A sustained burst from the MP5 went barely wide as Fisk slapped the trigger of the 870.
Another deafening roar. Buckshot spraying the wall.
Yelling. Spanish. Fisk could not make it out.
His ears were screaming. His chest was aching. He was running.
His mind told him to keep moving, to count his shots.
He slid out into the open, seeing an iron spiral staircase in the middle of the building, leading up to the second floor. The ceiling in the old industrial building was twenty feet high, so the staircase twisted twice, making anybody who ascended it visible from all parts of the warehouse floor for several seconds. To clatter up the stairs in the presence of two well-armed shooters was to invite death. To retreat was to trap himself like a rat.
He ignored the tempting stairs, continuing room by room. He peeped around a corner, saw movement.
The shooter raised his MP5, firing already, rounds biting into the floor on their way toward Fisk.
Fisk pumped, aimed, and fired the shotgun.
The shooter’s head erupted in an explosion of red.
The man crumpled on the spot.
Fisk did not slow down for a moment. He ran past the twitching body to the next doorway. He peeked around the corner. Looked clear.
He ducked back, plucking a couple of cartridges from the rack along the gunstock, loading them in. He was feeding in a third when a burst of gunfire sounded and a needle of fire went through his forearm.
He dropped the shotgun. His left hand opened spasmodically, and he gripped it with his right, getting blood on his palm.
He reached for the shotgun, pulling it to him. He pumped it one-handed and fumbled for the trigger, backing away from the holes in the wall where he had just been standing.
Yelling outside. Cop sounds. They were close.
More shouting. Thumping of feet. Directionless.
Suddenly everything went quiet.
Fisk had a premonition.
“Comandante?” he called out.
No answer. More footsteps.
“Stop, NYPD!” said Fisk, his left arm jerking, right hand aiming the shotgun.
Footsteps. Fisk fired at the doorway, a warning shot.
The buckshot tore into and through the wall to the left of the frame, going wide.
His hearing was gone again. Fisk set down the shotgun quickly in order to grasp the pump, trying to reload one-handed.
He jerked it, but the rack did not catch. The cartridge had misloaded.
He was jammed.
A man swung into view in the doorway. The lower left side of his white shirt was red with blood, but he held his weapon firmly.
Fisk recognized the face. The expression.
The Hummingbird looked at Fisk sitting on the floor with the shotgun. His lower lip curled into a sneer.
“You are not the comandante,” he said.
Then suddenly he looked up, raising his aim.
Too slow. Crack-crack-crack from behind Fisk.
Chuparosa’s head flew back. His torso twisted, his free hand going to his neck, out of which pulsed blood.
He fell to the side and began kicking, trying to crawl away.
Fisk turned. Garza stood in the doorway in a balanced shooter’s stance. Her cheekbones were flushed and her black eyes were wide and intent, glazed with adrenaline. A goddess of wrath.
She walked past him, Beretta on Chuparosa. He was still kicking, trying to get away.
She came up behind him, ready to shoot. Wanting to shoot.
She never got the chance. The kicking stopped, and the assassin’s body lay still. He was dead.
CHAPTER 71
Fisk heard about the aftermath from the emergency room at Beth Israel Medical Center in Brooklyn.
Eleven girls. Eleven young Mexican women, ages fifteen to twenty, had been locked in the basement of the warehouse.
Eleven young women had been saved.
The man Fisk had wounded and Garza had killed was all but confirmed to be Chuparosa. Learning his real name would take time. No matter what they might learn about the man, the killer known as the Hummingbird had been stopped forever.
The Teixeira Brothers truck was discovered in the garage. A remote control robot was sent in to open the cartons of oysters safely.
The disassembled gun parts were discovered packed inside.
Forged security passes were found near a laptop computer paused in the seventh inning of a three-week-old broadcast of a Yankees–Braves game. The issuing name was traced to an apartment in Bensonhurst, where a young caterer’s assistant named Elian Martinez and his wife, Kelli, were found murdered.
FISK SUFFERED A LEFT ULNA FRACTURE. Damage to his ulnar nerve, the largest unprotected nerve in the human body—when bumped, it is often referred to as the funny bone—was negligible. He was fortunate in that the round had passed through a wall before striking him, lowering its velocity. The attending physician, knowing Fisk was a cop, informed him that he came just millimeters from retirement.
He was to remain in the hospital for observation for twenty-four hours, the standard window of time when “compartment syndrome” could occur. Restricted blood flow to muscles and nerves due to pressure from an injury could lead to loss of the limb.
Fisk’s left forearm would be set in a hard cast in the morning. In sixteen weeks, the fracture would be repaired.
“Sixteen weeks of desk duty,” said the attending physician with a smile, thinking he was being funny.
CHAPTER 72
Cecilia Garza visited Fisk sometime before six o’clock.
Fisk said, “Don’t you have the dinner soon?”
Garza shook her head. “Called off. Everything has changed.”
“Of course,” said Fisk.
“I tried to call you,” said Garza.
“My phone . . . I must have lost it during the shootout. Maybe near that elevator.”
Garza nodded absently. “They will find it.”
“Sure.”
He watched her. There was something odd about her manner.
He reached for her arm with his good hand. “Where are you?” he asked.
“Right here,” she said.
“Adrenaline hangover,” he said. “I’ve been there. They gave me some painkillers, so I think I’m missing out.”
She looked at his arm again, wrapped in thick gauze. “You were lucky.”
“I was. We were.”
Garza smiled, but there was nothing behind it.
She spoke before he could ask her what was wrong again. “The dinner is essentially canceled. I suggested we move it to our consulate, where proper security can be guaranteed and the treaty can be signed in relative seclusion.”
“Obama isn’t still going?” said Fisk.
“No. Vice President Biden will be on hand for the signing, but will not stay for dinner.”
Fisk nodded. “Hey,” he said, reaching for her hand. “You got him. The man you came here for.”
Garza looked at his hand in hers, but her grip was slight. “That part does not seem real.”
“Is Señor León going to attend the dinner? Now that the bad guy has been killed?”
Garza squeezed Fisk’s hand once before letting go. “I made sure to extend President Vargas’s personal invitation.” She smoothed out a fold in the bedsheet near her side. “After the affair, we are returning home. Tonight. It’s been arranged.”
“Tonight?” said Fisk.
“President Vargas feels the need to get home. To be visible in the wake of this threat. And, I am sure, to be seen as victorious.”
Fisk studied her face. There was no victory in it. “Letdown, right?” he said. “It’s understandable. You’ve been searching for this guy for . . . how long?”