they were wild, full of some found strength and determination.

“I sold myself. They made me rich.” He sucked in a gulp of air. “But they made me do awful things. So damn sorry. They made me…”

“Who?”

“Him!” The old spy coughed the name out on frothy blood: “Dragon.”

Heat remembered. The person Salena Kaye had called from the stolen helicopter. “Who is Dragon?” she asked. “Aren’t you Dragon?”

He wagged his head vehemently and moaned a no. The effort drained the fight from his eyes and he blinked. Then in a sudden exclamation, he shouted, “Terror!” And then he sucked more air. “Death, mass death here in New York. Worse than…” He shuddered down a breath. “… Worse than 9/11.” He gagged and labored to swallow. “I’m cold.”