NYPD Red

Chapter 86

A lot of sharp-eyed New Yorkers can spot an unmarked police car. That’s because most of our plain brown wrappers look a lot like our blue-and-white units, minus the department logo and the big letters on the doors that scream NYPD.

Unmarked boats are a whole different ballgame. The one that was waiting for us at Pier 17 was the water equivalent of a Ferrari Testarossa. Her name was Kristina, she was from Tenafly, New Jersey, and she was beautiful.

Kylie and I jumped on the sleek, fifty-foot motor yacht, and I swear she was moving before my feet hit the deck.

Jim Rothlein, who is blond, tan, and built like a Transformers robot, grinned when he saw me. “Zach, they didn’t tell me it was you.”

Jim and I had worked together twice before. One was a homicide; the other a suicide. His team had dredged both bodies out of the river. I introduced him to Kylie.

“Since when did you guys get into Water Ops?” Rothlein said as we climbed onto the bridge.

“Today’s our first day. Since when does NYPD have a budget to float this beauty?”

“She’s a loaner from the Port Authority Task Force. She used to belong to some hedge fund guy in Jersey until the market tanked and he decided to supplement his income with a little cocaine trafficking. The PA nailed him on his first run. They seized the boat, and we get to use it until they auction it off next month.”

“Did Cates tell you what’s going on?” I said.

“She told me enough to know you’re stark, raving, out-of-your-gourd nuts,” Rothlein said. “Do you know anything about the boat you’re about to risk your lives on?”

“I’ve been on it three or four times,” Kylie said.

“And how much of that time did you spend in the engine room?” Rothlein asked. “Because I doubt if he’s going to be planting a bomb in a champagne bucket on the promenade deck.”

“You’d be surprised the places some people plant bombs,” a voice said. “Hi, I’m Jeff Ordway, and as you can tell by my outfit, I’ll be your bomb tech this evening.”

Ordway was tall, lean, with an ingratiating smile that was contrasted by his dead serious eyes. He was dressed in thick black canvas military fatigues and a tactical vest loaded with more paraphernalia than Batman’s utility belt. As bulky as it was, it was a lot more streamlined than I expected.

“Where’s your Kevlar moon suit?” I asked.

“Captain Cates said your bomber was an amateur,” Ordway said, “so I figured there’s no point wearing an extra hundred pounds of gear on the open water just to disarm a device I could defuse in my sleep.”

“Let me show you guys what you’ll be looking for,” Rothlein piped up. He walked us to a console and turned on a TV monitor. The screen came alive with the image of a vast space filled with high-tech equipment that could have belonged to NASA, but which I assumed was the guts of Shelley Trager’s yacht.

“Where’d you get that?” I said.

“The manufacturer’s website,” Rothlein said. “Every one of these two-hundred-footers is customized, but that’s just the living quarters. The engine room doesn’t change.”

“If our boy is determined to rip it apart six ways to Sunday, I’m thinking these are the most likely places he would plant his explosives,” Ordway said, pointing out half a dozen vulnerable spots.

“Let me give you a quick tour of the whole enchilada,” Rothlein said.

He took us through a series of architectural drawings that laid out the ship’s levels as well as the doors and staircases that connected one to the other.

“It’s a lot to process in a short time,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to take some of my team with you? We do this kind of thing for a living.”

“Jim, if this guy sees a mob storming the boat, he’ll blow it to hell before anyone can stop him. Cates is giving us a shot at doing it our way.”

“I don’t know what your way is, but do me a favor,” Rothlein said. “Don’t try to do it in those Florsheims. At least let me fit you out with a couple of pairs of deck shoes.”

“And radios,” Kylie said.

“And while you’re at it, a little Dramamine,” I said. “I’ve never been much of a sailor.”

A voice came from the cockpit. “Target is in sight, Lieutenant. I’ll radio the captain of the yacht to reduce speed. We’ll be alongside in three minutes.”

“You guys ever jumped from one boat to the next?” Rothlein said as I slipped on a pair of Sperry Top-Siders. “It’s a lot easier than it sounds. It’s like hopping on an escalator at Bloomingdale’s. The hard part is all being done by my guy at the wheel. It’s his job to get close enough so you can jump, but not so close that I have to apologize to the Port Authority for putting a big hole in their shiny new boat.”

“Well, then I guess we’ve got the easy part,” Kylie said. “All we have to do is make sure Benoit doesn’t send a raging fireball through two hundred feet of Shelley Trager’s yacht and a hundred of his dinner guests.”