My move was straight out of Ringling Bros. I dove for Irma, leaping through the air while getting off one shot over her head, my other arm wrapping around her shoulders so I could spin and hit the ground first to break her fall.
One bullet whizzed by my ear. There aren’t enough words to accurately describe the terror of that, except to say that it could always be worse. You could hear the bullet hit you instead.
Not today, though.
He got off two more shots. There wasn’t a third. My father made sure of that. He returned fire from my apartment, buying me just enough time to pull Irma into hers. Was I trying to kill her? Save her? She had no idea as we fell into her foyer.
Shit. What’s that noise?
My head whipped back to the hallway. Irma’s door was still wide open. The sound heading our way was the worst one yet. It was the sound of a good idea.
The clever bastard had grabbed a fire extinguisher, removing any sight line we could have on him. He wasn’t going to be denied, which meant he wasn’t a contract killer. If he were, he would’ve fled. Catch you on the flip side. He’d simply wait for a more opportune time to hold up his end of the deal.
No, this guy wasn’t a hit man at all. He was a soldier. Not military, but terrorist. A guy who had been given his orders. Kill or be killed.
He was firing again as he continued spraying the hallway with the extinguisher, moving toward us through a cloud of white. I could see the edges of it reach the doorway as the shots got closer.
There was only one word for this. Chaos.
And there was only one way to respond.
CHAPTER 60
CIA OPERATIVES aren’t given an official how-to handbook. But if we were, the section dedicated to getting your ass out of almost any jam could be summed up with one sentence.
When chaos reigns, create more chaos.
I scooped up Irma in my arms and carried her behind the counter in her kitchen. My telling her not to move as I put her down would’ve been redundant. The poor woman was still in shock.
Everything I needed was in my eyeline. The gas stove. The dish towel on the counter next to it. The bottle of vodka on the credenza near the window. Good thing Irma wasn’t a teetotaler.
The secret of a good Molotov cocktail is saturation. It’s not enough that the fuse—a.k.a. the dish towel—is in contact with the alcohol. It needs to be soaked from top to bottom. Of course, that takes some time. Time was the one thing I didn’t have.
To hell with saturation.
I flipped on the front burner of the stove, grabbed the vodka, and jammed the dish towel as far as I could into the bottle before giving it a couple of quick shakes. I was staying low, keeping my head clear of the top of the counter. The shots outside the hallway had stopped. That’s because he wasn’t in the hallway anymore. The sound of his closing the door behind him was all I needed to hear. He was inside Irma’s apartment.
C’mon, asshole, reach for that lock …
It wasn’t about keeping me in. It was about keeping my father out. This guy wanted a fair fight, one-on-one. I could practically feel his eyes scanning left and right, waiting for me to make my move. But he still had to lock that door behind him. He had to look away if only for a split second.
I glanced at Irma, my forefinger pressed against my lips—Shhhh—as my other hand reached for the now red-hot burner, the edge of the dish towel leading the way. Could he already smell the gas? He’d for sure see the flame. I had to time this just right.
The blink of a human eye takes between 300 and 400 milliseconds. A normal heartbeat is upward of 900 milliseconds. I figured my window was somewhere between two blinks and a murmur.
But not until you turn to lock that damn door. What’s taking you so long?
I lit the dish towel, my ears tuning out everything except the sliding of that dead bolt. The streets below us ceased to exist. The entire city had gone quiet. Dead.
Then. Snap!
I sprang up from behind the counter as he locked the door, launching the bottle where it would do the most damage. Not at him but at his feet. He never saw it coming.
The glass shattered as he turned back around, the flames igniting straight up his legs. He didn’t care, at least not yet. He wildly shot in my direction as I ducked behind the counter. The irony, though. He was holding a fire extinguisher while on fire.
I was about to pop up again. I wanted this guy alive if at all possible. The things he could tell us. Names. Locations. Who sent him to kill me and from where? That fire wasn’t going to put itself out, and it was only going to spread unless he did something about it. That’s when I’d have him. Score another one for more chaos.
Before I could even push up off the floor of Irma’s kitchen, however, I heard the shots from outside in the hallway. My father was taking a page from that same nonexistent handbook. He was breaking down the door with bullets, shooting out the locks. It was full-on crazy in every direction.
But I still wanted this guy alive.
I rose up from behind the counter as my father kicked his way in, the door flying open. He fired off two shots, one at each shoulder. That’s how you level a guy without killing him. My father knew I’d want this guy alive, too.
That made three of us.
My star informant was on the ground and in flames, his blood sprayed all over Irma’s living room carpet. He’d dropped his gun, along with the fire extinguisher, and he was rolling around in agony.
Still, my father was taking nothing for granted. “Watch him,” he told me, tucking away his Glock to pick up the extinguisher.
In the blink of an eye, faster than the beat of a heart. That’s all it took.
The guy now had his own window.
Literally.
CHAPTER 61
THE COPS, the two detectives, the EMTs—they all kept referring to him as the deceased since there was no ID to be had on his half burned, fully mangled body, which had literally cracked the sidewalk in half outside my apartment building thirty stories below. No surprise the guy would end up being a John Doe. I could’ve told them as much.
Then again, I was too busy having to tell them everything else.
“Wait, let me just repeat that back,” said the junior of the two detectives, who had introduced himself to my father and me as simply Miller. Not Joe or Bob Miller or even Detective Miller. Just Miller. “So after getting shot, the deceased sprang up and proceeded to run at the window glass, shatter it, and then jump to his death. Is that right?”
“It was actually more of a leap,” said my father. “A swan dive, really.”
My father was now going on twenty-four straight hours without sleep and was officially beyond punchy. Miller was barely even acknowledging him at this point, content instead to look only at me or down at his notepad. He was taking a lot of notes.
“Yes, that’s what happened,” I told him.
As for why it happened, I kept that to myself. The police didn’t need to know, at least not yet, that the guy pancaked on the sidewalk with his entrails splattered was part of a terrorist cell. Point being, his getting caught was absolutely, positively not an option.
I glanced at my watch. This was taking too long. The news vans were beginning to line up along the curb. My father and I needed to exit stage left in a hurry.
“Just a few more questions,” said Miller.
“Actually, no more questions,” he was told instead.
I turned—we all turned—to see Elizabeth flash her badge to Miller, who seemingly could not have cared less.
“You can have Dr. Reinhart when I’m done with him,” the detective told her, almost shooing Elizabeth away with the back of his hand.
The poor guy. I almost felt sorry for him as Elizabeth blinked in disbelief. She was about to give him a quick refresher about the pecking order among badges, and while she had her subtle moments from time to time, I knew immediately this wasn’t going to be one of them. Sure enough, she grabbed the notepad right out of Miller’s hand and h
eaved it to the other side of the street.
“Congratulations. You’re now done with Dr. Reinhart,” she said.
With that, my father and I followed her inside my apartment building, never once looking back.
“I like her already,” my father said as we walked.
He knew of Elizabeth from what I’d told him back when she and I were hunting the serial killer the Dealer, but this was the first time they were meeting face-to-face. I made the formal introduction in the lobby.
“Normally, I’d ask what brings you down to Manhattan,” she said, shaking my father’s hand.
“Normally, I’d tell you,” replied my father.
Enough said, at least about my father’s former life as an operative.
I was prepared to tell Elizabeth all about my morning. Meeting Eli. The fact that I now had a target on my back courtesy of some very impolite terrorists. But first there was something I needed to know.
“What are you even doing here?” I asked her. “You’re supposed to be out following—”
“Yes, I know,” said Elizabeth. “I was supposed to learn her entire routine. Everything she does. Everywhere she goes.”
“In other words,” I said, “tailing her for days.”
“Or maybe just hours,” she said. “I found out everything you need to know about Sadira Yavari. But we don’t have much time.”
CHAPTER 62
ELIZABETH WAS right, twice over. A beautiful little thing called serendipity had intervened in her reconnaissance mission. I no longer needed to know Professor Sadira Yavari’s daily routine, what her regular haunts were, or the particular park bench where she liked to go to read. Engineering my “chance” meeting with her had already been taken care of courtesy of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. In short, Sadira had jury duty.
Right now.
There was barely any time for the things I needed to do, let alone wanted to do. I wanted to head back up to the apartment, pack a suitcase, and say good-bye to the place. I’d be back, but I’d never live there again—not as long as the Mudir, or whoever was posing as Benjamin Al-Kazaz, knew the address. Can those two guys be one and the same? It definitely feels like it.
I also wanted to visit Irma in the hospital, whichever one the ambulance had taken her to. I think she was more shaken up than actually hurt, but the EMTs had wisely decided to play it safe. A night of observation made even more sense given her apartment was currently a crime scene, not to mention a complete shambles.
I had to put a pin in all those plans. Everything that could wait had to wait. Instead, I had to get downtown to the courthouse on Pearl Street and join the jury pool.
“How do you know Yavari’s name hasn’t been called yet?” I asked.
“It hasn’t,” said Elizabeth. “And it won’t be. I’ve made sure of it.”
“So you were actually there? At the courthouse?”
“Yeah. She’s wearing a white blouse with a gray skirt. Reading a book.”
“What’s the book?”
“I didn’t get that close to her,” said Elizabeth. “Forget about her book. More importantly, what’s your plan?”
I didn’t have one. Not yet. “Charm and charisma?” I offered.
“In that case, we’re doomed,” said my father, chiming in.
That got a chuckle out of Elizabeth. “I just got a glimpse into your childhood.”
“Yeah, nothing’s changed,” I said.
“If this Yavari woman is who you say she is, she’s hardly going to cozy up to any stranger,” said my father. “You need a Tebow.”
“Did you say a T-bone?” asked Elizabeth. “Like the steak?”
“No. Like the football player,” I said.
“Tim Tebow,” said my father, which did nothing to help Elizabeth. She looked at me, lost.
“A distraction,” I said. “Tim Tebow probably could’ve played a few more years in the NFL as a backup quarterback, but he was too much of a media distraction for teams, so they didn’t bother.” I turned to my father. “And I don’t need a Tebow.”
Elizabeth, who only ten seconds earlier didn’t even know what the hell my father was talking about, suddenly seemed intrigued. “What do you have in mind, Mr. Reinhart?” she asked.
“Please, call me Max,” said my father. Josiah Maxwell Reinhart never did like the shortened Joe for Josiah. Come to think of it, he didn’t much like Josiah either. He always thought it made him sound like a character in a Mark Twain novel.
“Okay,” said Elizabeth, obliging him. “What did you have in mind, Max?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“How fast we can get our hands on a flask, a flannel shirt, and a pocket copy of the Constitution,” he said.
CHAPTER 63
IT WAS like Renée Zellweger to Tom Cruise at the end of Jerry Maguire.
“You had me at flask,” said Elizabeth.
Even I had to admit, it was all just crazy enough to work.
The second I gave my blessing, Elizabeth was on the phone to a staffer at the JTTF named Freddie. She told him he had forty-five minutes to hit a Barnes & Noble and an REI store or “any other flannel-and-flask-loving outdoorsy place” to gather the necessary props and meet us at the courthouse. JTTF staffers aren’t accustomed to questioning their marching orders, but surely Freddie had to be wondering what on earth he was doing and why.
I feel you, Freddie …
Forty-five minutes later on the dot, my father was getting into character in an empty conference room at the courthouse. A sweaty and out of breath Freddie had delivered. No sooner had he handed off the goods to Elizabeth than she was scuffing them all up, making them looked used. Or, in the case of the flask, abused.
Meanwhile, through an open crack of the conference room door, I was watching everyone still remaining in the jury pool return from their lunch break. One after another they were filing back into the waiting area. Everyone except Sadira.
“Where the hell is she?” I asked.
“Are you sure she didn’t already go in?” asked Elizabeth. “You could’ve missed her.”
Elizabeth was still busy behind me with my father’s wardrobe. I looked back to see her actually ripping off a button from the flannel shirt. She kept glancing up at his old, beat-up John Deere cap as if it were the template for his overall look. The cap was probably how he got the idea for this in the first place.
I returned to staring through the crack in the door, waiting for a gray skirt and white blouse. The thought that Sadira had decided not to return to the courthouse crossed my mind like a wrecking ball. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon—where are you?
There she was.
She was almost hidden among a small group of other potential jurors. They were all returning at the same time. Most were talking to one another, surely commiserating about having to spend a perfectly good day waiting in an overcrowded room, all in the name of a nebulous concept that most New Yorkers tend to put in air quotes or utter with an eye roll: civic duty.
Sadira, on the other hand, wasn’t talking to anyone. Moreover, her body language was all but screaming, Keep your distance. Not exactly a good sign for what we were about to attempt.
Still, all that mattered for now was that it was her. It was definitely her. Sadira Yavari. Our mystery woman. Forget the gray skirt and white blouse. I’d know that walk anywhere.
I turned back to my father and Elizabeth. “It’s showtime,” I said.
CHAPTER 64
PLACES, EVERYONE.
Elizabeth went first. She walked out into the courthouse lobby, flashing her badge and prepping two security guards who were manning the door. They were nodding like a couple of bobbleheads. So far, so good.
I went next, walking straight past them and into the waiting room, where I took a seat with a clear view of Sadira. Not once, though, did I even glance in her direction.
A minute later, my father entered as a last straggler from the lu
nch break. If Simon & Garfunkel had written a song about how he looked, it would’ve been called “The Only Living Hick in New York.” Then again, that’s the beauty of the city. The diversity is so truly diverse that everyone ends up blending in. Until, for some reason, they don’t.
Exactly what we were banking on.
The Birthday Paradox is seemingly a mathematical improbability based on how many people would have to be in the same room before the odds were 100 percent that two of them shared the same birthday. The paradox is that the number of people is surprisingly low. Only twenty-three people are required in the room before the odds are fifty-fifty. At only seventy-five people, the odds of two sharing the same birthday jump to 99.9 percent. How can that be right when there are 365 days in a year?
But it is. The math proves it.
As for the Jury Pool Paradox, there was no math. Just instinct. How many people had to be in the room before no one noticed that two extra people had joined them after the lunch break?
Sure enough, no one seemed to give my father or me a second glance as we took our seats. Good thing. Because as fast as you can say Tim Tebow the entire room was about to notice us. Big time.
Whenever you’re ready, Pops …
Fittingly, it started with a fumble. Under the guise of trying to sneak a swig from inside his flannel shirt, my father dropped the flask to the ground. It landed with a metallic thud against the tile flooring, the sound echoing throughout the entire waiting room. Naturally, everyone looked. Their faces said it all. Oh, great. Some drunk guy.
Worse, a red-state drunk guy, given how he was dressed.
“Mind your own damn business, you liberal lookie-loos,” my father barked. He wisely didn’t go for the full-blown Barney Gumble and tack on a belch, but he did appear to lose his balance as he leaned over to pick up the flask.
Right on cue, someone nearby snickered.
“What are you laughin’ at, baldy?” my father asked, jabbing his finger at a follicularly challenged man, who immediately regretted the snicker, as well as not wearing a hat to jury duty. He dipped his eyes back into his magazine, hoping this nutcase would let it be. Fat chance.
Killer Instinct Page 14
