“They’re going for the bridge. We have to cut them off. Call it in.” She slapped the siren on the dash and floored the gas.
Nicholas braced himself with one hand and radioed in to headquarters to get them some backup.
Mike was good, weaving in and out of traffic, ignoring curses and middle fingers and stoplights, never taking her eyes from the car in front of them, navigating to a dime.
He hung on as the Crown Vic’s wheels screeched around a corner. He saw Mike was excited, focused; no doubt she was having fun. Was she giddy? Oh, yeah. God in all his goodness had blessed him with this woman as his partner.
Nicholas was shouting into the radio for some air support. Then two NYPD cruisers joined the chase, and their cavalcade didn’t slow, scattering people and other vehicles. Nicholas saw one taxi driver’s face when the Crown Vic spun out at the Division and Bedford intersection. He looked like death was coming at him. Mike jerked the wheel and up they went, the wrong way, on Ninth Avenue, then she sped off to the right, toward Broadway.
“Cut them off, go back, go back. Up Bedford!”
The back street here was narrow, carved with alleys. The Crown Vic rattled and shook as it sped down the uneven pavement. Nicholas was hanging on, Mike was about to take another corner, hard. He yelled at her when he saw a large lorry pulled in front of them. Mike screeched to a halt, buzzed down her window, and yelled, “Get out of the way, get out of the way!”
The cops behind them skidded to a stop as well.
The driver wasn’t a slouch. He slammed the truck into gear, shot forward, and Mike gunned the Crown Vic past him.
But the Honda was nowhere to be seen.
She said a very bad word, and Nicholas yelled into the radio, “We lost them, someone needs to pick them up.”
They pulled to a stop next to an HSBC bank branch on the corner of Bedford and Third Street, the cops fishtailing to crowd in next to them.
One got out of his vehicle and approached Mike like she was a bomb about to go off. Then she saw the officer’s nametag and laughed, couldn’t help it—P. Friendly.
Nicholas shouted, “Officer Friendly, is NYPD on the car?”
“We were calling in air support when he slipped away, Agent, sir. I’m sorry. We’ve got a BOLO on the Honda, we’ll nail them unless they pull into a garage.”
Nicholas slammed his open palm on the top of the Crown Vic, then called Gray. “We lost them. NYPD has a BOLO out. Okay, okay, let me change gears. Tell me you got something off the license plate of the Suburban Mrs. Antonio told us about.”
“I did indeed. It’s registered to a Meyers Enterprises, in Chelsea. Here’s the address.”
Nicholas punched it into his mobile. “Good. Now back to the Honda. They dirtied up the Honda’s plate so I couldn’t see any numbers or letters, but the background was white and it looked like there were some sort of flowers on a branch—”
Mike knocked on the top of the car to get his attention. “Virginia. Tell him the Honda plates were from Virginia.”
Gray heard her. “Brown Honda Accord, Virginia plates. Doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“It’s all we have, Gray.”
“I’ll see what I can do. We’re pulling CCTV footage from the area as we speak. Give me two minutes, I’ll find them.”
Two minutes. A lifetime.
Mike said, “We’re going to need a crime scene unit sent to Brooklyn. The guy Nicholas shot in the knee was looking for something in the burned debris.” She gave Gray the address, which he already knew.
“So now what?” Nicholas said. “We stand around with our thumbs in our mouths until Gray calls back, waiting for Zachery to come take our guns and put us in front of the review board again?” He watched Mike pull her hair back into a proper ponytail. She was bruised and flushed and out of breath and looked ready to spit nails. Nicholas thought she looked pretty as a picture. He couldn’t wait to meet her mom, the beauty queen.
Then she straightened, her eyes sparkled, and she gave him a sly grin. “Nicholas, we’re not needed in Brooklyn. There’s no way the two men are going back there, not with one of them wounded. This is a legitimate pursuit, and we think they may be headed to Chelsea to meet up with the black Suburban. So let’s get ourselves to the address in Chelsea Gray gave us. We can handle the fallout later.”
“Your mind is an astonishing instrument, Agent Caine. I believe you’re absolutely right. I’ll text Louisa, tell her about the man poking around. She and the team can check everything out, better for us to continue pursuit of the suspects. Chelsea it is.”
Mike turned back onto Sixth Avenue, thinking aloud. “Those two men who loaded up the redheaded woman into that Suburban. Mrs. Antonio said they were all in black? Not COE, no, they sound like professionals of some sort. We need to find her, Nicholas. I wish Gray would call and tell us they’ve identified her from the video at Bayway.”
Nicholas eyed her, alert to her tone, not her words. “There’s more, isn’t there? Something about her, Mike?”
She nodded. “I can’t get over the feeling that she’s familiar, that I’ve seen her somewhere before. Remember in the feed when she looked up at the camera? And we both wondered why she’d do that? Seems to me she wanted us to see her. We’ve got to find her, Nicholas, we’ve got to.”
31
BISHOP TO C5
Eisenhower Executive Office Building
Washington, D.C.
Callan mentally replayed the conversation with Ari while her driver, Redmond, expertly threaded her limo through the heavy traffic to the White House.
“You’re certain I’m the target?”
“Yes, maybe others, we don’t know yet.”
“And who’s behind the hit?”
“We don’t know that yet, either, not for sure, but probably the Iranians, Hezbollah.”
“And just when were you planning on letting me know?”
Was there the slightest hesitation before he said, and she remembered his exact words, “We’ve only confirmed in the last hour. We’ve been working hard to find out where he is, and we’ve had eyes on you. My people, Callan. Trust me, you’ve never been safer.”
“You should have told me immediately even though it wasn’t yet confirmed.”
“Contrary to popular belief, Callan, I don’t owe you anything.”
He’d hung up. She hadn’t bothered to call him back.
She knew all about Zahir Damari, and now that world-class killing machine was after her.
Callan knew she was strong. To those who didn’t like her, she was a ball-breaker, a bitch. To those who did, she was a trailblazer, a former CIA agent turned congresswoman who refused to kowtow to the good-old-boy network in D.C. and managed to keep her dignity and reputation intact—well, most of the time. She remembered, somewhat fondly, that ancient Southern congressman who’d slapped her hand once after a hearing and called her a bad girl. Now he was one of her biggest supporters.
A bad-girl scolding was welcome after what she’d been up against—dictators, military reconnaissance missions, and that bloody stint in the Islamabad Field Office, not to mention a decade in the U.S. Congress, probably the scariest of all. She thought she could handle anything. But Zahir Damari? After her? She didn’t stand a chance and she knew it. It scared her to the bone.
He’d been on the scene for more than twenty years now, a world-renowned assassin, a freelance terrorist, a walking, talking, breathing lethal weapon. She remembered her time as a freshman congresswoman; she’d been assigned to the Foreign Affairs Committee. Of course she knew all about Zahir Damari, seen some of his handiwork, but this was different. She’d never forget the briefing done by a group of Mossad agents on the hunt for Damari because he’d murdered five of their brethren during a special op in Afghanistan. One of the junior agents in the delegations was a handsome, hawkeyed man named Ari Mizrahi.