I, Michael Bennett

by James Patterson

  We cut the cake and sang “Happy Birthday” as Fiona and Bridget blew out their candles. I scanned the kids’ faces. They seemed happy. Sugar-crazed and binging around like pinballs with all the treats and dance music, but happy. A large contingent of safe, content, well-adjusted kids.

  I thought of what the woman had said outside the armory.

  At least for one night, my babies won’t die.

  Exactly, I thought. What else was there? I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  That’s when someone pointed it out. The eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the corner of the disco-pumping bowling alley.

  “I wonder where Mary Catherine is right now,” Fiona said as I handed her the first slice.

  That did it. The party was over right there, right then. Though the music still raged, the laughter stopped as everyone looked down at their bowling shoes.

  At least they weren’t looking to me for the answer. Because for once, I didn’t have the slightest clue.

  CHAPTER 95

  AT LONG LAST, the dreaded moment had arrived. It was packing-and-cleaning day at the Bennett vacation compound.

  Sunday was still two days away, but with Mary Catherine still AWOL, I thought it best to start the herculean task of moving my family back to the city as early as possible. I thought getting my guys to get their stuff together was going to be like pulling teeth, but I was in for a surprise.

  Not only had Mary Catherine devised an effective system for the care, organization, and cleaning of everyone’s clothes and possessions, she had taken pains to teach it to the kids. In no time flat, the guys were working the dishwasher and the washing machine and rolling their little suitcases out into the hall one by one like a troop of seasoned business travelers.

  If anyone was having trouble finding their stuff, it was yours truly. I was under my bed, scattering dust bunnies as I looked for my flip-flops when my cell phone rang. Still on my belly, I managed to retrieve it from the pocket of my shorts.

  “Yeah?” I said into the hardwood floor.

  “Mike? It’s me, Tara. I have big news. How fast can you get to Shawangunk prison?”

  I flipped over on my back.

  “Well, Tara, we hicks up here pronounce the prison ‘Shawn-gum,’ and I can get there fast. Why?”

  “Cleaning out Newburgh is starting to pay unexpected dividends, Mike. Huge ones. You know the Puentes brothers, Miguel and Ramon?”

  “The gentlemen who run the Newburgh Latin Kings?” I said.

  “Yep. It seems like those fine young men want to play ball. I just got a call from their lawyer. They claim Manuel Perrine is still in the States. Not only that, they say they know where he’s hiding out and are willing to tell us in exchange for immunity and witness protection.”

  I smiled up at the multitude of cracks in the lake house ceiling. I couldn’t believe it. Actually, I could. The connection made sense, since the Latin Kings were supposedly being supplied with drugs by Perrine’s cartel.

  That’s exactly how it happened in cases sometimes. You’d be beating your head against a wall for months with no clue about a murder or a felony, and then one day, the phone would ring with a willing eyewitness or an out-of-the-blue confession.

  “What do you know, Tara? Dumb luck happens to cops sometimes, too,” I said. “Have you contacted my pal Bill Bedford, the special agent in charge of the Perrine escape investigation, for his take on the latest development?”

  “He’s number two on my call list,” Tara said. “The race goes to the swift, Mike. This was your case originally so I thought I’d give you a head start to get back in on it. You game?”

  “See you at the prison,” I said, pulling myself up off the floor.

  CHAPTER 96

  TARA WAS WRONG.

  It turned out the meeting with the Puentes brothers wasn’t actually at the Shawangunk prison, because Shawangunk is a state facility. Since the charges were federal, it turned out that the seventy-plus Newburgh gang arrestees were being housed in the federal lockup in Otisville.

  Driving up to the second prison I’d visited during my summer vacation, I sighed. With all this running around in the country, I could write a fairy-tale romance novel for middle-aged cops, I thought. Call it The Prisons of Orange County.

  I arrived at the white-brick bunker of the administration building first. An affable black female assistant warden showed me the conference room where the meeting was to take place. It was surprisingly unlike a prison-a windowless room with a carpet, a conference table, coffee service, and even a whiteboard.

  I was pouring my second cup of joe when Tara came through the door with a mannequin from the men’s clothing store Jos. A. Bank. Actually, it was my tall, slim, nattily attired friend Bill Bedford, the FBI agent.

  “Tara, Bill,” I said, turning, with a smile of pure innocence.

  Bedford seemed to have some trouble preserving his unflappable demeanor.

  “What the hell is he doing here?” he barked.

  “Oh, did I forget to mention Detective Bennett, Bill?” Tara said. “He was part of the arrest procedures in Newburgh last night. He was the one who arrested Miguel Puentes. You know, the suspect we’re here to deal with?”

  I nodded at Bill helpfully as I sat back down. What Tara failed to mention was that Miguel hadn’t spoken to me personally. But ol’ Bill didn’t need to know everything. What would be the fun in that?

  “But why is he here?” the special agent in charge wanted to know.

  “What do you mean, Bill? Not only is Mike already a part of the federal gang task force, he’s been an integral part of the Perrine case from the get-go. So of course I took the liberty of including him in this meeting.”

  Bedford made a noise.

  “I’m sorry, Bill. I didn’t catch that.”

  “Yeah, uh-huh, whatever,” Bedford said, kicking out a chair and sitting. “Where are these Puentes people already?”

  Tara had her video camera set up when the Puentes brothers came in a few minutes later. I waved to Miguel, who was now wearing prison coveralls over his boxer briefs. His larger brother looked like he’d just taken a huge bite of some bad meat. Their lawyer was a large, bald Dominican gentleman in a gaudy banker’s suit who looked like he could make a go at professional wrestling if the law thing didn’t pan out.

  Everyone remained silent, sizing each other up as two corrections officers securely cuffed the Brothers McPuentes to a steel rail along the wall.

  “You understand that my clients are putting themselves and their families in grave danger by speaking with you,” the lawyer started out.

  “Bullshit,” Bedford said with over-the-top venom. “What I understand is that your clients here are looking at life in jail for murder and drug trafficking. Save the medal of valor application and cut to the goddamn chase, counselor.”

  The lawyer opened his mouth for a moment, and then closed it, the overhead fluorescent lights gleaming off the brown wrecking ball of his head.

  “I was told we were here to make a deal for my clients,” he said. “Maybe I heard wrong.”

  “Exactly. We want immunity. Full immunity,” Miguel cut in.

  “And witness protection,” said Ramon.

  “Oh, is that all?” said ever-helpful Bill Bedford. “No problem. How about we toss in a flying pony that shits bars of gold?”

  CHAPTER 97

  “ENOUGH, OKAY? WE get it,” Tara said, suddenly jumping in before Bedford could do any more damage. “You want to skate. That’s a very tall order. What do we get?”

  “We know where Manuel Perrine is,” Ramon said. “I’m talking right now.”

  “No,” said Miguel, eyeing his brother. “He doesn’t know shit. I do. I know where Perrine is.”

  “How would you know anything about Perrine?” I said.

  “We’ve been doing business with his people for quite some time, purchasing cocaine and heroin from their distributor in the Bronx. People from the Perrine cartel contacted me three weeks ago and
asked me to lease a house for them in a secluded location where a helicopter could land without looking suspicious. I was also asked to supply a staff of cleaning people and a chef who could cook French cuisine.

  “The chef is an old friend of mine. He confirmed to me that Perrine is at the location, that he arrived the night after the escape. I was able to contact my friend this morning, and he confirmed it again. Perrine’s still there as we speak.”

  “There was an attractive, dark-haired woman with Perrine,” I said.

  “Marietta?” Miguel said, looking at me. “Yes. She’s there as well.”

  “Why the hell is he still hanging around?” Bedford said.

  “Arrangements are being made to get them out of the country, back into Canada, where they had been living before Perrine’s arrest, but there’s some sort of problem,” Miguel said. “We need to move on this before my arrest is made public. Once that happens, he’ll send a kill team to wipe out me, my brother, and our family. That’s what he does.

  “He told me many times that sweet death is the noble price every man should happily pay for failure. He thinks of dealing drugs as a religious calling and himself as a messiah figure. He’s incredibly insane. Please, you need to help us. You need to grab this sick bastard. It’s our only chance.”

  “Okay, okay,” Tara said, standing. “We’ll confer out in the hall for a moment.”

  “What do you think, Mike?” Tara said after the door closed. “This info sounds credible.”

  “Extremely credible,” I said. “Especially the part about Perrine being incredibly insane.”

  “I agree,” Bedford said, trying hard not to lick his chops. “These two are sharks, but Perrine is Moby Dick. We need to make the deal.”

  “I will, Bill, on one condition,” Tara said.

  “What’s that?” Bedford said.

  “That Mike is brought back in on this for Perrine’s arrest and capture.”

  Bedford glared at her and then at me, but behind his eyes, I could see the calculator in his brain being furiously punched.

  “Okay, fine. I’ll have to talk to my boss, but I think we can work that out.”

  “Okay, then,” Tara said, winking at me as she grabbed the doorknob. “Let’s go back in there and make a deal.”

  CHAPTER 98

  AROUND 6:00 P.M. that summer evening, I was an hour and a half north of Newburgh in upstate Greene County, New York, standing on the shoulder of a two-lane country road.

  As I glanced at the seemingly endless ribbon of blacktop curving upward through the gold-tinged pines, the free-spirited maverick in me felt like sticking out my thumb and lighting out for the territories. But then I suddenly remembered that I was a cop instead of Jack Kerouac, and I followed the FBI agent I was with past a freshly road-killed porcupine into the bucket of a tree-service cherry picker.

  I held onto my borrowed yellow hard hat as the bucket hummed upward through oak leaves and pine needles. Halting just at treetop level, about seven stories up, I was greeted with 360 degrees of stark, breathtaking Catskill Mountains peaks shale ridges. Since there was no man-made structure to be seen, the experience was like going back in time.

  To the seventies, maybe, I thought, since on the way up, I’d actually passed a faded old billboard bearing a picture of Smokey Bear in his Park Service hat with the words ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES.

  We were three miles due south of Perrine’s rented wooded estate on West Kill Mountain, along a section of the Catskills called Devil’s Path, which made a lot of sense, considering we were here to find the devil himself. In the five hours since we had gotten the location of Perrine’s hideout from the Puentes brothers, earth and sky had most definitely been moved. In the space of the afternoon, a sixty-member contingent of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and all their equipment had been mobilized up from their headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, to Stewart Air National Guard Base, just outside of Newburgh, on two C-130 military cargo planes.

  I met with HRT briefly at the base when they arrived, and they were formidable indeed. Think of an armored, and armed to the teeth, professional football team. Only they brought their own helicopters and were dressed like ninjas. The feds didn’t just want to capture Perrine after they got egg on their faces down in Foley Square. They needed to.

  In the bucket beside me, HRT leader Kyle Ginther handed me a Canon SLR camera with a huge high-power zoom lens. Thirtyish, dark-haired, and boyish, Ginther looked friendly, like the young dad next door. Only when this dad wasn’t leaf-blowing his lawn, he was emptying sniper rifles and automatic weapons into range targets.

  I glassed the terrain to the north with the camera. After a moment, I spotted the roof of Perrine’s hideout halfway up the south slope of West Kill and super-zoomed it in. Through hanging motes of pollen, a shingle-and-beam chalet-style lodge house came into view. It had river-stone chimneys and a massive deck out in front to soak in the view. I’d already seen the photographs, taken an hour earlier, of Perrine and Marietta on that same deck sharing a drink.

  “We’ve received the building plans from the architect and have a shoot house mocked up,” Ginther said. “We know that there are two other guesthouses on the property, along with a barn. We also just learned that Perrine’s quarters are on the lower level of the main house.”

  I blinked at him in shock.

  “How did you find that out?”

  “Intel from the Puentes brothers,” Ginther said. “Getting the phone numbers of the people up there with Perrine was gold, Mike. With the help of the phone company, we sent software into the targets’ cell phones that turned them into microphones. Their phones don’t even have to be on. Ain’t technology grand?”

  “How many people do you think are up there?” I said.

  “Twenty-five to forty, as far as we can tell,” Ginther said. “They’re armed mostly with shotguns, but we have seen a few assault rifles. The men we’ve observed patrolling the perimeter seem professional, definitely trained. We’re going to have to watch our step.”

  “How are you going to do the raid?” I asked.

  “Wait till it’s dark, put our snipers in a tight perimeter around the facility, then cut the power and fast-rope in onto that deck from our Black Hawk and Little Bird helicopters. With snipers covering the outside with suppression fire, the airborne assault unit will split into two teams, one securing the main and upper levels, the other the basement, where Perrine is at. We’ll be ready to go by tonight.”

  I wiped sweat out of my eyes as I thought about things for a minute. On the way up to Greene County, I’d stopped at a country store to answer a text message and spotted a crow moving at the parking lot’s edge. It took me a second to realize with horror that it was plucking the feathers out of a smaller dead bird. For some reason, I couldn’t shake that sickening image-the large dark bird holding down the smaller one with his talon, fastidiously plucking out its feathers one by one-as I stood there sweating on the cherry picker.

  “Something bothering you, Mike?” Ginther said.

  “Despite your confidence and HRT’s obviously incredible abilities,” I said, “Perrine has the high ground. He brought heavy weapons to the midtown Manhattan shoot-out we had at the beginning of the summer, so he’s bound to have some more up here. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had RPGs. And he knows special operations tactics. The bad guys actually used flashbangs on us when my partner was killed. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had night vision, too, so a full-frontal assault, even in the dark, sounds dangerous to me. This bastard has sent me to enough cop funerals, thank you very much.”

  “Okay, I’m listening. You have any ideas?”

  That’s when it hit me. I did have an idea. At least the germ of one. I let it settle in for a beat, and then I grabbed the camera and looked back up at the house peeking out between the treetops.

  “That driveway is the only way in or out?” I asked.

  “By car, at least,” Ginther said.

  “Smoke
y Bear,” I mumbled.

  “What was that?”

  I handed the commando back his camera.

  “Take us down,” I said. “I think I have an idea.”

  CHAPTER 99

  TWO HOURS LATER, just after the sun went down, Ginther and I sat in the cab of a truck, looking out at the silent mountain twilight as we waited by the radio. We sat up when we heard the radio scratch.

  “Okay, this is Rabbit. We’re in position,” came the word from the first HRT infil team.

  I glanced over at Ginther as he checked his watch. We waited some more.

  It took another three minutes before the second team crackled the mike.

  “Okay, this is Merlin. We’re here.”

  “Okay,” Ginther said back. “Pop ’em all, fellas. Everything you got.”

  “Roger that, Cap,” Merlin said. “Affirmative. Fire in the hole.”

  We waited, our eyes glued north, toward Perrine’s house. After a minute, we smiled in unison as an enormous column of black smoke rose into the pale, twilit sky.

  But having two HRTs pop dozens of smoke grenades into the woods below Perrine’s hideout was only phase one. As the smoke billowed, Ginther made another call to the fire station at the base of West Kill Mountain’s north slope. A moment later, a blaring air horn sounded in the distance.

  My last-ditch plan was under way. Perrine might suspect something fishy was up once he heard the siren and saw the smoke, but how could he be sure if it was a real forest fire or not? The answer was that he couldn’t. Because deception is basic to the art of war, we needed to cause as much confusion and chaos as possible as we went in. In fact, we needed to bamboozle the living shit out of Perrine if we were going to capture him without heavy resistance.

  “Okay, buckle up. This is it,” Ginther yelled as he started one of the two fire trucks we’d borrowed from the nearby towns of Hunter and Roxbury. I slipped on a yellow fire helmet. I and the dozen other HRT members riding in the two trucks were already wearing firemen’s gear over our automatic weapons. I crossed my fingers.