“How long do you want me to wait for you at the park?” Nolan said.
“I like your optimism. An hour. No more. Don’t turn on your phone or your computer.”
“Why not?” Nolan’s voice was filled with suspicion.
“Because the hacker I mentioned is breaking into your devices. Both have GPS inside. It’s how I’ve been tracking you and it’s how they are as well.”
Nolan shot him an outraged look. “You hacked my phone? You tell me you’re one of the good guys and you do that? You’d better have a warrant.”
“Stealing from Dattar was outrageous. Getting your phone hacked is the least of your problems. We’ll talk about it later. Right now we have to sprint to the corner without getting shot. I’m going to go first, you follow.” There was a steady stream of single pedestrians passing by the door, but not too many groups larger than two, which is what Smith needed.
“All right, the next move is the toughest. The second that we see another group of pedestrians we’re going to run. I’ll go first, open the door and try to draw his fire. Whatever you do, keep moving.”
Several people flowed past on the sidewalk. He made it to the door in two quick strides, pushed it open, and stepped onto the street. Nolan passed behind him and ran to the left. He stepped out and deliberately caught the sentry’s eye, telegraphing his knowledge of the trap. The man straightened. Smith ran to the right, keeping the gun in his hand hidden inside the jacket and banking on the fact that the sentry wouldn’t fire with others nearby. Smith could see the CIA asset, if that’s who the sentry was, tracking his progress. He began to run parallel to Smith, weaving between the passing sidewalk traffic. They were opposite each other, with only the narrow street and two sets of parked cars between them.
Two more civilians crossed in front of the sentry, who pushed them out of his way in his haste to keep Smith in his sights. One, a young man with baggy pants and a baseball cap, stumbled. He regained his feet.
“Who the hell you think you are?” the man yelled, but the sentry kept moving, ignoring the young man completely. Smith kept his concentration focused on dodging people as he ran toward the corner.
Smith reached Fifth Avenue and darted right, turning the corner and watching for signs of the other two sentries. They were gone, but the one parallel to him kept pace, and Smith kicked into even higher gear, turning onto Twenty-third and running toward Broadway.
He turned again on Broadway and immediately regretted the move. The sidewalk was clogged with slow-moving pedestrians. Smith bobbed and weaved between them. The back of his neck tingled and it was all he could do not to look behind him. He kept swerving, hoping the sudden movements would forestall the sentry from simply shooting him in the back of the head. To Smith the block seemed endless and the flow of people created a human obstacle course. Smith heard a scream and grunted when he felt something punch into his left arm followed by a flow of warm blood. He twisted to look behind him and saw the sentry with a gun pointed in Smith’s direction. The attached silencer explained why Smith hadn’t heard the shot.
The crowd on the sidewalks reacted to the sight of the weapon. Civilians ran in all directions, cutting across the sentry’s line of fire. Smith darted across the street, turned, raised his own gun, pinpointed the sentry, and prepared to shoot.
The sentry darted behind a pedestrian, grabbed him by the neck and used him as a human shield, batting the man’s female companion directly into Smith’s sights.
“Get down!” Smith yelled.
The woman screamed and knelt, covering her head with her hands. Three other people near her scrambled out of the way and scattered. A man at Smith’s right yelled an oath and turned away, bumping into two other people and knocking one down in his haste to flee.
“Get out of here!” Smith yelled at the two on the ground.
Smith heard another woman scream, but he kept his focus on the sentry as he dragged the hostage backward with him. The sentry took stock, let the hapless human shield go, and weaved and bobbed through more civilians back toward Twenty-third. A man pushing a baby stroller with headphones in his ears and appearing oblivious to the panic around him walked into Smith’s line of fire. Smith lowered his gun as he watched the sentry hit the corner, turn onto Twenty-third Street, and disappear.
Smith holstered his gun and ran back toward Madison Square Park. At the corner of Twenty-third and Broadway he spotted Nolan across the street, at the park’s edge. The two sentries that had watched the restaurant’s Fifth Avenue entrance surrounded her. The new attackers held fast to her arms, one on each side as they propelled her across the park. One wore a dark suit and a white shirt that contrasted with his swarthy skin, the other wore dark cotton pants and an un-tucked, short-sleeved embroidered white shirt. When a breeze pushed the shirt against his spine Smith saw the outline of a bulky object. He presumed it was a gun in a holster at the small of the man’s back. Nolan marched between them, her tote in her hand and her head up. Smith couldn’t see her face, but she stood tall, straight and stiff. He turned on his phone and called Marty.
“Did you get out of the restaurant?” Marty said without preamble.
“Yes, but Nolan’s been captured. Are her devices still off?”
“Let me check.” Smith dodged around a couple holding hands and past a young man with a backpack talking into his phone while he kept the tail on Nolan. “I’m sorry, but they’re off.”
A limousine pulled up to the corner and idled. A man dressed in a navy turtleneck, black pants, and a sharp suit stepped out of it. Even at a distance Smith knew who it was. Khalil opened the passenger door and the two men holding Nolan pushed her into it, one man placing a hand on top of her head to help her clear the roof and the other pushing her on the back. When she was inside, Khalil joined her along with one of the men. The other crawled into the front with the driver. The limousine cut back into traffic and shot forward, running a stale yellow and turning at the next opportunity.
“Keep watching, can you? The minute she turns them back on I need to know about it.”
His next call was to Klein. “Khalil just loaded Nolan into a limousine at the edge of Madison Square Park. There’s a closed circuit camera at…” Smith crossed the street and ran toward a small structure within the park, “the Shake Shack in the park. Can you see if their camera captured an image?” Smith checked his watch. “They must have just closed for the evening.”
“I’ll run it down. Are you sure it was Khalil? That’s very bad news,” Klein said.
“I’m sure. I’m going to try to track her again.” Smith rang off and started running in the direction that the limousine had gone.
The one time she listens to me and now she’s screwed, Smith thought.
28
Dattar stepped off the freighter onto the dock, squinting against the sun. He wouldn’t normally have disembarked in the daytime, but he was anxious to leave the ship and he could see the bodyguards he routinely used when in Cyprus lounging by a large SUV parked parallel to the landing. They were well-trained mercenaries and though they appeared relaxed and held their machine guns downward, he knew they would annihilate anyone who dared to threaten him. Rajiid stood at his right shoulder holding a duffle containing their clothes and fielding a phone call from their contact in the States. The Pakistani captain of the freighter walked up to them both, but kept his eyes on Dattar, his expression grim.
“I just learned that no funds have been wired into my account. I presume this is a simple oversight on your part?”
Rajiid stopped talking and flicked a glance at Dattar.
“I have been maintaining phone and Internet silence while on the ship. It’s safer that way.” Dattar hoped the lie would calm the man. Instead the captain grabbed Dattar by the shirtfront, bunching it in his large hands and pulling Dattar forward. Before Dattar could respond, Rajiid had a gun out and pointed at the captain’s head and the two mercenaries snapped to attention, with their own guns trained on the captain. “How dare you touch me!” Dattar’s rage, which was never far from the surface, exploded. “I’ll have them take you away and boil you alive.” To Dattar’s great surprise, the captain didn’t appear afraid, nor did he release his grasp on the shirt.