It was getting late, and I was exhausted, having not slept much in four days. The lack of sleep I could deal with—I’d trained for that my entire life, and my increased strength and stamina helped—but cap that with my evening’s jaunt with the Jinn trio, and I was beat. Even so, I was too excited not to call Sarah back before going to sleep.
“Agent Wright? This is Steve, returning your call. Any news?” I figured it was best to play dumb. Explaining ghouls and Ifrits to a normal mortal would just get me an awkward silence or even hung up on.
“Haven’t you listened to my message? All hell’s been breaking loose in Red Hook. I thought you were going to be investigating out that way. I’m on my way there now.”
“Um, no. I haven’t heard a thing. I mean, maybe a few gunshots, but I figure, hey, it’s Brooklyn, right? What’s happening?” I wondered for a minute if I’d played it too coy, and I started to feel stupid. Part of me felt guilty for lying to her while the rest of me felt it was the prudent move. The prudent side won out—too much was at stake to allow my feelings to interfere.
“Some kind of gang war at a bus yard in Red Hook. Big shoot-out and fire. Half of Gowanus Industrial Park is burning. It’s a mess.”
Great. Now I really felt bad. “Well, that would explain all those sirens earlier. Are there many injured?” My job was to protect humanity, not chalk it up to collateral damage.
“So far, no. Kind of odd, actually. Not a single casualty, but there’s a trail of damage all the way down Otsego and into the Red Hook Recreation Area down to where they set everything on fire at the bus yard.”
Given the three dead gangbangers left in the wake of my fight with the Jinns, I guessed the Lar had done a little cleaning up for me. I would have to apologize to him later.
“Well, I’m glad that at least no one’s been hurt. Oh, I did find one piece of information in my search for that cup. I think the bomber lived in those Red Hook Houses,” I continued without thinking, mostly to keep the conversation going. I tried to convince myself that I’d said it because I wanted the police to find the two dead bodies in the apartment, but I was afraid that if they dug too much, they’d end up with a description that matched me. Still, someone really did need to inform the families of the two victims about their loved ones.
There was a long pause before she answered. “Really? Interesting…” She sounded a bit cagey all of a sudden. “I tell you what, I’m on my way there now. Why don’t I come by and pick you up? Where should I meet you?”
I could tell by the sudden change in her tone that she wasn’t buying my clueless routine anymore, and the fact that she didn’t give me much of an alternative to picking me up suggested she didn’t trust me. Wonderful.
“Eighty Rutland, just off Flatbush. Gimme fifteen minutes.”
I hung up. Stupid me. I sighed, and my stomach flopped. She knew I was lying to her. There went any chance at a relationship and any hope for sleep that night. I’d probably be in jail within the hour. I felt sick.
Just in case, I changed into a blue polo shirt and khakis that I hoped made me appear a little more respectable, and I fussed with the burn and cut on my face, hoping she wouldn’t be freaked out. I holstered my Sig and tried to decide what to do with my knife. I sure as hell wasn’t about to strap it to my leg. I decided to wear my tactical vest to blend in with the other law-enforcement types, which allowed me to store the knife in its usual place in its sheath on my upper chest. I took a few seconds to check and reload clips for the Sig, pulled on a light jacket, and then went down to meet Sarah—um, Agent Wright.
The moment I walked out of the bed-and-breakfast, I got that annoying tingly feeling again. I was a popular guy that night. At least I knew I was pissing off the right people. If I could avoid getting arrested as a suspect in the murders and mutilation of two bodies in the Red Hook Houses, I might actually be able to make some progress on finding this Cup and whoever took it.
As I stood in front of the building, a guy stepped partway out of the shadows of the building a few houses up Rutland to my right. I adjusted my jacket, pretending not to notice. Another figure approached from my left along the sidewalk about fifty feet away while two more stood around doing nothing across the street. The two across the street both turned their heads the moment I noticed them. Parked cars lined both sides of the street for the full length of the block, bumper to bumper, and all four figures kept to the shadows, including the one closing in to my left. For the moment, no cars were coming or going, and there was no one else along the length of the block. Since it was after eleven, most of the lights in the few houses not darkened for the night were coming from upper rooms. Overall, the street was quiet.
As I took stock of the situation, getting a sense of my surroundings, several small, quiet impacts on my back caught me by surprise. The chucklehead to my right had shot me. He’d actually tried to shoot me in the torso from thirty feet away. Freakin’ amateur. I dove for the space between the two cars parallel parked along the curb in front of the bed-and-breakfast while pulling my Sig. As soon as I made my move, all four figures followed suit: the two across the street ducked behind cars, and I lost sight of them; the shooter to my right ducked back into the shadows; and the shooter to my left dropped to one knee, and I could see the glint of a silver gun in his hands. Based on the impacts of the bullets to my vest and the relative lack of sound, I guessed the shooter was using a silenced .22 or something equally small. The other shooters would likely be similarly armed. That meant they were going to have to get very close to do any real damage to me, even if they managed to shoot me in some spot not protected by my vest-covered cuirass.
Everything got quiet for a second.
“You get him?” a hoarse voice asked from behind a car across the street.
“I hit him, but I don’t think he’s dead,” came the response from the guy up the street to my right.
“Can you still see him?” asked a voice from back down to my left.
Total amateurs. I now had a pretty good idea where they all were, even the ones I couldn’t see.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “Whaddya say you give up and go home? That way you might actually survive tonight. Just tell me who sent you, and we all walk away.”
No one spoke for several minutes. While I was waiting for a response, the lights of a car coming up Rutland from Flatbush Avenue reflected off the other cars on the street. Crap. The last thing I needed was someone getting caught in the cross fire of idiots. I just needed to keep the situation calm until the car passed.
The car stopped right next to me, and a few seconds later my phone rang. I poked my head up to get a glimpse through the windshield, and my heart stopped. Sarah was sitting behind the wheel of the dark-colored Chevy Impala, holding a cell phone to her ear. Dammit.
My phone stopped ringing, and her car door opened.
“Sarah, stay in your car,” I shouted.
“What? Where—” she managed to say before a bullet struck her windshield.
I popped up and fired twice up the street and twice down the street into areas where the gunmen were hiding, not really expecting to hit them but hoping they’d back off long enough for Sarah to take cover. The unsilenced nine millimeter sounded like a cannon on the quiet street.
“Holy shit!” she screamed. She ducked behind the front driver’s side fender of her car—totally exposed to the gunmen on the opposite side of the street.
I fired two more rounds into the rear and passenger side windows of the car I was sure the two gunmen on the other side of the street were hiding behind, shattering the glass and sending it showering onto the sidewalk beyond. The instant I pulled the trigger the second time, I stood, took a step, and jumped, sliding across the hood of Sarah’s car. I landed on the other side of the vehicle, just behind her, and immediately covered her with my body, turning my back to the gunmen behind us.
>
The maneuver brought a hail of quiet small-caliber gunfire from the pair behind us, with bullets ricocheting off every car around us. At least half a dozen bullets impacted my back as I covered Sarah and kept my head down. As soon as the shooting stopped, I stood up and spun around. Both gunmen were standing just beyond the cars behind me, frantically changing clips. I fired twice at each one, making them both drop, and then spun back to see if I could spot the other two who had flanked me to begin with. The one originally to my right was sprinting back up Rutland and away from us while the other just stood and started to fire his weapon. Sarah’s car took the brunt of his barrage, with bullets shattering her passenger side and rear windows.
Sarah had pulled her gun. She stared at me, wide-eyed—not in fear but in incomprehension.
“Stay. Put.” I spoke to her as forcefully as I could, ejecting my mostly spent clip and slamming home another. I ran around the back of Sarah’s car and rushed the remaining gunman, vaulting the car he was behind as if it were a short fence. As soon as I cleared the rear bumper, the man threw down his gun and started to run toward Flatbush Avenue.
“Freeze!” I shouted, but it only served to make the guy run faster.
I could have shot him, but I wanted him alive. I took off after him, but whether it was fatigue or poor judgment on my part, the kid managed to stay just out of my reach. I chased him out to Flatbush, where he bolted into the street, and an old Cadillac promptly hit him with a bone-shattering thud. He flipped up the car’s hood in a wild somersault and then smashed into the windshield. As the car screeched to a halt, his limp body rolled down the hood and off into the street. Tires screeched, and a car’s horn blared behind the Caddy while another car traveling in the opposite direction skidded to a halt sideways to avoid running over the kid’s body.
I ran into the street, up to the kid, and checked him for a pulse, but I could tell by the angle of his head, neck, and limbs that he was dead. I stood up with my hands on my hips and cursed my stupidity at not running faster. I could hear the drivers of the cars stopped around me asking me questions while a few of them got out to see. One even pulled out a cell phone to take pictures. I strode over to her, snatched the phone away, and tossed it onto the building on the other side of the street in disgust. Then I walked back to the street corner, upset with myself for not running just a bit harder to catch the kid.
I’d almost made it back to the sidewalk when a police car pulled up into the intersection around the stopped cars with lights flashing and siren blaring. Back up Rutland, I could see Agent Wright putting a flashing red light on the roof of her car as well. “Stay where you are, and put your hands behind your head,” came a tinny voice over the police car’s loudspeaker. “Do it now!”
I complied as I faced the cop. The officer threw his door open, braced himself, and pointed his service revolver at me. For the briefest of moments, I entertained the idea of running, knowing that I’d barely feel the impact of the .38-caliber shell on my armored back.
“Officer, wait!” Sarah shouted from behind me. “I’m Agent Sarah Wright of the DHS, and this man is working in conjunction with our department on a matter of national security.”
I craned my neck just far enough to see her walking up the street in the glow of the red flashing light from her car, with her ID and badge in one hand.
“Hello, Sar—um, Agent Wright,” I said sheepishly, hoping that maybe I was misreading her earlier tone.
“I’ll get to you in a minute,” she said in a low, serious voice, walking past me toward the cop as she presented her badge. The scowl on her face could have withered a cactus. I was screwed.
The police officer examined the badge and made a call back to his precinct to check the validity of her credentials while I stood around with my hands on my head. I felt stupid and tired, and I really wanted to search the guys who’d tried to ambush me. After another minute, he handed her ID back, and they had a conversation I couldn’t hear but managed to get the gist of through their body language. Clearly, Agent Wright was pressing the cop into the service of the DHS, and she wanted him to secure the area.
Once they finished that conversation, she fixed me with the same intense expression she’d had before. It conveyed both disappointment and confusion. As she walked over to me, she pulled out her handcuffs. “Put your hands behind your back and turn around,” she said, her voice devoid of emotion.
I just lowered my head and did as she asked. “Don’t you even want to know what happened?”
“Depends on if you’re going to tell me the truth this time,” she said, cuffing me and then turning me back around. “Let’s go back to my car.” She nudged my shoulder to prod me along.
“Well, I was just walking out here to meet you, and I got jumped. That’s the honest truth. You got there just as everything happened. Two guys are over there, and one guy is right here.” I lifted my chin in the direction of the two guys I’d killed back by her car. “The fourth guy ran up Rutland and got away. The dead guy on Flatbush ran into the street before I could catch up to him.”
She said nothing. As we walked back up Rutland toward her car, people were starting to poke their heads out of their windows, and lights were coming on as the neighborhood busybody patrol surfaced. People were gathering on fire escapes and stoops, and I could hear mumbling as people filmed us with their phones. Fucking perfect. I tried my best to keep my head down as we walked.
The entire length of Rutland was composed of apartment buildings and quaint old homes, but behind us, Flatbush was heavily commercial. The multicolored awnings on Flatbush were for hair and manicure salons, and the ones on the corner of Rutland were for deli markets.
That was when the smell of food caught my attention and sent my stomach into fits. I hadn’t eaten much in days, and I was starting to feel that now, too. I’m used to little sleep and not eating for long periods of time, but it was all finally catching up to me.
We finally made it to her car, and I leaned against her front fender. She stood in front of me, hands on hips, eyeing me with an expressionless face that I couldn’t read. After a long minute, she grabbed my jacket, pulled me to turn me around and then, to my surprise, took the cuffs off.
One hand back on her hip, she put her other hand out, palm up, and waved her fingers at me, indicating she wanted my gun. I handed it over to her slowly and deliberately, rolling my eyes.
“Now, explain to me exactly what happened again, slowly and in detail,” she said.
I finally had a chance to take a good look at her. She was wearing a dark-colored pantsuit with a white shirt, her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, much the same way she’d been dressed at the museum, only this time she was also wearing makeup. Despite the cosmetics, she glowered at me the same way she had the first time I’d met her.
She did a quick double take when she noticed the right side of my face. Her eyes softened for a second then hardened again.
“Look, I just told you. You saw everything that happened. Can we at least go get something to eat while I go over this again? I’m starved. And besides”—I tried to smile—“you owe me dinner.”
At that comment, her face lost all expression again, and I could see the muscles in her jaw harden. “We can’t leave until the police get here. Then we can go get something to eat. But they’ll need your statement, too, and your weapon. I assume you have a permit for it?” She hefted my Sig. “Shit, you look like you’re dressed for combat. What is that thing?” she asked, grabbing one of the Velcro tabs over one of my many vest pockets.
“It’s my body armor,” I replied curtly. “You said we were going to go where the bomber may have stayed, so I thought it best to be prepared. You know, an unknown enemy, hostile territory, IEDs, that kind of stuff.” I was torn between trying to repair any damage I’d done to whatever chances I’d had with her and becoming irritated with her treatment
of me.
She lowered her head and glowered at me from under her raised eyebrows as if I were talking about little green men and flying saucers. “You do know this is Brooklyn and not Baghdad, right? Is there something you’re not telling me? Something I should know?”
“Nope,” I replied brusquely. “I’ve just been doing this long enough to know it’s better to be safe than sorry. We’ve got a probable Middle Eastern dissident who blew up some sort of bomb in one of the most prominent museums in the country. Something was stolen from that museum, and now I’ve been attacked. It’s got to be connected. These guys were professional hitters. Well, semi-pro.”
“Professional hitters?” she sneered and had to stifle a laugh.
“Okay, maybe talented amateurs,” I quipped. “Still.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, sighing heavily, and rubbing at her forehead. “You think these guys were hired to kill you? Why? You aren’t the only one investigating this, and no one else has been attacked. Are you sure you aren’t just being paranoid? And what happened to your face?”
I self-consciously reached up to touch the cut across my cheek. Luckily, just then the next group of cops arrived and began cordoning off both ends of the block with yellow tape. It wasn’t long before a gaggle of cops and crime-scene investigators showed up.
I gave the exact same statement I’d made to Sarah to a detective, who was clearly annoyed with the task. I had to try very hard not to snatch his head clean off his shoulders several times, but I wasn’t too snarky. These things usually went better if I wasn’t a smartass.
Havoc Rising Page 16
