“I’ll see what I can do about the turf bullshit, but I have a feeling that’s gonna be something the commissioner and director are going to need to address.”
“I don’t see any signs of an explosion,” Vail said.
“No explosion.” Russo chuckled, then handed out booties. “Follow me. Got somethin’ for ya, Uzi.”
They walked single file past the statue toward the stairs that rose at a forty-five degree angle. Russo nodded at a couple of cops guarding the crime scene and tinned an FBI agent who seemed bothered by their presence.
Vail saw the problem immediately. About ten steps up, halfway to the top, a woman was reclining face up on the red Plexiglas and rubber surface, a wood-handled knife protruding from her chest.
DeSantos stopped a dozen feet shy of the body. “A woman’s been murdered. Why’s this relevant to our case?”
Russo glanced over his shoulder but kept moving. “Come see for yourself.”
As they gathered around the middle-aged Hispanic female, Vail gestured at a piece of paper pinned to the woman’s torso by the knife. “There’s a note.” She knelt down and kinked her neck to get a clear view. “Oh. Shit.”
For FBI agent “Shepard”: You are a liar. We know who you are Aaron Uziel and we have a debt to settle with you. First, a word of advice. There’s trouble in the first ward. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
“First ward?” Uzi asked.
“Guy’s a friggin’ riddler,” Russo said. “No idea what he’s talking about. You?”
Uzi shook his head. “I’ll get one of my agents on it, see if there’s any place in the country that uses wards—Chicago?”
“I think there are parishes, but—”
“That’s a good start,” Uzi said as he tapped out a message to Hoshi.
“They killed a woman just to leave you a note?” Russo asked.
“They want to put people on edge,” Vail said. “And they’re trying to keep us guessing, off balance. That’s the reason for the riddle. Inject uncertainty, leave us chasing our tails. And give us a sense that we don’t know what’s coming next.”
DeSantos pivoted and looked at the distant streets, where throngs of people still moved about behind the police barricades. “How can something like this can happen in the middle of such a busy place?”
“Hey, it’s Times Square,” Russo said. “Tourist sees something weird, he figures it’s some kinda performance art and moves along. I mean, there are women parading around wearing nothing but two circles of paint the size of a baseball—”
An FBI agent adjacent to Uzi’s right shoulder slumped forward as the crackle of a sniper rifle rang out.
“Shooter!” DeSantos said, then grabbed Vail and started moving down the stairs as he craned his neck in all directions to get a read on where the shots were coming from. “See anything?”
“Came from the east,” Uzi said as they headed toward the massive Duffy statue. “Agent was right in front of me, facing west. Entry wound was through his back.”
“Hope you’re right, Boychick.” They moved around to the side of the replica Duffy, using its breadth as a shield.
Russo squeezed in beside them on the edge, keyed his mike, and reported the sniper’s suspected location.
“All these Hercules teams and no snipers?”
“The teams make people feel safe,” Russo said. “A show of force. But no, we don’t deploy snipers unless we get a specific threat. Even if we could put a hundred sharpshooters on buildings in high profile areas of the city, no one wants to live in a police state. And the mayor—”
Another two shots, and a couple of cops, who were trying to get a better angle to locate the gunman, fell to the pavement.
“Body shots,” Uzi said, peeking around the edge. “Whoever’s up there knows what he’s doing.”
On Russo’s radio command, a number of emergency service unit officers and uniformed cops from the NYPD’s substation at the south end of Times Square headed into the surrounding buildings to lock them down and begin a search.
Vail moved to the far end of the statue and craned her neck, stealing a look around its edge, searching the buildings. Raindrops plunked into her eyes and she blinked them away.
“Gotta be a roof,” she said. “Windows don’t open.”
Uzi moved slowly around the edge and then pulled back. “There’s only one possible twenty, given the angle of the shots. Above the Sbarro, maybe nine or ten stories up. Otherwise, it’s just billboards, lights, and electronic signs—or the angle’s all wrong or the building’s too high.”
Vail and DeSantos inched around the front of the statue and looked at the area Uzi had described.
“I see him,” DeSantos said, then ducked back. “You’re right.”
“Do we have a clear shot?”
“Tough angle, but it’s possible.”
Where’s Russo? Vail texted him the sniper’s location. But another rifle blast rang out and a cop who was attempting to cross to the other side of the street went down. Goddamn. I’m not waiting for Russo’s guys to get this asshole. “Let’s take a shot.”
“That’s not funny,” DeSantos said.
Russo’s text came back:
esu and hercules en route sit tight
“Hercules is coming to save the day.”
“Again, not funny.”
“No, the Hercules team. They’ve only got submachine guns so I’m guessing they’re getting rifles and double timing it over here. ESU’s coming too,” she said, referring to the NYPD’s SWAT equivalent. “We don’t have time to wait. I say we put this bastard down.”
“With handguns?” Uzi asked. “From this range? Against a sniper rifle? Soon as we clear the cover of the statue, he’ll pick us off. Just like the others.”
“I did something like this with Delta Force,” DeSantos said. “He’s sighting through his scope. If he’s not looking at us when we expose ourselves—which would be a hell of a coincidence—he won’t see us till it’s too late.”
“And if he does happen to be looking our way?”
DeSantos shrugged. “He won’t be able to hit all of us. And he may not even hit any of us.”
“Sounds like an awesome plan,” Uzi said, the sarcasm thick as he drew out the word “awesome.”
“This can work,” Vail said.
Another shot, this time striking a young female pedestrian a block away who had not taken adequate cover. Her torso absorbed the hit, then she fell to the ground in a heap.
Uzi turned away from the downed woman and faced Vail. “Okay. I’m in.”
“Who’s the best shot?” Vail asked.
Uzi and DeSantos simultaneously said, “Me.”
“Men.” She shook her head. “Hector, still using that canon?”
“Yep,” he said as he attached a sight to his .50-caliber Desert Eagle. “Now outfitted with a Leupold scope.”
“Sorry, Uzi. His is bigger.”
“Hey, a .50-cal with a scope? All yours, Santa.”
“Do me a favor,” Vail said, “and get him before he gets us.”
DeSantos checked the Leupold, then held his Desert Eagle in both hands between his thighs, pointed at the ground.
“On my mark.” Vail peered around the edge. A few seconds later the shooter revealed himself, sighting through his scope for another victim.
“Got him,” she said. “Mark!”
DeSantos swung out into the open and squared himself as Vail and Uzi came out firing. Before the cacophony of gunshots ended, the sniper tipped forward over the edge of the building and tumbled face first to the pavement, passing the Broadway billboard ads for Phantom and Wicked.
It did not take long for him to touch down.
22
They stood over the suspect’s prone body, a stream of blood leaking into the street and joinin
g rainwater running off into a nearby sewer. The drizzle persisted and had dampened Vail’s hair, making it frizzy. Her hands were starting to freeze.
But she hardly noticed. Rather, the image of the man free falling from the building had dominated her thoughts, bringing back memories of another high profile terror attack she was once involved in.
“Pretty clear what he was after,” Uzi said.
The comment drew Vail from her reverie. “What?”
Russo joined them, three Hercules teams alongside him. They fanned out and brought their rifles up, searching the surrounding rooftops through their scopes.
Russo craned his neck to the spot where the sniper had been perched. “Nice shot.”
“Lucky shot,” DeSantos said.
“Shoulda waited.”
“Couldn’t,” Vail said. “Seconds counted. He wasn’t stopping till we stopped him.”
“You think this was all about me?” Uzi asked.
DeSantos knelt down and carefully moved the shooter’s jacket with the back of his hand, searching his pockets. Russo pulled out a glove and handed it to him.
“Maybe,” Vail said, “given what’s written on that note. But I think there’s more to it than that. Like why they didn’t set off a bomb. And why they used the murder of that woman to send you a message. And why they chose to do it here.”
“Which is?”
“Times Square isn’t just a public place, it’s high profile.”
“High profile doesn’t quite cut it,” Russo said. “We had a discussion about this in our counterterrorism briefing last month. Based solely on tourists, Times Square is the number two attraction in the world behind the Las Vegas Strip. It gets over 130 million visitors a year, a bit more than Disneyland and Disney World. It don’t get more high profile than this.”
“We got security footage?” DeSantos asked.
“Oh, yeah, plenty a cameras. I’m sure we’ll have this goon on film on at least one a them. I’ll see what we got.” Russo pulled his phone and walked off to make his call.
“You okay?” Vail asked.
“Hmm?” Uzi was staring at the body, then pulled his gaze away. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m—whenever someone takes a shot at you and kills someone else instead, you feel kind of guilty. Responsible.”
“I don’t have to tell you that’s ridiculous.”
“We can’t know for sure the sniper was there just for you,” DeSantos said. “They had no way of knowing you were even in New York.”
Uzi seemed distracted. “Yeah.”
“And the message on that note would’ve been delivered to you whether you were here or not.”
“I agree,” Vail said. “The sniper was there to pick people off. I don’t think they necessarily cared who. Cops, FBI, women, children. You, if you were here. But whether you were here or not, the shooter was going to take his shots. It fits the purpose behind all these attacks: induce terror and fear in the general population, leave them wondering what’s coming next. Each one of their attacks has been different in some way or other.”
Uzi was silent a moment, then walked up the steps and knelt at the murdered woman’s side. “Amsterdam.”
Vail and DeSantos, who had followed, looked at each other.
“There a reason why you just said ‘Amsterdam,’ Boychick?”
“Amsterdam, 2004. Guy by the name of van Gogh was shot in the middle of a crowded square, then a knife was driven through a note into his chest.” He gestured at DeSantos. “You’ve got gloves—check to see if she was shot before she was stabbed.”
Russo walked over while DeSantos examined the body.
“Any witnesses?” Vail asked.
“I’m sure there were plenty, but we only managed to get a couple. Conflicting descriptions of the perp, which—”
“Not surprising in stressful times. People don’t see what they think they see.”
“Exactly. The cameras will give us a better look.”
“Either of them say anything about the woman being shot before she was stabbed?”
“No.”
“Yes.” DeSantos looked up at Russo, shielding his eyes from the rain. “GSW to the chest, just above the stab wound.”
Uzi nodded. “So it fits. But what does it mean?”
“It means the sniper may’ve had an accomplice. He took the shot, woman goes down, his buddy stabs the note to her chest.”
“Who was the doer in the Amsterdam case?” Russo asked.
“An Amsterdam native of Moroccan descent, Mohammed Bouyeri. MO was very similar: high profile location, in the middle of a lot of people, dramatically staged with the knife and the note.”
“So what’s the connection?” Russo asked.
DeSantos rose from his crouch as the medical examiner’s vehicle pulled up to the edge of the plaza, in front of the George M. Cohan statue at the southern end of the square.
“Wanna give me that canon for evidence?” Russo asked, gesturing toward the Desert Eagle.
“Nope,” DeSantos said as he went about detaching the scope.
“I think we should just let it go,” Vail said, looking hard at Russo.
“Tell you what,” DeSantos said. “Take it up with Director Knox. He tells me you should get the gun, I'll hand deliver it.”
“Knox.”
DeSantos shrugged. “All I can say.”
“We’ve gotta follow up on something,” Vail said. “Keep us posted on what you find here?”
Russo’s brow bunched as he studied her face. “Anything you’d like to tell me? You know, share resources?”
“I’m sure the NYPD will be plugged into everything that’s going on,” DeSantos said.
Russo gave him a dubious look. “Yeah, right.”
23
Vail found the address for Menachem Halevi, the Aleppo rabbi and safe deposit box holder, on the way back to their SUV. He lived in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, an Orthodox Jewish enclave bordering its Italian counterpart not far from the Verrazano Bridge.
“That’s a little surprising,” Uzi said on the ride over. “An Aleppo rabbi would live in Flatbush, on or around Ocean Parkway, not in Borough Park.”
“Is that some kind of rule?” Vail asked.
Uzi chuckled. “Borough Park is mostly Hasidim of European background. It’s unusual to find Syrian Jews here, but not impossible, I guess.”
They parked on 50th Street and walked to the corner at 14th Avenue where they found the seven-story brick apartment building that, by the look of it, dated back at least several decades. Signs above schools and storefront shops bore Hebrew and English lettering.
As they walked through the small courtyard formed by the two wings of the complex, a man in a black overcoat and matching felt hat was coming through the glass doors.
“Hold that,” Vail said, showing her FBI credentials.
The religious man averted his eyes, as the Orthodox are inclined to do around women, but stopped and kept the door from closing.
Vail, DeSantos, and Uzi entered the building and proceeded straight ahead to the elevator. Uzi pulled open the steel door and they stepped into the car.
“This is pretty friggin’ old,” Vail said. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen an elevator like this.” A tarnished penny was stuck inside the cross-hatching of the small glass window of the door that swung closed. She thought about taking the stairs instead, but DeSantos shouldered her aside.
“Deal with it. It’s a short ride.”
A moment later they arrived at the fifth floor. They found the apartment at the end of the hall and pushed the chime. There was a ruckus inside, the sounds of young children playing and roughhousing.
“Good thing today’s Sunday,” Uzi said. “Saturday, the elevator wouldn’t have been working and no one would’ve answered the door.” He apparently n
oticed DeSantos’s inquisitive head tilt, because he said, “The Sabbath.”
Vail knocked firmly—the weak “ding-dong” was no match for the yelling kids—and seconds later a man in his forties appeared.
“Yes?”
As Vail studied his face, formal dress, and demeanor, she had a feeling he looked older than he probably was.
“I’m Aaron Uziel, FBI. We’re looking for Rabbi Halevi.” He held up his credentials for the man to peruse—which he did, with a backward tilt of his head so he could view them through the reading portion of his glasses.
“What does the FBI want with him?”
“We’re following up on the bank robbery eighteen months ago. We’ve got some questions.”
The man lifted his brow. “You found him. Come in.” Leaving the heavy gauge metal door open, he turned and proceeded into the apartment. Well worn olive carpeting led to a dining table wedged along the left wall. Directly across was a living room of modest size, about a dozen feet wide and fifteen long. Five children, ranging in age from what Vail estimated as three to nine, were running around, slashing at each other with fake swords and jumping off plastic play structures.
“Sorry to bother you on a Sunday,” Vail said, “but these questions couldn’t wait.”
Car horns—loud and long—blared outside on the street.
Halevi sat on a chair near the knot of children. Vail, Uzi, and DeSantos sank into the couch against the long wall. The youngsters seemed unfazed by their visitors and kept playing as if they were not there.
One of the boys stopped suddenly and looked at Vail. In fact, he was staring at her. He pointed and said, “Is that a real gun?”
Vail looked down—and quickly brought her jacket around, covering the protruding handle. “It is. I’m a police officer.”
“Police officers protect people,” he said. “Can I see your gun?”
“Isaac,” Halevi said, “don’t bother the nice lady. Go back to playing.”
A woman a few years younger than Halevi walked in, wearing what appeared to be a wig, but as with her husband, her style and demeanor gave the impression of someone senior to her true age. “We have guests, Menny?”
The Lost Codex (OPSIG Team Black Series Book 3) Page 15
