Code of Honor

3

Caruso swept aside the tail of his jacket to draw his Glock. His eyes were up, scanning. Nick Sutton lay slumped in the grimy concrete stairwell leading below street level next to the entrance of a nail salon. The steel door to the basement behind him was closed, forming a concrete pit at the bottom of the steps. It would have been an easy matter to hide and ambush the agent when he came by. Caruso had heard no shots. The half-dozen pedestrians coming and going down Doyers either hadn’t seen anything or had simply ignored what they saw.

“It’s Dom,” Caruso said, stepping around Sutton in the cramped space and trying the door while Adara assessed the agent’s wounds. “We’re here for you, bud.” He wanted to drop to his knees and help, but neither he nor Adara would be any help if they got shot.

Arterial blood painted a massive arc on the concrete wall. Even now, after years on the job, Dom found himself astonished at the apparent gusto with which blood left the human body. If anyone besides a trauma surgeon could save Nick Sutton now, it was Adara Sherman.

Dom shielded Adara as best he could in the small alcove, then, pistol tucked in tight against his ribs, pulled on the door handle with his left hand. It was locked tight. That didn’t mean much. Caruso had read somewhere that there were tunnels all over Chinatown. Sutton’s attackers could have gone through the door or just walked away — in which case they would be walking directly into Chavez and Clark.

Caruso jumped back on the radio. “They may be coming your way, Ding.”

The radio clicked twice, signifying Chavez had heard.

Dom fished the FBI badge out of his shirt and let it dangle on a chain around his neck. The Bureau badge carried a lot of weight, but it was relatively small. The little gold shield would do little to avert a blue-on-blue shooting if another cop showed up pumped with adrenaline, but it was better than standing beside a bloody body brandishing a gun without it.

Pistol in low-ready, he stood over Adara and the wounded agent, scanning the doorways and windows along Doyers — the street known as the “Bloody Angle,” where Chinese tong hatchet men stained the street red, hacking rival gang members to death in the early days of New York.

“Talk to me, Nick,” Adara said. “Can you hear me?”

Sutton mumbled something Dom couldn’t make out.

“We’re gonna get you fixed up,” Adara said, her voice grim. “Ambulance is on the way.”

Dom glanced down at her blood-soaked phone on the steps.

Sutton moaned. Despite Adara’s efforts, he was losing a lot of blood.

“They’re long gone,” Dom said. “What do you need me to do?”

She pointed to Sutton’s armpit. “You can help me with this artery. There’s another bleeder somewhere and I need to find it.”

Caruso holstered his weapon and knelt across from Adara. She used two fingers to hand off a spaghetti-like end of Sutton’s brachial artery. A gaping three-inch gash laid bare the meat and bone of his upper arm. Two smaller wounds framed the gash like bloody parentheses. The blood and gore made it difficult to tell how many times Sutton had been stabbed, but his wounds were many and deep. His aggressor had gone for his neck, but he’d been able to get his arm up, taking most of the damage to his triceps and his ribs — small consolation, since such a wound only meant he would bleed to death at a slightly slower rate than he would if he’d had his throat cut.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Sutton gave a rattling cough. His eyes fluttered open, and he appeared to see Caruso for the first time.

Adara pressed her palm over a hissing stab wound in his chest, doing her best to seal it until paramedics arrived.

“Dom?” Sutton coughed again, croaking, wincing from the effort.

With his hand literally half buried in Sutton’s flesh, Caruso could feel the man’s hummingbird pulse — rapid but extremely weak, as his heart worked to deliver the little blood left in his system to his brain.

The agent blinked. “What… What are you doing here?”

“Tell you later, bud,” Caruso said. “Who did this to you?”

“Rene…” He coughed again. “She stabbed the shit outta me. Rene Peng… hiding down here while I followed her husband…” Sutton swallowed. “You got any water? I’m really thirsty.”

“Sorry,” Dom said. “We’ll get an IV in you as soon as the ambulance arrives. Save your strength.”

Sutton shook his head. “Pengs are Chinese nationals. Run… snakeheads out of the docks.” He shuddered, spit out a mouthful of blood, then stopped to catch his breath.

“Ambulance is almost here,” Adara said.

“Trying to get these bastards for months… Took my wife and kid to Vincent’s… damned if I didn’t see Rene walk by on the street…”

Sutton’s eyes widened. “My wife… I told her to wait… at restaurant.”

“I’ll go get her,” Dom said. “We’ll bring her to the hospital so she can visit with you.”

“Thanks… dude,” Sutton said, panting harder now. “Oh, man… I should… never have brought Melissa here…”

Caruso patted the agent’s cheek, gently but firmly. “Stay with us, Nick. No going to sleep. Where do you think Rene Peng is going?”

“No idea,” Sutton said, his words slurred. “If I woulda known that, I coulda caught ’em already…”

Ding’s voice broke squelch on the radio. “We have a woman wearing a white ball cap coming at us on East Broadway, toward the bridge. She’s restrained, like she’s trying to look relaxed but isn’t. There’s a guy with sunglasses and blue hoodie about three steps behind her.”

“That has to be them.” Dom looked down at Sutton’s wounds. “There no way she doesn’t have blood on her. Either that or she changed shirts.”

“Stand by,” Chavez said. “She’s walking past me now…” He whispered the next. “Bingo on the blood. It’s them, all right.”

The swath of red across the front of Rene Peng’s shirt was almost hidden by her arms. Her husband moved up beside her as she passed Ding, stuffing a cell phone back into his pocket and trotting to catch up as if he’d been on a call. He said something to her and they both laughed.

“Heartless bitch,” Ding mumbled, ignoring Clark as he came out of a little bodega and fell in behind the couple. Ding fell back, taking a moment to check out a vendor with a table full of used books in Chinese.

“I have the eyeball,” Clark said. “Half a block from the bridge.”

“Nearly there,” Midas said. “We’ll trap them in a pincer—”

“Let’s hold off on that,” Clark said. “If it looks like they’re going to get away, we’ll take them.”

“John,” Dom said, the need for vengeance straining in his voice. “They slashed the hell out of an FBI agent.”

“And he was after them for a reason,” Clark said. “Let’s see where they’re going. Dom, Adara, you deal with the police. The rest of you move toward the bridge. Let’s get a net around these bastards.”

At first it looked like the Pengs might take the Manhattan Bridge pedestrian walkway that led over the East River to Brooklyn. Instead, they stayed on East Broadway, going under the bridge, then paralleled the bridge along Forsyth Street. It looked like a county fair. Folding tables were laid out for several blocks, covered with assorted produce, from dragon fruit to durian — things Chinese people, not tourists, came to buy. Wizened faces sat under the makeshift shade of blue plastic tarps or large canvas umbrellas. Boxes of fruit were stacked high on the sidewalks behind the vendors. Refrigerated box trucks lined the streets.

It was still early enough that sunlight hit this side of the bridge, and the odor of fish and trash from the shadowed side streets gave way to the fruity perfume of the vendors.

Clark hung back a hundred feet or so, head down, shoulders hunched a little. Ding had fallen in behind him shortly after he’d taken over the eyeball, matching his pace but staying in the crowd of pedestrians.

With her back to Clark, Rene Peng stopped at a fruit stand where the street above began to curve back to the east over the sidewalk. Garret walked a few steps past her, glancing up at the pedestrian walk overhead, and then across Forsyth. He seemed tense, but Rene moved fluidly, now calm as a summer morning. She picked up a pear, held it to her nose, chatting amiably with the woman at the scale. The old woman nodded, looked up, past Clark, toward Ding. She leaned forward and whispered something. Rene held up the pear as if she was about to buy it — and then bolted.

The pear seemed to hang in midair for a long moment.

“They’re running north on Forsyth!” Clark snapped. “Toward Confucius Plaza and the bridge ramp. They may try and split up.”

Rene shot a glance over her shoulder, toward Clark again. She shouted in Chinese to her husband, and then both of them dug in, picking up their pace.

“Get after them, Ding!” Clark said. He’d done more than his share of running over the years, but it was no longer his strong suit. In any case, he had other ideas. “Jack, tell me you’re at the northeast corner of the bridge.”

“They’re in sight,” Ryan said.

Ding ran past Clark, the leather bag o’ guns looped over his shoulder, bouncing on his back.

“I’m here, too, Boss,” Midas said. “We got it all covered, the steps, Canal. Dave is posted in front of the Greek Orthodox church.”

“Outstanding,” Clark said. “Ding, cut to the east side of the street near Dave. They may split up.”

“John, they’ll see me—”

“Do it now!” Clark snapped, leaving no room for argument. “The rest of you spread out. Give me a ten-count, then make yourselves known. Remember, this pair just tried to murder an FBI agent. Ding and I are the only ones armed at the moment.”

Scanning the street for the nearest available weapon — there was always something — he snatched up a broom handle from one of the fruit stands as he walked past and began using it like a walking stick. He didn’t run, hardly even looked up. The old man at the table simply nodded as if he knew what Clark had planned, or didn’t care.

One way or another, this was going to be over soon.

“Now,” Clark said, reaching his own ten-count. “Let them see you. Grab them both if you can. If not…”

“She’s coming at you, John,” Midas said, clipped but in control.

Half a moment later, Ding came over the radio. “The male is on the ground. You were right. They split up.”

Clark continued to walk north, using his peripheral vision to watch Rene Peng as she got closer. She looked well past him, as if he wasn’t even there. He could see the knife in her hand, half drawn up in her sleeve. A half-grin perked the corners of her lips, as if she thought she’d won. Clark stopped as if to catch his breath as she got nearer, looking up at the spectacle of someone being chased — as anyone might do. He rested both hands on the stick, loosely, absent any apparent threat, careful not to catch her eye directly. One of the few benefits to being old in this line of work was becoming invisible.

She never saw the broomstick coming. Clark swung it hard, aiming through instead of at her knee. He used one hand, swordlike, but put his hips into it, pivoting as he turned. Rene Peng was not a tall woman, but she had an incredibly long stride. The heavy stick connected with an audible crack while her leg was flexed and in the air. Wood and bone shattered on impact. The force of her foot hitting the pavement exacerbated the damage, causing her to crumple in a screaming heap.

Sirens yelped on Canal, just a few hundred yards away.

Rene tried to push herself up, the blade still clutched in her fist. Clark let her have another well-aimed strike with what was left of the broomstick, aiming for the bleachers as he took out her right elbow.

The knife — still smeared in Nick Sutton’s blood — clattered to the pavement at the same time a white NYPD cruiser fishtailed onto Forsyth from Canal. Clark dropped the stick and stepped out of the street onto the sidewalk, not running, but moving with purpose. He faded into the gathering crowd, making it almost to the underpass by the time the cruiser reached the injured woman. Dom had described her and her husband as dangerous and possibly having weapons, so the responding officers were more interested in getting her handcuffed than they were in who might be running from the scene.

A second set of officers found Garret Peng, his jaw broken in two places, handcuffed to a standpipe next to the Greek Orthodox church.

“Everyone clear?” Clark said once he was sure responding officers had not only the woman but her bloody knife in custody.

Everyone was. Except Dom and Adara.

The ambulance disappeared down Doyers Street, sounding the air horn periodically to move traffic and mindless pedestrians aside as it jumped on Bowery toward NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The proximity to One Police Plaza and the New York Field Office of the FBI left the narrow street crawling with responding uniforms and Feds.

A ruddy blond agent named Bolton, hands encased in blue nitrile gloves, appeared to be the one in charge of the scene. He nodded to an Asian NYPD officer, who led Adara to the back of her patrol car under the auspices of getting her cleaned up.

Caruso shook his head in disbelief, biting his tongue so he didn’t say something he’d regret.

“What?” Bolton said, studying Caruso’s credentials. “Something on your mind?”

“Seriously,” Dom said. “You’re splitting up my girlfriend and me like we’re suspects?”

“Everybody’s a suspect,” Bolton said. “You know that.”

“We called you, remember?”

“Matter of fact, I do,” Bolton said. “So let’s go over that again, shall we? You, an FBI agent, just happened to stumble onto Sutton, also an FBI agent, who stumbled onto someone who then stabbed him?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Caruso said.

“How’d you know him?”

“Sutton was in the academy that overlapped mine. I thought I recognized him on the street and we came over to say hi. We found him here.”

“Seems awfully convenient,” Bolton said. “What office are you out of?”

“Director’s,” Caruso said.

Bolton looked at him through narrowed eyes as he handed back the credential case. “Be that as it may, I’ll need a written supplement from you.”

“Of course.” Caruso shrugged. “It’ll be about three lines long, but I get that you need it. Listen, Sutton said he left his wife and kid at Vincent’s, over on Mott. Somebody needs to go and let her know what happened. She should be with him at the hospital.”

“I’ll do that,” a familiar female voice called from around Bolton’s SUV. Caruso glanced up to find Special Agent Kelsey Callahan walking his way. Her auburn hair was shorter than it had been when he worked with her in Dallas. He was surprised to see her in New York. She’d been doing a hell of a job running the North Texas regional task force focused on human trafficking.

“I thought you were in Texas,” Caruso said, smiling despite the blood that painted the front of his shirt.

“I still am,” Callahan said. “The powers that be detailed me here for a couple of months to cross-pollinate the Interdiction for the Protection of Children techniques we’re using in Texas with task force here in NYFO. Human smuggling is human smuggling, you know. Turns out there’s a hell of a lot of it going on in New York City — much of it right smack in the middle of Chinatown, if you can believe such a thing. You got your sex workers, domestic servants locked in basements after their eighteen-hour days, your garment industry slaves — and, as it turns out, a hell of a lot of undeclared spies. Sometimes their duties overlap. Rene and Garret Peng were two that kept floating to the top like the turds they are. I perked up when their names came out over the radio a few minutes ago when you or somebody called nine-one-one. And you know everyone responds when we hear an agent down…” She stared at him hard, then glanced at Adara, giving her a once-over. “So this is the girlfriend?”

“She is indeed,” Caruso said. “Adara Sherman.”

“I heard she saved Sutton’s life.” Callahan looked up and down the street, even checking the roofline, as if she expected to find someone working overwatch. “So, your mature badass friend isn’t with you? John… what was his name again?”

Caruso gave her a Cheshire cat grin but kept a tight lip.

Callahan heaved a deep sigh and then patted Bolton on the shoulder. “You may as well cut them loose, Sean,” she said. “Take it from one who knows, you’re gonna get a call from the special agent in charge in about a millisecond, directing you to turn them loose anyway. It’s easier on the ego if it’s your decision.”

She hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward her car. “Come on, you two. Let’s go get Sutton’s wife to the hospital. I’ve got a couple of raid jackets you can put on over your bloody shirts so you don’t terrify the locals. Nick is a good soul. He’s a counterintelligence weenie, but we get along well enough. A good portion of the human cargo the snakeheads smuggle into the U.S. comes here under false promises, putting them in the trafficked-human category. Snakeheads and spies naturally overlap, and so did a ton of our cases.” She rummaged through her trunk until she found two dark windbreakers with FBI emblazoned on the back in large yellow letters. Callahan gave one to Caruso and one to Adara. “I’m not sure who you guys are,” she said, “or what you’re up to, but whatever it is, I’m glad you were doing it here in New York. Sutton was working on some sketchy people.” Callahan leaned in closer. “Spies,” she said. “Apparently, they’re all over the damn place.”