Alert: (Michael Bennett 8), page 23
The car’s hood was folded in, and its front and rear windshields were completely shattered. All the interior air bags had gone off, and all the tires were blown flat.
I had to move one last sheet of wood to get a look at the driver. He gasped as he sat in the driver’s seat of the ruined car, clutching the wheel with his right hand. The driver’s door was missing. So was the driver’s left arm below the elbow. His striped polo shirt was scorched and sliced to tatters from bomb shrapnel, and when he turned, I could see a still-smoking piece of metal the size and shape of a Dorito embedded in his right cheekbone.
“You’re going to be okay,” I lied to him. “Just sit tight. What happened? Did you see who did it?”
He didn’t say anything. I watched his jaw suddenly clench and his lips begin to tremble. His whole face started shivering, like he was suddenly freezing. I was looking into his blue eyes when they glazed over and he stopped moving. I stepped back in startled horror, looking away. I knew I’d just watched him die.
I recognized his face when I peered back at him a split second later. It was Anatoly Gavrilov, the other Russian we’d brought in during the Bronx arrest of Yevdokimov.
Yevdokimov! I thought as I quickly looked past Gavrilov’s body to the passenger door on the other side of the car. Shit! It was open, and there was blood on the passenger seat and in the footwell.
“Yevdokimov!” I yelled to Emily as I scrambled out of the wreckage and headed into the street around the destroyed vehicle’s trunk. “He was in the car. He’s hurt and on foot. The real bombers must have tried to hit him. C’mon, he can’t have gotten far.”
Around the other side of the car, there was an actual blood trail on the sidewalk. A lot of blood. Yevdokimov was obviously hurt very badly. It was like we were tracking a gut-shot deer up Eighth Avenue.
“Back out of the damn way!” I said to all the looky-loos, trying to preserve the crime scene.
We turned the corner, and the trail ran smack-dab into a tall West African street vendor who was crouched down, picking up iPhone covers out of the gutter.
“Hey! Anyone come past here bleeding?” I said.
“Yes! A white man. A crazy white man,” said the vendor in a musical voice. “He had blood on his arm and pouring off his chin. I tried to get him to sit, but he pushed past me and knocked over all my stuff. He got into a taxi not a minute ago.”
I couldn’t see any taxi on 37th when I stepped into the street, so I radioed it in.
Officer Rowe and his buddies had arrived and were surrounding the scene when we went back around the corner to the wreckage. There had to be about a thousand people standing around now. Cars stopped in the street. Everybody had their phones out, immortalizing our bombing scene for the folks at YouTube to instantly globally disseminate.
“Fuck the police!” someone in the crowd threw out over the still-wailing horn to get a laugh. He got several, unfortunately.
“Isn’t this great? We’re going viral,” Emily said as we stood there gaping at the still-steaming, torn-apart car.
“Of course we are,” I said. “Who wants to watch Times Square Elmo beat the crap out of Times Square Spidey when you got a real live blown-up guy in a car?”
“So I’m going to take a wild guess and say we’re not the only ones looking for Yevdokimov,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“Guess not,” I said as I moved back through the crowd into the street. I walked around Rowe and crawled back toward the front of the car and reached in over the dead Russian and found the keys still in the ignition.
People in the crowd actually booed as I finally cut the car’s engine and the horn.
“That’s all, folks,” I said.
CHAPTER 98
“SO … ANYTHING YET?” I said for the twentieth time over Chuck Jordan’s shoulder as he sat at the desk, tapping at Yevdokimov’s laptop.
“Oh, plenty, Mike, but I’m keeping it to myself,” the young agent said, rolling his eyes.
“Why don’t we give Chuck a little space to work, Mike?” Emily said, yanking me out into the hallway.
We were in Yevdokimov’s flop now. We’d found it soon after the bombing. Sergeant Rowe had been spot-on. The building was just where he said it was, down the block from the bombing off Eighth Avenue on the north side of 37th. Yevdokimov’s crash pad was on the tenth floor, and it was filled with me and Emily and about twenty FBI agents who were scouring every nook and cranny for some sign of who the real bombers could be.
We still were unsure of Yevdokimov’s whereabouts. We’d told all the hospitals to be on the lookout for him, but so far, nothing was shaking. The good news was that we’d actually found three computers, which Chuck Jordan and his guys were now poking through.
“This isn’t exactly what people have in mind when they think ‘New York loft,’ is it?” Emily said, looking at the moldering plaster and probably asbestos-covered overhead pipes. “What did the building manager say? This used to be a sewing machine factory? Wasn’t there a famous fire in a sewing machine factory in New York in the eighteen hundreds or something? Because this place definitely looks haunted.”
“You’re thinking of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire,” I said. “That was down in the Village. After the fire started, more than a hundred garment workers died. People were jumping out windows. Because the kindly owners had gated and locked the exit stairwells to keep the workers on task.
“Some good actually came out of it, though, because the public went nuts, and it led to fire safety laws and sprinkler systems and fire escapes and the forty-hour workweek.”
“You’re just a walking Ken Burns documentary, aren’t you?” she said.
“Yes, and my fee for this extended walking tour is the capture of a Russian homicidal bomber in handcuffs with a big shiny bow on his head.”
“Get in here! I think I found something,” Chuck Jordan bellowed.
We went back in. On the screen was a picture of three fat kids in an aboveground pool. It took me a couple of seconds to see Papa Yevdokimov sitting behind them on the pool ladder holding a Super Soaker water gun.
“These are Yevdokimov’s personal photographs. There are about a hundred that show him at the same seaside cottage,” Chuck said.
“It’s his dacha,” Emily said.
“His what?”
“I worked a Russian organized crime case a couple of years ago. Dachas are Russian vacation houses. All the mobsters have them back in the old country,” she said.
“So are we going to try to peg the location from the background again?” I said.
“No. These shots are JPEGs with Exif file formats, which means that they were taken with a smartphone. Smartphone cameras record GPS locations of where each picture is taken in a process known as geotagging. Give me a second,” Chuck said, clicking open some new screens.
“Here it is. The latitude and longitude,” he said a second later. “It’s Eleven Roseleah Drive, Mystic, Connecticut.”
“That’s where he’s headed—has to be,” said Emily.
“What are we waiting for, then? Let’s roll,” I said.
CHAPTER 99
WE WERE BACK in the dingy building’s hallway, getting a move on so we could head up to Connecticut, when the elevator opened and Chief Fabretti appeared.
“There you are, Bennett. I’ve been trying to call you,” he said with an agitated look on his face.
“Sorry, Chief,” I said, fishing my phone out of my pocket. “Oh, here’s the problem. Left it on airplane mode.”
“Stop screwing with me, Bennett,” Fabretti said, pulling me over to a corner. “I’ve been getting calls from my bosses. Their counterparts over at the Bureau saw you traipsing around their new digs this morning. They said thanks but no thanks for your help. There’s no more task force. The feds are taking over the investigation from here.”
“What do you mean?” I said, agitated myself now. “We’re right in the middle of this. We’re about to grab the only guy who knows who the real bombers are.”
“No, Bennett. They’re about to grab him. Not you. The feds want to nail the bastards who blew up their building all by themselves.”
“What about the college kids who died on the train and the mayor and the people who died in the EMP attack? They were New Yorkers, right? The people we’re supposed to protect.”
“It’s already been settled. The FBI is going to get the credit for this.”
“They can have the damn credit, and if there’s any left over, you can have it. I’ll leave before the reporters show, I swear. C’mon, Chief. We’ve got a beeline on this guy. We just need to find this bastard now before the real bombers take him out.”
“It’s over, Bennett. So stop arguing,” Fabretti said, glaring coldly at me. “You’re off the case, and that’s an order. There were about a hundred robberies during the evacuation. We have plenty of work for you to do. Now drive me back to One Police Plaza.”
“Mike?” called Emily from down the hall, where all the FBI agents were packed into the elevator.
“Go,” I said. “Get this guy. It’s up to you now. Don’t lose him!”
“That’s the spirit, Bennett,” said Fabretti as the elevator door rumbled closed.
CHAPTER 100
FABRETTI INSISTED ON buying me a coffee at a Times Square Starbucks before we headed way back downtown to One Police Plaza.
“See, Mike? I’m not such a bad guy,” he said, tipping his nonfat latte at me as I chauffeured him down Broadway. “Listen, I know you’ve been neck-deep in this from the beginning, but this is coming from up high. The mayor—hell, the senior senator—is involved. We’re just small potatoes.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“Exactly. I’m doing you a favor. I heard the mayor sent her plane for you. That had to be sweet. A real ride on the gravy train. Or should I say ‘the gravy plane’? Honestly, you play your cards right, Mike, you keep playing ball, retirement is going to be smooth sailing for you.”
“Sure, definitely,” I said, checking my phone to see if there was anything from Emily.
After another excruciating twenty minutes of Fabretti’s pep talk, I dropped him off at the door of One Police Plaza. I told him I was going to park and meet him up at his office, but instead I actually squealed out of the lot and got immediately on the northbound FDR Drive.
I called Emily as I punched it.
“Where are you?” I yelled.
“We just crossed the Connecticut border, but we’re still about two hours away. Mystic is practically in Rhode Island. We have a team of agents out of New Haven almost at the house. What’s your status?”
“I’m on the highway about half an hour behind you.”
“What about Fabretti?” Emily said. “Aren’t you off the case?”
“I never heard him say that,” I said. “My ears are still ringing from that car bomb.”
“Mine, too, Mike,” Emily said with a laugh. “See you there.”
I hung up and asked Siri for directions and proceeded to put the pedal to the metal. I took the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge into the Bronx, then took the Bruckner to I-95.
It was coming on rush hour when I crossed into Connecticut and hit traffic. It was stop-and-go past Stamford when I saw the Chevy’s tank was almost empty, so I got off at the next exit and pulled into a BP gas station and filled up.
As I stood squeezing the nozzle, I looked at my phone and laughed when I saw that Fabretti had left twenty angry texts. Where the f are you? came his latest.
Taking a ride on the gravy plane, I texted back.
My phone rang a moment later.
“Hey, Robertson,” I said.
“Mike, big news!” he yelled. “We just got a bead on two Russians that might be our guys. Brooklyn and I have been going bonkers with these flight manifests, but we have two Russian immigrants who have been back and forth to Cape Verde from the States six times over the last year.
“Their names are Vladislav and Oleg Filipov. They’re father and son. Turns out they flew to Cape Verde out of Miami, not New York.”
“Miami?”
“Yes. The father, Vladislav, ran a brutal Russian prostitution and drug-dealing crew there for most of the eighties and nineties—allegedly, at least, since he never got caught for a damn thing. No fixed address.”
“What about the son?”
“We don’t have anything on him in terms of a record. He had a house in Queens up until six months ago, but since then, nothing. No address. No job. No visible means of support. I’m e-mailing you their photographs from their driver’s licenses as we speak. They could definitely be the guys on the video. One older, one younger. They’re looking good on this!”
“Sounds great,” I said. “Yevdokimov will be able to ID these guys once we catch up to him. Really good job, Robertson.”
I hung up and looked at the pictures of the two Russians. They didn’t have goatees in the pictures, but they both had lean, pale faces with sharp features and the same strong nose.
I left the pump still going and went inside to grab a Gatorade and some Pringles when I saw the clerk at the back of the store by the restrooms, standing with a mop by a pool of something that had spilled. I stopped in my tracks by a rack of magazines when I saw what he was mopping.
It looked like blood.
“Hey, what’s up, kid?” I said, rushing over. “Is that blood?”
“It ain’t tomato soup!” the blond college-age clerk said with a disgusted face. “Some guy was just in here, and when he leaves, the next customer comes out white as a ghost, screaming, ‘Ebola! Ebola!’ It looks like somebody hemorrhaged in here. I told my boss, and he said I should start mopping, but I don’t know. You think I should call the cops?”
“This bleeding guy, when was he here?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
I grabbed the mop out of his hand as I took out my shield.
“I am the cops. Show me the camera now!”
CHAPTER 101
“EMILY, LISTEN!” I screamed as I roared along the shoulder on I-95, scanning the stop-and-go traffic. “I just saw him! I just saw Yevdokimov on a gas-station video. I’m about five minutes behind him. He’s in a white Nissan Altima on Ninety-Five outside Stamford, heading north past exit ten. He’s probably heading toward you. New York plates two seven eight FRG. He’s bleeding heavily, and—”
I dropped the phone as I suddenly saw a white Altima ahead in the left lane. I drew alongside it across two lanes of traffic. I checked the plates. It was him.
“I see him!” I said to Emily as I snatched up the phone. “I’m on him. We’re between exits ten and eleven.”
“Stay on him, but wait for backup, Mike, before you try a traffic stop. Chuck’s on the horn with the Connecticut troopers. Hang back. We’re coming to you.”
A horn honked as I cut back into traffic, then Yevdokimov turned and saw me. He had some kind of bandage on his chin.
He immediately gunned it. He got out of the left lane ahead of the SUV in front of me. A second later, I saw him flash into the right lane and onto the shoulder, going for the exit ramp we were already passing.
At first it looked like he was going to make it, but then at the last second, he sideswiped the yellow water-barrel divider that cordoned off the exit ramp from the highway. I watched as he spun and hit the concrete divider on the other side of the exit with a horrible crunch of metal.
I got over to the right and braked and skidded to a stop on the shoulder and ran back toward the turned-around Altima, now almost completely blocking the exit.
I thought Yevdokimov was most certainly dead after this second incredibly violent incident of the day, so I was surprised when the passenger door opened and he staggered out.
“Down!” I yelled over the honking horns as I pointed my Glock at his head.
Because he was bleeding, I probably shouldn’t have cuffed and moved him, but we were in danger from the traffic, so I had no other choice.
I had him in my Chevy, down on his stomach in the backseat, while I was in the front passenger seat rifling through the glove compartment for the first aid kit, when the truck rear-ended us.
The passenger door was open, and I was thrown from the vehicle. It was the weirdest sensation of my life. One second I was sitting there reaching into the glove compartment, and the next I was out in the air banging the crap out of the back of my head as I skidded across asphalt.
I eventually ended up on a berm of newly mowed grass beside the shoulder. My head was ringing. I must have had a concussion. I felt numb as I lay on the grass facedown, not moving. I was definitely in shock.
Eventually I turned to look at my car.
We’d been hit by a big pickup, a Ford Super-something truck with an extended cab and a push bar in front and six wheels. Everything on it was black. The big tires and rims; the body; the tinted windows.
The two guys who climbed out of it were in black as well. They had ski masks on, and they rushed over and pulled Yevdokimov none too gently out of my smashed Chevy and put him into the cab of the truck.
Behind them, cars were just driving past normally. Some horns honked, but that was it. I couldn’t believe this was happening in broad daylight.
When I looked again, the guys in the ski masks were heading in my direction. That’s when I saw the guns they were carrying strapped over their shoulders—the nasty little black Heckler & Koch submachine guns that ESU guys have. I reached for my service weapon and drew air. That was not a great feeling. My Glock must have skidded loose when I was thrown.
I started backing up, scrabbling weakly on my unsteady feet on the grass. I couldn’t get my bearings. I felt off balance and floaty, like I was standing at the bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool.
I thought that was it. They’d just shoot me. But instead they grabbed me and threw me back down onto the grass. I almost laughed. It was like we were all kids again, and they wanted to wrestle or play football right there on the side of I-95.
