"Well, I'm not thinking about procedure," she snapped. "There're two children alone in there and they just heard a shoot-out in front of their apartment. Wouldn't you think they'd be a little scared?"
Coe had had enough reprimands for one day. Silently he turned and walked back to his car without a word, pulling out his cell phone as he left. He too drove off angrily, his phone pressed against his ear.
Sachs then called Rhyme and gave him the bad news.
"What happened?" Rhyme asked, even angrier than Dellray.
"One of our people fired before we were in position. The street wasn't sealed and the Ghost shot his way out . . . . Rhyme, it was Alan who fired the shot."
"Coe?"
"Right."
"Oh, no."
"Dellray's bumping the INS down a notch."
"Peabody won't like that."
"At this point Fred's in no mood to care about what people like and don't."
"Good," Rhyme said. "We need somebody to take charge. We're groping around in the dark on this one. I don't like it." Then he asked, "Casualties?"
"A few officers and civies wounded. Nothing serious." She noticed Eddie Deng. "I've got to get the Wus' children, Rhyme. I'll call you back after I run the scene."
She disconnected the call and said to Deng, "Need some translation help, Eddie. With the Wus' kids."
"Sure."
Pointing to the bullet-pocked four-by-four, Sachs said to another officer, "Keep it sealed. I'll run the scene in a minute." The cop nodded in response.
Deng and Sachs walked to the apartment. She said, "I don't want the kids to go downtown to the INS alone, Eddie. Can you sneak 'em out of here and get 'em to their parents at the clinic?"
"Sure."
They walked down the few stairs that led to the basement apartments. Garbage littered the alleyway and Sachs knew the rooms here would be dark, probably infested with roaches and would undoubtedly stink. Imagine, she thought: the Wus had risked death and imprisonment and endured the physical pain of their terrible journey just for the privilege of calling this filthy place their home.
"What's the number?" Deng asked, walking ahead of Sachs.
"One B," she answered.
He started toward the door.
It was then that Sachs noticed a key in the front-door lock of the Wus' apartment.
A key? she wondered.
Deng reached for the knob.
"No," Sachs cried, unholstering her weapon. "Wait!"
But it was too late. Deng was pushing the door open anyway. He leapt back--away from the slight, dark man with his arm around a sobbing teenage girl's waist, holding her in front of him as a shield, a pistol pressed against her neck.
Chapter Twenty-five
"Ting, ting!" Eddie Deng shouted in panic.
The young detective's weaponless hands rose above his spiny hair.
No one moved. Sachs heard a multitude of sounds: the girl's whimpering, the low hiss of traffic, horns from the street. The gunman's desperate orders in a language she didn't understand. Her own heartbeats.
She turned sideways, to present a smaller target, and centered the blade sights of her Glock on as much of his head as presented. The rule was this: as difficult as it was, you never sacrificed yourself. You never gave up your weapon, you never turned it aside in a standoff, you never let a perp draw a target anywhere on your body. You had to make them understand that the hostage wasn't going to save them.
The man started forward very slowly, motioning them back, still muttering in his unintelligible language.
Neither Sachs nor the young detective moved.
"You in armor, Deng?" she whispered.
"Yeah" came the shaky reply.
She was too--an American Body Armor vest with a Super Shok heart plate--but at this range a shot could easily do major damage to an unprotected part of their bodies. A nick in the femoral artery could kill you faster than some chest shots would.
"Back out," she whispered. "I need better light for shooting."
"You going to shoot?" Deng asked uncertainly.
"Just back out."
She took a step behind her. Another. The young cop, sweat gleaming between the thorns of his hair, didn't move. Sachs stopped. He was muttering something, maybe a prayer.
"Eddie, you with me?" she whispered. After a pause: "Eddie, goddamn it!"
He shook his head. "Sorry. Sure."
"Come on, slow." To the man gripping the teenage girl Sachs spoke in a cooing voice and very slowly: "Put the gun down. Let's not anybody get hurt. Do you speak English?"
They backed away. The man followed.
"English?" she tried again.
Nothing.
"Eddie, tell him we'll work something out."
"He's not Han," Deng said. "He won't speak Chinese."
"Try it anyway."
A burst of sounds from Deng's mouth. The staccato words were startling.
The man didn't respond.
The two officers backed toward the front of the alleyway. Not a single goddamn cop or agent noticed them. Sachs thought, Where the hell are all of our people?
The assailant and the terrified girl, the gun tucked against her neck, moved forward and stepped outside too.
"You," the man barked to Sachs in crude English, "on ground. Both on ground."
"No," Sachs said, "we're not lying down. I'm asking you to put your gun down. You can't get away. Hundreds of police. You understand?" As she spoke she adjusted her target--his cheek--in the slightly better light here. But it was a very narrow bull's-eye. And the girl's temple was a scant inch to the right of it. He was of very slim build and Sachs had no body shot at all.
The man glanced behind him, up the dark alley.
"He's going to fire and then make a run for it," Deng said in a quavering voice.
"Listen," Sachs called calmly. "We're not going to hurt you. We--"
"No!" The man shoved the gun harder against the girl's neck. She screamed.
Then Deng reached for his sidearm.
"Eddie, don't!" Sachs cried.
"Bu!" the assailant called and thrust his gun forward, firing into Deng's chest. The detective grunted violently from the impact and fell backward, against Sachs, knocking her to the ground. Deng rolled onto his belly, retching--or coughing blood; she couldn't tell. The round might've pierced the body armor at this range. Stunned, Sachs struggled to her knees. The gunman aimed at her before she could raise her weapon.
But he hesitated. There was some distraction behind him. The shooter looked back. In the darkness of the alleyway Sachs could make out a man speeding forward, a small figure, holding something in his hand.
The perp released the girl and spun around, lifting the gun, but before he could shoot, the running figure clocked him in the side of the head with what he was carrying--a brick.
"Hongse!" Sonny Li called to Sachs, dropping the brick and pulling the girl away from the stunned assailant. Li pushed her to the ground and turned back to the dark man, who clutched his bleeding head. But suddenly he jumped back and lifted his pistol toward Li, who stumbled back against the wall.
Three fast shots from Sachs's gun dropped the attacker like a doll onto the cobblestones and he lay motionless.
"Judges of hell," Sonny Li gasped, staring at the body. He stepped forward, checked the man's pulse then lifted the gun out of his lifeless hand. "Dead, Hongse," he called. Then Li turned back to the girl, helping her up. Sobbing, she ran down the alley, past Sachs, and into the arms of a Chinese officer from the Fifth Precinct, who began comforting her in their common language.
Med techs ran to Deng to check him out. The vest had indeed stopped the slug but the impact might have cracked a rib or two. "I'm sorry," he gasped to Sachs. "I just reacted."
"Your first firefight?"
He nodded.
She smiled. "Welcome to the club." The medic helped him up and they took him out to be examined more thoroughly in an EMS bus.
Sachs and two ESU officers
cleared the apartment and found a young, panicked boy, about eight, in the bathroom. With the help of a Chinese-American cop from the Fifth Precinct to translate, the medics checked the siblings out and found that neither of them had been hurt or molested by the Ghost's partner.
Sachs glanced back into the alley, where another medic and two uniformed officers stood over the corpse of the assailant. "I have to process the body," she reminded them. "I don't want it disturbed more than necessary."
"Sure, Officer," came the reply.
Nearby, Sonny Li patted his pockets and finally located his pack of cigarettes. If he hadn't found any she wouldn't've been surprised to see him rifle the dead man's pockets.
*
Putting on her Tyvek suit to search the crime scenes, Amelia Sachs glanced up to see Li walking toward her.
She laughed to see the cheery grin on the little man. "How?" she asked.
"How what?"
"How the hell d'you figure out the Wus were here?"
"I ask you same thing."
"You tell me first." She sensed he was eager to brag--and she was happy to let him.
"Okay." He finished the cigarette and lit another. "Way I work in China. I go places, talk to people. Tonight I go to gambling halls, three of them. Lose some money, win some money, drink. And talk and talk. Finally meet guy at poker table, carpenter. Fuzhounese. He tell me about man come in earlier, nobody know him. Complaining to everybody about women, about what he had to do for family 'cause wife sick and broke arm. Bragging about money he going make. Then he say he on Dragon this morning and rescue everybody when it sink. Had to be Wu. Liver-spleen disharmony, I'm saying. He say he living nearby. I ask around and find about this block. Lots meet-and-greet snakeheads put people here who just arrive. I come over and look around, ask people, see if anybody know anything and find out family--just like Wus--move in today. I check out building and look through back window and see guy with gun. Hey, you look in back window first, Hongse?"
"No, I didn't."
"Maybe you should done that. That good rule. Always look in back window first."
"I should have, Sonny." She nodded in the direction of the dead shooter.
"Too bad he not alive," Li said glumly. "Could been helpful."
"You don't really torture people to get them to talk, do you?" she asked.
But the Chinese cop just gave a cryptic smile. He asked, "Hongse, how you find Wus?"
Sachs explained to Li how they'd found the Wus through the wife's injury.
Li nodded, impressed with Rhyme's deductions. "But what happen to Ghost?"
Sachs explained about the premature gunshot and the snakehead's escape.
"Coe?"
"That's right," she agreed.
"Big fuck . . . . I not like that man, I'm saying. When he over in China at meeting in Fuzhou we not trust him much. Walk into room and not like us, nobody there. Talk like we children, want to do case against Ghost by himself. Talk bad about immigrants. Disappear at times when we need him." Li looked over the Tyvek overalls. He frowned. "Why you wear that suit, Hongse?"
"So I don't contaminate the evidence."
"Bad color. Shouldn't wear white. Color of death in my country, color of funerals, I'm saying. Throw it out. You get red suit. Red is good-luck color in China. Not blue either. Get red suit."
"It's enough of a target in white."
"Not good," he said. "Bad feelings." He remembered a word that Deng had taught him earlier. "Bad omen, I'm saying."
"I'm not superstitious," Sachs said.
"I am," Li said. "Lots people in China are. Always saying prayers, sacrificing, cutting demon's tail--"
"Cutting what?" she interrupted.
"Called cutting demon's tail. See, demons follow you always so when you cross traffic you run fast in front of car. That cut off demon's tail and take his power away."
"Don't people ever get hit?"
"Sometimes."
"Then don't they know it doesn't work?"
"No, only know that sometimes you cut his tail, sometimes demon get you."
Cutting the demon's tail . . .
Sachs got Li to promise he'd stay out of the crime scene--at least until she was finished--and then processed the dead gunman's body, walked the grid inside the apartment and finally searched the Ghost's bullet-riddled SUV. She bagged and tagged all the evidence and finally stripped off the space suit.
Then she and Li drove back to the clinic, where she found the Wu family reunited in a room guarded by two uniformed cops and a stony-faced woman INS agent. With Li and the agent translating, Sachs got as much information as she could. Though Wu Qichen knew nothing about the Ghost's whereabouts in the city, the scrawny, embittered man gave her some information about the Changs, including the name of the infant with them, Po-Yee, which meant Treasured Child.
What a lovely name, thought Amelia Sachs.
She said to the INS agent, "They're going to detention?"
"Right. Until the hearing."
"Do you have a problem putting them in one of our safehouses?" The NYPD had several nondescript, high-security town houses in the city, used for witness protection. INS detention centers for illegal immigrants were notoriously lax. Besides, the Ghost would be expecting them to go to an Immigration facility and, with his guanxi, might pay someone in the detention center to let him or a bangshou inside to try to kill the family again.
"Fine with us."
The town house in Murray Hill was free, Sachs knew. She gave the agent the address and the name of the NYPD officer who oversaw the houses.
The INS agent then looked at Wu and, like a bad-tempered schoolteacher, said, "Why don't you people just stay at home? Fix your problems there. You almost got your wife and family killed."
Wu's English wasn't good but apparently he understood her. He rose from his wife's bedside and gestured broadly. "Not our fault!" he snapped, leaning toward the sour woman. "Coming here not our fault!"
Amused, the INS agent asked, "Not your fault? Who do you want to blame?"
"You country!"
"How do you figure that?"
"You not see? Look around! All you money and richnesses, you advertising, you computers, you Nikes and Levis, cars, hair spray . . . You Leonardo DiCaprio, you beautiful women. You pills for everything, you makeup, you television! You tell whole world you got fuck everything here! Meiguo is all money, all freedom, all safe. You tell us everybody how good is here. You take our money, but you say to us mei-you, go away! You tell us our human rights terrible, but when we try come here you say mei-you!"
The thin man lapsed into Chinese then calmed. He looked the woman up and down, nodded at her blond hair. "What your ancestor? Italians, Englishes, Germans? They in this country first? Huh, tell me." He waved angrily and sat down on the bed, put his hand on his wife's uninjured arm.
The agent shook her head, smiling in a condescending way, as if astonished that the immigrant couldn't figure out the obvious.
Sachs left the somber family behind and motioned Li after her to the clinic exit. They paused at the curb then jogged between two fast-moving taxis. Sachs wondered if she'd been close enough to the second one to cut the tail off any demons pursuing her.
*
The building and the garage beneath it were virtually impregnable but the parking garage annex in an underground structure across the street was far less so.
Concern about terrorist bombs had prompted the Government Services Administration to limit access to the garage under Manhattan Federal Plaza. There were so many federal employees that it would create huge bottlenecks to check every vehicle that entered the garage under the building itself, so that facility was closed to all but the most senior government officials and the one next door constructed for other employees. There was still security in the annex, of course, but since the garage sat beneath a small park, even the worst bomb damage would be limited.
In fact, tonight at 9 P.M. the security was not at its best because the one guard on duty
at the entrance booth was watching some excitement: a car fire on Broadway. An old van was burning down to its tires--a conflagration observed by hundreds of happy passersby.
The chunky guard had stepped out of his booth, watching the black smoke and orange flames dancing through the windows of the van.
So he didn't notice the slight man dressed in a suit and carrying an attache case step quickly into the "autos only" entrance and hurry down the ramp into the half-deserted garage.
The man had memorized the license plate number of the car he sought and it took him only five minutes to find it. The navy blue government-issue vehicle was very close to the main exit door; the driver had this choice spot because he'd arrived only a half hour ago--long after the offices had closed and most of the federal employees had left for the day.
Like nearly all federal cars--the man had been assured--there was no alarm. After a fast glance around the garage he pulled on cloth gloves, quickly drove a wedge between the window and the side of the door, slipped a slim-jim tool inside the space and popped the lock. He opened his attache case and took out a heavy paper bag, glanced inside for one final check. He saw the cluster of foot-long yellow sticks on whose side were the words: EXPLOSIVE. DANGER. SEE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USE. Wires ran from a detonator in one of the sticks to a battery box and from there to a simple pressure switch. He placed the bag under the driver's seat, unwound a length of wire, then slipped the pressure switch between the springs of the seat. Anyone who weighed more than ninety pounds would complete the circuit and set off the detonator simply by sitting down.
The man clicked the power switch on the battery box from OFF to ON and locked the door of the car, closed it as quietly as he could and left the garage, walking matter-of-factly past the still-oblivious security guard, raptly watching the NYFD douse the flames of the burning van though with a little disappointment in his face--as if he was sorry that the gas tank hadn't blown up spectacularly, as they always did in action flicks and TV shows.
Chapter Twenty-six
They sat in silence, watching the small television set, William translating those words that his parents didn't understand.
The special news report didn't give the names of the people who'd nearly been killed on Canal Street but there was no doubt that it was Wu Qichen and his family; the story said they'd been passengers on the Fuzhou Dragon that morning. One of the Ghost's confederates had been killed but the snakehead himself had escaped with one or two others.
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