Deadly Heat

TEN

An adrenaline surge swept through Heat, but she kept her head. Training trumped emotion, and she flipped the switch from exhilaration to logistics. Before she even got up from the table, she speed-dialed the radio dispatcher at the Twentieth and ordered up a blue-and-white to Code Two it to Boulud and meet her at the curb. This would not be the time to look for a cab.

As they rushed to the door, Nikki stayed on her cell to give Dispatch the list of detectives she wanted mustered to the staging area that Homeland Security had already established on the East Side. Heat didn’t have to do much thinking. She asked for everyone but Sharon Hinesburg.

At the same time, Rook put in a direct call from his phone to Detective Rhymer, whom he knew was still in the bull pen working their RFID detail. By the time he and Nikki hung up, the cruiser’s emergency lights strobed the block and its siren chirped as it cut a U-turn around the median on Broadway to pick them up.

Fewer than two minutes had passed since Bell’s call. To Heat, it felt like forever.

DHS had taken over East 57th and Sutton Place, an area that gave them a quiet residential cul-de-sac that terminated at a pocket park bordering the East River. Plenty of room for the Mobile Command Center and absolute control of the zone. Heat and Rook jumped out of the cruiser at the cordon and single-filed between the line of plain-wrap Crown Victorias, Malibus, fire trucks, and ambulances to the white RV, where they found Agents Callan and Bell standing outside its open door. Twenty feet from hello, Yardley Bell spotted them and called, “Sorry to inconvenience your date night with a little law enforcement.”

Nikki wanted to smack her. So what if it was only dry cop humor? It might have only been that. It also might have been cheap snarkiness from Rook’s ex. For the second time that night, Heat firewalled her feelings and held professional focus. “Agents,” she said, “bring me up to speed on the target.”

Agent Callan beckoned them inside the RV, the interior of which had been fitted with all the tech essentials to command and communicate during a tactical operation. “Cool,” said Rook. “It’s like Air Force One’s dinghy.” He scowled and attempted Harrison Ford. “Get off my RV.” Registering their stares, he said, “Proceed.”

“To the best of our info,” said Callan, “Tyler Wynn has a safe house in a fourth-floor apartment up the block near First Avenue.” A junior agent at the console brought up a satellite photo of the neighborhood with resolution unlike anything available on Google Earth. He then touched the screen to zoom in and highlight the building. Callan continued, “Like the rest of this neighborhood, it’s mostly over-sixty-fives with money.”

“Hide in plain sight,” said Heat.

“Exactly.”

Then she asked, “What do you mean by your best info? Have you had a sighting or an eyewit?”

“We have not seen the target ourselves, although we now have a surveillance dome over this place.” Then the agent went on, “What we did, however, was send in one of our tech units posing as a repair team to service the building’s security cameras. Basically, that allowed us to tap their system without sending up any flares, in case the doorman or concierge are getting spiffed by Wynn for warnings.” Callan signaled the board operator, and a window of security video rolled and then froze on the image of Tyler Wynn getting off the elevator on the fourth floor, holding a tennis racquet. “Is this your man?”

Heat said, “The time stamp is just after ten this morning. Is this the latest hit?”

“Affirm. We scrubbed video from then until now, all possible exits. Target went in this ayem and hasn’t come out.”

“How did you find him?” asked Rook.

“All thanks to you,” said Agent Bell. Nikki caught the shoulder pat Yardley gave him. And how it lingered and trailed across his back.

“Hey, great, I’ll take it, but how?”

“You gave me the idea yesterday of tracking him through his retail purchases. You know, the RFID chips?”

Rook said, “Of course, I know. We are all over that at the precinct.”

“And that’s adorable,” she said, somehow not sounding condescending this time, not to Rook. “But come on, we’re in The Bigs. We have the resources. We do this in our sleep. In fact, we did. Our mainframes were humming overnight, and-thanks to your list of Wynn’s connoisseur tastes-they spit out critical overlaps to this address. We sent in the geeks to tap the security cams, and by noon, we had him.”

“Noon?!” shouted Heat, unable to control the flash bang of rage that had just gone off inside her. “Are you kidding me? You have known this since noon today?” She turned to Rook and saw him fuming, too, which only fueled her anger and resentment. “You walk into my precinct, you essentially hijack my investigation-plus, without telling my squad we’re wasting our goddamned time, you duplicate our efforts to follow the RFIDs-and now take a bow like we should throw roses and kiss your ass?” She whipped her head to Callan. “Is this what you feds call cooperative interface?”

Before Callan could answer, Bell jumped in. “Detective Heat, give me a fucking break. Is this your first rodeo? The fact that we’ve known since lunchtime has nothing to do with anything. We needed every bit of that time to set our logistics and bolt this down. He’s in there, we are here, and he’s not going anywhere. And second?” The agent took a step closer to Nikki, literally and symbolically nudging Callan out of her way. “I got him. He’s under the jar. Are you seriously complaining?”

Nikki paused. Her fury cooling to embers, she collected herself and said, “No.” And meant it. Interference aside, Yardley Bell had come through. In one day she had accomplished what Nikki had not been able to in a month. The irony for Heat was that she had only told Bell about tracking Wynn’s consumer habits as a smoke screen for hiding the code. Yardley had not only run with it, but within hours she’d found the man who ordered her mother’s murder. Her feet back under her, Heat looked from Callan back to Bell and said, “How can I help?”

Special Agent Callan stepped forward, as if to remind everyone of the in-charge part of his title. “You can run the capture,” he said. When Bell turned to him, about to protest, he continued, “We are already utilizing resources from the Seventeenth Precinct. My decision is that we continue our cooperation with local law enforcement by having Detective Heat lead the takedown. End of conversation.”

“Forget it, Rook, you’re staying here,” called Nikki on her way back from mapping out the plan of attack with the Emergency Services supervisor. Rook stayed on her heels as Heat strode between a dozen heavily armed emergency services unit cops-The NYPD’s elite SWAT officers-suited up in black fatigues, ballistic helmets, and Ironclad gloves. The writer stayed close as she walked toward her detectives from the Twentieth, who were pulling on body armor from the trunk of the Roach Coach. “You wanted it to be like old times, Rook, you got it. Stay with the car.”

“How’s that for a stroll down memory lane?” teased Ochoa.

“More like the boulevard of broken dreams,” from Raley.

“Come on, Nikki, I’ve come so far. Why are you leaving me behind?”

“We’ve been through this before. You’ll be in the way. And it’s dangerous.”

“Ah, but this time I brought my own protection.” He unzipped a gym bag. “I called Rhymer so he’d bring this. Tada.” From the bag, he pulled out his own bulletproof vest. One word was stenciled across the chest and back: “Journalist.”

“You are kidding,” said Heat, as she tightened the Velcro tabs on hers.

Standing at the open trunk of his car, Detective Feller said, “Hey, what are these embroidered things on the front that look like two gold coins?”

“These? Pulitzers.” And then he added, “There’s room for a few more.”

Sharon Hinesburg said, “A bulletproof vest with bling?” They all turned as the detective approached, pulling on her own gear. “You guys forgot to give me the heads-up. Good thing I still had the monitor on at home.”

The loose chatter stopped, and the detectives attended their preparations with eyes averted from her. The squad knew the open secret. “Detective Heat, a moment?” Hinesburg beckoned her aside and lowered her voice. “Look. I’m not blind. I’m aware how I get kicked to the curb a lot or get handed the dog assignments. I also know it probably wasn’t any accident nobody called me to roll on this.” Heat saw tears welling in Sharon’s eyes and knew two things: One, Hinesburg was in on the open secret, and two, Nikki didn’t have time for this.

She decided to be honest. At least about the latter. “Sharon, this isn’t the place.”

“I promise I’ll have my head in this. You won’t be sorry.”

Nikki decided these were the last two seconds she could afford on Hinesburg and said, “Get ready.”

Numerous high-rise luxury apartments and office towers didn’t make Sutton Place the friendliest neighborhood for air support. But as the first phase of her deployment began and her unit moved on foot along East 57th to the front door of the Kluga Building, those same elevated rooftops provided the dome of cover Agent Callan had boasted about. In lieu of a chopper, DHS and NYPD sharpshooters kept vigil on the roofs overhead as Heat’s team silently double-timed up the sidewalk. Simultaneously, a contingent from ESU’s fabled Hercules Squad mirrored their movement on East 58th to cover the back exit. When she reached her position mid-block, two doors from Wynn’s entrance canopy, Nikki hand signaled and her troop stopped, all of them planting their backs against the stone façade of the building to minimize their visibility from overhead windows.

“Heat in position one,” she whispered into her shoulder microphone.

“Copy, position one, Heat.” Bart Callan’s voice came back in her earpiece, from inside the RV. “We have visual of you. Hercules is also confirmed position one.”

“We go in one minute, mark.”

“Copy the mark,” came the voice of the Herc team leader.

Nikki held up a forefinger to the unit and then waited the long minute, trying not to think of this culmination and all it meant to her life. This was the wrong time for emotion. It was time to be thinking of only two things. She summoned them, as she always did, from the Academy. To the little sign posted in every hall, in every classroom, even in the basement shooting range. The sign that saw her through every situation: “Good Cops Are Always Thinking Tactics and Cover.”

Above her, behind her, and on the next block stood the best cover available anywhere. In her logistical planning with ESU and the One-Seven’s site super, the blueprint review of the building had not only marked tactical access and contingency passages, but had delineated cover within. Each cop had an assignment on entry and had memorized the route to get there-from the elevators to the front desk, the mail room, the private gym, the stairwells, even the trash chute, should Mr. Wynn decide on such an undignified escape. And who knew, from the fourth floor, he might survive the drop. If so, Sharon Hinesburg would be waiting.

Twelve seconds to go. Detective Heat breathed some night air, keyed her mic, and as her last detail before going in, repeated the same thing she had told them back at the staging area. “Watch yourselves, but try to take him alive. I want to know what he is working on.”

When her watch zeroed-out the minute, she calmly said, “Green to go.”

And they went.

If it weren’t for the body armor and 9mm machine guns, it could have been a ballet. Detective Rhymer slid ahead of Heat, as planned, badged the doorman, and stayed under shelter of the canopy with him to make sure no calls got made to the upstairs. The double glass doors auto-opened, and an ESU officer sandbagged them to stay that way. Nikki streamed into the lobby calling out, “NYPD, everyone stop what you’re doing. Come out from behind the counter and the office with your hands in plain view, and stand here with Detective Feller.” The suited concierge and the day manager did just that, finding spots on the polished marble and wearing expressions of awe and nervousness. “Don’t be alarmed,” Heat assured them. The dark-suited Hercules Squad pouring in the back entrance and into the stairwells did little to mollify the pair.

The day manager-“Carlotta,” according to her brass name tag-asked, “Do you need a key to one of the apartments?”

A voice beside the manager’s desk said, “Already got one,” and Carlotta’s eyes widened when she turned and saw the ESU cop holding the battering ram. But she relaxed when she saw that it hadn’t been he who spoke, but Detective Ochoa, coming around the counter holding up a passkey to 4-A that he had pulled from the cubby. Nonetheless, the ESU man and his battering ram got on the elevator with Heat and Roach, as well, just to be sure.

As the doors started to close, Rook skidded into the car, wearing his “Journalist” vest. “Four, please.” On the ride up, he ignored Nikki’s annoyed glance and said, “I’m selling subscriptions to Douchebag Monthly. Have a feeling I’ve got a live one in 4-A.”

“OK, last time, Rook. You have a job. Stay in here and hold the door open.”

“Don’t you have a sandbag for that?”

“You’ll do.” Then she brought her Sig Sauer up in a combat stance. The doors parted onto four, and she led her team out into the hall. According to plan, a team from the Hercules Squad had already taken positions at the open door to the stairwell and behind the love seat off the elevator, with assault rifles and machine guns aimed, ready to give cover.

Using only hand signals, they padded lightly up the carpeted hallway to the end unit with “4-A” etched in a pale blue frosted glass square anchored to its outer wall. The muted sounds of music from a radio or MP3 bled from inside. To Heat, it sounded a lot like Billie Holiday singing “Trav’lin’ Light.” A reminder of listening to American jazz with Rook in Paris wafted over her like a happy scent from another time. She knelt near the doorjamb while the others took their high and low positions; Ochoa, closest to the knob, held the key. Straining to listen through the music, Nikki heard a man singing along.

She knew the voice well. She had heard it, disembodied, on a grainy VHS video shot when she was five years old and played Mozart for him by her mother’s side. She had heard it in her waking hours almost every night of the past month instructing her ex-boyfriend to push her in front of the next subway train. Even now, over the thud of her quickened pulse, she could hear it casually tossing off the last words she heard it say as he left her there to die in that subway Ghost Station. That voice on the other side of the door had said, “Shoot her, if you have to.”

Heat turned to the group around her. She touched her ear and nodded to indicate she heard Tyler Wynn in there. Nikki then held up three fingers to indicate the coming countdown. Still in a crouch, she rotated up the hall to make sure the Hercules men and women saw it.

That’s when the explosion blasted inside 4-A. The floor shook, pictures fell off the wall, and the concussion knocked Heat on her ass.

Black-gloved hands grabbed Nikki by the back of her vest and jerked her to her feet. A giant of an ESU cop extracted her, yanking her in reverse up the hall, away from the door. He deposited her with Rook outside the elevator and raced back to 4-A, shouldering past Raley and Ochoa, who were clearing the area. In the pandemonium, car alarms sounded and a few frightened tenants opened doors to hollers from Nikki and the others to evacuate immediately, using the stairs. They didn’t need a second warning. Heat noticed the elevator doors were closed. She also realized her headpiece had flown out of her ear. She popped it back in to hear frenzied chatter. “Bomb squad on the way up.”… “Paramedics standing by for all clear from the Code Ten.”… “Ladder and pumpers rolling up, awaiting clear from the Ten.”

Heat keyed her mic to report, “Negative injuries in hallway on four.”

“Copy no injuries” came back from Agent Callan.

“ESU evacuating collateral fourth-floor tenants via stairwell; intercept in lobby and remove via rear.”

“Lobby has them now,” replied Callan. “Assets now clearing floors above and below.”

“Reporting positive audio fix on target inside 4-A, no visual yet.” Nikki looked up the hall and continued, “Door still intact.”

“Instruct you to hold for bomb clearance.”

“Copy. Holding.”

Nikki made eye contact with Rook for the first time. “You OK?” he asked.

She nodded. “You?”

The elevator doors parted, and an ESU sergeant in a hooded blast suit clomped out flanked by two Hercules cops. As they passed, Rook said to Heat, “I officially feel like I’m in Star Wars.”

Everyone waited in the stairwell while the bomb squad hero opened the door, just in case of a booby trap. “What do you think that was about?” asked Rook. “Did Wynn know we were here? Was he making bombs and screwed up?” When Rook realized he was the only one talking, he stopped. “Shutting up now.” He waited.

They all waited. Finally, Heat heard the all clear in her headpiece… followed by the call for paramedics to aid a victim.

“He’s alive,” she said hurling herself back to the hall. On the way to Wynn’s door, she keyed her mic. “Let’s move on those paramedics-now.”

The apartment had two floors. The blueprint she’d committed to memory back at the staging area showed a living room, hall, powder room, kitchen, and dining area downstairs, and two bedrooms and two baths upstairs. Heat hustled in the front door and broke left-the bomb sarge had radioed that the victim was down in the kitchen. Her face plowed through the thin layer of blue smoke suspended in the hall. Nikki hand signaled Raley and Ochoa, who had her back, to clear the closet and powder room as she passed each. Five paces ahead, a stream of bright crimson leaked across the hardwood from a source unseen around the corner in the kitchen.

A surreal view greeted her as she made the turn. The bomb sergeant, still cloaked in his bulky armor suit, knelt on the floor, applying direct pressure to the wound gushing red from Tyler Wynn’s neck. Heat made a flash assessment of the damage. All of the old man’s wounds were from the torso up on one side of his body, the side that had been exposed to the blast, which she could see-quite graphically-had come from the dining table on the other side of the counter. The eating area had been ripped by the explosion: leather dining chairs shredded; glass from the solarium-style windows gone; vertical blinds-those that remained-wagging back and forth in the breeze, mangled, sawed-off, and powder-charred; the thick glass table shattered into bits. Some of the glass was spread across the floor like fractured bits of ice. The rest of the jagged shards had been broadcast around the place, blending with the shrapnel packed inside the bomb: a mix of screws, nails, and ball bearings that peppered the ceilings and walls.

Wynn had taken the blast while in the kitchen. The granite counter had blocked his lower half from injury; meanwhile, his upper body resembled tartare. Heat knelt beside the man from the bomb squad and reached out to plug another ugly pumper on Wynn’s chest. But she had to pull her hand back. Something sharp etched her palm. She lifted the sopping tatter of his shirt and saw the broken blade of a bread knife the concussion had shot out of the wood block on the countertop and into his ribs.

“Heat,” he coughed out, making it almost sound like “hee.”

“Help’s coming. Hang on. Just hang on.” She found a dish towel on the floor and made a wad to press around a gash on his forehead. The skin had been so flayed, she could see skull. The chest wound still flowed prolifically, so she carefully fit the bread knife blade between two fingers and applied what pressure she dared around the metal.

“Was it…?” He coughed again.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said.

“Was it… Salena?… Did Kaye… find me?”

“Breathe. Don’t talk. Just breathe and stay with me. Look, here come the paramedics.”

In truth, Nikki wanted him to talk. But she wanted him to live first, so he could talk a whole lot. When the EMS crew took over, she stood by, bloody to her elbows and knees, not wanting to leave his side, in case he said anything more. It didn’t seem likely. Even without medical training, Heat had been around enough trauma scenes to know from a paramedic’s tone of voice, when the medic verbalized vital signs, when things were dire. They were having trouble stabilizing him. The paramedic said, “We gotta transport, and now.”

Heat rode down with the gurney and got in the back of the ambulance for the ride. If Tyler Wynn were going to die, she wanted to be there when he did. And, yes, she also wanted to make sure he didn’t get away again.

No sooner had the double doors closed than he rolled his head to her. He raised the hand on his good arm, the one without exposed tendons and bone showing, and beckoned her close. She held the rail of the gurney to steady herself and leaned forward inches from his shredded, monster face. “I’m sorry,” he said. She could see him whimpering a cry and put a hand on his good wrist. “I loved your mom. I…” He choked a sob back and closed his eyes, which made her think he’d died, but then he flashed them open, and they were wild, full of some found strength and determination.

“I sold myself. They made me rich.” He sucked in a gulp of air. “But they made me do awful things. So damn sorry. They made me…”

“Who?”

“Him!” The old spy coughed the name out on frothy blood: “Dragon.”

Heat remembered. The person Salena Kaye had called from the stolen helicopter. “Who is Dragon?” she asked. “Aren’t you Dragon?”

He wagged his head vehemently and moaned a no. The effort drained the fight from his eyes and he blinked. Then in a sudden exclamation, he shouted, “Terror!” And then he sucked more air. “Death, mass death here in New York. Worse than…” He shuddered down a breath. “… Worse than 9/11.” He gagged and labored to swallow. “I’m cold.”

“My mother found out about it? Is that why you-”

“Yes!” he blurted. “I am so sorry.” He sobbed again and said, “She almost stopped them.”

“Who did stop them? Nicole?” she asked. It felt logical that her mom’s friend and fellow agent intervened-and then ended up a frozen body in a suitcase.

His head wagged urgently side to side on the sheet. “Nobody stopped them.”

“I don’t understand. When was it supposed to happen?”

“Not was.” His neck wound gurgled and red froth formed around it. Then he grunted out, “Is!”

“What is? Tyler, what?”

Nikki had to put her ear to his lips to hear him, his voice had grown so weak. “Mass death. It’s coming.” She rose up a few inches to see his face, to try to comprehend. And to believe. With a gaze fixed on hers from under flayed eyelids, he nodded with a message of certainty and warning. “You, Nikki. You stop it.”

Another shuddering, labored breath. Heat could see him slipping away, and the injustice of his exit enraged her. “Talk. Tell me.” She put her face right up to his. “You killed her, you goddamned bastard, and it’s not going to be for nothing. Talk. Tell me what’s coming. When?” The old man didn’t answer. He reached for her cheek, but his hand never got there. It dropped lifelessly to his chest.

The paramedic swept in to try to revive him. For the second time in a month Nikki watched Tyler Wynn paddled by cardiac jolts on his deathbed. And, as before, a shrill flatline tone from the cardiac monitor called it a day.

The difference this time: Tyler Wynn was really dead.

The paramedic switched off the monitor and knuckled the glass behind the front cab. The ambulance driver killed the siren and slowed for the remainder of the trip past Columbus Circle to the ER. Nikki looked at the old spy’s body then out the window as they pulled up to Emergency at Roosevelt Hospital. If Wynn had told her the truth, a terror group was somewhere out there right now-busy making other plans.