Bad Faith

35

Standing on top of the float, Karp saw them coming from two blocks away. A half-dozen figures dressed in gray fur with black noses and floppy ears running with purpose against the flow of the parade. Even at a distance he could tell that they moved like men weighed down by a heavy burden.

It was seeing their costumes, though, that had reminded him of one of the offhand comments made by the terrorists in the house with Nadya Malovo: “We will be like wolves among the sheep.” And that’s when he knew the identity of the men who’d been sent to kill him and many others.

The comment might have passed him by, but his daughter’s discussion about how people sounded different when speaking naturally as opposed to reading had heightened his consciousness about speech patterns. Without knowing why it mattered, he noticed how Malovo’s voice had caught when the man spoke before she recovered and tried to hide the slipup.

Now he knew what had been in the boxes that Jaxon’s men had discovered at the Bed-Stuy house that afternoon. They had found the boxes when they took the terrorists into custody, but they’d been empty, and it wasn’t until the agents discovered an old tunnel below the apartment building that had once been used to transport heating coal beneath the streets that they realized that one group of the terrorists had escaped with their costumes. The others who stayed back were just unwitting decoys, though murderous in their own right.

“It’s the wolves, Clay!” he shouted at the large ghost standing next to him.

“The wolves?” Fulton repeated, then nodded. “I see them.” He cued his radio. “We’ve spotted the targets. Five-no, six men dressed as wolves, running toward the float. On my signal, jam them! Take-down team, be ready!”

As his would-be assassins approached, Karp prayed that none of them would panic and attempt to detonate his vest until they were close to him. Although it was believed that the vests were going to be detonated by remote control, they couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t a manual means as well.

A block away, the wolves picked up speed. One of them held up a cell phone.

“Now!” Fulton shouted.

Screaming, “Allahu akbar!” the wolves halted in a semicircle in front of the float as the leader with the cell raised it high above his head and pressed the Send button. For a moment it seemed to Karp that time stopped and the world stood still. But instead of a blast followed by a million tiny steel balls flying through the air, tearing bodies to pieces, nothing happened.

The terrorists looked at each other in confusion. Several shouted again as the leader punched at the phone. But that was his last act before all six wolves were tackled hard and taken to the ground by two dozen burly NYPD SWAT officers dressed as Roman gladiators. Before any of the assassins could reach for a manual detonation device, their arms were wrenched behind their backs and each was subdued and cuffed by two officers while a third held a gun to the head of a prisoner.

Throwing back his cowl and removing his Death mask, Karp looked over at a pretty female ghost standing on his other side. “Nice work,” he said.

“What?” Lucy said, still looking at the squirming wolves on the ground.

“The cell phone detonator,” Karp said.

“Oh,” she said. “It was nothing.”

“Yeah, nothing, but it saved a lot of people,” Karp replied.

It was Lucy who’d figured out that Malovo would want the suicide vests to explode simultaneously for maximum effect and the best way to do it would be to use cell phones attached to the vests as detonators. Her clue, as she explained in his office at lunch, had been the attack on the ferry. She’d been listening on some of the world’s most sensitive audio equipment when she announced that the remaining terrorists on the crippled boat wanted to surrender. “No one was threatening to blow up the boat,” she said. “But right before it exploded, I heard a cell phone ring. We checked transmissions to and from the vessel, including those from Aman Ghilzai that morning. At the exact moment of the explosion, there was a call placed to a cell phone on the boat from one of the apartment buildings overlooking the harbor.”

Karp looked at Fulton. “We better set off the fireworks,” he said.

“Blow ’em!” Fulton shouted into his radio.

The command was followed by several large explosions from the rooftops of buildings on either side of the grand marshal’s float. As the crowd around the float, some of whom were still trying to figure out if the scene with the handcuffed wolves was real or a joke, cheered, the big detective smiled. “Sounded like a successful suicide attack to me,” he shouted.

Karp nodded, wondering how the night would end, but grateful that so far it was without the deaths of many innocent people.

Pulling that off had been no small feat and had taken the full focus of Jaxon’s team, as well as Karp and Fulton. That alone had been tough for Karp, who’d had to switch gears from the trial and sudden appearance of Nonie Ellis.

Fortunately, the good guys had several things working for them. One was knowing that everything Malovo and her accomplice had said aloud was intended to deceive them. Whatever she was planning, it didn’t depend on the six men in the house who thought they were going to martyr themselves.

Of course, Jaxon’s team still had to follow the men and, when they met with the other sleeper cell, take them down as they prepared for mayhem and murder. The two Russians Malovo had been speaking to had also left the house, but these men, and a third unidentified man who’d gone with them, were left for Grale to deal with as part of his bargain with Karp.

It was Grale who’d figured out that while Malovo and Rolles, whom they now assumed to be a double agent with the Sons of Man, were serious when planning the terrorist attack on the Halloween parade, it wasn’t just to sow fear and terror, or even just to kill Karp. Those were just side benefits. Their main objective was to kill or capture Andrew Kane.

Grale had realized early on that a traitor was working against him. A man who’d been exiled from the Mole People and had somehow contacted Malovo and informed her that Kane, whose information would be invaluable to both law enforcement and the Sons of Man, was being held captive. This traitor had led her to Bruce Knight, whom she’d tried to use to sow disinformation.

Grale had countered by having one of his loyal followers contact the traitor and, in conversations, let himself be convinced to work for Malovo, too. Then Grale tested his theory by having his man tell the traitor that he would be meeting with Lucy Karp in Central Park and that he would have Kane with him. He’d been well aware of the man in the shadows at the boathouse.

“Whatever her plans, she is working hard to make sure that my focus, and your focus, is on the Halloween parade,” Grale had said at their meeting. “She’s even tried to divide us by suggesting to me that you work with the Sons of Man. All of it to lure me away from my stronghold and her prize.”

It was then that Grale had proposed his deal with Karp, who now looked north up Sixth Avenue. It’s in your hands now, David, he thought just as two police officers led a struggling man dressed in a brown monk’s robe up to the float.

“Let go of me … piss crap balls whoop whoop oh boy … you pissants, I’m working with the DA!” the man shouted.

An amused smile crossed Karp’s face. “David Grale, I presume,” he said.

One of the police officers pulled back the hood from the robe, and Dirty Warren Bennett grinned up at Karp, his face twitching. “Hey, Butch, I got a … oh boy oh boy … good one for you,” the news vendor said. “What are the two things the Gypsy woman says to Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man?”

Karp laughed. “Let’s see, ‘Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.’”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s the … tits ass whoop … one everybody knows,” Bennett said with a grin. “What’s the other one?”

“Boy, that’s a tough one,” Karp replied.

“Woo-hooo!” Bennett cackled. “Tonight I’m going to … son of a bitch oh boy … win for once!”

Karp grinned. “Sorry to disappoint you, my friend, but how’s this? ‘The way you walked was thorny, through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end.’”

“Aw, I knew you’d get it … oh boy whoop whoop,” Bennett said. He pointed down at the sewer cover he was standing on. “It just seemed appropriate … crap nuts … it being Halloween and the predestined end and all. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, Warren, I know exactly what you mean.”