Raging Heat

EIGHT

Surprise delayed Heat’s reaction. A split second of “what the — ?” was all it took, and she toppled face-first, toward the sidewalk. But in the blink after that split second, training kicked in. With a vengeance.

A primary rule of close combat: Don’t get pinned. Nikki spun during the fall to present her back to the ground. On her twist around she jammed a sharp elbow to the ear of the man behind her, which not only stunned him but also pushed him off-line so he would not land on top of her.

When he hit the pavement with an “Oof,” she had already continued her roll, flinging a leg behind the knees of the man beside her, the one who’d taken her weapon. He had her Sig Sauer in his hand but pointed where she had been, not where she was. The leg sweep took this guy down hard. The back of his head made a coconut smack on the concrete. Heat sprung into a crouch, ready to lunge for her pistol, but by then the other assailant had gathered himself up and he threw himself on her.

Like his partner, he was big and built like granite. But his bulk also made him slower than Nikki. Once again, she swiveled to land on her back, and when he reached out to put a hand on each shoulder to pin her, she rained a rapid-fire barrage of punches up to his undefended face, a face she then recognized from Beauvais’s SRO. He pulled back a fist to strike her, but during his wind-up, she lunged the crown of her forehead into his nose and he cried out. The punch never came.

Movement. The other man, also from the SRO hallway, was hauling himself up onto his knees, dazed, and with blood streaming from the split skin on the back of his shaved head. In the ghosty light, she saw him start to bring up the Sig Sauer. Nikki struggled to free herself from under the moaning hulk. Finally getting to a squat, she gauged there was too much distance and not enough time to jump for the pistol. She made a no-look reach and tore at the Velcro on her ankle holster. The ripping sound gave the man an instant of hesitation. Heat filled it with .25 caliber slugs from her Beretta Jetfire. The air cracked twice and his face lit up with muzzle flashes as the bullets entered just above his eyebrows.

Beside her, a whoosh of cloth. A black tactical boot kicked Nikki’s wrist and her back-up piece flew from her hand, clattering into the parking lot of the public housing complex. Without waiting, she dove for her Sig in the dead man’s hand. Inches from reaching it, two pairs of hands grabbed her from behind, snatching her up onto her feet. Another big man had joined the attack, and both of them dragged her across the sidewalk toward an idling van. She struggled mightily to free herself. Heat knew if they got her in that thing, she was as good as dead.

Another axiom from Nikki’s combat training: To unleash surprise, think in opposites. She made a point of wrestling harder the closer they brought her to the side cargo doors. No match for their brute strength, she was conditioning them to work against her resistance. Then, a yard from the open doors came their surprise. Heat reversed her struggle, unexpectedly charging in the direction they were pushing her. The flip in momentum hurled all three of them at the vehicle. But Nikki was the only one prepared for the shift.

When the two men smacked into the side of the van on either side of her, Heat broke free and ran.

At ten on a drizzly weeknight, this block was hopelessly quiet. Apartment vestibules were empty and locked; the big office building on the left slept; no cabs or cars to flag for help. Ahead, at Ninth Avenue, a pool of bright light reminded her: The hotels. The Dream and the Maritime both had a vibrant night scene. And security. But then she came to an abrupt stop.

A silhouette approached her from that direction; a dark paramilitary form. Half a block away, but coming. Walking. Taking his time, however also bringing his hand to his hip. Something about his ease made him seem even more menacing. Nikki cut a quick turn and shot across Sixteenth to get some leeway on the opposite side. She almost got killed.

The attackers’ cargo van bore down full throttle and nearly creamed her, speeding the wrong way on a one-way street. Heat took advantage of the blow-by. They were going too fast to turn around. So she reversed field and doubled back the way they came, toward Eighth. But the van didn’t bother to turn around. She heard protesting gears and the thundering of the engine. Heat glanced back as she ran, only to be blinded by white back ups as the Express 1500 raced toward her — full speed — in reverse.

The driver had skills. Even going backward at an insane clip, the tires followed the gutter line expertly, and soon the thing came beside her, pacing her. The cargo doors banged open and the attacker whose nose she had flattened hung out of the hatch, poised to either jump or simply ape snatch her as they drove by. Lungs searing, Heat calculated her chances of making the corner, determined not to go, not like this. And for a flash, she wondered if this is what it had been like for Jeanne Capois right before the torture.

At Eighth Avenue a taxi approached with its roof light burning. Nikki reached the corner shouting with her arms raised, but the driver never looked her way. She ran out into traffic but the few other cabs that came by were all taken on a misty night in New York. A frantically waving pedestrian got ignored; just a drunk or a tourist. She thought of flashing her badge for a stop but at night that was chancy. Besides, the van was still in play. The driver had backed it out into Eighth and roared toward her again, this time, headlights-first.

Heat dashed over to the sidewalk, sprinting toward Fifteenth, no plan. Just get away. Ahead at the corner a food delivery man was getting ready to chain his bicycle to a standpipe. “Hey, hey!” she hollered. “NYPD, taking this.” He mustn’t have understood, or didn’t buy it, because he gave Heat a shove to defend his ride. Just what she needed. Losing steps to the Take-A-Masala guy. She plowed past him, mounting his bike and yelling, “Call 911. Officer needs help.”

Nikki ate up sidewalk knowing full well if she took the street, she’d be roadkill under that van.

The van.

Beside her again. Running parallel, matching speed, holding steady. The passenger window opened. A pair of black sleeves came out, forearms bracing on the sill, hands clasping a Glock aimed at her. Heat jammed her brake pedal. The van continued past. A shot barked from the window. The miss sang off the stone wall beside her. Heat’s brake pop made her lose balance. Some noise ahead, a big clatter. Fighting to stay upright, she yawed wildly in the saddle. Almost good. Almost…A few yards up, the source of the racket. A night-demolition crew rolled a barrow of construction debris from a loading dock right into her path.

The impact bounced Nikki off the big gray refuse tub and she landed on the sidewalk looking up at the front bicycle wheel spinning over her head. The demo workers rushed to her, lifting dust masks off their faces, helping her up. “Whoa, lady, you all right?” A bullet ripped through the upper arm of the one closest to her.

“Down, down, down.” Heat yanked them to the deck just as two more shots hit some fractured pieces of drywall in the bin, snowing powder down on them. Her companions froze, panicked and bewildered. Nikki took charge. “NYPD. You.” She pointed to the one who wasn’t bleeding. “Push, come on.” Seconds mattered. “Come on.” She grabbed him by the coveralls and pulled him to the debris tub with her. She took one of the other man’s palms and clamped it over his wound. “Squeeze. Stay close.” She gave a three count and they rolled the container back into the loading dock, using it for cover. Three more shots hit it but didn’t penetrate. Thinking now of cover. Tactics and cover. Get inside the building, get behind that metal door. Quickly. But halfway there, the wounded man passed out and hit the ground. Heat scanned the loading dock. Time for new tactics.

Nikki sent her Officer Needs Help text and waited for them to come. A prolonged half minute that stretched all her senses. Wondering how many there were. Wishing she had a gun. She tried not to think of the odds. Only of making her stand. The voice of her training instructor echoed across more than a decade: “When met with superior force respond with shocking vigor.” Heat listened, dissecting the night, ready to do her TI proud.

She knew to expect a calculated assault. And not just because these guys liked to put on tactical wear. Their escape from Flatbush in those dual cars showed planning and training. So did the execution of her takedown tonight: the stealth; the van skills; the redundancy — like positioning that cool customer to block her escape toward the hotels. So she got into their heads, following their playbook, anticipating their way in. Which was why when the Glock eased around the corner leading to the loading dock, right where she knew it would be, she was ready for it. But Heat held back. Held back knowing the visual peek-around was still a beat-count away. More arm would show first. And it did. In fact, two arms because both hands gripped the pistol in a textbook isosceles brace.

Now.

Heat lashed out the nine-foot length of flexible metal conduit like a bullwhip. Her cast landed perfectly. The galvanized steel cable encircled both his wrists twice, strapping them together. She gripped her end with both hands and used her full body weight to yank. Her pull jerked his left forearm into the corner of the concrete wall and it snapped. He screamed as he fell forward. She pounced on him to get the Glock before the belting could loosen on his wrists, but as he crashed to the ground the gun broke free and skittered out of reach. Nikki crawled for it. But he got his good hand clear and clutched her jacket, holding her back. A shot fired from outside the loading dock, and the air beside her ear sizzled as the slug passed. The guy’s grip not only kept her from the pistol, he held her in place as a target. She reached down to her waistband for the hammer she had taken from the construction worker. With one swing Heat put the claw end into her attacker’s temple. She tried to pull it out for another blow but it was stuck. No matter. His grip slackened for good.

Four more rounds put the Glock out of reach in the kill zone. Heat rolled away, retreating to the hide she had made behind the debris bin. She signaled the conscious worker hiding with his buddy behind the tool chest near the electrical panel. He nodded, reached up, and pulled the main. The loading dock fell dark except for light-bleed from the street.

Again, Heat waited.

He came in a low crouch. She could see his reflection in the convex mirror above the service elevator. He crept closer. Cautiously. Mindful now that his task held peril. This was the one whose nose she’d broken. Nikki took only slow half-breaths, not letting any sound give her away. But he had to know where she was. And he was right. He got to the side of the bin. She could hear him swallow. Crouched in the darkness, she was lost in shadow to him, but in the mirror, backlit by the streetlights, she could see he was merely an arm’s length away. One more step. That was all she needed. He took it.

She switched on the laser level. Nikki missed his eyes at first, but she quickly adjusted her aim and blinded him with the tool. He fired wildly at the light source, but she had already moved, sprung up from her crouch with a nail gun. He couldn’t see anything but he heard her coming and swung an arm to deflect her. The pneumatic tool fired. In that light she couldn’t tell what she hit but he gasped and yelled “Fuck.” Heat had to get that gun away. He was already bringing it toward her. She slapped her free hand on it and was able to push it aside, but he held strong. He punched at her, landing a hard blow to her cheek that dazed her.

Unable to get the gun free, Nikki pressed the air nailer against his wrist and fired. Pulled back. Fired again. Nails are painful. Nails between joints are excruciating. The pistol dropped. Disarmed, he ran out moaning.

Sirens coming. Lots of them.

Armed with her attacker’s Smith & Wesson, Detective Heat switched mode, just like that, to offense. She wanted these guys. For what they did. For what they knew.

Cautiously, rapidly, she picked her way past the debris container that had shielded her and hopped over the body splayed on the concrete with the hammer lodged in its head. She flattened her back against the wall of the loading dock and braced the gun in both hands. The cargo door of the van slammed just outside, and she heard it roaring off. She swung around the corner onto the sidewalk to try for the tires but it was too long gone. Across the street, a quarter block west, a dark gray Impala idled. A man stood at the open driver’s side door. This was the cool customer who’d blocked her escape earlier. Their eyes met. In the orange tint of the streetlights, his features were passive. A living death mask.

“NYPD, freeze.” Nikki brought her weapon up to aim. With a chilling casualness, he raised an assault rifle and laid down a hail of bullets that sent her diving for cover behind the engine block of a parked car. When the firing stopped and the echoes from the G36 trailed off into the night, Heat shook the windshield glass from her hair and rose up, ready to return fire.

But the Impala was already turning the corner down on Ninth Avenue. Before disappearing around it, Heat could swear she saw an arm raise up from the driver’s side and give her the finger.

Forty minutes later, Lauren Parry knelt beside the body on the floor of the loading dock. “Nikki Heat, you did this?”

“Would it help if I said he had it coming?”

The ME glanced again at the claw hammer, still embedded in the man’s head, and then back to her. “Remind me never to mess with you, girl.” Lauren, who constantly nagged her friend not to get herself killed, chuckled. Her laugh was as false as Nikki’s vacant smile.

Heat still inhabited the adrenaline wasteland. After the hormonal tsunami receded, it left her body shaky, her emotions hollow, and her focus dulled. All reserves had been tapped and she subsisted now on pure will. She was relieved to be able to account for her weapons. Her Beretta 950 found its way home to her ankle holster courtesy of a teen from the housing projects who violated his mom’s curfew to smoke some weed in the parking lot, found the Jetfire, and turned it in to the crime scene unit working the body of the attacker she’d killed with it. CSU had located her Sig Sauer near his corpse, and she’d have that back soon enough. Detective Feller knew a few things about adrenaline dumps and handed her a Snickers. Randall had arrived on the scene shortly after the first responders, having heard the ten-thirteen call go out. The street veteran said if he’d known that she was the officer needing help, he would have beat them all there, and Nikki believed that. He told her that the plate numbers she got from both vehicles had been boosted from airport rental cars, so good luck there.

“I figured when I saw the Montana tags on the Impala,” she said. “Makes sense that the Cool Customer wouldn’t be driving that thing around with Port Authority tags on it.”

“Cool Customer, indeed. That G36 he was firing must have packed a hundred-round drum. CSU had to send out for more numbered cones to mark the shell casings. They ran out.”

While he went around the block to check on getting her Sig released, Heat took another bite of the candy bar in service to her blood sugar. Then came another boost. Rook arrived.

He had been her first call when things all settled and the wounded construction worker got patched and ported in the ambulance. Nikki phoned just to let him know where she was — at least that’s what she told herself. But she really needed to hear his voice. She craved a connection to life after coming so close to losing it. And even though she’d told him not to come by, there he stood, beaming on the sidewalk as if he wanted a candid look at her before he broke and ran to her arms.

They buried themselves into their hug, whispering each other’s names, and then kissing. PDA be damned, she thought, I’ve earned this moment. The tensions they’d been dealing with didn’t exist right then; all she wanted was to hold him and be held. He touched his thumb tenderly to the red mark on her check and she assured him the paramedics checked and she was fine, nothing broken.

“You know,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever kissed a woman standing over a corpse before.” Nikki laughed, but it started to turn into tears and she put her head against his chest just to get calm and not break down. He seemed to know she needed that and they stood together quietly a few moments until she stepped back, nodding that she was OK now.

They relocated to the sidewalk to let Lauren Parry continue her work. He said, “Apologies to Peter, Paul, and Mary, but now we know what you’d do if you had a hammer.” Which made her laugh, but then she noticed his eyes were moist now.

“Hey?” She took his hand. “I’m all right.”

The precinct’s remaining Crown Victoria pulled up beside them and the man who needed all that room hauled himself out of the driver’s side. “Heat, you’re going to give me a fucking heart attack,” said Wally Irons.

“No, I think the pork chops and fried dough are pretty much going to take care of that,” muttered Rook to Nikki while the captain waddled around to them.

Before Irons even checked on her, he gave Rook a disdainful head-to-toe and said, “I’d ask what you’re doing at my crime scene, but I guess I can let it go, considering.”

Rook said, “You’re a big man, Wally,” and took an elbow from her.

Heat filled in her captain on the events. The exercise forced her to relive the unpleasantness, but it also helped her organize the main points for the report she would have to write. It also spared her a second recap to Rook. She finished by telling him Detective Feller would ride herd on Forensics to run prints on the two deceased and on the Smith & Wesson dropped by the man she air nailed.

He bobbled his head. “Sounds like you’ve got it all buttoned down.”

“It’s the job, sir.”

He looked off up the empty midnight street, watching life beyond the cordon and said, “You think this is related to the Gilbert case?”

“I do.” Beside her, Rook cleared his throat but wisely chose not to speak.

“Heat, I want some hides on the wall for this.” He came back to look at her. “Meantime, I’ve tried this before, but I’m not taking no. I’m putting a radio car at your doorstep all night. Period.”

She thought about the assault force. Saw the passive menace on the face of the Cool Customer. And said yes.

Irons felt good about that. Until Rook said the car should be at his place overnight.

Heat was up and dressed, pacing the kitchen on her cell phone when Rook shuffled out of the bedroom the next morning. After indulging in a long, hot, therapeutic bath to soothe the morning-after soreness of her street battle, she had already brewed a thermos of coffee and taken it down to the officers in the blue-and-white outside his loft. Nikki poured him a cup of French roast from her second pot and smooched a silent air-kiss while she listened to Zach “The Hammer” Hamner’s dour phone call to start the workday.

“This is not going to be one of our usual friendly chats,” he’d begun when her phone rang exactly a minute after seven. Zach was so damned earnest, she couldn’t tell if he was kidding, or if he truly felt they had a cordial relationship. “This is an on-the-record, official caution, Detective. Are you hearing me?”

“Yes, Zach, I hear you.”

Rook glanced up from booting his laptop at the counter and whispered, “Is that The Hammer?” She nodded and rolled her eyes. “Tell him you killed a man with a hammer last night. That’ll lighten things up.”

Nikki held up a shush finger and turned away so she wouldn’t laugh as Zach pressed onward. “In my capacity as special assistant to the commissioner of Legal Affairs, I am informing you that the department has been put on notice that an unlawful arrest suit is going to be filed by Keith Gilbert’s attorneys. I don’t need to tell you what cost such a lawsuit would carry. Not just in hard dollars, but in embarrassment to everyone here at One PP.”

“Are you saying they’re threatening? That’s chest beating. Why don’t they just file if they really have a case?”

“An indulgent stance when you’re not in my chair,” he said. “I want your assurance that you have a case.”

Nikki said yes, but didn’t feel it would be wise to share everything her squad had gathered. Maybe she didn’t have a law degree, but Heat knew what an abundance of caution was, too. “I’ve got solid stuff, Zach. I’ve got forensic evidence. I’ve got phone records connecting Gilbert to Beauvais, even though he denied knowing him. I’ve got the doctor who treated Beauvais, who ID’d Gilbert to him as the guy who shot him.”

“Tell me you have the gun.”

“I have a search warrant in-process.”

“What’s the delay? No, let me guess, Wally Irons.”

“You win.”

Zach Hamner didn’t laugh. The Hammer never laughed because he wasn’t human. But this time, his sourness had cause; he was feeling pressure. “We have to get this right, Heat. You have to get it right. A dropped ball will hurt the whole team, but a fumble on your end will have most serious repercussions vis-à-vis your viability for future endeavors. You know what I’m talking about, right?”

“Yes, of course, the task force.” She saw Rook look up from his screen and quickly back at that mention. Would this open discussion, or just be the elephant in the kitchen? Nikki yearned for friendly contact and came around the counter to drape an arm on Rook.

“Fine then,” said The Hammer. She heard papers shuffling on his desk. “Let’s cover some bases. Keep digging. And bring in that doctor for a sworn statement. I’ll see what I can do to move along the search warrant for the gun.”

“That would be helpful.”

“All I can say is, this better be airtight. Let me hear you say it.” When Heat didn’t respond, he said, “Detective?”

Nikki didn’t reply because she was too transfixed by what she happened to see on Rook’s MacBook. It was a security camera still photo. Two men — both dangerous-looking, with prison time written on their faces — were leaning into the foreground of the shot, which had the slightly fish-eye effect you got from a wide-angle lens. Heat had seen many pictures like this before. This pair was caught in the act of installing a dummy keypad and card skimmer to steal PINs and account codes from ATMs. But that’s not what gave her pause. What made Heat momentarily speechless was who she saw standing lookout in the background: Fabian Beauvais.

“Hello? Did I lose you?”

“No, I’m here.” And then, trying to sound like she still believed it, Nikki said, “…Airtight.”