Tick Tock

Chapter 70

OUTSIDE BERGER'S BEDROOM, Emily and I raced behind Hobart and a few SWAT and bomb guys to a circular staircase at the end of the hallway.

"If this sick-ass individual really is up there, he knows IEDs, so keep your eyes peeled for trip wires," Hobart called back to us as we quickly began to ascend in single file.

IEDs? Trip wires?! I thought, wiping sweat out of my eyes. I couldn't believe this insanity. We'd found Berger, taken him down, and yet this thing still wasn't over?

Of course not, I thought as we corkscrewed upward toward the penthouse's third floor. It wasn't over until the fat lady sang.

It was noticeably hotter in the upstairs hallway. Dim, with the curtains drawn, it reminded me of an attic. A bizarre, mazelike one with ornate crown moldings and paneled walls and more art. Strange art, too, I thought, scanning the walls filled with photographs of hellish landscapes and oil portraits of melting people. We passed a large room nearly filled with hideous primitive sculptures.

Sweat dripped from my nose and from the grip of my Glock as we slowly went down the hallway. Emily was pressed close behind me, her Glock 23 pointed toward the ceiling, her palm flat on the back of my Kevlar vest.

Everyone jumped in unison as we heard a loud, electric clack and a deep humming from behind the wall we were walking beside.

"Excuse my French, but what the fuck?" Emily said.

"Must be the building's elevator machinery," Hobart whispered over the com link.

"Can anyone loan me a fresh pair of boxer shorts?" asked one of the commandos.

A moment later, Hobart and his men paused by an open doorway on our left. When I arrived beside them, I was surprised by a breeze.

That wasn't the only surprising thing. Inside was a bathroom. The most enormous white-marble bathroom I'd ever seen. It had a sunken tub, a fireplace, and French doors that opened onto a massive stone balcony. A soft breeze fluttered the bubbles in the tub along with the tiered flames of candles that blazed in the enormous fireplace.

"Where the hell is this creep, already?" Hobart said, sighting his submachine gun at the tub. "Did Calgon take him away?"

We followed Hobart out onto the balcony. A tar beach this was not. Talk about a million-dollar view. Over the ornate granite railing in front of us was nothing but Central Park's trees and the distant, iconic towers of the Dakota and San Remo apartment houses on Central Park West.

"What have we here?" Hobart said, kneeling down at the terrace's south end. A rock-climbing rope was knotted expertly around one of the stone balustrades, its other end pooled onto the roof three stories below.

Hobart cupped his mike with his fist.

"I want a team on the roof at the base of the penthouse pronto. Be advised, it looks like our guy has bugged out, either into the building or onto one of the fire escapes."

I followed Hobart's gaze. He was right. Looking down below on the roof of the building, I spotted the openings for at least two fire escapes. If our man Carl had bolted the moment we'd knocked the door down, he could have gotten down to the ground floor by now or onto the roof of one of the block's adjoining buildings.

Shit. We would have to go floor by floor now or maybe even building by building. It was possible he could even have gotten away.

I immediately called Miriam.

"I got good news and bad news," I told my boss. "We found Berger, but apparently the guy from the security camera is his accomplice. Not only that, but he just went Spider-Man on us. We're going to need Aviation on the block here, eyeballing the rooftops."

"On it," my boss said.

"Wait up. What's this?" Hobart said, suddenly climbing over the railing on the north side of the balcony and hopping down.

Five feet below the terrace around the side of the penthouse was another balcony with a massive garden of potted palms and shrubs and exotic plants. Beside the garden, alongside the building itself, was a suburban-type garden shed. Hobart raised his foot to kick its door in, but then thought better of it.

Brian Dunning from the NYPD Bomb Squad popped a gum bubble as he climbed down and stepped forward. He took a digital video recorder out of a bag and worked its fiber-optic camera under the door's bottom crack.

"It's okay. Clear," he said after a minute.

Still, a tense, collective breath was held as he opened the shed's door.

Most of the dim room was taken up by a massive worktable. The flashlight taped to Hobart's MP5 played over a soldering iron and bricks of what looked like modeling clay.

"That's plastic explosive," Dunning said, waving his arms frantically, warning everyone back. "Enough to crater this roof. We need an evac of the penthouse and the roof right now."