“Nobody’s getting out of there unless they sprout wings,” he said. “And even then I’ve got a couple of avid duck hunters on my team.”
“What about the building itself?”
“Standard issue for this neck of the woods.” He laid out an architect’s blueprint from the NYFD database. “Single-story, double-height brick box, basically. Office up front here. Machine shop and lavs in the back here. Storage here. Don’t need to tell you storage can be tricky, nooks and crannies, bad lighting, so we’ll just have to keep our heads on a swivel, right? Door here in front. Another off the machine shop. Three steel roll-downs, two jumbos off the car park, one leading to the yard in the back.”
“Fence?” she asked.
“Chain-link with vinyl cover. Razor wire all around, including the roof.”
Nikki ran her finger along a boundary line on his neighborhood plan. “What’s over this back fence?”
The lieutenant smiled. “Duck hunters.”
They fixed five minutes as the time for the raid, suited up in their body armor, and got back in their cars. Two minutes before go, Marr appeared at Heat’s window. “My spotter says the near rolling door is up. I assume you want in first?”
“Thanks, yeah, I do.”
“I’ll have your back then.” He checked his watch as casually as if he were waiting for a bus and added, “Spotter also tells me the truck with your plate is in the yard.”
Nikki felt her heart pick up a few BPMs. “That’s a break.”
“Those paintings pretty valuable?”
“Probably enough to pay a day’s interest on the Wall Street bailout.”
The lieutenant said, “Then let’s hope nobody puts any holes in them today,” and got in his car.
Ochoa popped his knuckles in the seat beside her. “Don’t worry. If the Russian’s in there, we’ll get him.”
“Not worried.” In her rearview mirror, Raley’s eyelids were half-closed, and she wondered, as she always did with Rales, if he was that relaxed or was, perhaps, praying. She turned around to Rook, who was sitting beside him back there. “Rook.”
“I know, I know, stay in the car.”
“Actually, no. Out of the car.”
“Aw, come on, you want to leave me standing here?”
“Don’t make me count three, mister, or you’re grounded.”
Ochoa checked his watch. “Rolling in fifteen.”
Heat gave Rook an insistent glare. He got out and slammed his door. Nikki glanced into the car beside her as Lieutenant Marr brought his microphone up. On her TAC frequency she heard his relaxed “All units green light.”
“Let’s go to an art show,” she said and hit the gas.
Nikki felt her diaphragm cinch when she turned the corner and sped up the block. Long ago she had learned that you could calm-talk your brain all you want, your adrenal glands pretty much had charge of the control panel. One conscious deep breath compensated for the shallow ones she had been taking, and after she took it, Nikki found that sweet spot between nerves and focus.
Ahead, a formation of cop cars rolled down the street toward her, Marr’s pincer movement in action. Coming up fast on her right, the auto body shop. Its nearest rolling garage door was still wide open. Heat braked and cranked the wheel. The Crown Vic took a hard bounce on the steep slope of the driveway and was still rocking on its suspension when she roared into the middle of the garage and screeched to a stop. The flashing of her gum ball reflected on the startled faces of the handful of men in the shop.
Nikki had already done her count by the time she was yanking the door handle. “Clock five,” she said.
“Roger five,” answered Roach in tandem.
“Police, nobody move, hands where I can see them,” she shouted, coming around her car door. She heard the backup arriving behind her but didn’t turn.
On her right, two laborers in dusty coveralls and white painter’s masks dropped the belt sanders they were using on an old LeBaron and raised their hands. Across the garage to her left, at a patio table just outside the storage room, three men rose from a card game. They looked anything but submissive.
“Watch the card players,” she said low to Roach. Then loudly, to the group, “I said hands. Now.”
It was as if her “Now” were a starting pistol. All three men scattered in different directions. In her periphery, Heat could see uniforms already patting down the two sanders. Free of that pair, she started off toward the biker dude who was running along the wall toward the front office. As she took off after him, Nikki called out, “Ochoa,” and pointed to the one breaking for the exit to the rear yard.
“On the green shirt,” said Raley, chasing the man booking it for the side door. By the time Raley finished his sentence, the guy had pulled the side door open. Heat was past the point where she could see it, but she heard a ragged chorus of “Police, freeze!” from the uniforms in Marr’s flank group who were waiting in the alley.
The biker she was chasing was all muscle and beer gut. Fast as Nikki was, he had the clear path; she had to dodge rolling tool lockers and a crushed fender. Ten feet from the office his swaying gray ponytail was the last thing she saw before the door slammed. She tried the knob but it wouldn’t turn. She heard a deadbolt thrown.
“Stand aside, Detective.” Marr, cool as can be, was behind her with two uniforms in helmets and goggles holding a battering ram.
The detective slid out of their way and the two cops swung the head of the Stinger into the lock. The ram hit with the shudder of a small explosion and the door popped wide.
“Cover,” said Heat. She started into the office with her piece drawn. Two gunshots cracked the air in the small room and a bullet embedded low in the door frame opposite her. She rotated out again, putting her back prone against the brick wall.
“You hit?” asked Marr. She shook no and closed her eyes to study her eidetic image of that brief instant. Muzzle flashes from high up. Window along the wall. But biker dude was standing on the desk. Reaching up high with his other arm. Dark square in the ceiling above him.
“He’s going for the roof,” she said and ran through the garage to the rear yard, where Ochoa had his man down and cuffed. “Eyes high, Detective,” she said. “We’ve got a monkey.”
Heat walked the perimeter of the building, her head tilted up as she went. In the gap between the body shop and the auto glass place next door, she stopped. A small piece of torn cloth waved from the razor wire on the rooftop. Nikki stood on the concrete directly under the flag of cloth and looked down. Between her shoes were two bright red spatters of blood.
She turned and caught Raley’s eye from the yard, then hand signaled the arc of the biker’s jump to the next-door roof before she trotted out the gate to the corner of the building. Heat peeked around it and pulled back. The sidewalk was clear. She figured her dude would not exit down the front but would stay up there as far as he could get before coming down.
As she ran along the façade of the auto glass shop, she told herself to be grateful that this was an industrial area and that there was a heat wave, both of which made it so she didn’t have to deal with pedestrians. The end of the building marked the corner of the side street. She flattened her back against the concrete and felt it warm the back of her neck above her vest. Nikki peeked around the building’s edge. Halfway up the block, the biker was climbing down a gutter drain. Her backup was coming but was a building’s length away. Biker dude was using both hands to shimmy. If she waited, he’d be on the sidewalk with a free gun hand.
Heat pivoted around the corner, gun up. “Police, freeze!” She couldn’t believe it. Rook was strolling up the sidewalk between her and the biker.
“Whoa, it’s me,” he said.
“Move,” she yelled, and waved him to the side. Rook turned behind him. For the first time, he saw the man climbing down the pipe and dashed out of the way behind a parked oil delivery truck. But by then the biker was holding onto the pipe with only one hand and drew. Heat pivoted behind the wall and his shot went wide, punching into a stack of wooden pallets at the curb.