“Damn,” Johanna said. “Back this way.”
They turned and ran the opposite direction down the lane, the last row of huts on their right and the cyclone fence on their left, the south corner of the lot a hundred yards away. The tow truck—Tiger behind the wheel—pulled into their lane behind them and sped in their direction. Johanna backpedaled as she squeezed off a few shotgun blasts in the direction of the truck, and Wally did the same with her handgun, but the young Russian swerved side to side in the lane just enough to avoid a direct hit from any of the shots.
The others followed Wally as she ducked between two of the huts to make it over to the next lane, sidestepping a half Dumpster and a pyramid of potted plants to make it through, but as soon as they emerged, they found the taxi there—Klesko behind the wheel—already racing in their direction. The taxicab would easily cut them down if they tried to cross his path.
“Back!” Wally barked.
She reversed course, Tevin and Johanna following as she sped between the next two huts, headed back in the direction of the perimeter fence, where the tow truck was still patrolling. As they ran, Johanna blasted two more shots at the taxicab, but then the chamber of the shotgun rang empty. Johanna tossed the useless weapon aside and continued after Wally.
In the cab of the tow truck, Tiger scanned the row of Quonset huts to his right, where the three had disappeared. He slowed the truck but kept moving forward; he knew Klesko was defending the next lane over, and he expected their quarry would be herded back in his direction soon.
Suddenly there was a blur of motion directly ahead of him as a half Dumpster came wheeling out into his path, the girl and the two others pushing it with all their strength. Tiger had no time to react and blasted into the Dumpster with the crash bumper of his tow truck. It was a major jolt, but the truck was clearly the winner. He accelerated and turned his wheel to the right, plowing the Dumpster out of the lane and into one of the Quonset huts amid a shower of sparks. He backed the truck up ten feet, then surged forward again, wheeling around the Dumpster and racing after the three fleeing figures as they sprinted toward the perimeter fence.
As they moved, the girl and her friends hurled various loose objects into the truck’s path, hoping to slow Tiger’s progress as he hunted them down. They rolled a round metal picnic table with a large sun umbrella into his path. The massive truck plowed it under. Tiger was only slightly inconvenienced by the umbrella, which became stuck on the hood, blocking his view. He never even slowed down but reached out his window and tossed the umbrella aside.
More obstacles stood in his path—large earthenware pots with plants in them, large plastic garbage bins, a wooden trellis, a big barbecue grill on wheels—but none of it was anything more than a minor annoyance as Tiger charged on, the corner of the perimeter fence looming closer. Looking forward, Tiger beheld an unexpected sight: the young “Aretha” girl was standing fifty feet ahead in the lane, directly in his path, her handgun raised in his general direction—but not exactly. Her gun was pointed lower, toward his front wheels. Tiger wondered briefly what the girl was thinking; the truck’s crash bumper would protect the engine, and even a tire blowout would not slow him down enough. Then he knew.
“Shit!” Tiger growled.
Wally stood her ground in the lane, aiming her gun carefully at the barbecue grill that was half-plowed under the tow truck’s nose and dragging on the ground. Attached to the barbecue was a medium-size propane tank, and Wally had the tank in her sights. The driver of the truck seemed to realize the danger at the very last moment, and he swerved the truck directly into the row of huts, running over a pile of lumber scraps that were stacked outside one of the dwellings. As the truck ran over the pile, the loose boards dislodged the barbecue from underneath it.
Wally took her shot at the propane tank—now rolling away just to the side of the truck—and the tank exploded in a fireball. The blast did not blow the truck into the air as Wally had hoped it would, but the ploy succeeded anyway: to avoid the explosion, the driver of the truck veered hard to the right, plowing right through one of the Quonset huts and into the next lane over.
“Yes!” Tevin whooped.
But there was little time for celebration. Apparently the taxicab had abandoned its patrol of the next lane, because it was now barreling at them in their own lane from the same direction the tow truck had taken. A crazed-looking Klesko was behind the wheel, plowing aside any remaining obstacles as it sped toward them.
“Come on,” Wally commanded, and the three of them raced on to the end of the lane, where the fence surrounding the Navy Yard came to a corner, forbiddingly high and with the same barrier of razor wire on top. The taxi was closing fast on their position.
“There!” Johanna pointed ahead to the last Quonset hut, which had a ramp out front for wheelchair access. “We can use that. …”
The three of them set upon the wooden ramp—fifteen feet long, at least—dragging it away from the hut and over to the fence. They struggled to tilt the heavy wooden structure straight up to its full height and then tipped it over, toppling the ramp like a felled tree. The ramp crashed down heavily onto the fence, and it sagged a few feet outward under the weight.
Before Wally could react, Johanna reached out and grabbed the Glock out of her hand.
“What are you doing?” Wally asked. “Let’s go—”
“I’m right behind you!” Johanna shouted back. “Go now!”
She turned toward the approaching taxicab and blasted away with the Glock. Klesko ducked down beneath the dashboard to avoid the shots and the cab careened into a hut, coming to a crashing stop.
As Johanna continued to fire—making sure Klesko stayed pinned in the cab—Tevin pushed Wally ahead of him and up the ramp, its slope steep enough that Wally had to grip the handrail to pull herself up. As she climbed upward, she looked back over her shoulder, panicked that Johanna was lingering too long as she tried to cover Wally and Tevin’s escape.
“COME NOW!” Wally shouted at Johanna, with no response.
“Keep going, Wally,” Tevin shouted, and continued to push her from behind. “Get over the fence and she’ll come.”
Wally understood that Johanna would not make her own escape until Wally herself was free, so she scampered up the last few feet of the ramp and dropped down over the side of the fence, where a row of Dumpsters made the distance easy to jump. As soon as she had touched down safely, Wally called back to Johanna.
“NOW! PLEASE!” she yelled.
Johanna tucked the Glock into her belt, then turned on her heels and scrambled up the ramp. Tevin waited at the top to help her over, reaching out as she approached. Johanna was within an arm’s length of Tevin when a mighty roar came from the direction of the next lane over. The tow truck came blasting through the last hut at full ramming speed, tearing the hut off its cement foundation.
The entire hut bent in half from the impact and surged forward with a thunderous sound of tortured metal. The hut collided with the escape ramp, driving it off the fence and crashing it down. Johanna and Tevin rode the ramp to the ground, still inside the Navy Yard and on the wrong side of the fence from where Wally now stood.
“Run!” Wally implored them from over the fence. She grabbed onto the fence desperately, wishing now that she was still on the other side so she could help her friends or share their fate. “Get away!”
But there was nowhere Johanna and Tevin could go. Wally watched helplessly as they tried to pick themselves up from the wreckage, but now Klesko and Tiger emerged from their vehicles and rushed forward, their guns drawn. Wally could only look on in horror as disaster unfolded.
Johanna saw the two men coming toward them and reached back for the handgun under her belt, but … it was gone. Dazed, she looked around the wreckage of the ramp and the destroyed hut, desperate to find her weapon. She could not find it, but Tevin did; the gun sat on the ground before him. He stared at it for a second as if examining a foreign object. He picked it up, and from the f
irst moment of contact, it was painfully obvious that he had never held a gun before. He awkwardly raised the gun and steadied it with both hands, then took aim at the approaching killers.
“NO!” Wally shouted, but it was too late. As Tevin raised the barrel of the gun, a barrage of gunfire came from Klesko and Tiger, cutting into the boy. He dropped to the ground, instantly lifeless.
“TEVIN!” Wally wailed in agony as she watched her friend die. She truly felt at that moment as if the bullets had entered her as well, ripping through her own flesh as they had ripped through Tevin’s, tearing away whatever it was that held life and love. For what seemed like forever she stood motionless, staring with horror and disbelief at Tevin, waiting for a sign of life that in her heart she knew would never come ever again.
“Oh, Tevin … oh God. …” Wally mouthed the words, but there was almost no sound, the air finding no way out of her clenched chest.
But Wally’s anguish did nothing to stop the violence from continuing.
Within seconds the two Russians were on top of Johanna. Klesko pistol-whipped her and she dropped to the ground, barely conscious as she groaned loudly in pain. Klesko did not slow his pace but kept moving forward, stepping over Johanna and charging the fence toward Wally, his gun still raised.
Wally stood frozen there for just a moment, still shocked nearly senseless by Tevin’s slaughter and the sight of Johanna brutally struck down, her unconscious body now under the control of the two killers. The sight of Klesko raising his gun toward her now, however, stirred her primal sense of survival; she ran, her escape shielded by the Dumpsters against the fence. Klesko threw himself at the cyclone fence and climbed just high enough to get a shot at Wally as she retreated, but when he drew her into his sights and pulled the trigger, the hammer clicked harmlessly. His mag was empty.
“Fuck!” Klesko howled, dropping to the ground and pounding furiously against the fence as Wally made her escape.
TWENTY-EIGHT
It had taken Atley more than a day to find Special Agent Bill Horst. There had been half a dozen unreturned phone calls to the Manhattan field office and Bill’s home, and finally a drop-in visit to the field office, where he never even made it past security. Atley had no luck at all until late the following night, when a call went out over the cop channels about a gun battle in Brooklyn that had involved federal agents.
Atley took a chance and made the drive over the bridge, headed for the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He was en route when some details about the battle came over the radio.
Holy shit, Atley thought, listening to the police broadcast. Wallis Stoneman, the runaway, already being sought for questioning in the murder of Dr. Charlene Rainer, had been present at the Navy Yard shoot-out as well. Now an APB came over the radio and it was official: every law enforcement agency in New York was actively looking for Wally. Atley still had no clue what Wallis was up to or how the Sophia Manetti murder figured into it, but he felt vindicated that he had spent so much of his time tracking the girl. Whatever was going on, Wallis Stoneman was in the middle of it.
It was almost nine o’clock that night when Atley arrived at the old Brooklyn Navy Yard, where a fleet of police cruisers and emergency vehicles and news vans had the traffic completely blocked. He double-parked a few blocks away and walked to the yard, badging his way through two Brooklyn police lines. On the way, Atley used his cell phone to dial Special Agent Bill Horst—his fourth try in the past hour—and Horst finally picked up.
“Where are you?” Bill greeted the call.
“Near the gate,” Atley said.
“Here at the yard?” Bill sounded unhappy. “Shit. Stay where you are, Atley. I’ll find you. Do NOT come through the gate.”
Bill hung up before Atley could reply. Atley obeyed Bill’s instruction, hanging back from the broken gate at the yard and waiting for Bill to emerge from the crime scene chaos across the street. Bill Horst finally appeared at the gate of the Navy Yard. He spotted Atley on the opposite sidewalk and crossed over to join him.
“Why are you here?” Bill demanded brusquely. “We got three dead ATF agents over there—I personally knew two of the guys more than ten years—”
“Shit, Bill …I’m sorry.”
“It’s a bad scene in too many ways, Atley. All the agencies want to keep this federal.”
“I get it,” Atley said, “but you have an APB out for Wallis Stoneman. That’s all I need to know about.”
Now Bill looked even more exasperated. Before speaking, he steered Atley halfway up Carlton Street, away from any curious feds who might spot him talking to an NYPD suit cop.
“So what the hell?” Atley asked.
“Your BOLO was here,” Horst said. “The street girl. That’s confirmed. You’re not hearing this from me, but these three agents? It’s looking like they were off the res, running their own thing. None of their ACs have any idea what they were doing down here.”
“Running what? What were they into?”
Bill Horst hesitated, struggling with the decision. He snuck a look over his shoulder, back in the direction of the Navy Yard crime scene, still anxious that someone from his team would spot him talking to a local cop.
“It’s just you and me here, Bill,” Atley reassured his friend.
Bill sighed and began to talk. “Atley, you remember back all the way to when I got pulled out of our academy class? I know you guys resented it, how I was picked like that, like the feds thought I was the ace of the goddamn class or something.”
“And you weren’t?”
“They basically picked me for body type. You believe that shit? There was a joint FBI and ATF unit that joined an Interpol operation in Eastern Europe—Bulgaria—and they were looking for guys who fit the genetics. Plus, I speak German from my folks. And I was a clean face.”
“Okay,” Atley said, surprising himself that he was in fact relieved, a little, to hear this. Had he really been holding that bullshit grudge all these years?
“Make you feel better?” Horst said with a weary smirk.
“A little. Yeah.”
“So I’ll spare you the long story that mostly has nothing to do with this case,” Bill continued. “Just know it was about Russian guns—everything moves through Bulgaria—and we were on it for two years. There was this one mover that we spent a lot of time trying to nail, name of Klesko. Came up with the Dobrik mob as a fixer, moved up to bigger things. Nasty motherfucker, highly productive. The international task force—including us—nailed him fifteen years ago on a tip about an arms exchange. The legend on the street was that his girlfriend was the one who tipped us and took off with his entire negotiable stash, worth millions in cash and precious stones. Over the years, a lot of folks have been looking for the girlfriend—”
“Meaning they’ve been looking for Klesko’s stash.” Atley was slowly putting it together.
“More than ten years and they’ve never stopped.”
“So how the hell does Wallis Stoneman figure into all this shit?”
“We don’t know yet, Atley, but the two shooters you faced off with? The other night at the shrink’s office?”
“You know about all that?”
“I told you, Atley,” Bill said with a wry grin, “we’re all big fans of your work.”
“Funny.”
“No, we got called in when the two shooters were ID’d. It was Klesko and his son. The kid is a chip off the block, an experienced fixer already at the age of seventeen. Came up on the streets of Piter, just like his father. Between the two of them, they’re not known for missing what they aim at. You’re a lucky son of a bitch to still be breathing. Plus, it looks like they were the doers tonight on these three ATFs.”
“I thought you said this Klesko was locked up.”
“Yeah, he was”—Bill shook his head in dismay—“but not anymore. Two years ago he was transferred out of a high-security facility and put out to an old-school Siberian re-education camp, not quite so secure. The sentence was for life, but it didn
’t work out that way.”
“He escaped?”
Bill nodded. “Yeah, and here’s how good a getaway he made from the Siberian camp: it was us that told the Russians he was gone, once we ID’d him here in the States. They didn’t even know. Apparently, there was a fire. …”
“So we’ve got the father and son Kleskos in town looking to recover what was taken from them years ago,” Atley said. “Which means they think the girlfriend … ?”
“Yalena Mayakova was her name back then,” said Bill.
“The Kleskos somehow figured out that this Yalena Mayakova is in New York somewhere. …”
Bill Horst nodded and continued the thought for Atley, “And some ATF agents—who were part of our task force all those years ago—seemed to figure out the same thing.”
“Ten years go by”—Atley was still putting it all together—“and now everyone gets the scent again, at the same time? The ATF guys and the father-and-son Kleskos?”
“We have no idea what set it off, but it’s all coming down now. Two bloodbaths and your BOLO was right in the middle of both.”
“Why were they all here in the yard?”
“I’ll tell you when we know, but so far we’ve come up with squat. Look at the place. Like a goddamn tornado hit it and now half of it is burning.”
There was a long moment as Atley continued to process all the new information. There was one detail he’d expected to hear from Bill at some point in the narrative, but he hadn’t; once Bill brought the subject of the Russian mob into the story, Atley expected him to say something about Wallis Stoneman being a Russian adoptee. Either Bill didn’t know about Wallis’s Russian origins or he did know and was just holding that detail back. Whichever it was, Atley could tell that something was on Bill’s mind that he hadn’t spilled yet. For a guy who had survived undercover for more than five years, Atley found him pretty easy to read.
“There’s something else, right?” Atley said. “What are you not telling me?”
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