The Execution

by Dick Wolf

  Fisk moved virtually through the side streets of this neighborhood, coming to a large garage door covered in peeling paint the color of dried blood. Opposite the garage was an unbroken wall of warehouse.

  “This is it?”

  Thring nodded, relieved that his eyes could find the floor again.

  Fisk turned to Jerry. “I need the layout of the place inside.”

  Thring was not very helpful. Jerry translated, “You knock on the door. It is dark. They take money and bring you down basement, unlock door to room.”

  “Unlock door?” said Fisk.

  “Many doors,” Jerry translated.

  Many girls, thought Fisk.

  CHAPTER 61

  Fisk knew Garza would not be answering her phone, so he texted her and e-mailed her a link to the address in Bushwick. She probably wanted to stay put with the Mexican president, but it was her call.

  Dubin was at lunch when Fisk reached him. He talked over Dubin’s opening diatribe, laying out where he was headed and why.

  “You want a SWAT team?” said Dubin.

  Fisk had had about enough. He said, “Barry, this is me. Do it. Or don’t. I’m not waiting.”

  And he hung up.

  Dammit, Fisk thought. I’m going to have to do this alone.

  CHAPTER 62

  Fisk parked two blocks away. He jumped out and popped his trunk, pulling the Remington 870 shotgun from the bracket inside. He checked to make sure it was fully loaded, then filled the elastic cartridge carrier on the stock with another ten rounds of buckshot.

  He pulled on his ballistic vest, did the straps, then slipped on a blue Windbreaker over that. It read NYPD on the back in bold yellow letters. If and when the SWAT team arrived, he hoped that and the badge in his belt carrier would be enough.

  He slammed the trunk shut. A woman walked by him, carrying a string grocery bag, looking at him nervously, speeding up as she hit the corner and turned away.

  Fisk’s heart was beating rapidly. He started down the sidewalk with the shotgun held out in front of him with both hands.

  CHAPTER 63

  Cecilia Garza did not check her messages until President Vargas was safely away from the podium and back in the clutches of his security detail. Two persons had been intercepted in the crowd, one suspicious man with a backpack and another wearing a hoodie in the hot midday sun. Neither turned out to be any threat.

  The text from Fisk was vague and contained misspellings. That alone spoke to its immediacy. Did he have a lead on the Mexican prostitute who had pointed out Virgilio to Chuparosa? She found the address. She tried to call Fisk, but it went right to voice mail.

  Vargas was moving back to the hotel soon. She did not know what to do.

  CHAPTER 64

  Fisk jogged down the sidewalk toward the red garage. He could see the camera mounted on the building above it, but he was not in range yet. Trying the garage door was a third option at best, and going in through the door Thring had entered was a suicidal second. So he looked for a better first option.

  Cutting around the building before it led to a side door up a flight of four rusted stairs. It was locked, of course, but the door had a little give against his hip, so he brought the butt of the shotgun down on the handle. It broke, and he kicked in the door.

  Abandoned. Or at least emptied, awaiting a new tenant. Concrete dust lay on the floor, a file cabinet on its side. Through that room and down a hall, he found another exit door. Through the window he could see his target building. There was a bulkhead secured with a chain and lock.

  Fisk rushed back through the rooms looking for anything heavy he could use. He found a length of post pipe and picked it up. He only had one shot at this, two at the most.

  He rushed back to the exit and unlocked the door, opening it to daylight. He hopped off the stairs quickly and crouch-ran to the bulkhead, looking up at the building for windows. There were none. He heard nothing from inside.

  He set down his shotgun and slid the chain so that the lock was fully exposed. He could not hope to break the lock, but thought the force of the blow might pull off one or both of the bulkhead handles.

  He reared back and swung. The TRONGG sound echoed, and he saw the handles bend.

  He gave it another full swing without taking time to think about it—TRONGG—and the handles popped off, one bolt each.

  He pulled off the chain, nervously checking both ways, waiting for someone to come upon him. A dog barked close by, as near as the next building over.

  He grasped the half-removed handles and only then wondered what he would do if the doors were locked from inside. The padlock outside seemed to throw that into doubt, however, and when he pulled . . .

  . . . the door opened with a sick groan.

  Cement stairs coated with dust and dead bugs, leading to another door—its lock plate broken.

  Fisk thumbed the flashlight button on the fore grip of his 870 and pushed the door open.

  CHAPTER 65

  The man known as Chuparosa was upstairs watching a baseball game soundlessly on a laptop computer when he heard the twin clangs.

  Watching baseball helped him to focus. He was dressed in his black pants and tuxedo shirt, his bow tie ends dangling from his winged collar. It was a recording of an interleague game from August. The Yankees were playing the Braves in Atlanta, so there was no designated hitter. The Mexican leagues had adopted the DH at more or less the same time as the American League, and Chuparosa did not understand the reason behind splitting Major League Baseball down the middle. The game was improved by the designated hitter rule—it was a fact!

  Fortunately the Yankees were up 3–1 in the seventh. Chuparosa’s uncle, the one who raised him, had always revered the Yankees organization as the greatest sports franchise in the world. Chuparosa hated his uncle unreservedly, but agreed with him in this thing only. His ball cap sat atop the table next to the computer, between it and a copy of H Para Hombres magazine with a picture of an almost naked Ninel Conde on the cover.

  The noise was so startling and so loud, so obvious, he immediately dismissed it as the product of a nearby worker. But nothing could be left to chance.

  Tomás Calibri came running into the room, buttoning up his trousers, the sound of the flushing toilet coming through the bathroom door.

  “What is that, patrón?”

  “Find out,” said Chuparosa.

  Calibri reached for the silenced MP5 submachine gun standing by the door.

  Chuparosa said, “We are just a few hours away from glory. Do not take any chances.”

  CHAPTER 66

  The flashlight mounted on Fisk’s Remington 870 was a recently purchased SureFire—incredibly powerful, but it gobbled batteries at an outrageous rate.

  Inside the broken door to the basement, Fisk briefly swept the dark room, making certain no one was there to shoot him as he silhouetted himself in the doorway. Then he thumbed the flashlight off again. He did not want to go dark-blind. Nor did he want to tip off his location.

  The noise of his entry had surely alerted anyone inside the warehouse.

  He moved left, along a narrow walkway, cutting quickly through the blackness, ears straining.

  Footsteps, above. He switched his light on again, directing it at the ceiling. Heart pine over massive old wooden beams. The creaks were farther away than that. A second floor above him.

  He moved quickly down the hallway—too quickly, misjudging the end of the hall and bumping into the wall so abruptly he saw stars. He stopped, shaking it off. He turned right. He blinked the SureFire on and then off again.

  Along the wide side of the room stood a series of unlabeled doors. As many as eight.

  He aimed the light down, low to the ground, minimizing its illumination, and hurried across the gritty cement floor to the first door.

  He put his hand on the knob but did not turn it. “Hello?” he whispered, remembering Thring’s description of the room the hooker had been locked inside.

  “Come in
,” said a female voice, barely audible, trembling.

  Fisk tried the door, shotgun muzzle up. The knob turned. The door only locked from the inside, to keep its occupant from escaping. The flashlight blinded the young girl inside, who was no older than fifteen, sitting naked on a bare cot next to a chair with folded bedsheets stacked upon it.

  With one thin arm, she blocked her eyes. With the other she attempted to cover her small breasts.

  Fisk froze there for a moment. Then he grabbed the knob and pulled the door shut again.

  Fisk backed away from the door. He looked down the wide room at the other doors.

  Best to leave them locked in for now.

  He quickly checked his silenced phone. No reception down here.

  He put his phone away and thumbed off the light, picking his way across the room in darkness. The odor here was foul, the air uncirculated. He neared the end of the room and thought he could make out a flight of stairs headed up. He turned on his SureFire again . . . but the image he saw before him burned itself onto his retina, even after he shut off his flashlight again.

  There, against the wall and on the floor, the amount of dried, brown blood was astonishing.

  Slung against the paneled wall, splashed against the concrete floor.

  Fisk held his breath in an attempt not to breathe in the fumes. He thumbed on the light again.

  He saw the divots in the floor, amid all the smeared blood. He swung his light to the corner, where stood a tool resembling a post-hole digger, its blade crusted brown.

  The scene was even grimmer the second time he looked at it. Grim and infinitely sad.

  This was where the Rockaway thirteen had been decapitated and otherwise maimed.

  CHAPTER 67

  Chuparosa checked the exterior surveillance cameras, front and back. There was nobody outside the building, no vehicles except those parked along the curb, nothing moving. No police cars, no vans.

  If it was a cop, he had come alone. Which meant he was crazy or stupid.

  If it was not a cop, who could it be? The unluckiest thief in the history of the world? Or another, unexpected threat?

  Chuparosa buckled on his holster containing the Glock 21. He reached for the M4 carbine he had stolen from a drug dealer three weeks before.

  He decided he wanted to keep eyes and ears on Calibri, and started down the stairs after him. Tomás Calibri had been shot twice fighting communist guerrillas during his stint in the Mexican military, where he was awarded the Condecoración al Valor Heroico and the Cruz de Guerra. Three years later he offered his mercenary services to the Zetas. He was a man of questionable intelligence, in Chuparosa’s opinion, as well as being a little insane—but he was a good man in a fight.

  Calibri was starting toward the door to the basement. As Chuparosa came off the bottom step, the elevator from the basement groaned to life, the thick cable starting to pull the car upward.

  Chuparosa motioned to Calibri to take up a position opposite him by the elevator door. Calibri could cover the elevator while Chuparosa watched the basement door, and they could each shoot without concern for hitting each other.

  The elevator hummed and whined and shuddered as it moved up toward them.

  Whoever this strange visitor was, they had him.

  CHAPTER 68

  Chuparosa, thought Fisk, quickly surveying the room by flashlight. He spotted a freight elevator gaping open, a rectangular slab of darkness in the wall. He thought to try the stairs first—quieter—but he had already announced his presence with the bulkhead chain.

  The sound of the freight elevator would certainly put whoever was upstairs on alert, but it was time to take a chance. He was alone in an unfamiliar building. The advantage was theirs.

  The Hummingbird might be up there.

  The freight elevator was an ancient thing. It operated with a worn, old-fashioned brass handle that you pushed one direction or the other. Right was up, left was down. A spring forced it back to the off position as soon as you let go of it.

  If it even worked.

  There were no automatic doors, no safety features, just a telescoping grating that you pulled across the face of the elevator. Or not. It operated either way.

  Back in the good old days before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, before city inspectors and class action lawsuits, if you didn’t pay attention and you hung your foot out of an elevator, it was severed at the ankle. And it was your own damn fault.

  So Fisk did not have to close the grating or the door to get the elevator to move. Instead he simply pushed the brass handle to the right. The elevator sighed deeply, then jerked to life, rising slowly.

  He knew he would only have a moment to find out whether he could pull off the trick he was considering. He risked a flash with his SureFire as the base of the elevator rose, and he crouched and surveyed the undercarriage to see if there was anything there he could grip and hold on to. As it moved upward, he saw that the base consisted of a network of iron struts. The bottom cable was straightening slowly. Fisk switched off his flashlight and moved quickly.

  He grasped one of the struts with his left hand and dangled there, the shotgun in his right. He turned so that he was facing in the direction of the door as the car rose.

  He realized he would again only have a few moments to evaluate his situation once he reached the first floor. If he was spotted, he would have to let go and fall back into the darkness—and probably break both ankles. The pit in which the elevator rested contained some kind of base or spring assembly to cushion the elevator, so there was an excellent chance he would fall on something very hard—maybe slicing his flesh or even impaling himself.

  So dropping free of the elevator was the least attractive option.

  His hand started to burn. The strut was hard-edged and thin, cutting into the base of all four fingers. The elevator shook, thumped, paused, then continued onward. Each movement threatened to break his grip. Fisk was concerned that if he had to hang there too long, the sharp edges would cut right through.

  The top of the elevator was rising into view on the first floor.

  A voice, whispered, Spanish: “Empty. A diversion.”

  “The stairs then.” The second voice was softer, dubious.

  Fisk hoisted the pistol grip of his shotgun up into firing position. It was a pump gun, which meant he needed both hands to cycle it. Since he was hanging with one hand, Fisk had only one shot. Then it was either fall back into the dark uncertainty, leap onto the first floor and take the fight to the voices, or hang on and ride up to the top floor.

  As the base of the elevator cleared the lip of the first floor, Fisk could see again. Two pairs of feet, shiny black shoes, one near, one farther down the hallway. Toes facing away from him.

  Time crawled as the gap beneath the elevator and the floor grew larger and larger. Fisk only had one shot. He had to be sure.

  Just then the near set of feet jogged down to join the other at the end of the hall. A bolt was thrown and they started through a door.

  Before they disappeared, he saw a submachine gun in the second one’s hands.

  Fisk heard, under the groaning of the elevator mechanism, footsteps echoing on the metal stairs.

  They were going down just as he was coming up.

  Slowly the first floor scrolled fully into Fisk’s vision. His waist passed the floor, then his thighs, then his knees.

  Enough finally to swing out and jump. He hit the ground with a thump—no way to land softly—and paused to shake the fire out of his left hand and forearm. Another second or two and his grip would have failed. It had been that close.

  He was one man with a shotgun against two men with submachine guns. The smart play was to retreat, to get out of the building and wait for support.

  Then he remembered the girls trapped down in the basement.

  And the bulkhead door, open to freedom.

  As he was starting down the hall to the open door, a figure suddenly appeared in it. Dressed i
n white and black like a waiter, he also had a large paunch. He raised the muzzle of an MP5 and unleashed a short, disciplined burst of submachine gun fire.

  Fisk felt as though he’d been hit in the chest with a brick.

  Instinctively he pulled back on the trigger of the 870 as the impact shoved him backward. The roar was deafening in the enclosed space.

  But the gunman was already gone. Fisk’s ears were ringing too loudly to hear his own footsteps on the metal stairs going down.

  It was only then that Fisk realized he’d been shot. He looked down. All three rounds had struck his vest, which, because of the gunman’s apparent military training and skill as a shooter, had saved Fisk’s life.

  A worse shot might have hit him in the face or the neck or the groin or the arm.

  This guy had put three rounds dead center, destroying nothing but Kevlar.

  A man that good would not make the same mistake twice. Center mass was standard military training, but once you knew your enemy was wearing body armor, you went for the head.

  Fisk pumped the shotgun and charged down the hallway. For the first time in his life, he felt an odd fatalistic sense that things just might not break his way. And to his surprise, it did not really bother him. Something about it seemed natural and right.

  The whole series of thoughts just came and went like a small dark cloud passing over the sun on a summer day.

  He rushed through the doorway to the stairs. If the men had been waiting, he would have been cut to shreds.

  They were not. Fisk ran to the bottom, passing the bloody wall and floor, passing the horrified screams of the girls behind the locked doors. The open door above left enough light that Fisk did not have to use his SureFire. He did not want to risk moving his hand off the rifle pump anyway.

  As Fisk turned into the narrow hallway, he fired a quick round just to keep them honest. It lit up the tight space, but Fisk saw no one. He racked the 870 again and continued his charge.