Run For Your Life

Chapter 75

Sitting in the darkened Holy Name confessional booth, Father Seamus Bennett silently blew his running nose and lifted his Sony minirecorder.

“Poor box stakeout,” he whispered into the microphone. “Day two.”

Sick, my ankle, he thought, sniffling. He’d never been sick a day in his life. Stay in bed? Didn’t Mike know that at his age, lying down was a hazard to be avoided at all costs? Who knew if he’d ever be able to get back up again? Stay on his feet and stay busy, that was the thing.

Besides, he had a parish to run. Not to mention a dastardly poor box thief to collar. It was clear by now that nobody else was going to do it. The overrated NYPD was no help, that was for sure.

Twenty minutes later, he was starting to doze off when he heard a sound – very faint, tentative, a creak that was barely there. Stifling a sneeze, Seamus slowly drew open the confessional’s velvet curtain with his foot.

The noise was coming from the middle aisle’s front door! It was opening an inch at a time. Seamus’s heart rate kicked into overdrive as a human figure, shadowed in the dim glow of the votives, emerged from behind it. He watched, mesmerized, as the thief stopped beside the last pew, stuck his arm up to the shoulder down into the poor box opening, and removed something.

The object was a folder of some kind. So that’s how it had been done, Seamus thought, watching the felon slide coins and a few bills out of the folder into his hand. He’d used a type of retrievable trap that would catch any money dropped in the box. Ingenious. For a poor box robber, he was a true mastermind.

Except for getting caught red-handed, Seamus thought as he removed his shoes and stood quietly. Now for the arrest.

In just his socks, he crept out into the side aisle. He was less than ten feet away from the culprit, approaching silently from behind, when he felt a nasty tingling sensation in his sinuses. It was so fast and powerful that he was helpless to hold it back.

The sneeze that ripped from him sounded like a shotgun blast in the dead silence of the church. The startled figure whirled around violently before bolting for the door. Seamus managed to take two quick steps before his socks slipped out beneath him and he half dove, half fell forward with outstretched arms.

“Gotcha,” he cried, tackling the thief around the waist.

Coins pinged off marble as the two of them struggled. Then suddenly his opponent stopped fighting and started… crying?

Seamus got a firm grip on the back of his shirt, hauled him over to a wall switch, and flipped it on.

He stared in disbelief at what his eyes told him. It was a kid. And not just any kid.

The poor box bandit was Eddie, Mike’s nine-year-old son.

“For the love of God, Eddie. How could you?” Seamus said, heartbroken. “That money goes to buy groceries for the food bank, for poor people who have nothing. But you – you live in a nice apartment with everything you want, and you get an allowance besides. Don’t tell me you’re not old enough to know stealing is wrong.”

“I know,” Eddie said, wiping his teary eyes, with his gaze on the floor. “I just can’t seem to help it. Maybe my real parents were criminals. I think I got bad blood. Thieves’ blood.”

Seamus snorted in outrage. “Thieves’ blood? What a crock.” He shifted his grip to the young man’s ear and marched him toward the door. “Poor Mary Catherine must be worried sick about you. You’re supposed to be home.You’re going to have a thief’s black-and-blue behind once your father hears about this.”

Chapter 76

By the time I got back to the Blanchettes’ on Fifth Avenue, the party had amped up considerably. I heard dance music blaring as I got off the elevator. In the wood-paneled foyer, I was nearly blinded by flashbulbs as spit-shined executive types and their exotic-looking wives got their social register pics taken.

Was being a cop in this town unbelievable, or what? I thought. From an actual bowels-of-hell tenement fire to The Bonfire of the Vanities in ten minutes flat.

The butler had announced that Mr. and Mrs. Blanchette were unable to be present owing to a family emergency but wanted the guests to enjoy themselves. They took him at his word. Glamorously and barely dressed teenage socialites were bumping and grinding in the now dark and strobing party room. I passed a living statue, a transvestite Bettie Page impersonator, a woman in a Vegas showgirl costume, a guy dressed like a bird. I shook my head as he flapped past. Was he the endangered species they were trying to save? No, this event was for a different charity, but I couldn’t remember what.

“Who is your dermatologist?” someone yelled near my ear as I pushed my way through the crush. “These white truffles are so complex yet so simple,” somebody else announced.

I turned as someone clapped me on the shoulder. It was a middle-aged man in a black suit with traces of a suspicious white powder under his nose.

“Hey, I haven’t seen you since the open,” he said. “How was Majorca?”

“Great,” I said, backing away toward the kitchen.

I even spotted one of the New York Times editors who I’d almost arrested, talking with some men in suits out by the pool. Probably deciding what tomorrow’s news would be.

When I finally made it back to my kitchen command corner, I sat for a moment with my forehead pressed against the cool, soothing granite of the counter.

The newest revelation, still ringing through my aching skull, didn’t make sense. How could Thomas Gladstone not be the man we were looking for?

No matter how I put it together, I couldn’t get it to add up. Gladstone gets divorced and loses his job, and then someone else kills his family? And what about the little fact that our eyewitness, the Air France stewardess, ID’d him from a photo lineup? Was she lying? If so, why? Did we need to reinterview her?

I took a break from being baffled to call in to the security detail. Everything seemed normal. No activity on the street. All of the building’s ground-level doors and windows had been checked and rechecked.

“We’ve got it all wired tight,” Steve Reno radioed up from the lobby.

“Like my nerves,” I radioed back.

“Go ahead and have a glass of Cristal, Mikey,” the SWAT lieutenant said. “Or maybe krunk with some of those debutantes. We won’t tell. You gotta do something to relax.”

“Busting a move is tempting,” I called in to my radio. “But fortunately, Steve, all I gotta do is retire.”

Chapter 77

At a different luxury apartment building, the Teacher knelt over the sidewalk grate and started working on it with a crowbar. There were no cops staking out this place, he’d made good and sure of that.

Within five minutes, he was able to swing the grate open. He hopped down inside and silently closed it back over his head. This was a filthy, squalid way of doing things, but if you wanted to get into one of Manhattan ’s Fort Knox-like, prewar buildings, you had to make some sacrifices.

The beam of his penlight, held in his mouth, played over the concrete where he squatted. The filth came up to the ankles of his three-hundred-dollar socks – mounds of cigarette butts and gum wrappers; sodden, unrecognizable garbage; an empty crack vial.

He shrugged off his jacket, wadded it up, and held it against the dust-caked basement window beneath the grate. He hit the window with a single sharp punch, breaking out the glass. He stilled, listening for an alarm or outcry. There was nothing. He reached in, found the window latch, and squirmed his way into the darkened basement.

He walked quickly down a corridor lined with dusty storage bins piled with beat-up luggage, old wooden skis, stationary bikes, eight-track tapes. High society kept the same crapola as most other idiots, he thought. He slowed as he approached a doorway with the sound of Spanish music behind it – no doubt the super’s apartment. But the door stayed closed as he silently moved along.

Past it, on the right, he came to an old-fashioned manual elevator. Inside that, he let the outer door slide quietly closed before easing shut the brass lattice of its inner gate.

That was when he noticed that his hand was bleeding. Crimson drops were rolling off his thumb, splashing on the worn linoleum.

Wincing, he pulled up his sleeve. Christ, he’d sliced the back of his arm wide open when he’d punched the window. How did you like that? He was so jacked up, he hadn’t even noticed.

Well, what was a little blood? he thought, clicking off the safeties of the Tec-9s. He pulled back the elevator switch and started to ascend.

There’d be a lot more of that soon.

Chapter 78

When the Teacher let go of the freight elevator lever, the car did a funny little bounce. He held his breath, listening, as its humming motor silenced with a clack and it stopped dead in the shaft. Still nothing.

The floating feeling of elation in the pit of his stomach was insane now, like he’d swallowed a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. How many years of his life had he wasted running away from it, denying it? He loved being at war with anyone and everyone. The thrill of it was better than sex, drugs, and rock and roll put together.

Quick now, he thought, sliding the brass inner gate back silently.

It opened onto a narrow back landing, a service entrance with two doors and some garbage cans. He put his ear to the closer of the doors. Inside, he heard water running, the bang of a pot being put on a stove, loud voices that sounded like children’s.

He pressed the thumb of his injured hand to the doorbell. Footsteps approached. He was prepared with a ruse about delivering a package to the Bennett residence. Or, if the door opened a few inches on a chain, to just ram it with his shoulder.

But the lock tumblers clicked and it started swinging freely inward.

You’ve got to be kidding me, he thought. Not even a “Who’s there?” Hadn’t they heard about the crime wave?

His heart double-dribbled against his chest as the door opened all the way.

Chapter 79

When I ducked my head out of the kitchen about ten minutes later, I could see that the Blanchettes’ party had kicked into full tilt. The mayor was dancing to techno with somebody’s trophy wife, and she was laughing her head off like a hyena. All around them, others were behaving more like raucous teenagers than the dignified adults they no doubt were during their day jobs.

I exchanged perplexed looks with one of the Midtown North undercovers who was posing as a waiter.

“I guess it just ain’t a party until the guy in the bird costume is deejaying in front of your Pollock,” he said.

Then a voice spoke through my earpiece.

“Mike? Uh, Mike? Um, could you get in here?” It sounded like Jacobs, one of the Midtown North detectives.

“Where’s ‘here’?”

“The kitchen.”

“What’s up?”

“You, uh, just need to come, okay? I’ll show you when you get here. Over.”

What now? I thought, heading back to the Blanchettes’ kitchen. Jacobs had sounded weird, even upset. Well, things had been going so smoothly, maybe something had to give.

I hurried into the kitchen.

And stopped still.

Jacobs was beside the back door, standing over a young guy who was lying on the kitchen floor. I recognized him as another detective, Genelli, from the Nineteenth Precinct.

“Oh, my God,” I said, striding toward them. “What the hell happened to him?” Had somebody bashed him? Was our shooter here after all?

Genelli briefly tried to lift his lolling head, but it thunked back to the floor.

“He’s okay,” Jacobs said. “Dumbass rookie, he got bored out by the pool, started drinking beer and playing quarters with a couple of the college girl guests. Next thing, one of them comes to tell me he passed out. Sorry to be coy, Mike, but I didn’t know what else to do. We don’t get him out of here before the mayor sees him, he’s going to get fired.”

“Him and me both,” I said, grabbing Genelli’s arm. “Open that back door and ring the freight elevator before anybody sees us.”

Chapter 80

Mary Catherine was drying her hands with a dish towel when the back doorbell rang. She assumed it was a delivery that the doorman downstairs had okayed, which happened fairly often. Nobody could get up here without going past him.

But her towel fluttered to the floor as she stared at the man standing there. Her gaze went first to his bloody hand, then flicked to the two evil-looking guns he was holding, then to the wide grin on his face.

“Bennett residence, I presume,” he said, pressing the snub-nosed black barrel of one of the machine pistols to the tip of her nose. Blood streamed down his wrist, within inches of her staring eyes.

Oh, my good Lord, she thought, struggling to stay calm. What to do? Scream? But it might enrage him, and who would hear her, anyway? Sweet Jesus – this man here, and the worst of it was that all the kids were home!

Still smiling, he tucked the threatening gun into his jacket.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he said. She stepped back reluctantly. There was nothing else she could do.

“Thank you,” he said with mocking politeness.

When he spotted Shawna and Chrissy at the kitchen island, he lowered the other gun and hid it behind his leg. Thank God for that, at least. They watched him with mild curiosity. At their age, the sudden appearance of a stranger was just one of thousands of other mysterious things. The flu that had kept so many of the Bennett kids home from school had also wreaked havoc with their bedtimes.

“Hey, who are you?” Chrissy said, sliding off her stool and starting toward him to make friends.

Mary Catherine swallowed, fighting the urge to dive across the kitchen and scoop the child up. Instead, she stepped forward to intercept Chrissy and caught her hand.

“I’m one of your daddy’s friends,” the man said.

“I’m Chrissy. Are you a police officer, too? Why is your hand bleeding? And what’s that behind your leg?”

“Put a sock in the brat,” the Teacher said quietly to Mary Catherine. “This ‘why is the sky blue’ crap is really pissing me off.”

“Go watch the movie now, girls,” she said.

“But I thought you said Harry Potter was too scary,” Shawna said, giving her a distressed look.

“It’ll be okay this once, Shawna. Just do it. Now.”

The little girls scurried away, finally frightened by their nanny’s harsh tone rather than by the man who might kill them.

He lifted a carrot stick off the cutting board and bit into it.

“Get on the phone and tell Mike he needs to get home fast,” he said to Mary Catherine as he chewed. “You won’t be lying if you say it’s a family emergency.”

Chapter 81

“All right, young man, it’s Judgment Day,” Seamus said as he guided Eddie through the Bennetts’ front door.

Then someone on the other side of the door yanked it open, jerking the knob out of his hand.

Indignant, he started to say, “Well, that’s a fine way to welcome? -”

His sentence died at the amplified click in his ear. He peered to his left and saw a gun, a big one. A tall blond man in a suit pressed it to his temple.

“Another kid?” the man said, looking at Eddie. “What is this, a day care center? And a priest, too? Wow, that’s normal. Now I see why Bennett puts in so much overtime. I’d work twenty-four/seven if I had to live in this psych ward.”

Seamus’s stomach clenched as he instantly put it together. This was the serial shooter Mike was trying to catch. He must have fixated on Mike. Talk about nuts.

Maybe he could calm the man down, Seamus thought. Be the fatherly counselor. It was his job, after all.

“I can see you’re troubled, my son,” he said as the gunman guided him into the living room. “There’s ways to make this right, and I can help you. Unburden yourself, confess your sins. It’s never too late.”

“Just one little problem, you doddering imbecile – there is no God. So I’m going to take a rain check on the sin thing.”

Doddering? Seamus thought angrily. Time to switch to plan B.

“Well and good, then,” he said, ignoring the gun and turning to stare defiantly into the killer’s eyes. “I’m happy to know you’ll be going straight to hell where you belong.”

The kids gasped.

“Watch it, padre. Shooting kids isn’t against my religion. Priests, either, for that matter.”

“It’s Monsignor to you, asswipe,” Seamus said, still glaring at him like they were about to go fifteen rounds.

Seamus heard another, even louder gasp. Then he realized with shame that the killer was right. He was acting like an old fool. He had to tone down the temper and look out for these kids.

The psychopath grinned.

“I like your guts, old man, but mouth me like that again, and you’ll be saying midnight mass at the pearly gates with Saint Peter.”

Suddenly Fiona, the closest of the huddled group of children, let out a troubled grunt and doubled over. When the gunman realized what was happening he jumped back. But not fast enough to avoid her upchucking a stream of vomit onto his shoes.

Good girl, Seamus thought.

The man made a face of pure disgust as he flicked puke off his fancy footwear. Then his look turned confused when he noticed that Jane was furiously scribbling the whole scene in a notebook.

“You people are something else,” he muttered. “Bennett’s going to thank me when I put him out of his misery.”

Chapter 82

After the Genelli “incident” was safely taken care of, I got a call from Mary Catherine. She said that Jane had become really, seriously ill – temperature of a hundred and two, and she couldn’t stop vomiting. Mary didn’t know whether or not to take her to the emergency room. Could I come home right away?

I didn’t see any choice. Luckily, things were still quiet here. I put Steve Reno in charge and headed for the door. The mayor, having a photo op in the foyer, gave me a nasty look as I walked by him. Was he pissed that the killer hadn’t shown?

Outside, the cold air and lack of headache-inducing dance music hit me like a refreshing tonic. I crossed the street to my Impala, taking deep breaths and rolling my stiff neck. I turned the engine over and squealed a right onto Eighty-fifth.

As I cut through pitch-black Central Park toward the West Side, I went back to brainstorming. Why did somebody kill Thomas Gladstone, his family, and a bunch of other seemingly random, hoity-toity New Yorkers?

Insanity? The guy was a psycho, sure, but he was organized, smart, very much in control. I didn’t believe that the killings were random, on impulse. He had a reason for what he was doing. Revenge? Maybe, but revenge for what? There was no way even to guess. Maybe both those things figured in, along with God-knew-what-else.

About all I was sure of was that he had to be somebody connected to Gladstone.

I turned down the Chevy’s police radio and turned up the real one to soothe my aching skull. Fat chance: 1010 WINS was going on about the serial shooter. So was CBS 880, so I twirled the dial over to ESPN sports talk.

But there was no escape there, either.

“Our next caller on the Giants Report is Mario from Staten Island,” the announcer said. “What’s shaking, Mario?”

“My mom, mostly,” the caller answered, in a Rocky Balboa voice. “She lives in Little Italy and she’s afraid to open her door. When are the cops going to catch dis friggin’ guy? Jeez!”

“I’m working on it, Mario,” I said, shutting off the damn noise box as Beth Peters rang my cell.

“Mike, I hope you’re sitting down. We just got word. The apartment is rented to a guy named William Meyer. Turns out this guy is a military contractor from Cobalt Partners. You know, the company that provides security to Americans in Iraq? The one that’s in super-deep shit from that recent shooting incident.”

I’d been busier making news than listening to it, but I vaguely remembered something about it. Shots had been fired at a convoy of State Department officials, and the Cobalt security people had returned fire into a large crowd. Eleven people had died, four of them children. An indictment was expected.

“This William Meyer is the main suspect. He was sup-posed to be on the Today show to defend himself but bailed. Before Cobalt, he was in the marines, Special Ops. That would definitely jibe with our guy’s military tactics and shooting skills.”

“Any idea why Gladstone was in Meyer’s apartment?” I asked.

“Absolutely none, Mike, but at least now we have a name. We’re trying to put together his picture. We’ll get him. It’s only a matter of time.”

Chapter 83

William Meyer, I thought as I went up my elevator to my apartment. The way this guy had been taking people out, he seemed more like Michael Myers, the psycho from the movie Halloween.

There were still so many unanswered questions. Had Thomas Gladstone and William Meyer been old service buddies? I would have asked one of Gladstone’s friends or relatives, but they were all dead. Shot by Meyer, if our newest theory was right. Had Gladstone pissed Meyer off or something? And what about the fact that Meyer had been ID’d as Gladstone? They even looked the same?

The scent of apples permeated the foyer outside my apartment. On the antique mail table we shared with our neighbors, a silver bowl was brimming with apples, gourds, and cute baby pumpkins. A gold-and-crimson-colored dried-leaf wreath hung on their door.

While I’d been out chasing a psychopath and staring at charred bodies, Camille Underhill, the Martha Stewart clone next door, had done up our alcove in autumnal splendor. I’d have to remember to thank her when this was all over.

Then I glimpsed my own reflection in the mirror above the table, and it stopped me cold. I was as pale as death. I had garment bags under my eyes and a thumb-sized smudge of tenement-fire soot on my chin. Worse, my face was creased by a scowl that was taking on a permanency.

It was time to start getting serious about finding a different line of work, I decided. The sooner, the better.

Inside my apartment, I started down the hall toward Jane’s room, but then spotted flickering blue TV light coming from the living room. It was late for the kids to be up, but maybe Mary Catherine had stuck the others in front of the tube so she could take care of Jane. I didn’t hear any coughing or retching sounds. Was the epidemic over?

When I first stepped into the darkened living room, my guess seemed right. On the TV screen, Harry and Ron were running down a corridor of Hogwarts, and kids were sitting all over the sectional and various beanbag chairs.

Then I realized that all ten kids were there, including deathly sick Jane. Stranger yet, both Mary Catherine and Seamus were with them, staring at me urgently.

“Why the heck is everybody up this late?” I said. “Did J.K. Rowling come out with another book or something? Come on, gang, it’s time to hit the sack.”

“No, it’s time to unholster your gun and kick it over to me,” said a voice behind me. The living room light flicked on.

That’s when I spotted the lamp cord that bound Seamus and Mary Catherine to the dining room chairs they were sitting on.

What!? No, not here! Oh, my God. Son of a bitch!

“I’ll say it once more. Your gun, unholster it and kick it over here,” the voice said. “I suggest you be very careful. You know exactly how well I shoot.”

I turned around to finally come face-to-face with my nightmare.

The witnesses had done a good job, I thought. Tall, athletic, with a handsome, boyish face. His hair was blond, but obviously dyed. And he did look like Thomas Gladstone. I could see why the stewardess had ID’d him. This guy looked like an older, slimmer version of the deceased pilot.

Was he Gladstone? Or Meyer? Could the dental records on the body in the tenement be wrong?

I also couldn’t help noticing how his finger was very tight on the trigger of the machine pistol he pointed steadily at my heart.

Keeping my hands visible, I drew my Glock from my belt holster, set it on the hardwood floor, and booted it over to him. He picked it up and shoved it inside his belt, revealing the butt of yet another gun. Talk about armed to the teeth. Christ, this guy was scary.

“Time for a little man talk in here, Mike,” he said, gesturing toward the kitchen with his chin. “Me and you got a lot of catching up to do.”

Chapter 84

“Now, don’t do anything silly, kiddies. Just sit still,” the gunman said to my family in a peppy, condescending tone. “I’ll be listening, and if I hear something I don’t like, you’ll make me put a bullet in your daddy’s head. That’ll ruin his whole day.”

I could see the kids cringe, and little Shawna, sitting in Juliana’s lap, was crying while Juliana tried to comfort her. Christ, that was just the kind of thing they needed to hear after losing their mother less than a year ago. I’d gladly have killed the son of a bitch for it – just for being in my house.

With a gun at my back, I walked into the kitchen and sat at the island, choosing the stool closest to the block of knives by the stove. If I could get him to let down his guard, I’d grab one and go for him, I decided. I wouldn’t mind getting shot, but I needed to be sure. If I failed, we’d all be dead.

But the shooter stayed on the other side of the island, on his feet and very watchful.

“I heard you’ve been looking for me,” he said with smug sarcasm. “Well, here I am. What can I do for you?”

I said a quick silent prayer of thanks for my years as a hostage negotiator. I was able to stay calm despite the adrenaline bulging my veins. Let all that training and experience take over, I told myself. Maybe I could talk my family to safety.

Maybe? What was I thinking? Maybe wasn’t an option. I had to. That was all there was to it.

“This is between me and you,” I said calmly. “As long as we keep it like that, I’m fine with whatever you want. Just take me out of here or let my kids go. I’ll tell them not to talk to anybody, and they won’t. Like you said, they don’t want to see me get hurt.”

“Actually,” he said, “this thing is between me and whoever I say it’s between. The Bennett Bunch is staying right here.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s you and me leave. I’ll do whatever you say and I won’t try anything.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Why don’t you tell me what I can do for you?” I said. “You want to get away? I can arrange it.”

He shook his head, still with his sardonic smirk, then opened my fridge and came out with a couple of cans of Bud. He popped the top off one and handed it to me before crunching one for himself.

“Budweiser? In a can? Jeez, Mike,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Where do you keep the potatoes that complete your Irish seven-course meals?”

He took a sip of his and pointed to mine.

“Go on. Tilt your elbow, Mikey. Loosen up a little. Looking around for me must have been thirsty work. Not to mention dealing with that crew of curtain climbers in the living room.”

“If you insist,” I said, and took a long hit of the cold beer. It tasted damn good.

“See? There you go. A little levity goes a long way. I knew we could be friends, that you were the guy I could explain myself to.”

I took another drink. The way my nerves were jangling, I could have gone through a twelve-pack. I set the Bud on the counter and stared at him with as much concern and understanding as I could muster. Oprah would have been proud.

“Explain away,” I said. “I’m more than happy to hear what you have to say, William. That’s your name? William Meyer, right?”

“Sort of,” he said. “My name used to be Gladstone. But my parents got divorced and our family split up. I went with my mom, and my stepfather adopted me and changed my name to Meyer.”

So that’s why we didn’t get a hit on any relatives for Gladstone, I thought, shaking my head.

“That’s what this was all about in a way,” the killer said. “My turning my back on my name and on my brother.”

Much as I wanted to see this psychopathic, cop-killing, walking infection on an autopsy table, the hostage negotiator in me won the day. Meyer wanted to tell his story, and the longer I could keep him talking, the more time I bought and the more likely he was to relax.

“Can I call you Billy?” I said in a voice that would make any therapist proud. “I’ve worked a million cases, but I’ve never heard anything like this. Will you tell me about it?”

Yeah. Tell me all about how much smarter you are than the rest of the world, you evil prick.

Chapter 85

Just as I’d figured, Billy Meyer didn’t need any prodding.

“Like I said, when I was ten, my parents got divorced, and my mom got remarried to a very rich financier. I went with her, but my little brother, Tommy, stayed with my dad. Pop was a nice guy, but a drunk. He worked cleaning trains for the Transit Authority, and that was the height of his ambition. As long as it kept him in booze.”

He took a slug of his beer. Good, keep drinking, I thought. Maybe I could get him to let me bust out the Jameson’s, and we could do shots. He’d get drunk and pass out. Or better yet, I could brain him with the bottle. I was all for that.

“My life completely changed,” he went on. “I went to snobby Collegiate and on to even more elitist Princeton. But after I graduated, instead of heading off to Wall Street like my stepdad wanted, I rebelled and joined the marines instead. I started out as a grunt and ended up in Special Ops. I trained as a pilot, like my brother.”

At the top of his class, no doubt, I thought, remembering his efficiency with a pistol.

“When I got out of the service, I joined up with the multinational corporate security firm Cobalt. It was great. Iraq was just starting up. It was just like Special Ops only better. All the action I wanted. It was great while it lasted. Cobalt’s the firm that’s been catching some heat lately. You follow current events, Mike?”

“I do what I can,” I said.

“Well, the FBI is actually going to try to charge me with murder. Of course I killed those people. You let off shots in the direction of my men, crowd or no crowd, you’re getting them back and then some. The Feds want to indict us for staying the fuck alive? Screw that. I came back to fight that nonsense. Point out the little fact that we were in a war zone. Cobalt hired a PR group to rep us. We were going to go on the morning shows and talk circuit. It was all set up.”

He paused to take another sip.

“Didn’t work out?” I tried.

“Well, that was before I came home to my apartment here in the city to drop off my bags and found my brother.”

The psychopath suddenly looked down at the floor. A pinched, sad expression clouded his face. I wouldn’t have believed he had that kind of feeling in him.

“My brother blew his brains out, Mike. They were on the coffee table all over my rug. There was a three-page suicide note on the table. Turns out things had totally turned to shit for him while I was away. He’d had an affair with a stewardess, and his wife, Erica, found out and filed for divorce. The big money, the fancy house – all that stuff was hers, so he was out in the cold. Then came the final blow. He got busted for tossing back a few before a London -to- New York run, and bingo, he lost his job.”

This time, I took a sip of my Bud, trying to mask my confusion.

“At the very end of my brother’s note was a list. It was a list of people who had wronged him, the ones who ‘made him do it,’ as he said.”

Billy Meyer let out a deep breath and made a “there you have it” gesture with his gun-free hand, looking at me as if he’d just explained everything.

I nodded back slowly, trying my best to look as if it all made sense now.

“Standing over my poor brother’s body, I had an epiphany. I’d abandoned him when we were little. I never called him, never wrote, always blew him off. I was a self-centered prick. The more and more I thought about it, the more I realized I’d fucking killed him as sure as if I’d pulled the trigger myself. My first reaction actually was lifting the gun. I wanted to kill myself, too. That’s how messed up I was.”

If only you’d gone with that immediate instinct, I wanted to say. Think long, think wrong.

“That’s when I decided it. Screw defending myself in the indictment. Screw my career, my life, everything. All I ever wanted in life was a mission, and I decided that righting the wrong that had been done to my brother would be my last and final one. I decided to give Tommy a going-away present. Maybe he didn’t have the balls to get back at the people who fucked up his life, but I did. I decided to send out the Gladstone brothers with a bang.”

So we’d been right, I thought. The victims were people who had wronged Thomas Gladstone. Only Gladstone wasn’t the one killing his enemies. It was his brother. We’d gotten the sequence wrong, I realized. It wasn’t a murder spree that ended in a suicide, but a suicide that had inspired a murder spree.

“So all that stuff you wrote about society was bull?”

“I believe most of it, I suppose. But it was mainly just smoke to cover my tracks. There were a lot of people on the list. I needed time. I needed you to think my targets were random. Screw with the enemy’s head: Tactics 101. It was working, too, until you came along and stumbled between me and the last two people left on my brother’s note.”

He gestured with the gun for me to stand.

“Which brings us to why I’m here, Mikey. You got in the way of my taking out Erica’s parents. You’re going to have to make that up to me. Fortunately, I’ve come up with an alternate plan, and you’re going to help. So drink up that beer of kings, pal. Last call. We’re going for a little ride.”

Chapter 86

Thank God, was my first thought. If we got out of here, my family would be safe. That was all I wanted.

At gunpoint, he walked me out of the kitchen, back into the living room. But then with his free arm he scooped up Chrissy, still in her Barbie pajamas, off the couch.

“No!” I yelled. I managed to restrain myself from lunging for him, afraid he’d start shooting.

But Eddie screamed, “Get off her!” and jumped from the couch, trying to tackle Meyer. He went flying backward even faster as Meyer kneed him in the chest.

“Get your rug rats under control, Bennett, or I will,” Meyer snarled at me.

“Guys, stay where you are,” I ordered the kids, then turned back to the killer. “Billy, relax. I already said I’d help you. We don’t need to bring her. Besides, she’s sick.”

“Her condition’s going to get a lot worse if you don’t do what I say. That goes for all of you. I see a cop car, this family is going to be short two place settings at breakfast tomorrow.” Holding my squirming little girl under his arm, Meyer gestured me back toward the kitchen with his pistol. “Come on now, Mikey. We’re going down the freight elevator.”

I hesitated for the briefest second as we passed the knives, but then kept walking.

“Wise decision, buddy,” Meyer said, jamming the gun barrel against my ear. “I knew we’d start to grow on each other, me and you.”

We went down the back elevator and came out the side entrance of my building on 95th Street. Not a soul was in sight as I led him to my unmarked Impala. He put me behind the wheel and took Chrissy into the backseat with him.

“She’s not wearing a seat belt, Mikey, so I’d drive carefully if I were you. Go to Broadway and head uptown, and do me a favor. Turn that police band up.”

We rolled uptown to Washington Heights.

“Make a left up here,” he said when we got to 168th.

Over the building tops, I saw the steel lattice tower of the George Washington Bridge.

“Find an on-ramp for the outbound side,” Meyer said in my ear. “We’re going across.”

Why were we heading to Jersey? Not to load up on cheap gas, that was for sure. Was this his escape plan? It was impossible to guess what was going on in that crazy mind.

I managed to make eye contact with Chrissy in the rearview mirror. She looked scared, but she’d settled down, and was holding up more incredibly than I could have imagined. I love you, Daddy, she mouthed. I love you, too, I mouthed back. Don’t worry.

I didn’t know much, but I was certain of one thing as I piloted us carefully onto the bridge. This sick bastard wasn’t going to harm my daughter. No matter what.

Chapter 87

When Maeve and I had first brought home our oldest daughter, Juliana, I used to have this terrible recurring nightmare. In it, I’d be feeding Juliana in her high chair, and all of a sudden, she’d start to choke. I’d put my finger in her mouth, give her the Heimlich, but absolutely nothing would work. I’d wake up sweating and gasping, and I’d have to go to her room and hold a mirror to her tiny nose and see it fog with her breath before I could let myself go back to sleep.

Because that, without question, is a parent’s greatest fear. To be helpless, not able to do anything, when his child is facing harm.

I glanced in my rearview mirror at Meyer, sitting next to my daughter. At the heavy, oiled automatic pistol he held loosely in his lap.

My dry throat felt like it was caked with dust as I swallowed. My whole body was covered in a cold sweat. The steering wheel was slick with it, practically slipping out of my hands.

You live long enough, I thought as misery shook through me like a low-voltage shock, even your worst nightmares may come true.

I glanced in the mirror again, and this time I saw a pain-filled light in Chrissy’s eyes. It was the same look she’d gotten when I’d read her The Velveteen Rabbit for the first time. She was starting to really understand how wrong this ride was.

The last thing we needed was for her to start crying, and irritate the human time bomb sitting next to her. When I’d attended the FBI Academy in Quantico, I’d learned that when you’re kidnapped, you want to be as unobtrusive and cooperative as possible.

“Chrissy?” I said, struggling to keep the fear out of my voice. “Tell us a joke, honey. I didn’t hear today’s joke.”

The sad light in her eyes diminished, and she cleared her throat theatrically. As the baby of the family, she knew how to perform.

“What do you call a monkey after you take away his bananas?” she said.

“I don’t know, honey. What?” I said, playing straight man.

“Furious George!” she yelled, and started giggling.

I laughed along with her, watching Meyer’s eyes for his reaction.

But they had nothing in them. They were the glazed eyes of a man buying a newspaper, or riding an elevator, or waiting for a train.

I glanced back at the road just in time to see that the tractor trailer in front of me had come to a dead stop. My heart locked as the huge truck’s blood-red brake lights and sheer steel wall seemed to rush at us, filling the windshield. I mashed the brakes, with rubber squealing and smoking.

That the car came to a stop inches before decapitating me under the tailgate was a miracle. Add hysterical cops to the list of people God looks out for, I thought, wiping my sweating forehead.

“Get it together, Bennett,” Meyer warned me harshly. “You get us in trouble, I’ll have to shoot my way out of it. Starting right here.”

Yeah, sure, my bad, I wanted to snap back. It’s a tad hard to focus when your nerves are stretched past the snapping point.

“Take the next exit west off the interstate,” he ordered. “Time to get off this road, anyway, the way you drive.”

We pulled onto Route 46, a run-down industrial strip. I stared out at the old motels and warehouses, with patches of deserted desolate Jersey swampland in the spaces between them, trying to assess whether the slower speed and lack of traffic might work in my favor. If I jammed the car into a fishtailing spin, would that throw Meyer off balance long enough for me to grab Chrissy and run? It’s hard to hit a target, especially a moving one, with a handgun.

But this guy was incredible with a pistol, there was no doubt about that. Just my luck.

Run or fight – both bad choices, but the only ones I had. Oh, God, help me save my daughter, I prayed. What the hell do I do?

“Look, Daddy,” Chrissy said, and an instant later, a violent roar shook through the car. Stunned, I thought maybe I’d actually hit something this time. For an insane instant, the thought of a roadside bomb even flitted through my mind.

It took me a couple more seconds to realize that the noise was from a plane coming in low over our car. As it dropped into sight ahead, I saw that it was a small, sleek corporate jet, landing on a runway behind the high chain-link fence on my left.

What the hell was an airport doing here? Newark was miles farther south down 95. Then I realized that this was Teterboro, a small private airport that a lot of corporations and jet-setters used when coming into New York. It cost a fortune, but it was only twenty or so minutes into the city, and there were no strip searches or waiting in line.

“Slow down and turn in here,” Meyer said as we approached a stoplight.

I made the turn carefully, swiping again at the cold sweat now stinging my eyes. Whatever this son of a bitch had in mind, the addition of an airport somehow made it a thousand times worse.

Chapter 88

The airport entrance road called Industrial Avenue was lined with private jet management firms – small two-story buildings with hangars behind them and fenced, guarded parking lots in front. The guard booths were manned with uniformed Port Authority cops, I noticed.

Was this the time to make my move? Would they figure out what was happening before Chrissy, I, and maybe they, too, ended up dead?

I hung on once again, figuring I’d be better off if I knew what Meyer had in mind.

“Stop here,” he said when the road dead-ended. “Listen good, Bennett, because you’re going to get only one chance. Turn around, then pull into the first hangar on the way back. They’ve got only one guard, and that’s why I brought you. You’re going to use some of that on-the-job cop juice. Flash your badge and get us in.”

“What am I supposed to tell him?” I said, wheeling the Chevy around in a U-turn.

“Get creative, cop, and make it good. Your daughter’s life depends on it.”

The Port Authority cop in the guard booth was a young Asian guy, who leaned out his window when we drove up.

“NYPD,” I said, flashing my shield. “We’re in pursuit of a homicide suspect that we believe might have climbed the fence off Forty-six, and could be inside this area.”

“What?!” the young officer said, squinting in at me. “I haven’t heard anything about that. Homeland Security had us put sensors on the wire after 9/11. They should have picked the guy up.” His gaze moved toward Meyer and Chrissy in the backseat.

I tensed, silently praying that he would deny my bizarre request, or even drop all pretence and go for his gun. My Chevy looked like what it was, an unmarked cop car. A passenger riding in the backseat would have looked extremely suspicious even by himself, let alone with my four-year-old daughter beside him.

Meyer would be distracted, and I could fling myself over the backseat on top of Chrissy. At least shield her with my body, and maybe get her out of there. Run like hell, somewhere, anywhere. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was looking like the only shot we’d get.

Instead, the cop’s face turned even more perplexed.

“Who’s the little girl?” he said.

“Her daddy was the one who got killed,” Meyer piped in over my shoulder. “Give us a break already with the twenty questions, cuz. This is a homicide we’re talking about. Time’s a-wasting.”

“I can’t believe I wasn’t notified about this,” the Port Authority cop said almost to himself, with a shake of his head. “Okay, come on in. Park over by the hangar while I radio my sarge.”

“Nice work there, Mikey boy,” Meyer whispered as the stick gate rose. “I appreciate it so much, I’m going to give you and your brat five more minutes of life.”

As we drove the twenty yards to the hangar, Meyer sneezed violently, then wiped snot off his face with his wounded hand.

“Your goddamned kids got me sick,” he said.

As if on cue, something in my stomach heaved, and I doubled over and vomited all over the passenger footwell. So my dry throat and cold sweat weren’t only from my bone-numbing terror, I realized, wiping my chin on my sleeve. The flu had finally caught up with me, too.

“That makes two of us,” I said.

“Yeah, well, sick or not, the show must go on. C’mon now. Me, you, and the girl are going out. You listen to me, you two might just make it out of here.”

I sat up, found Meyer’s eyes in the rearview, and shook my head.

“Never happen,” I said. “You want me to go with you, fine. But she stays here.”

“Don’t leave me, Daddy,” Chrissy pleaded.

“What kind of mean father are you, Bennett?” Meyer said. “See, she wants to come.” That ugly mockery was back in his voice again. He must have been feeling confident, now that he’d gotten this far. “Or would you rather I finish you both right here and now?”

“You’re talking like that cop’s the only one at this airport,” I said. “Pull that trigger, and he’ll call in the cavalry before the sound fades. You know damn well they’ve got a SWAT team here. M16s, sniper rifles, flashbangs, lots of drill practice. You’re good, Billy, but you’ll never get past them.”

Meyer was quiet for several seconds. “I hate to admit it, Bennett, but you make a good point,” he finally said. “That’s another favor you’ve done me, so I’ll do you another one back. We’ll leave her here. It’s just you and me now.”

Chapter 89

Outside the car, my sweat felt even colder, maybe because of the fresh air or maybe because I seemed to be running a fever now. On top of that, my stomach told me it wasn’t completely done heaving up its inventory.

The roar of another plane screaming skyward drowned out everything else for a few seconds. As its echo faded, my heart was cut by the sound of Chrissy, crying in the backseat.

The Port Authority cop stepped out of his booth and came walking toward us. His hand was on the butt of his pistol and his face looked wary.

“Just got off the phone with the sarge,” he said. “He’s on his way over here.”

I was opening my mouth, trying to come up with another quick lie, when Meyer shot him. No indication, no warning – just boom. The bullet hit the officer in the cheek, blood sprayed out the back of his head, and he dropped like a soup tureen that had been pushed off a table.

“No shit,” Meyer said, crouching to take handcuffs off the downed cop’s belt. “What did the sarge say?”

“You son of a bitch,” I yelled, and I leaped on Meyer, swinging. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do, but I didn’t think, I just reacted. I hit him as hard as I ever hit anyone in my entire life, a right hook to his ear that knocked him off his feet and sent him rolling over the cop’s body onto the asphalt.

But goddammit, he got up with his gun clenched in his hand. I was shaking as he placed the still warm barrel in the soft spot under my chin, but he seemed amused instead of angry. He was actually grinning.

“Not bad, copper, but that’s the only one you get,” he said. “You gonna behave now? Or do I have to go back and see how your little girl’s doing?”

“Sorry,” I muttered, lowering my eyes.

“No, you’re not,” he said, then gave me a vicious kick in the rear, aiming me toward the private airport’s main building. “But you will be.”

The reception area inside looked like the lobby of a four-star hotel. Walls paneled with gleaming wood, leather furniture, marble coffee tables fanned with Fortune, BusinessWeek, Vanity Fair. The tarmac was visible beyond the windows.

A pretty, obviously pregnant receptionist was talking into a phone, but when she saw us she froze in place, gaping. The phone dropped from her hand, clattering on her desktop.

“Sorry to barge in unannounced,” Meyer said airily, pointing the gun at her swollen belly. “We’re just going to head out to the tarmac, okay? Don’t bother us, and we won’t bother you.”

There was an empty executive waiting room through a door on the left. More leather chairs and a hundred-inch wide-screen TV blaring ESPN’s top ten.

I jumped about five feet in the air as Meyer suddenly swung his gun around and blew a hole through the screen.

“Why should Elvis have all the fun?” he yelled, shoving me into another corridor. “-Fifty-seven high-def channels now, and there’s still nothing on.”

He kicked open a door marked PILOTS’ LOUNGE. We passed workout equipment, showers, a small kitchen.

Then the cold hit us again as we went through another door into a brightly lit hangar. Wind whipped through the building, across a steel walkway and stairs. There were tool carts, a portable crane, a mobile scaffold, but no people, thank God. Was he looking for a plane? There were none of those, either. Thank God again.

“Move it, Bennett,” he said, yanking me out the huge double doors toward the string of blazing runway lights.

“We’re going out there?” I said. “Looks kind of dangerous.”

Meyer sneered. “Come on, cop, show some balls.”

Striding toward the runway, we saw a plane approaching slowly down the taxiway from one of the other private hangars – a small orange-and-white Cessna, with a loudly buzzing propeller engine on each wing.

“Give me your badge, quick,” Meyer ordered me. “And stay here. You move one step, your daughter’s dead.”

He tore the badge out of my hand and jogged toward the runway, shoving his gun into his belt. Standing in front of the plane, he held up the badge and waved his other hand frantically, like an enraged traffic cop. I could see the pilot behind the windshield, a young man with shaggy blond hair. He looked baffled, but he stopped the plane, and Meyer came around the wing.

A few seconds later, the pilot opened the door and Meyer stepped up into the plane. I couldn’t hear what they said over the noise of the propellers, but I saw Meyer snake something out of his pocket and flick his wrist. A telescoping steel baton shot from his hand like a huge switchblade knife. He must have taken it off the dead Port Authority cop along with the handcuffs.

He blasted the kid across the side of his head twice, with a force I could almost feel. Then he reached in, unclipped the pilot’s seat belt, and dumped him, unconscious, out onto the tarmac, with blood streaking his blond head.

“He says we can borrow his plane, Bennett!” he yelled at me. “How’s that for luck? Get your ass over here.”

I stood in the icy wake of the roaring propeller blades, wondering if there was any chance I could run back to the car and make a getaway with Chrissy. But Meyer had his pistol in his hand again. I saw the muzzle flash and felt the snap of a round whip past my left ear. Before I could blink, another round ricocheted off the tarmac between my legs.

“Come on, Mikey, I want some company. Pretty please?”

I sucked in my breath and headed toward the plane.

Chapter 90

The inside of the Cessna was as tight as a coffin. And less comfortable, I thought, trying to squeeze my long legs underneath the sharp console on the front passenger side. It didn’t help that Meyer cuffed my wrists before strapping me tightly into my seat with a lap belt and shoulder harness.

I stared at the bewildering array of complicated-looking gauges and buttons on the huge dashboard. But Meyer’s fingers moved across them with assurance. The propellers seemed to scream more loudly as he pushed forward one of six floor-mounted levers. Then he brought the one next to it up as well, and we started slowly moving.

We were making the turn onto the runway when we saw the fire truck – humongous, bright yellow, lights and siren blazing as it barreled down the middle of the runway to block our path. I recognized it as the Port Authority’s Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting Unit. What was their nickname again? Something and Hoses?

A blistering spray of automatic rifle fire suddenly bloomed from one of the truck’s side windows, and the tarmac in front of us exploded with puffs from the warning shots.

Holy crap! Guns and Hoses, that was it. Those guys were a crazy hybrid of firemen and cops who dealt with both plane crashes and hijackings.

Aim for the pilot! I mentally messaged them, scrunching down in my seat as far as I could.

Although at this point, I was willing to get shot if it meant finally stopping Meyer.

He did something with the foot pedals, and we made a quick U-turn back onto the taxiway. Then he jammed the throttle level up as far as it would go, and we were suddenly rocketing down the lane, dangerously close to the row of hangars.

My breath stopped when I saw the deicing truck that was parked squarely in our way. There was no chance we could miss it. At that speed, trying to turn the plane would have sent it into a violent, out-of-control spin.

Silently I said my last prayer as we raced forward to ram it broadside.

At the last second, Meyer pulled the yoke back. With our wheels practically scraping the deicing truck’s top, we were airborne.

Chapter 91

Even numb with fear, I could feel my heart beating wildly through every square inch of my body as Meyer rocketed us up. I’d been to several plane crash sights in my time with the CRU. I knew all too well what happened to the human body when it struck something at several hundred miles an hour.

The plane seemed to be standing on its tail end, climbing straight up. I stared out at the ground lights that whirled below, feeling paralyzed with fever and fear.

My mind whirled, too, wondering what Meyer had planned. Where was he heading? Out of the country?

Not that it made much difference to me.

But mostly I thought about Chrissy. I hoped to God she hadn’t seen Meyer shoot the cop – hoped somebody had found her and called home by now.

“You know how crappy it was to lose my brother – not just once, but twice?” he said, raising his voice over the roar of the engines.

I shook myself out of my stupor. All of a sudden, I felt free. I had nothing left to lose if I was going to die, anyway. And I was damned if I’d be listening to his garbage when it happened.

“I’d have some sympathy for you, asshole,” I snapped back. “Except lots of people have it tough and don’t feel the need to go around shooting innocent, defenseless people and kidnapping little girls.”

“Screw that bullshit. When I was in aviation training, they told me, ‘Kid, you see those people down there on the desert floor, looking like little ants? Well, we want you to fire these bullets the size of butter knives down on them one thousand times a minute. Don’t worry that after you’re done, there’ll be piles of bloody rags where human beings were standing. Just ignore it.’ ”

“But I’m also supposed to ignore the real assholes back here in the States. The ones who make people miserable, who don’t give a fuck if they treat somebody so bad it drives them to suicide – the selfish pricks who really make this world a mess. Leave them alone? I think not.” Meyer shook his head. “They can’t have it both ways. They taught me to kill for our country, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. But this time, I’m doing it by my own rules.”

And I thought my fever was making me sick. Now this guy was using a war vet trauma to excuse his evil.

“That was a tragedy, all right,” I said.

“Killing for this country?”

“No,” I yelled into his ear. “That you didn’t die for it.”

Chapter 92

I swung away from him and stared out the window, trying to figure out where we were. It was hard to tell, but I knew that we’d taken off in an easterly direction.

The plane ride wasn’t helping my stomach any. It was obvious that Meyer’s piloting skills were a little rusty. Every few seconds, we’d pitch to the right or left, swoop down a couple of hundred feet and then back up again.

But after we’d been up there a few minutes, he managed to smooth it out.

“Okay, Bennett, I’m ready for the final act,” he growled at me. “Time to finish what I started. Pay the Blanchettes a little visit. Plow into their bedroom at three hundred miles an hour, and you’re going with me. I told you not to get in my way, you goddamned idiot.”

Something in me had known all along that he intended to kill us both, but I’d refused to really wrap my mind around it. But now it was for sure.

Then I thought, Oh, no, it’s not.

Although my wrists were cuffed, my fingers were free. I furtively started working to undo my lap belt.

Within another few minutes, flying dangerously low and dangerously fast, we were approaching the giant lit-up towers of Manhattan. I recognized the vast, darker rectangle of Central Park, with its tree-lined pathways and glimmering reservoir.

And I shuddered when I spotted our target – the Blanchettes’ Fifth Avenue building. It was directly ahead, looking like it was racing toward us with dizzying speed. In no time, we were so close I could see the tea lights floating moodily on the surface of the rooftop pool.

I gave the seat belt a final yank, and it came loose. Then I lurched as hard as I could to the left and head-butted Meyer.

Seeing stars, I thought I got about as much as I gave, until I saw Meyer’s blood-spurting nose mashed flat against his face. He was making a low animal noise as he went for the gun in his lap. I leaned all the way over against my door. Then I ripped my legs out from beneath the console and slammed my feet up against his chin.

The kick landed hard with both heels. His head snapped back and the gun went flying somewhere behind us. The plane was going crazy, careening into a wild arc and plunging downward. I didn’t care. I kept on kicking him again and again – his head, his face, his neck, his chest – literally trying to drive him through his door, out of the airplane. With each blow, I screamed like a madman.

I might have succeeded, except he somehow extended the steel baton and whipped it down flush between my legs. I screamed again, this time from pain, and curled up with my eyes rolling back into my head.

Meyer paused to wrestle with the airplane, managing to pull it out of its dive and aim it through the building corridors and toward Central Park. Then he hit me on the forehead. It felt like he’d cracked the whole front of my skull. The world went gray as he shoved me back down into my seat.

His last measured blow with the baton whiplashed my head so hard into the door beside me that the window broke. I saw wheeling lights and blood streaming down the interior of the plane like a dark curtain, before my body went limp and my eyes closed.

I was just about gone, but somewhere deep in my head, a tiny spark of consciousness fought to stay lit.

Chapter 93

Mayor Carlson was on the third mile of his before-bed elliptical machine trek when Patrick Kipfer, one of his deputy chiefs, stuck his head in the doorway of Gracie Mansion ’s basement gym.

“The Commissioner,” he said. “I forwarded it to your cell.”

The mayor hit the elliptical’s Pause button and lowered the volume of the hanging TV before he lifted his phone.

“Commissioner?” he said.

“Sorry to bother you, Mort,” Commissioner Daly said. “We got a hostage situation. One of our homicide detectives, Mike Bennett. His family said a man came into their apartment and abducted him and his four-year-old daughter.”

Bennett? the mayor thought. Wasn’t he the cop who was at the Blanchettes, the one who’d wanted to shut down the party?

“Tell me it isn’t the spree killer.”

“We have to go on that assumption.”

Carlson wiped his sweating face on his NYU T-shirt.

“Goddammit. Do we have any idea where they went? Any ransom demand? Any contact?”

“Nothing so far,” Daly said. “This happened less than an hour ago. His unmarked vehicle is missing, so we’ve notified state troopers and our guys.”

“I know you’re doing everything you can, Commissioner,” the mayor said. “You think of any way I can help, let me know immediately.”

“Will do.”

The mayor stared at the Pause button on the elliptical after he placed his cell back down. Should he call it a night? No, he decided, reaching for the button. No excuses. His cholesterol was through the roof. Not to mention how tight his suits were getting these days, with all the fund-raiser food. Just do it, and all that garbage. Besides, what good would he be to the city if he had a heart attack?

He was just getting back up to pace when Patrick returned and stuck his head in the doorway.

This time, the mayor hit the Stop button as he lifted his cell phone.

“The commissioner again?”

“The other commissioner,” his aide said. “Frank Peterson, from Port Authority Police.”

The mayor gave him a puzzled look. Christ, when it rained, it poured. What did the Port Authority commissioner want?

“Frank? Hi. What can I do for you?” the mayor said.

“One of our cops, a young guy named Tommy Wi, was just shot dead out at Teterboro,” Peterson said somberly.

The mayor shook his head in disbelief as he stepped off the machine. First a kidnapping, then a murder?

“That’s…” he started to say, but couldn’t find a word. “What happened?”

“Just before Officer Wi was shot, he called in and said an NYPD detective had asked for access to the tarmac. Two minutes later, a twin-engine Cessna was hijacked by a pair of men. Nearby, we found an NYPD unmarked radio car with a little girl inside, saying her daddy is Detective Mike Bennett.”

“Mr. Mayor,” his aide Patrick said, coming in again with another cell phone in his hand. “It’s important.”

Christ, another call? He had only two ears.

“Sorry, Frank, can you hold a minute?” he said to the Port Authority commissioner. What now? he thought as Patrick traded phones with him.

“Hello, Mayor Carlson,” said a crisp male voice. “Tad Billings, assistant director of Homeland Security. You’ve heard about the hijacking at Teterboro?”

“I’m starting to,” Carlson said curtly.

“FAA radar is tracking the Cessna over the Hudson, heading east, inbound toward the city. An F-15 has been scrambled and is en route from McGuire Air Force Base in south Jersey.”

“What?! An F-15?!”

“Part of the new Federal Homeland Security statute,” Billings said. “Teterboro spoke to the FAA. FAA spoke to North American Air Defense. NORAD scrambled a jet. I just got off the phone with General Hotchkiss. The jet pilot has been authorized to shoot the Cessna down.”

“You can’t be serious. We think there’s a cop on that plane, an NYPD homicide detective. He’s being held hostage!”

“The air force has been made aware of that. They’ll try to establish radio contact, but time constraints and the hijacker’s unpredictability are important factors. This is a major threat to your entire city, sir. As harsh as it is, as reluctant as we are to put the life of an innocent on the line, we unfortunately have to prepare for the worst.”

And he’d worried about having a heart attack? A heart attack would have been a breeze, compared to this impossible-to-keep-up-with insanity.

“Is our conversation being recorded?” the mayor finally said.

“As a matter of fact, yes, it is.”

“Then let me state for the record that you are all a bunch of heartless bastards.”

“Duly noted, Your Honor,” Billings said without hesitation. “I’ll make sure to keep you up to date.”

Chapter 94

The F-15E Strike Eagle was less than a mile out from McGuire Air Force Base when the pilot, Major James Vickers, fired the afterburners. Sapphire-blue flame shot from the jet pipes of the aircraft’s Pratt and Whitney F100 engines, and the state of New Jersey was suddenly rolling beneath him like the belt of a treadmill turned to sprint.

Located eighteen miles south of Trenton, McGuire for the most part was a C-17 cargo plane and KC-10 tanker refueling plane base. But in the aftermath of 9/11, in order to cover all future threats to New York City, a contingent of the 336th Fighter Squadron had been discreetly redeployed sixty-four miles to the north. At the aircraft’s top speed of nine hundred miles an hour, that distance evaporated in an eyeblink.

Which was what happened a moment later as the F-15 double-boomed, breaking the sound barrier.

Like opening a can of biscuits, Vickers thought with a shake of his flight helmet. You know the pop is coming, but damn if it don’t always surprise you.

“Okay, we’ve got him,” said Captain Duane Burkhart, the weapons systems officer, or wizzo, as they were called, sitting in the cockpit seat behind Vickers. “The Cessna’s transponder is still on. It’s lighting up the LANTIRN screen like a Christmas tree.”

LANTIRN was the plane’s Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night system. Since the small plane’s transponder was still operational, they could actually fire a missile now if they wanted.

“You heard the CO,” Vickers said. “We need to try radio contact first, and at the very least we need a visual.”

“Yes, sir,” Burkhart said with uncharacteristic nervousness in his voice. “Just letting you know.”

No wonder Duane had the jitters, thought Major Vickers. He’d envisioned many combat missions upon graduating from the Air Force Academy six years before. But never one that took place over the Jersey Turnpike.

“This is wild, isn’t it?” Burkhart said as the New York City skyline, unmistakable from seven thousand feet, approached rapidly on their right. “Those bastards hitting the towers was the reason I joined up.”

“You’re a true patriot,” Vickers said sarcastically, dropping altitude and buzzing by the Statue of Liberty. “I hitched up for the subsidized on-base bowling.”

“You should be able to get that visual now,” Burkhart said.

“Roger that.” Vickers spotted the blip that appeared on the canopy’s electronic air-to-air combat heads-up targeting display. The Cessna was moving south down the Hudson three, maybe four miles ahead, and closing fast.

Vickers flicked a button at the top of his joystick with his thumb and the pairs of AIM Sparrow and AIM Sidewinder missiles, nestled under the wings, hummed as they powered on, high-explosive attack dogs tugging the chain.

He had already been given the firing order by the time he’d finished strapping in. He didn’t need to know who or what was on the Cessna – only to knock it out of the sky.

“Cessna Bravo Lima Seven Seven Two,” Burkhart said into the radio. “This is the United States Air Force. Turn around and land back at Teterboro or you will be brought down. This is your only warning.”

The Cessna pilot’s voice crackled back. “Don’t bullshit me, ace. I used to fly one of those things. You can’t risk it. You could wipe out half of Manhattan.”

“That’s a risk we’re prepared to take,” Burkhart said. “I repeat. This is your final warning.”

This time there was no answer.

Had the guy really been a fighter pilot? Vickers wondered. If it was true, that added a wrinkle.

He rolled his neck as the targeting radar lock alarm suddenly sounded.

“Well, you can’t say we didn’t warn ‘em,” he said.

The siren quit as the Cessna suddenly swung a hard left west in between the stone and glass towers. It was in Manhattan airspace now, somewhere around 80th Street.

“No!” Burkhart cried. “Shit on a stick! We’re too late!”

“Keep your shirt on,” Vickers said, jogging the joystick between his knees to the right, screaming the dull silver-colored jet in over the West Side. He was coming over Central Park a split second later when the Cessna reappeared ahead above Columbus Circle, then immediately vanished again, weaving through the city’s high-rises, using them for cover.

Though the missile lock siren came back on, he knew he couldn’t chance a missile now. That bastard in the Cessna was right. If he missed, a big chunk of midtown Manhattan would be history.

Vickers squinted beneath his flight visor as his gloved finger reached for the trigger of the twenty-millimeter Gatling gun. He kept it there, waiting for his chance.

Chapter 95

I was wide awake when I heard Meyer’s radio exchange with the fighter pilot, although I was wishing I wasn’t. I didn’t know which hurt worse, my head or my groin.

“The hell with the Blanchettes,” Meyer said, talking to himself now. He was ignoring me, assuming I was unconscious or dead. “Why waste this stellar opportunity on those old fools? Let’s hit this fucked-up country where it’ll hurt the most – the Big Apple’s pride and joy. Then they’ll read my Manifesto of Nonsense.”

I stayed slumped in my seat, but opened my eyes just enough to see that we were rocketing southward down Fifth Avenue.

Straight toward the glittering, spire-topped, man-made mountain face of the Empire State Building.

One more try, I thought, gritting my teeth against the pain. I was going to die in a fiery explosion anyway. Maybe I could keep us from taking anybody else along – except for the psycho beside me.

Meyer hadn’t bothered to strap me back into my seat. Quietly, I took a long, deep breath.

Then, with every ounce of strength I could muster, I threw my left elbow up into his Adam’s apple.

He reared backward, clutching his throat with one hand and clawing at my face with the other. I lunged into him, pinning him against his door and grabbing the wheel.

“We’re going out over the bay,” I screamed into his headset microphone. “Shoot us down!”

For the next few seconds I had the edge of surprise, and I managed to wrestle the plane into a sharp westward arc. Banking perilously, we skirted the northwest corner of the Empire State by no more than a couple hundred yards.

But Meyer was strong and he came back, pounding at my face and trying to regain control. As the plane yawed wildly from side to side, we battled like caged panthers, snarling, butting heads – both of us injured, both desperate. Once again, we were losing altitude fast.

But this time we were heading out over the bay. I clung to the wheel with everything I had to keep us on that course, my shoulders tensed for the fireball from the fighter jet that was going to blow us into cinders any second.

“Our Father who art? -” I started mumbling through my teeth, as the expansive emptiness of the last sight I would ever see raced up to meet me.

Then I heard a high-pitched sort of whining sound.

Sweet Jesus, this is it, I thought.

An instant later came one long, continuous, eardrum-rupturing string of explosions that tore the roof and entire back of the plane away like wet tissue paper.

But I was still there, still alive. I could see streaking fire behind us, but it was a trail of burning fuel, not the entire plane exploding.

My mind was scrambling to rectify that when I realized that our gliding dive was turning into a plummeting headlong fall. The bolts of my seat groaned as we shook and rattled, and my shoulder harness bullwhipped my chest.

Strangely, it brought me a window of peace. Not the kind of light at the end of the tunnel that people who thought they were dying sometimes describe, but just calm.

An instant later, we hit with a tremendous splash, like a returning NASA shuttle.

Chapter 96

The impact was crushing, slamming me around the cockpit, but we still had enough forward momentum to skid across the water’s surface for a few more seconds. Otherwise, it would have been like smashing into concrete. That, and the fact that I’d been wedged in tight with Meyer’s harnessed body when we hit, was probably what saved me.

As I tried to believe that I was still alive, I felt something wrong with my neck. I wiggled my fingers to see if I was paralyzed. They would barely move, but I realized that was because my wrist was broken. Half the dashboard gauges were now sitting in my bleeding lap. But apparently, my neck was only wrenched, and the rest of me was more or less intact. I was able to get my arms going, then my legs.

Burning debris was scattered all around on the dark surface of the bay, and water was pouring inside, already covering my ankles, as what was left of the plane sank fast.

Then came a massive flash of orange and a blast of intense heat from the pilot-side wing. Pitch-black smoke that smelled horribly of burning plastic seared my face. Another fuel compartment must have gone up. The flames surged ferociously, eating into the plane’s interior. Within half a minute, they would engulf it – and me.

Meyer was still strapped into his seat, unmoving – knocked out by the impact, or dead.

I wasn’t about to find out which.

With my unbroken hand and my last bit of strength, I pulled myself out of the now doorless passenger-side threshold and dropped into the frigid water. Gasping, I eggbeater-kicked backward as fast as I could.

Then, through the smoke, I saw movement inside the plane – something struggling in the flames. No! It was Meyer.

Clothes on fire, he rolled out the same doorway I’d just departed. Both he and the flames disappeared as he hit the water with a sizzling splash.

He surfaced right next to me! I lurched away, kicking at him, as he clawed at my eyes with a burnt hand, making a sound that was like an animal screech.

That was when the weirdest thing of all happened. A euphoric, druglike rush swept over me, and my face split into a huge smile. I swung my arms around his neck in a headlock, threw my weight on top of him, and took us both under.

The sound of the world ceased as I dragged him down through the cold, dark water. With newfound strength, I turned up the pressure, throttling him to crush his throat against his spine.

It was glorious.

In my entire life, I had never been as confident or as single-minded as I was at that moment. If there was one outcome that I was sure of in all of my existence, it was that this evil thing I held in an unbreakable headlock, this murderous bastard who had threatened my family and very nearly murdered me, wasn’t ever going to make it up into the land of the living again. I was going with him, but it was the best possible way I could go.

Time disappeared from my mind. I had no idea how much of it passed before he stopped struggling. But finally, as the air in my lungs gave out, so did my strength. I held onto him until the last possible instant before he slipped out of my fading grip.

Alone, I kept on twisting through the water – up, down, I didn’t know which, and it didn’t matter. I was done for, numb, too weak to move. My aching, burning lungs screamed for air. In a few more seconds, my body would be forced to inhale cold salt water.

But even as I paid the ultimate price, that peace was still with me.

Suddenly, ahead in the water, I saw a pale luminous form floating toward me. It had to be a hallucination. I had just been through about as much trauma as a human being could endure.

I stared at it in terror as it came closer. Then, with certainty, I knew everything was okay.

Because it was my wife, Maeve.

Everything fell into place. She was the reason I’d survived the crash – my guardian angel, watching over me just like I’d prayed for her to do.

But as I reached out to touch her glowing hand, she shook her head sadly and vanished.

The next thing I knew, there were other human shapes around me – big dark ones, with nothing ethereal about them. Rough hands gripped me and something rubbery was shoved between my teeth.

With my mouth forced open, I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. The dam burst, and my starving lungs sucked in desperately.

But instead of the bilgy water I’d been braced for, it was pure, sweet air – from the Aqua-Lung of a Coast Guard diver, I learned soon afterward, one of a team who’d helicoptered in to intercept the crashing Cessna, and plunged into the chilly bay to find me.

When those heroes got me back to the surface, other choppers and craft from the Coast Guard and city authorities were converging on the site, to contain the fire and search for survivors.

Thank God, I was the only one of those.

The crazy events weren’t quite over yet. After the Coast Guard guys dragged me onto the deck of a cutter, I stood up and actually tried to dive back in. It took two paramedics to strap me, kicking and screaming, into a stretcher.

“Take it easy, Detective,” one of them said, trying to calm me. “The pilot’s gone. It’s over.”

“To hell with him!” The muscles in my face and throat felt like they were tearing as I yelled out at the flame-filled dark water.

“Maeve!” I screamed. “Maeve!”