“No!”
“And his fiancée, too. Wasn’t Jeanne Capois also enslaved in your shred operation? Maybe you’ll also go down for her.”
Cristóbal’s whining mixed in perfect pitch with the eighty-mile-per-hour winds roaring between the buildings in the Financial District. “No, no, I’ll cut a deal.”
“That’s not your choice.”
“I know things.” He finally brought his gaze to hers. “Things you want.”
Was he acting, or was this the break Nikki had hoped for — if not the smoking gun, at least the hot trail? She tested him. “Tell me about Beauvais.”
“I know all about Beauvais.”
“What did he steal from you that was so dangerous?” When he didn’t answer, she asked, “What about Keith Gilbert? What’s his connection to all this?”
He licked his mouth and smiled broadly, and when he did, his lip parted again and blood dripped off his chin. With the wind and rain and flashes of lightning, he could have been Dracula. “Deal first,” he said.
Heat checked her watch. Nearly an hour had passed, and still no backup. She checked the window. Water had risen to the chassis of her undercover. Any higher, she might not be able to start the engine. Cristóbal was scum. Heat needed to get him to swear a statement before he lost his fear and did too much thinking.
She turned to Rook. “Let’s get him to the First Precinct.”
There were whitecaps on Beaver Street as they crossed to the car and got him into the backseat. Relieved when the ignition fired up, Nikki said to Rook, “Change of plan. It’s worse than I thought out here. In all this, Ericsson Place is too far to go. I’m thinking One PP is closer.”
“You’re the skipper. Want to cast off?”
The car filled with high beams from behind. She checked her mirror and made out the form of a black armored vehicle pulling up. “May be our lucky day. Looks like we’ve got backup, after all.”
But when Heat registered that the BearCat drawing alongside did not have NYPD or National Guard markings, instinct took over. She threw the transmission in low gear and floored it. Her tires spun until they made purchase, and the car slogged forward, churning water. “Down, down,” she yelled just as the rear windows shattered with automatic rifle fire.
SIXTEEN
eat jerked the wheel and made a sharp right up William Street. Too busy driving, Nikki couldn’t turn to see, but she knew Reese Cristóbal had to be dead. She reached for the two-way and keyed the mic, “One-Lincoln-Forty, ten-thirteen, officer needs help.” She released the button. After the squelch came a blizzard of radio calls stepping on each other. “You hit?” she asked Rook?
“No.” The car filled with light again as the BearCat followed in pursuit. He twisted in his seat for a rear view. “Shit.”
“One-Lincoln-Forty. Ten-thirteen, officer pursued by heavily armed suspects in armored vehicle. Moving north on William, passing—” She called over the wind to Rook, “What’s our cross?”
“Wall Street — No, Pine, Pine.”
A short burst of automatic gunfire flashed from the passenger side of the assault truck and took Heat’s side mirror clean off. She steered sharply to the right, then left, then right again to become a weaving target. “You hit?”
“Stop asking me. I’ll let you know.”
Back on the two-way. “One Lincoln-Forty, taking automatic fire. Ten-thirteen, William and Pine. Do you read?” Nothing but garble. She might be getting heard, but there was no way to know. Heat ditched the mic and said, “Hang on.”
A restaurant-linen-and-uniform delivery truck started to inch into the road across their path with its flashers flashing, driven by someone who must not have been able to see in the cyclone. Nikki whipped the wheel to the left and her vehicle responded, clearing the front of the truck, with Rook’s door taking a mean, shrieking scrape as she passed. Behind her, through the gale, she heard the throaty blast of the BearCat’s horn as it got blocked.
“Ha-ha, denied,” said Rook. “Where now?”
“We keep going to One PP. When we reach Fulton, I can cut up to — forget that.” Ahead of her, a car had struck a light pole that toppled and jutted across the intersection, barring the street.
“Can you squeeze by on the sidewalk?”
“Not sure,” she said, squinting through the sideways rain. “Don’t want to get wedged.”
“I dunno, might make it.”
“And also might get wedged.” They both made another rear check and saw no headlights. “Plan B.” Heat turned a right down Platt.
“Whoa, check it out.” A small car floated sideways past Rook’s window. “Now there’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Not liking this, Rook,” she said in a low voice. “Not liking this.” The tide had risen significantly, coming up the top of her wheels.
“Maybe we should have risked the wedge instead of driving where? Toward the river?”
“Um, not helpful?”
“Just observing.”
“Just driving.” The engine became swamped and died.
“Not anymore.” While she tried to restart, the sky to the north lit up with a huge blue flash followed by another. “Lightning?”
One second later, the entire block fell into pitch darkness. The two-way crackled with multiple calls about an explosion at the Con Ed station on Fourteenth and advisories that all of Manhattan was blacked out south of Grand Central. Rook said helpfully, “I have a little squeezy flashlight on my key ring.” He indicated the backseat. “I’m thinking Mr. Cristóbal won’t miss us if we get out and walk to—” He stopped short as the car blazed with daylight.
The BearCat roared back, charging toward them. “Out, out, out,” called Nikki, but the flood had risen halfway up the doors and the resistance from water pressure made them impossible to push open.
Bang!
The impact threw them hard against their seat belt straps and deployed both airbags. Still conscious, Nikki wiped a trickle of blood from her nose and shook off the stupor from her face crashing into the inflated sack. Beside her Rook was coming out of it, too. Behind them the three-hundred-horsepower Caterpillar diesel revved. The BearCat rode high enough not to be bothered by the up-tide. Six tires securely gripped the wet pavement and the assault vehicle pushed them forward by its reinforced front-impact grill.
Helpless to do anything but go along for the ride, Heat pulled the hand brake to no avail. The black machine shoved them slowly but relentlessly off the street and down the ramp of a parking garage. In the fearsome blare of the BearCat’s head lamps, they saw their fate ahead of them. Submerged cars bobbed on the incline. The whole place was inundated by tidewater and filling fast.
White-water rapids cascaded down from street level into the underground garage, which had already filled enough to swallow the dozen or so cars they could see floating around them. Heat’s plain wrap banged to a stop when it crunched against the tangle of autos blocking the ramp. Still, the BearCat’s engine revved louder and louder, pressing them in place. Their attackers’ strategy was clear and chilling: to brace them there, trapped, to drown in the rising tide.
It wouldn’t take long. With the back windows blown out, the flow had already begun to gush over the side doors with impunity and both of them sat with water above their laps. “Can you move?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Nikki undid her seat belt and got on her knees for a quick check of the situation. Because of the incline of the ramp, all she could see of the truck out the rear was the black steel ram on the reinforced front grill, which meant anyone up in the truck would be high enough not to see over it to them. The water had risen even more and Reese Cristóbal’s corpse bobbed up to her seat back. The back half of his head was gone. She fended the body away and said, “Come on, let’s move. We’re going to try an end around.”