Authors: Alan Jacobson
56
“W
hat the hell’s an Osprey?” Vail asked. “I assume you’re not talking about the bird.”
“It
is
a bird, just not one that flaps its wings.”
“Helicopter?”
“Not really that, either. It’s a plane and a helicopter all in one. A tilt rotor aircraft, vertical takeoff and land. First of its kind. It flies twice as fast and twice as far as a chopper.”
Vail snapped her fingers. “Yeah, I saw one of those at an air show a couple of years ago. Very cool demonstration. But didn’t they have a lot of problems with them?”
“Define problems.”
“Crashes.”
“That’d be a yes,” DeSantos said. “Don’t worry about it. The criticism was overblown.”
Vail looked at him, hoping to see a broad grin. But he was not smiling.
And that’s when she felt a serious knot tighten in her stomach.
FIVE MINUTES LATER, Vail’s phone rang.
“Got something,” Rodman said. “Put me on speaker.” After Vail complied, he continued: “I’ve located Rudenko, outside a flat in Camden.”
DeSantos accelerated. “That’s where we’re headed. When was he there?”
“He’s there now. I tapped into the Met’s CCTV network and set the system up to set off an alarm if it got a facial recognition hit. I had to pull off the road, but I’m now on a live feed. Rudenko came out of a building and headed northwest. I’m trying to follow him, pick him up on different cameras. If you’re anywhere close, I suggest you get your asses there fast, because I don’t know how long he’ll keep walking where we’ve got eyes. He’s in a black overcoat and a top hat. And he’s got a handlebar moustache. Doesn’t look like he’s as good as you when it comes to disguises. Attracts attention to himself, if you asked me.”
“Goes with the personality of successful, wealthy businessmen,” Vail said. “They think they’re impervious. Some lose the filter for being careful. They become overconfident. They’re accustomed to doing what they want and winning, like a gambler who keeps getting positive reinforcement. He loses the inhibition to be careful; he forgets he could still lose everything.”
“Don’t know if that applies to Rudenko,” DeSantos said, squealing the tires as he pushed the Peugeot too hard on a turn. “He’s survived decades in weapons dealing because he’s extremely smart. I can’t imagine he’s suddenly lost his edge. You sure it’s him, Hot Rod?”
“Hundred percent match. I pulled up a good image from his gallery cameras. Wait, he’s passing the Costa Coffee Shop on Chalk Farm Road right now. Across from the Stables Market.”
Vail pulled out her iPhone and dialed Reid, who answered on the first ring. “Can you get CO19 to Camden, Chalk Farm Road? Sighting on Rudenko, real time. By the Costa café, across from the Stables Market.”
“Will do,” Reid said, and clicked off.
DeSantos hung a hard left. “Just turned onto Camden High off Jamestown.”
Residential apartments sat atop storefront businesses, restaurants, and coffee shops on both sides of the street.
“Looks like Camden High becomes Chalk Farm,” Vail said, reading the GPS and glancing up at her surroundings. “I think we’re close.”
“A few blocks,” Rodman said. “But—Oh shit.”
“Oh shit” is not what I want to hear right now.
“I can’t—”
Vail heard Rodman tapping his keyboard.
“Damnit. Lost him.”
You’ve gotta be kidding me.
“Find him! We may not get another chance.”
“I can’t see him if there aren’t any cameras,” Rodman said, his voice tense, yet controlled. “I can try tapping into private cams, but he’ll be long gone by then. Keep driving along Chalk Farm. Maybe you’ll be able to get a visual.”
DeSantos slowed the car to a crawl. “Passing Stables Market.”
“He was on the north side of the street,” Rodman said. “If that helps.”
“See anything?” DeSantos asked.
“There,” Vail said, pointing at a man walking in a black overcoat a block away. “We’ve got a possible. Vail out.” She pocketed the phone and drew her SIG. “Pull ahead and let me out. He won’t recognize me until he’s on me. By then you’ll be there, behind him.”
It’d be a whole lot better if Brits drove on the
right
side of the road.
DeSantos accelerated gently and passed the man.
“That’s him,” she said, looking in the side view mirror.
DeSantos pulled the Peugeot to the left curb and Vail got out, hiding her handgun and avoiding eye contact with Rudenko as she crossed the street.
Apparently Rudenko had seen this maneuver before, because he turned and ran in the opposite direction. He ditched the overcoat, hopped the adjacent construction enclosure, and landed in a vacant lot alongside a backhoe.
Vail followed but lost sight of him as he scaled the far fence thirty feet away, and then disappeared up the side street.
She heard footsteps on the asphalt behind her, which she sure hoped belonged to DeSantos—but she was not about to take her eyes off the area where Rudenko had disappeared.
Vail climbed the chain-link and landed squarely on the sidewalk. Ahead of her was a dimly lit residential area featuring modest two-story attached homes fronted by brick walls.
She moved up the street slowly, SIG at the ready, eyes scanning the block, looking for any form of movement.
“Karen!”
She heard DeSantos’s voice an instant before the gunshots.
57
E
than Carter accelerated as he rounded the curve, forcing Reid’s left shoulder into the car door.
“You think we’ll get there before CO19?” Carter asked.
“Depends on where they were when the call came through from dispatch. But their average response time is something like four minutes.”
As they turned onto Chalk Farm Road, they saw the ARV, or Armed Response Vehicle, ahead of them, two blocks away. The BMW was moving quickly, its light bar whirling in a dizzying rhythm.
“There’s my answer,” Carter said. He accelerated and came up behind the white, yellow, and orange vehicle.
“What do we do if Vail and DeSantos are still around?”
“Once we grab up Rudenko, we’ll help them make their exit. But they knew the score when they summoned CO19.”
Reid clenched his molars. “They asked for CO19 because it was the right thing to do. They shouldn’t be punished for putting aside their own interests and making the right call.”
He did not want to see Vail and DeSantos go through the penal system for risking their lives on behalf of the United Kingdom. Still, there was little he could do to help them. His first priority was to secure Rudenko. The rest would have to take care of itself.
DESANTOS APPROACHED with his SIG down by his knees, oriented toward the ground, as he shuffled toward the houses. When he had gotten out of the Peugeot, he angled away from Vail, taking a different approach while heading down Hartland Road.
Because of his route, he had seen what Vail could not: Hussein Rudenko perched behind the brick wall, his handgun aimed at her, the barrel poking over the top.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine. For someone who nearly had her head blown off. Thanks.”
“I told you I’d never let anything happen to you.”
“I’m starting to believe you.”
DeSantos looked at her. “Starting?”
Ahead of them was Rudenko’s inert form, his gun lying impotently on the pavement a few feet from his hands.
Just then in the windows of the adjacent house, Vail saw the flicker of a police light bar. “Shit. They’re here.”
“Hang on,” DeSantos said as he started toward Rudenko’s body.
Vail grabbed his sleeve. “They’re down the block, we’ve gotta go.”
“Just wanted to be sure he’s dead.”
She pulled him down Hartland, away from Chalk Farm. “Can’t go back for the car, we’ll never make it.”
“What about Hačko?”
They crossed to the other side of the street and ran down the sidewalk, using the parked cars as cover, headed toward what looked like a train trestle.
As the Armed Response Vehicle passed Hartland—they were headed to Rudenko’s last known location, the Costa café—Vail saw a car on the side street off to her right: Hawley Road. The vehicle flashed its headlights and Vail and DeSantos ran toward it.
As soon as they pulled the backdoors closed, Carter hung a right on Hartland.
“Did you find Rudenko?” Reid asked.
“We more than found him,” DeSantos said. “I shot him. No choice. He’s probably dead.”
“No choice?” Carter asked, not doing an effective job of concealing his anger.
“No choice,” Vail said. “He was about to kill me.”
“He was a high value asset. I still think there was a choice.”
“I won’t take that personally,” Vail said.
“Turn left up ahead,” Reid said. “Let’s try to get some distance from CO19.” He turned around to face DeSantos. “So there were gunshots?”
“Two.”
Reid and Carter shared a look.
“Gunfire’s rare in London,” Reid said. “More units are gonna respond. Go down Adelaide, see if we can circle around, get us away from the crime scene.” He rooted out his phone. “I’m going to see if I can point them where they need to be. It may take them off their search grid.”
“And out of our hair,” Vail said.
“Exactly. Where’s the body?”
“Near the vacant lot,” DeSantos said, “on Hartland, in front of the first or second house, by the brick wall.”
“Have them search our car,” Vail added. “An idling Peugeot on Chalk Farm by Hartland. They’ll find Nikola Hačko in the trunk.”
He initiated the call. “This is DCI Carter. I’ve got some intel from an informant on the location of the victim and possible suspect that CO19’s responding to in Camden.” He gave them the directions and shoved the phone back in his jacket pocket.
“Get anywhere with the Home Office?” Vail asked.
“Working on it. I’ve enlisted a prosecutor’s assistance, someone we can trust. He nearly laughed me out of his office. No evidence—at least none he can present to a judge. I mean, we’re going after the Home Secretary. That’s not something you want to be wrong about.”
“We’re not sure it’s her,” Vail said. “Uzi’s still working on it, but you may need to set a trap, plant some information and see who takes the bait.”
“Now
that
I may be able to pull off.” He pointed at the approaching intersection. “Left on Finchley, it turns into Park.”
Reid wiped the fogging window with his jacket sleeve, then scanned the streets. “We’ve got Rudenko and two of the three batches of ricin. And we’ve got some direction on who might be our mole. No offense, Karen, but I think we can take it from here.”
“So we’ve been told. Uzi reached the same conclusion.”
“You need a way out, then.”
“Uzi’s going to pick us up in an Osprey. I assume he’s gonna fly us out of the country.”
Carter took his eyes off the road to glance at Vail. “An Osprey, did you say?” He shook his head. “Don’t think I want to know how he’s going to get one of those—or get you through British air space without the air force shooting you down.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Got any better ideas?”
“Not one,” Carter said.
Reid leaned forward and peered out the windshield. “Where’s the rendezvous point?”
“Don’t know,” DeSantos said. “We’re going to choose one and hope it works. We’re running out of time.”
Vail swiveled in her seat and looked out the rear window. “We’ll need to get to a place where cameras aren’t likely to be monitoring us. Any suggestions?
“The Thames,” Carter said. “Get there, take a boat, and you’ll be off the grid as much as possible in this city. The Met’s got a Marine Support Unit, but the river’s still your best bet. Uzi should be able to pick you up somewhere along the shoreline.”
DeSantos nodded. “Works for me. Get us to the Thames. We’re not that far from it.”
“No,” Vail said, swiveling around in her seat. “Angles and distance, right?” She got a surprised look from DeSantos. “If we take a straight line to the Thames, we’ll lead them right to our only way out of this mess. We need to escape and evade.”
“She’s right,” DeSantos said. “What’s the most direct roundabout way that’ll get us there?”
“The mail railway,” Carter said.
“Yes!” Reid said. “Brilliant, mate. Paddington, then?”
“What’s the mail railway?” Vail asked.
“Hold that thought,” Carter said. “We’ve got company.”
Vail twisted in her seat and saw a Metropolitan Police cruiser swinging onto Finchley behind them, light bar flashing.
58
“L
et us off!” Vail said.
Carter glanced up at his mirror. “I’m gonna slow without touching my brakes. If they don’t see the lights come on, they may not be close enough to realize that I’ve stopped. Get ready.”
“I’m going with them,” Reid said as he turned off the interior dome light. “I’ll get ’em to the railway. Can’t stay here, anyway. They’ll arrest me and make your life hell for harboring a fugitive.”
“Very well, then.” Carter downshifted to first and they lurched forward as the engine groaned. He pulled up on the handbrake, and when the vehicle had slowed enough, they popped open their doors and got out in front of a stone gazebo.
An adjacent sign told them there were standing just outside Regent’s Park. Reid led them around the far side of the structure, out of the approaching cruiser’s field of view. The police car pulled up behind Carter and flashed its lights. Carter, who had continued on after dropping off his passengers, brought the vehicle to a stop half a block away.
Vail, DeSantos, and Reid moved to the far side of the small building and waited. She heard Carter identify himself and imagined him pulling out his credentials. They would comb the sedan’s interior with their flashlights, and then send him on his way. In this neighborhood, at midnight, there were few cars on the road. Carter’s vehicle was an easy target for search, in case their shooter had escaped via automobile.
Vail watched the light bar’s reflection off the area’s buildings diminish in intensity. As she shifted position, she saw that the cruiser was headed down Park, Carter just ahead of them.
She poked her head further around the edge of the gazebo and signaled the others that it was clear.
“Looks like Carty left us a gift,” Reid said, heading for a couple of short, rod-shaped objects in the street where Carter had parked. He picked them up and handed them to DeSantos. “Flares?”
DeSantos grinned. “So Uzi can see us from the air.”
We carry ’em around in our cars for emergencies. Carter must’ve dropped them out the bottom of his door before pulling away.”
“Now what?” Vail asked.
“Baker Street Underground station.” Reid stole a look at his watch. “We’d better hurry. It’s a half mile up the street and the last train leaves soon.”