I couldn’t believe it.
A tall, regal black woman. Smooth, dark skin shining with sweat and blood from the bullet wound in her jaw. She was still alive. She looked at me, dazed. Then she seemed to notice that the small AK-47 was still in her lap.
“Don’t do it!” I said. “Don’t!”
But she wouldn’t listen.
She went for the gun, and I shot her twice more as the gun in her hand fell over the rim of the meat case and clattered to the worn linoleum.
“Mike! Mike!” said Emily at my back when I knelt in front of the woman a minute or so later. “Mike, are you okay? Are you hit?”
“No,” I said. “What happened out there? Did we get them?”
“We got them, all right. Our intel was FUBAR. There were twenty of them, Mike. They all fought to the death. They’re all dead.”
“Did we lose anyone?”
“No, thank God. An agent was shot in the calf, but he’s going to be fine. Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded, sweat pouring off my chin and cheeks. I shook my head at the Nigerian woman’s brains on the glass of the meat case, her blood on the plastic-wrapped packages of sausages and drumsticks.
I stood there searching her face, her expression, her eyes for something — anything — that might explain any of this.
But even after another minute, I didn’t see a damn thing.
Chapter 53
Apprehensive, angry, and still very much stunned numb, I peeled myself away from the incredible Queens crime scene at a little past one in the afternoon. I looked out at the rubble and the pockmarked, bullet-scarred brick walls as I put the unmarked into drive.
“Welcome to Beirut, Queens,” I said to myself as I peeled out around a just-arriving news van.
I decided to head home.
First I showered, then I threw my clothes into the wash, since they were making the apartment smell like a firing range. As the machine filled with water, I poured myself a stiff measure of Wild Turkey and cracked open a bottle of Bud and sat on the couch in the blessedly silent apartment.
Probably not what four out of five doctors would recommend at quarter to two in the afternoon, but it actually did the trick. My hands stopped shaking, and I was momentarily able to get the image of the dead Nigerian woman’s brains out of my mind.
I was well into my next round of Irish therapy when the phone rang. It was Chief Fabretti. I sipped bourbon and listened idly as he chewed my ass about the raid. I wasn’t completely sober, but somewhere in there I caught the implication that he thought I might have been responsible for all the deaths.
I decided to hang up on him and shut off my phone.
“There. Much better,” I said as I poured another drink.
I was busy making dinner when Seamus came in around two thirty. Corned beef was on the menu tonight. Being an Irishman from New York, I of course did it the Jewish way, deep-sixing the cabbage and replacing it with rye bread — heavy on the caraway seeds — and mustard to make huge Carnegie Deli — style sandwiches.
I wasn’t really in the mood for eating, but it was Chrissy’s favorite dinner. After what I’d seen today, I wanted to make my baby happy for some strange reason.
“Corned beef? Is it Saint Paddy’s Day again?” Seamus said when he peeked into the pot.
“’Tis,” I answered as I poured a measure of Wild Turkey into a tumbler for him. “And lucky you: you’re just in time for the parade.”
He took a sip and smiled and rolled his eyes. He looked good. Still kicking, which was good, because I loved the old man.
“Ye can stop with the eagle-eye treatment, ya know.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I see you watching me like I’m going to fall over and die. That little incident was a one-off. I’m fine.”
“I wasn’t worried about you, Father, so much as the glass you’re holding,” I said as I patted him on his white-haired head. “That Waterford crystal is a family heirloom.”
“Little early for the bar to be open, eh?” Seamus said. “Was it that thing in Queens?”
Boy, was the old codger still on the ball.
He hugged me then. Wrapped me in his frail arms like I was five years old again, though I was twice his size. As he did it, I could see the woman lying there in her meat-case coffin. I tried not to cry about it, but I failed.
“God bless you, Mike. It wasn’t your fault,” Seamus said.
“God bless us all,” I whispered through my falling tears.
Chapter 54
At four minutes past 3:00 a.m., the image appeared on the tablet’s touch screen with the light press of a finger.
It was a live video feed, a grainy picture of a dimly lit downtown alley. With a flick of the touch-screen controls, the camera moved forward, zooming in on the dark face of one of the alley’s shabby apartment buildings. Then, with another flick, the image teetered suddenly as apartment building windows began to scroll vertically, as if the camera were attached to a crane and someone were raising the boom.
The screen showed a window with a yellowed lace curtain, then, on the floor above it, a window covered by some old broken blinds. The next floor’s window was shadeless and showed a bedroom in which a lean Asian woman was in the process of unbuttoning her blouse in a lit bathroom doorway.
The camera went up to the next dark window for a moment before it reversed itself to the disrobing woman.
“Mr. Beckett, please,” Mr. Joyce whispered harshly. “We have a schedule, you know. If you can’t resist distractions, then promptly hand over the controls.”
“Fine,” said Mr. Beckett, smiling sheepishly as the camera-equipped drone returned to its ascent.
They were wearing EMT uniforms now and were standing in the back of an idling ambulance parked in a little alley off Worth Street in the heart of downtown Manhattan. They needed to be in the area overnight, and, after some research, they realized that no vehicle was less suspicious or more ubiquitous than an ambulance waiting for a call.
Mr. Joyce nervously wrung his hands as Mr. Beckett piloted the large quadcopter drone over two blocks of buildings and lights. Down at the far end of the alley, across Worth, was some kind of underground dance club. It must have been ’70s night or something, because there was a constant muffled thrum of disco music.
He massaged his temples as the drone approached the imposing, almost industrial-looking square office building that was their target. All they would need was some fool spilling out of the club to take a piss and see the drone.
He knew their attack plan was unprecedented and therefore almost impossible for the enemy to guard against. He’d thought of it himself after much deliberation — had gamed it twenty times, looking for every possible glitch. He knew in his well-informed gut that it would work. But still. Any damn thing could happen in this city. There was knowing it, and then there was actually doing it.
With the drone finally alongside the target, Mr. Beckett swung it right until it was around three feet away from the building’s northeast corner, the best route for avoiding detection from the windows. It continued to ascend. Five more floors scrolled past, then ten, and then a few more, and they were finally there. They were finally up on the roof!
“There it is,” said Mr. Joyce, pointing at the top left corner of the screen.
“All over it,” said Mr. Beckett as he piloted the drone over to the teal-colored metal box that housed the air-conditioning unit.
He pressed a button, and the image on the screen shifted to the camera at the bottom of the drone, beside the power screwdriver they’d installed.
Mr. Joyce held his breath as Mr. Beckett took the drone down slowly toward the edge of the grate covering the AC unit’s fans. He maneuvered it carefully, hovering over the first of the Phillips-head screws holding the grate in place. Closer and closer, and then... yes! He was there. The tip of the drone’s magnetic screwdriver was snug in the groove of the first screw.